by CJ Carver
With two big home-made game pies and a variety of reheatable vegetables in foil dishes, Grace drove home. As she turned the last corner approaching the farm, she felt the same sense of looming disbelief descend.
Lone Pine Farm in the Highlands of Scotland was a heavenly place to be on a fine summer day with the crest of Ben Kincaid rising dramatically over the farmhouse, red grouse cackling in the heather, the river Lomhar glittering beneath the ancient stone bridge. It made your spirits soar. But when the weather turned, sleet driving from a sky the colour of a tar pit, the wind cutting like knives from the frozen wastes of Greenland, it felt so remote and hostile she had trouble believing she was in the United Kingdom.
Rumbling across the cattle grid she looked at the dilapidated buildings that Ross was going to turn into holiday cottages, the low-slung farmhouse that he’d partially done up. Home. She still hadn’t got used to it.
When she’d been embroiled in a crazy manhunt with Lucy last year, she’d realised how much she loved Ross and how terrified she was of losing him. She’d made herself a vow: that no matter where in the world he went, she’d go with him. But now that the reality was here, she was struggling. Not with Ross but with her environment. She was used to shops and cafés on her doorstep, restaurants, cinemas, late-night bars. If she wanted to socialise she just had to walk down the street to the pub on the corner. Here she had to drive for miles to do the same and there wasn’t a decent place to eat for love nor money.
Pulling up outside the house she heard her own voice as she spoke to Lachlan the paramedic – it will be beautiful when it’s finished – and had the realisation she was nothing but a soft southerner used to endless privilege and luxury, and abruptly felt a wave of self-loathing.
Just shut up, she told herself. You have so much to be thankful for. How can you be so self-centred?
As she switched off the ignition, Ross came across, boots muddy, his overalls covered in dust and dirt, and leaned in to kiss her. She forgot all about the mud, the mounds of building rubble, and kissed him back. For a moment her disquiet at where she was living vanished.
‘God, woman,’ he said. ‘You’re looking good today.’
She grinned. ‘You are so busted.’
‘What?’
‘I think you were talking to this.’ She patted the butcher’s box beside her.
He gave her a sheepish look. ‘Did you get pies?’
‘I got pies,’ she told him, but as his eyes lit up she added sternly, ‘but don’t forget you have to share.’
*
Dan was the first to arrive with Christopher, who moved as slowly and painfully as if he had a sword buried in his heart. Dan was taller than she remembered but the careful reserve in his body language and expression remained the same. She was surprised when he embraced her, kissing both her cheeks with warmth in his eyes, but then she remembered saving his life last year. An embrace was the least she supposed she deserved and she returned it with affection.
Since the sitting room was a mess, piled with mouldy wallpaper and rotten plaster, she took them through to the kitchen where Ross had lit a fire. The kitchen was enormous, bigger than the sitting room, with plenty of space for the two armchairs and sofa in front of the fire. Grace suspected that even when the sitting room was finished they’d spend most of their time in the kitchen because it was, quite simply, the nicest room in the house. She was pouring them all whisky when Lucy arrived in a flurry of dynamism that she quickly tempered when Dan introduced her to Christopher.
‘Dan rang me earlier and told me about Connor.’ Her narrow face pinched in sympathy. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Christopher nodded. ‘Thank you.’
Grace hugged Lucy tightly feeling her spirit lighten at the energy Lucy brought into the gloom of the farmhouse. Although she knew Lucy occasionally crashed, suffering black moods, she’d never seen her friend functioning at less than top speed.
While Ross prepared dinner, they got down to business. As Grace suspected, Dan wanted Lucy to undertake an unofficial investigation into Connor’s death.
‘I’d like you to act as a friend of the family. Not as a police officer.’
‘Fine by me, because if the local boys and girls know I’m poking about they’ll probably put me in a giant wicker man and set fire to it.’
Dan’s eyes went to Grace. ‘You were the first person called about Connor’s death.’ He glanced at Christopher. ‘You’re sure about this?’
‘I want to know everything.’ Christopher’s voice was intense. ‘Please, Dr Reavey—’
‘Grace,’ she told him.
‘Grace,’ he amended. ‘Don’t hold back or hide anything. It will kill me slower if you do.’
Grace nodded. She took a sip of whisky and told them, word-for-word, what had happened.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Christopher when she finished.
The man didn’t move, didn’t give any indication he’d heard her. His face was ashen and immobile.
‘Drink this.’ Dan handed Christopher his glass of whisky.
Obediently he drank. His hands were trembling, but when he spoke his voice was surprisingly strong. ‘Go on.’
Dan raised his chin at Lucy. ‘First thoughts?’
Lucy turned to Grace. She said, ‘Was any effort made, in your opinion, to look for the presence of a weapon or other means of death other than suicide?’
Grace shook her head.
‘Was the body searched for a suicide note?’
‘Not while I was there.’
‘What about the Coroner?’
‘They’re not Coroners here,’ Grace explained. ‘They’re Procurator Fiscals. The fiscal for the District tells me he spoke with Murdoch’s boss and is satisfied that death was suicide and that there are no elements of criminality or negligence. He’s asked me to provide a death certificate.’
‘Which,’ Lucy clarified, ‘means he’s not asking for an autopsy.’
‘Correct.’
Lucy leaned back, a corkscrew frown between her brows. ‘Were any photographs taken?’
‘I don’t know,’ Grace admitted.
‘Did they bag the body in situ?’
Grace thought for a moment. ‘I didn’t see a body bag.’
‘Which means it’s probably well and truly contaminated.’ Lucy exhaled. ‘And they transported it in the ambulance? Not a Coroner’s vehicle?’
‘Ambulance,’ Grace confirmed.
‘What about his bicycle? Dan said it was found on the bridge?’
‘It’s been returned to his mother.’
‘They certainly do things differently up here,’ Lucy remarked. She looked over at Dan. ‘When can I visit the scene?’
‘Any time you like. It’s not out of bounds.’ At that moment Dan’s phone rang. He checked the screen. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured. Rising to his feet he walked to the far end of the room and stood looking out of the window at the woodland. He spoke quietly.
Grace got to her feet and put another log on the fire sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. Ross topped up their drinks and together they laid the table.
When Dan re-joined them something had changed. There was a restlessness in him now, anxiety perhaps, it was hard to tell.
‘I’m sorry,’ he told them, ‘but something else has come up. I’m going to catch the first flight out tomorrow.’
Something to do with his job, Grace guessed. Freelance spy or whatever he was now.
‘You’ll be OK to investigate together?’ Dan looked between Grace and Lucy. ‘Grace is to get a post-mortem done if she can. Both of you talk to the pathologist. Lucy is to talk to Sam, Connor’s mum, and his school . . .’ He raised his hands half-apologetically at Lucy. ‘Sorry. You know what to do. I’ll let you get on with it.’
Later, after they’d eaten, Grace pulled Dan aside. He’d been withdrawn since his phone call, barely speaking to his grief-shattered friend during dinner, and his eyes were shadowed with emotions she couldn’t read.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked.
He looked at her steadily. He said, ‘My father’s left me a letter.’
At her blank look, he added, ‘He died last week.’
Before she could offer her condolences he said, ‘The bearer of the letter is a friend of my father’s.’
She could tell he wanted to say more but she also knew he hated giving anything away if he could avoid it.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ she said.
He looked into her eyes.
‘Someone has to know. Someone I trust.’
‘I won’t tell anyone.’
‘Except Lucy.’
‘Except Lucy,’ she echoed.
He took a breath, and she knew he was finding it difficult to speak, so she remained quite still, quite silent.
‘Dad’s friend, Olivia, says he may not have died of a heart attack after all. She says he may have been murdered.’
CHAPTER TEN
From Heathrow Dan took a bus to Reading Station and a train on to Bristol where he caught a taxi to Clifton. He spent the journey in a state of stunned incredulity, unable to comprehend what Olivia Laing had told him.
His dad, murdered?
If his father had been in a military theatre, on a war operation, Dan wouldn’t have a problem with this, but he’d died in his friend’s golf club. Doing something he loved.
When Dan wasn’t staring blankly into space he was replaying the phone conversation he’d had with Olivia Laing and, when he could, he used his tablet to research everything about her. When he’d taken her call last night, her name rang a bell but that was all. Dan had never met this particular friend, and didn’t know anything about her. He found this slightly disturbing although he couldn’t pin down why. Was it because he thought he knew all his father’s friends? He was familiar with Christopher’s father, Gordon, along with their other university friends, Rafe and Arne. But he couldn’t say the same for his father’s work colleagues.
His father had been an officer in the Royal Marines. He was tough, fit and intelligent, and when he’d retired at fifty-five he’d founded Tor & Associates Ltd, a global security and risk management company that he’d eventually sold for a small fortune to three former Royal Marines who kept him on as a consultant. Dan couldn’t remember meeting many of his father’s colleagues and as his taxi turned into Victoria Square he realised he’d had no reason to.
Olivia Laing lived on the ground floor of Victoria Square West, a grand Georgian terrace of houses overlooking a broad stone pavement and leafy gardens. Having attended Bristol University, Dan was already familiar with the place and knew it was one of the oldest and most affluent areas of the city, filled with art galleries, restaurants, and boutique shops and bars. He’d always had a vague notion at the back of his mind that he and Jenny might move here in their dotage so they could shuffle along and have a good coffee with friends, also in their dotage, before reading the newspaper sitting by a window in the sunshine and then shuffling back home.
Was that what Professor Olivia Laing did? Her page on the University of Bristol website showed she had retired in 1996 having reached pensionable age, but it didn’t seem like she did much shuffling. She’d just completed a book on constitutionalising the European Union after the Brexit vote and was co-authoring another, along with advising on a project funded by the Office of the Prime Minister. Her biography made her sound like an academic spinster, one of those elderly, dignified, frighteningly intellectual women living alone with a cat and sustained by little more than deep thought, so when she opened the door in a flurry of colour and jangling bracelets, Dan made a swift mental adjustment.
‘Dearest Dan, I can’t imagine how you must be feeling. I’m so sorry for ringing you like I did but I only returned from Brussels last night and when I heard about your father I knew I had to do something straightaway . . .’
She took his arm and led him inside, silk scarves trailing. She was small and delicately boned, with short-cropped jet-black hair threaded with silver. From her biography she had to be at least seventy-eight years old but she didn’t look anywhere close, which Dan put down to her Asian genes.
‘He told me if he died suddenly and without warning, to get in touch with you immediately. I know he died of a heart attack and that very many people die of heart attacks, but he also died suddenly and without warning . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ An upsurge of sorrow washed across her face. ‘Your father was a very good friend to me. I shall miss him very much.’
Dan touched her lightly on the shoulder and she looked up at him with a sad smile. ‘He loved you, Dan. Dearly.’
‘I quite liked him too,’ he responded with ironic Britishness to cover his pain.
‘Come and sit down. Let’s have something to drink.’
He opted for a glass of mao-tai, a Chinese liquor and something his memory told him he’d had before but that he couldn’t remember ever drinking.
‘Gambai!’ he said. Bottoms up. He didn’t know where that came from either, but he’d learned not to get stressed over his ruined memory. One day he might discover he’d been to China, but in the meantime there was no point in getting frustrated over his inability to recall it. As he’d worked out with his psychiatrist, it was a waste of mental energy and merely made him angry if he dwelled on it for too long.
Olivia Liang smiled at the toast, and at that moment, he saw her age in a multitude of tiny wrinkles radiating from around her eyes. ‘Gambai.’
They drank in silence for a moment. Then Dan put down his glass and leaned forward. ‘I need you to tell me everything my father said.’
Carefully she put down her glass. Her gaze went to the window, her expression withdrawing a little. ‘It wasn’t much, I’m afraid. He said he’d discovered something that might put him in danger. He stressed the word might several times. He honestly wasn’t sure. He told me he’d read something in the newspaper that had scared the “living daylights” out of him. He was looking into it, in case it was true.’
Dan remained silent, not wanting to interrupt her reliving the memory.
‘I asked him what he’d do if it was true. He said he’d take it to you.’
Dan wanted to ask whether his father had seen him as a son when he had said this, or as an ex-MI5 officer, or a political analyst, but he held his tongue. Bill would trust the son, and Dan guessed he’d also trust his son’s professional experience in a global and political world.
‘What else?’ Dan pressed.
Olivia rose and fetched them another glass of mao-tai. She paused in front of a huge painting of red and orange swirls that was outrageously bright, almost gaudy, but which Dan found oddly restful.
‘He didn’t say much,’ she told him, ‘because I’m sure he didn’t want to worry me. He was very light-hearted about it. He said he was probably being paranoid and that we’d have a laugh about it when it turned out to be nothing.’
‘When did he see you?’
‘Last Tuesday. In the evening. We had dinner at Fishers. He had a huge bowl of mussels followed by the most enormous piece of cod. And sticky toffee pudding. I could never work out where he put it all.’
His father had always eaten heartily, and it was only later in life he had begun to put on a bit of weight around his middle, which he battled against by keeping active.
‘Which newspaper had he read?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘I don’t suppose he mentioned what day he read it?’
Olivia shook her head. ‘Sorry.’
Dan took a sip of his drink. He let his eyes rove over a variety of contemporary art, from a pair of bronze lobster claws to a vibrant neon chandelier hanging over the dining area.
‘When he gave me your letter,’ Olivia added, ‘he said to keep it safe. Very safe. Shall I fetch it?’
‘Please.’
The envelope was standard plain white, press seal, medium weight, sized to take an A4 sheet folded into th
ree. There was no name on its front, nothing on the back. It wasn’t sealed either. It looked like an unused envelope, aside from the fact there was a sheet of paper inside. It was the type of envelope Dan himself might have left with a trusted friend, something that a burglar wouldn’t notice and that could easily be overlooked. He put it on his knee.
Olivia returned to her seat.
‘Where did you keep it?’ he asked, curious.
‘In an envelope holder with the rest of the envelopes on my desk.’
Hiding in plain sight.
‘Have you read it?’
‘No.’
He believed her.
‘Do you know what’s in it?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Dad didn’t intimate what he might say?’
‘No.’
He heard a car door slam outside, then an engine starting up. When the car had gone he picked up the envelope and opened the flap. Withdrew a single sheet of paper. Unfolded it. His father’s bold, slanted writing scrawled across the page.
My dearest Dan,
If Olivia has given you this, then I am dead. I’m sorry to do this but I would like you to ask a pathologist to check my body for any signs of foul play. If you don’t find any, then I died suddenly and without knowing anything about it, which has to be a good thing.
If, however, you are convinced otherwise, then I am mad as a cut snake and I want you to place an ad in The Times saying you love Elizabeth very much and how sad you are that she can’t be with you on your anniversary but you will be sitting on your special bench on the day so she can picture you there.
The bench, son, is the one facing the pharmacy on Chelsea Green. The day is the day after you place the advertisement, 10 a.m. sharp. Have the newspaper with you.
All my love,
Dad x
‘Don’t tell me,’ Olivia said, raising both hands. ‘He told me not to get involved and in all honesty, I’d rather not know.’
Normally Dan was pretty unreadable – which sometimes drove Jenny crazy – and he wondered what had shown on his face to alarm her. Disbelief? Astonishment? Or was it something more profound, like cold fury? He took a breath and gave a twisted smile. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t be sharing it.’
