Blood Ties

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘Well,’ Alec said. ‘Lunch, I think. Back to The Lamb. What do you make of Matthews?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m disposed to dislike him because he put Eddy down, but I’m probably being picky. Kevin seems to rate him and Eddy did too, apparently. Adam Hart is easy to like, which automatically gets my spider sense tingling.’

  ‘Oh, you were a copper for far too long. Funny though, the thing that really strikes me is that Eddy was careful, tidy, odd in what he told people. No one seems to have the full picture. It’s like he fulfilled whatever their expectations were, even with people he is supposed to have liked and been close to.’

  ‘Don’t we all do that to a certain extent? I mean, Sam knows things about me even you don’t. Not because I’m hiding anything; just because they’re sister things, girl stuff, you know?’

  ‘Sure, I suppose so. Maybe that’s all it is.’

  ‘But you’re not sure that’s all it is.’

  ‘No, I’m not so sure.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Lunch was an oddly sober affair. Susan was distracted by the mundane weekly task of ordering and resupply for the pub; Kevin, oddly quiet, had taken up residence in Eddy’s corner, if not yet in his chair. A few locals drifted in, but they were a largely evening, post-work phenomenon and at lunchtime were thin on the ground. Trade at lunchtime was steady and, Naomi noted, generally older people, Susan having a discount policy twice a week for those of pensionable age.

  ‘I’ve got great staff,’ Susan said when Naomi tentatively asked if she could make a profit overall. ‘Regular lunch customers who come back week after week, a couple of walking groups who have monthly bookings for thirty or more, and in the summer there are several B&Bs who put custom my way, so we all get by. I’m in this for a steady living for me and my staff, and that means building loyalty, so we do OK.’

  She didn’t know Eddy had been writing a book and neither did Kevin.

  Post lunch, Alec intended to drive out to Eddy’s house, so he sought Susan out in her office in order to borrow her key, leaving Kevin and Naomi ensconced by the fire and examining Eddy’s notebooks. Kevin had brought with him a digital recorder so Naomi could listen back later to their discussion. It was a thoughtful move and much appreciated. Alec was now kicking himself for not having thought of it.

  ‘What do you hope to find at Eddy’s place?’ Susan asked, handing the key over.

  ‘I don’t know. He talks about some interesting papers that he used for researching his book. I’m probably barking up the wrong tree but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Have you heard anything from the police?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, but the solicitor phoned this morning, said he’d been looking over Eddy’s estate and there’s more to it than just the house.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah. We always assumed Eddy had some kind of pension he was living on, but it looks like he had money apart from that, some kind of trust fund that came from his wife. It should have passed directly to Karen when she was twenty-one, but of course she died, so it came back to him.’

  ‘I see. Do you know how much?’

  Susan shook her head again. ‘No, Mr Cole says he’s still collating all the details. Apparently Eddy made several investments with the interest and there’s stocks and shares and such.’

  ‘Sounds as though it’s a large sum, then.’

  ‘When I asked if there’d be enough to hire a solicitor to look after Kevin, and he said yes, I thought he meant that we’d settle up after I sold the house or whatever, but it seems like this is what he meant. That there is actual money. I know it sounds silly, but I’m a bit daunted, Alec.’

  ‘I think that’s understandable. It’s all happening rather quickly.’

  She nodded and turned back to her desk to continue with the day to day concerns of running The Lamb, but Alec was pensive. More mystery, he thought.

  Alec drove along the winding road to Eddy’s house deep in thought. It had not escaped his attention that all they’d done so far was uncover random facts about Eddy’s life; nothing that actually gave them a lead on who had killed him.

  More and more, Alec was drawn to the notion that Eddy had quarrelled with a friend and the death had been accidental. Why on earth would anyone want to hurt a man whose main interests in life were events that had happened centuries before?

  Susan would have been a possible suspect had she known about the will, but as she’d got a pretty solid alibi and, as even Eddy’s solicitor seemed to have been vague about his estate until now, that really didn’t seem likely.

  ‘What about Kevin, then?’ Alec spoke his thoughts out loud, trying them on for size. ‘He had opportunity; did he have motive? Did Eddy find something that Kevin wanted? Did they argue about it? Did Eddy fall and Kevin was too scared to call for help?’ Alec frowned at the road ahead. ‘I don’t see it,’ he said. ‘I’m missing something.’

  He pulled into the short drive that led to Eddy’s house, switched off the engine and sat, mulling everything over in his mind. What had Eddy really been like? It seemed he had been trying to be all things to all people – at least some of the time. But was Naomi right and Eddy had merely been magnifying that habit everyone had of showing the most acceptable face in any given situation?

  He got out of the car, fishing Susan’s key from his trouser pocket and then, remembering how cold Eddy’s house would be, taking his heavy winter coat off the back seat and shrugging it on. It was unbelievably quiet out here, he thought. Just the sound of the wind and a few extra hardy birds.

  Before going inside, Alec wandered round to the back of the house, through a little wooden gate and into the rear garden. He halted in surprise. He knew that rural gardens could be large but he had expected nothing like this. The garden meandered, there was no other word for it. The boundary line on his right was roughly straight, marked out by a hedge of hawthorn and ash and other plants Alec couldn’t name. To his left the garden arced around, first to the right then sharply left. It then curved and snaked out into the middle of a neighbouring field before bounding back to join the hedge line. But it was vast. Long and wide, once it left the environs of the cottage and the paved area of old bricks that formed a sort of patio immediately behind.

  Alec moved to stand by the back door, just outside the little porch he had noticed when he stood in the kitchen with Susan. A brick path led down to a plashed hedge, its structure clear now the winter had denuded it of leaves. An arch led through to what Alec discovered was an extensive vegetable plot and beyond that a small orchard with perhaps a dozen trees. He wasn’t good at estimating acreage, but he reckoned there was a small field’s worth of land here and, from the look of the still-stocked vegetable patch, kale and onions and winter cabbage ready to crop and the neat beds up towards the house, it was all well loved.

  He could see now the reason for the odd shape. A little stream wound its burbling way down the side of the garden and across the ploughed fields beyond. There was no other boundary here, and quick examination showed that the stream was shallow, easily forded, and the line of a footpath could be discerned a hundred or so yards distant where the road looped to touch the farmland. It would have been a muddy journey from footpath to stream and thence into garden, but it would not have been a difficult one.

  He turned to look back at the house. The lean-to porch didn’t look sturdy enough for anyone to use that as an access point to the upper floor – and, besides, Kevin and Eddy had sat talking in the kitchen, so they’d have heard anyone climbing it. Conversely, a person coming up the garden path could clearly have seen them both in the kitchen, though with the lights on inside, neither Kevin nor Eddy would have been able to see them.

  Carefully, Alec walked back up the path, looking for signs that the CSI had been out here and examined the scene. He found none. Evidently their search had been focussed inside the house.

  He walked round the other side of the cottage. A rain butt had been set below the downpipe from the roof. He had noted several, se
t around the cottage. This, like the others, had a wooden lid. All the rain of the past few days had washed it clean and filled the butt to overflowing. Beside the butt, a couple of ageing wine crates had been upended and stacked one on the other. It was a precarious balance, but would have been enough to assist anyone trying to gain the top of the water butt. Alec examined them, saw no sign of shoe prints. He tested them for sturdiness and, with one hand on the downpipe, managed to balance and then step on to the wooden lid of the water butt. Alec looked up. A small window, which he figured must give on to the landing, could just about be reached by someone climbing the downpipe. Plumbing from the bathroom overflow protruded through the wall and Alec reached for it. It broke as he touched it, the pipe coming away clean in his hand. He tucked it into his pocket and looked more closely at the wall. Scuff marks, as though a foot had slipped from the pipe and scraped down the wall, could just be discerned, and he figured that someone lighter and more limber than himself could just about have reached that upper window.

  He jumped down from the water butt and took the short length of plastic pipe from his pocket. Of course, he couldn’t be certain, but the break looked new and a tiny scrape of mud still clung to what had been the upper side. Feeling in his pocket he found a couple of ziplock bags, thanking his long career which meant he almost always had evidence bags somewhere about his person. The pipe was too big to fit into one and he slid a second over to cover the top, knowing that he was probably wasting his time with this; any forensics would have been compromised by his interference and the fact that he could not establish a proper chain of evidence. Still, it might add to what could be classified as circumstantial; it might pique someone’s interest.

  Returning to the front of the house, he let himself in. Without the slight benefit of the hazy sunlight, the house was as chill and damp as he had expected. It didn’t take long, he thought, for a home to feel just like another neglected space. He went upstairs, noting here and there the evidence of the CSI return but also the absence of any crime scene tape on the front door, just a sad streamer of blue and white tied to the foot-scraper outside, left when the rest had been removed.

  The window at the end of the landing was closed and Alec noted the fresh traces of fingerprint powder on the sill. Gingerly, he lifted the latch, noting traces of grey here also.

  ‘Right, so there’s where you came in.’

  Looking down he could see the top of the water butt. The downpipe passed the window before continuing to the roof. Could you lift the latch from the outside? The windowsill was narrow on the outside, not much room for perching while you tried to open the latch, but what might be a footprint, smudged and muddy, marked the cracked paint. Alec photographed it with his mobile phone and made the assumption that the CSI would have done the same. He pulled the window closed, then opened it again. Tool marks on the wood, scraping marks, showed that something had been slid between latch and badly fitting frame and the latch had, in all probability, been lifted from its place.

  Would you have heard that had you been sitting in the kitchen? Alec wondered. This was, after all, the external kitchen wall. Would you not have heard someone landing on the floor upstairs if you sat below?

  The latch was an odd one: a little curl of wrought iron, with holes drilled along the length which fitted on to a small metal peg. There had once been a second catch, further up on the frame, but that was broken off and, Alec thought, had been long gone.

  He dropped the catch back against the frame. It fell with a dull, metal on wood thunk and a little click where metal hit metal. Would you hear that in the kitchen? Maybe not that, but the getting through the window without making a noise would be far harder. Would you hear it in the hall?

  He thought about it, wishing he had someone with him so he could try it out. Probably, he decided. Was that why Eddy had come upstairs?

  Turning, Alec made his way back down the corridor, opening doors as he went, checking rooms for signs that someone else had been there.

  Everywhere were the signs of the CSI presence, but Alec was certain that they hadn’t been the only ones to search this house. It was just a feeling, but it wouldn’t go away. He opened drawers and cupboard doors in the guest room, feeling beneath the stacks of towels and sheets in the big cupboard, searching beneath the mattress and under the bed. Then Eddy’s room, noting that although the clothes were folded they were not stacked in the drawers but crammed inside as though someone had grabbed them out in handfuls and then crammed them back to establish the semblance of order. Nothing beneath the bed, not even much in the way of fluff. The wardrobe contained a couple of suits and three jackets. Shirts on hangers, jumpers in neat piles on the shelf above, and shoes in rows on the cupboard floor. Nothing had been moved here, Alec was sure of that. So, why look in the drawers but not bother with the wardrobe? Had they found what they were looking for?

  Alec stood on the bright red rug in the middle of Eddy’s room and looked around. Whoever had searched this room had been looking for something small. Something that could be fitted into a drawer, hidden beneath clothing. He thought about the diary and notebooks that Kevin had discovered in his pack. Had that been what they searched for? If so, why did he have this sense that they had stopped looking? Had they realized that whatever they wanted had already gone?

  He crossed to Karen’s room and slowly opened the door but nothing had changed. The room still nestled beneath the strata of dust and the soft toys still glared at him from the end of the bed. He closed the door again and returned to the foot of the stairs. Glancing at his watch he noted that he had been at the house for a little over an hour. It felt longer. A swift check of the kitchen confirmed that nothing seemed to have been disturbed there, and the living room looked the same, so far as he could recollect, as when he had examined it with Susan. A little bored now, and somewhat frustrated, he went back into the hall and into Eddy’s office.

  The mess was still there: boxes opened, papers scattered, files taken from the cabinet and emptied on to the floor. The computer was missing and Alec remembered that Sergeant Dean told him the police had taken it. He wondered if they had found anything. If Eddy had kept back-up files. A search of the desk drawers revealed nothing but pencils and printer paper.

  What would the key fit? The desk drawer had the wrong kind of lock. The filing cabinet?

  Feeling in his pocket for the key, he crossed the room and tried it in the lock but the lock was too large and the wrong shape. No, Naomi was right, this was more like the cheap keys issued with suitcases. Made of flat, stamped out metal, it was too thin and too flimsy to be for anything that required force or a strong mechanism.

  Did the key even mean anything?

  A small sofa occupied a corner of the room and Alec sat down, trying to see the office from Eddy’s perspective. Eddy must have sat here, with his cup of tea and his notes or his research. A rickety little table had been placed at the end of the sofa. The surface was worn and covered in marks from hot mugs having been set there. ‘So, he sat this end of the sofa, and he read or thought or . . . looked at his maps.’

  Where were Eddy’s maps? And what about this Lorenz cache that had provided so much information for his book?

  Alec sat back and tried to think. The last time he had seen him in the pub, Eddy’s maps had been on the table in front of him. At the end of the evening, what had he done with them? Alec visualized the scene: Eddy at the end of the evening, draining his glass, picking up his maps and books and assorted bits and putting them into a document case. Not a proper briefcase, just a slim red folder. He opened his eyes, surveyed the room once more, stood up so he could see. Knowing what to look for now, Alec scoured the room, lifting stacks of paper and spilt filing and rummaging behind the cabinets that stood wonkily against one wall.

  ‘Got you.’ On impulse he had tipped the furthest cabinet slightly to the side. It was heavy, but not impossibly so, and in the hollow beneath the plinth he glimpsed a red folder. Clinging to the cabinet, he kicked a
t the folder, dislodged it from its place, and then drew it out from beneath the cabinet with the toe of his shoe. Sitting atop the folder was a small tin box fastened with a tiny padlock. Alec laughed aloud.

  A small sound attracted his attention and, frowning, he lowered the cabinet again, picked up the folder and box and peered out into the hall. Nothing, and yet he was sure that the sound had not been merely from the old house settling. It was unfamiliar, a difference in what Naomi would have called the natural soundscape of the place.

  Not really understanding the impulse, but acting on it anyway, he shoved the box and folder out of sight beneath the sofa, then went out into the hall once more. ‘Who’s there?’

  He could see through the living-room door that the room appeared to be empty. The kitchen? A few steps down the hall and a quick glance through the door told him that this room had no occupant.

  Upstairs?

  Alec set a foot on the lowest step, looked up at the spot Eddy had fallen from and that was as far as he got. Pain, hard and heavy and acute, filled up and overwhelmed his senses and then the world went black.

  NINETEEN

  ‘What time is it?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘Just after four. Shouldn’t Alec have got back by now?’

  ‘Depends what he found, but I’d have thought so. Is my bag over there?’

  Kevin passed her the shoulder bag and went to get them both more tea. The Lamb was very quiet at this time in the afternoon, the lull between the lunchtime crowd and those in search of an evening meal. The chef went off home at two, picked his kids up from school an hour after and came back for the evening rush. His wife worked too and the flexible hours, though a bit frenetic, fitted them both. Evening staff started to arrive at five and for much of the afternoon Susan was alone with maybe just one other member of staff. She said she liked it that way. Naomi got the impression that she was trying to employ as many people as she could. even if that was only part-time.