by Wonny Lea
They seemed genuinely shocked by his father’s death and Charles wondered how they would react when it became known that he was murdered. It would surely be on the news, but then it had happened in Wales, so maybe there’d be a time lag. His father was not well known in his own right but his wife was no stranger to the media and his son was an MP. Add that to the fact that his daughter still held a place in the hearts of the British tennis fans then sooner or later the press would put those things together and come looking for a story.
Charles thought better of that whisky he had been seeking and went through to the kitchen to settle for some strong black coffee. He was going to have to play the part of his life over the next few days and act even more than he was used to doing politically. The only one who wouldn’t be convinced that he was a grief-stricken son would be Lizzie.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Fill me in on what’s happened,’ said Matt, ‘and if anyone’s going to the canteen will they pick me up a sandwich? Anything, I don’t care what filling, and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, please.’
Matt was starving. He hadn’t eaten during the Wiltshire trip and it was way past lunchtime. He wasn’t sure if anyone had heard his request but five minutes later a ham salad sandwich arrived together with the crisps and a coffee. In the meantime he’d been briefed more fully by DS Shaw and DC Cook-Watts.
‘Well, as you know I was keeping an eye on Elizabeth Ferguson and I told you over the phone about explaining to her the possibility that her father was murdered and showing her the photograph.’ Maggie Shaw hesitated. ‘It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.’
‘Yes, and I’d have probably done the same,’ replied Matt. ‘So what’s happened since then?’
‘Not a lot, really, as far as Elizabeth Ferguson is concerned. She was obviously shocked when I showed her the photo, but then it was as if a valve had been released, and she poured out years of wondering what had happened to her baby. Her friends had known nothing about her pregnancy; Della wasn’t even born at the time, but they’ve both been very supportive. She’s been speculating about what her father was doing in Wales and if it had anything to do with finding her daughter. I get the feeling she’s not going to be that surprised to hear Ellie Bevan’s story.’
Matt turned to Helen. ‘So what about Ellie – where is she with her understanding of the situation?’
‘Oh, I think she’s streaking ahead. She knows that the name written on the victim’s photograph is Elizabeth but the name meant nothing to her. Now she believes that the photographs are of her as a baby in the arms of her mother and that one of them is called Elizabeth and the other Harriet. She thinks it must be her that was named Harriet because that’s what her adoptive father was calling her before he died.’
‘I think she’s got that right, don’t you?’
Both the women he was speaking to nodded in unison. Helen continued.
‘She’s been demanding to know the identity of the victim and to know if he was in some way related to her. Knowing that his identity would soon be public knowledge, I told her that the gentleman was a Mr Edward Ferguson. Not surprisingly, the name was unfamiliar, and then for some reason she wanted to know if he was Welsh. It seemed like a strange question to me!’
‘Let me get this straight,’ said Matt. ‘We are all of the view that Ellie Bevan is the baby that Elizabeth Ferguson gave up for adoption twenty years ago. The victim, Edward Ferguson, is Elizabeth’s father and therefore Ellie’s grandfather. My instinct is to put Elizabeth in the picture – pardon the pun – and see how she reacts to what we tell her.
‘Maggie, you come with me and Helen please stay with Ellie and make sure she’s OK. See if there’s anyone she’d like to be with her, and if she asks any questions don’t hesitate to answer them truthfully. Her thoughts may be streaking ahead but she’s going to have more than thoughts to deal with before today is over.’
Lizzie’s first thought when Matt entered the room was to ask about the Jag but there was something about his demeanour that stopped her short. ‘You know who killed my father – is that it?’ she asked.
‘No, not yet, but we will find out.’
‘OK, Inspector, but at least you saw that his car was at Woodcanton Hall and not where you thought it was?’ The second question was more like an accusation but Matt didn’t bite.
‘We can talk about the cars later, but for the moment I want to tell you about something we have discovered as a result of our investigations. It’s of a rather personal nature, so how do you feel about your friends being here?’
Lizzie gave a feeble laugh. ‘So far today they have learned that I was raped by my tennis coach at fifteen and that I had a baby girl that I was persuaded to give up for adoption. You can’t get much more personal than that, can you?’
Matt spent the next quarter of an hour telling Lizzie about the circumstances surrounding her father’s death. Lizzie was surprised to learn that her father had been on the same train every day the previous week.
‘But why?’ she asked ‘What was he doing there?’
By the time Matt had finished talking Lizzie knew the answer to that question. There was silence in the room for several minutes before Lizzie broke it.
‘So this young woman – this Ellie – is my daughter. Does she know about me? Does she want to see me? Are you sure about this?’
And then Lizzie had an horrendous thought. ‘Surely she had nothing to do with my father’s death? Oh, please God don’t tell me she was involved. Why was he killed anyway? Did she know he was her grandfather?’
Questions. questions … and there would certainly be plenty more to come. Matt tried to take them one at a time.
‘First of all, Ellie doesn’t actually know about you yet, although she’s adding everything up and suspects she was related to your father. As I said earlier, we don’t know as yet who killed your father but I have no reason to suspect Ellie was involved.’
Lizzie interrupted. ‘Will I be able to speak to her? Do you think she will want to see me? Oh God, I wish my father was still here. Has anyone been able to get hold of my mother yet? I’ve given her number to dozens of people. I did speak to my brother and he was supposed to be on his way here. Not that either of them will be bothered about my father, but bloody hell, will they be furious to know that he probably found me my daughter.’
‘Why furious?’ Matt asked. He thought they’d be overjoyed to welcome Ellie back into the family?
‘When my father had rescued the family business he set about putting his affairs in order, and out of the blue he instructed the family solicitors to name my daughter as one of the main beneficiaries of his will. It contains a clause whereby she is entitled to live at Woodcanton Hall for the duration of her life if she chooses to do so.
‘My mother went ballistic when she heard what he’d done, but the family solicitor said he was within his rights to decide who could use the house that had been part of his family’s estate for generations. She calmed down when I told her that I’d no intention of ever looking for my daughter and it’s not been mentioned since.’
Lizzie hesitated. ‘Until now I had always believed it would be wrong to disrupt whatever life she’d made for herself – now I’m not at all sure … and I really want to see her. I guess none of us imagined my dad would go off to look for her. I’m sure my mother would have done anything to stop him if she’d known what he was doing.’
Matt silently wondered if the ‘done anything’ would include murder.
Lizzie’s eyes re-filled with tears. ‘I hope he saw Ellie – I’ll have to get used to calling her that, she’s always been Harriet in my mind.’
‘From what Ellie described, he did see her, and what she also said was that he seemed like a kind and gentle man but that his eyes were sad – and she told me that she wished she had spoken to him.’
‘She’s described him perfectly.’ More tears welled up in Lizzie’s eyes and Matt turned to DI Shaw.
‘S
tay here with Lizzie while I check on a few details, and then I’ll decide how we should proceed.’
‘She’s here, isn’t she? My daughter’s here! Don’t lie to me, Inspector Pryor – I know she’s here!’
Matt was completely taken by surprise by Lizzie’s outburst but quickly regained his composure. ‘I don’t know where you got that idea from, but I won’t lie to you. Yes, Ellie is here – but she doesn’t know that you are. There are some things I need to talk to her about and as you can imagine your presence is going to be one hell of a shock for her. It will be for her to decide if she wants to see you or not. I can’t and won’t make her do anything she isn’t comfortable with.’
A few minutes later, with Helen Cook-Watts in attendance, Matt was having a very similar conversation with Ellie Bevan.
‘Thank you for being so patient, but there were things I had to be sure about before coming back to speak to you. I was hoping you would have phoned someone to be with you – did you do that?’
‘Well, to be honest, DI Pryor, I’ve never really got on with my adoptive mother, and my two best friends work for the same company as I do. Our boss is already cheesed off with me taking so much time off this week, and I don’t want to annoy him further by getting one of the others to take time off as well. I’m saving every penny I earn for a deposit on a place of my own so I can’t afford to get the sack at the moment.’
Matt wondered how Ellie would react when she knew that there was a very spacious property in Wiltshire, and the opportunity to turn at least part of it into a home of her own.
‘But I’ve been in touch with my Auntie Julie and she’s making her way here. She was my father’s sister and I’ve kept in touch with her since he died, but she lives in Swindon so she may be a while yet.’
‘I’m happy to wait until she gets here if you think you need her to be with you when we talk.’
‘No, please, let’s just get on with it – my brain is working overtime and I’m way beyond making one and one make two … I’ve got it adding up to six at least.’
Ellie smiled, but she looked tired and Matt knew he would be adding to her burden with some of his revelations.
‘I understand DC Cook-Watts has told you the identity of the gentleman on the train. We don’t know yet who committed his murder or what possible motive there is for the crime but those are things we will find out. What we do know is the connection that exists between you and Edward Ferguson.’
‘Is he my grandfather?’ asked Ellie, almost in a whisper.
Matt simply nodded and then went on to fill in all the gaps in Ellie’s understanding of the situation. Helen grasped the young girl’s hand and provided countless tissues as the truth of what was being said sunk in and Ellie began mourning the death of a grandfather she had only fleetingly encountered.
‘The woman in both photographs is Elizabeth Ferguson, his daughter, and as you have been suspecting the child is you – and she is your mother.’
The words brought a fresh flood of tears from Ellie and Matt could see that his DC was struggling to fight back a few of her own. He could barely imagine the emotions that Ellie was facing. Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she knew who she really was.
In the last week she had met but not spoken to her grandfather, and then watched him die. Now she would be getting the opportunity to meet her real mother.
Matt was about to broach that subject very gingerly when Ellie asked, ‘Does my mother know I was there when he died? Has she been to see her father? Is she still here?
‘Yes, Ellie, to all three questions. I know it’s a big thing to consider at the moment, but do you want to meet her?’
‘With all my heart – yes.’
It was Matt’s turn to fight back the tears as he saw the emotion in Ellie’s eyes, but he spoke resolutely.
‘We’ll make the arrangements, but I’m afraid nothing can happen until your aunt arrives from Swindon. I can’t let you face this situation without support, so you need to sit tight for just a bit longer.’
Matt left Helen with Ellie and made his way to the incident room where all known details of Edward Ferguson’s murder were available. He looked at the board and was pleased to see some of his questions already answered.
He highlighted the word ‘motive’ on the board. Someone on that train had a reason to kill Edward Ferguson and the murder must have been carefully planned. Matt had momentarily considered Catherine Ferguson as the killer, but only because had a possible motive. Catherine actually having been on the train, having injected her husband personally was impossible – but would she have been able to arrange his death?
Matt didn’t know enough about the woman yet, but he highlighted the need to interview her. Whoever had done the deed would have had a syringe already primed, and known the best time to administer the injection and then be able to exit the train anonymously.
Sitting at one of the tables, Matt wrote down everything he could think of regarding possible motives for murder. Eventually he discarded most of what he’d written and ended up with three things that seemed feasible.
His team had already gathered a lot of information about the victim. There was even a family tree that showed Edward’s ancestry back to Tudor times. None of the family held peerages, but they would certainly have been classed as landed gentry. Fortunately for the family their ancestral home wasn’t that big, in comparison to many that had been too expensive to maintain, and Edward himself had amassed a considerable fortune. He’d rescued the family business from collapse and had made it an extremely profitable concern.
The first possible motive on Matt’s list was money. Lizzie had already mentioned her father’s contentious will, and Matt made a note that he needed to see it. He assumed Edward’s wife and children would be the main beneficiaries, and as such they would all have to be considered as suspects, even Lizzie, although Matt didn’t really see her as a likely candidate. He would need a verified alibi of all their whereabouts at the time of the murder … though even then there was the chance that they’d arranged for someone else to commit the murder.
Having met the son as well as the daughter, Matt struggled to keep his personal dislike of Charles Ferguson from influencing his judgement. Logically Matt could see no reason for Charles wanting his father dead. His political career appeared to be blossoming, and judging by the car he drove and the suits he wore he was no pauper.
The murder had happened at approximately 08.30 yesterday, and members of his team had already interviewed more than twenty people that had been on the train. So far the rugby player that Ellie Bevan had mentioned was their strongest lead. Andy Cox had told DC Cook-Watts that there was someone in the carriage who had caught his attention.
‘There aren’t many blokes bigger than me,’ he’d told Helen. ‘But this feller was way above my height, quite dark, and he didn’t seem to know where he was – kept looking through the train window. Must have been a stranger to the area.’
Sadly, when pressed for a description of the man Andy Cox wasn’t that helpful, and the only additions to the fact that he was tall and big, but not fat, was that he didn’t smell too sweetly, and had very big feet.
‘It wasn’t body odour exactly, more like he’d been eating garlic or something peppery. I’m sure other people in the carriage would have noticed. This man had his back to me most of the time, and to be honest I was nursing a bit of an ’angover so I wasn’t feeling sociable. I had my head down, I was avoiding eye contact with a nosy neighbour of mine, and that’s why I can describe his shoes in detail but can’t tell you much about his face!’
He’d made a statement confirming what he’d said to DC Cook-Watts and Matt scanned it and then looked through all the statements to see if any other passengers had remembered the man.
Matt reined himself in from thinking that this man was probably a trained assassin hired by Charles Ferguson to kill his father, but he had to admit that he desperately wanted to interview him.
Any further d
eliberation was halted as Helen Cook-Watts came in followed by a woman she introduced as Mrs Fletcher.
Ellie’s Auntie Julie.
Chapter Fourteen
Charles Ferguson redialled the number and this time, to his relief, his mother picked up. For years Catherine had insisted that in public, her son called her by her first name, but she knew that when he was particularly worried he reverted to ‘Mother’.
‘Mother, thank God! Did you get my message? I hope you’re sober because we’re both going to need our wits about us to get out of this mess.’
‘Of course I’m bloody sober! I had lunch with some friends, I must have fallen asleep for a bit – but I’m absolutely fine. And before you start the lecture, yes, I know what time it is. What are you banging on about – what mess?’
‘Where are you?’
‘That’s none of your bloody business. I’m not at home and that’s all you need to know.’
‘Has anyone told you about Father?’
‘I picked up a message from your sister saying something about her having to go to the police station in Cardiff. It didn’t make a lot of sense, she was prattling on about his car having been found somewhere in Wales.’
Charles listened carefully to his mother’s voice and tried to decide if she was indeed reasonably sober before telling her what he knew.
‘Things have moved on a bit since then. It would appear that he died on a train in Cardiff and that the police are treating his death as suspicious.’
