He’d been let out once to use the toilet in the bathroom next door, and the blond man had brought him a sandwich and a drink, so he guessed it must have been lunch time, but what did that mean? Twelve? One, even two? The pale and watery sun had moved out of sight behind the house and he tried to visualize how the sun shifted in relation to Frantham. He knew it set down past Marlborough Head but he’d never observed its movement closely enough to guess the time.
George had passed most of the time in speculation. Why was his dad so angry with Karen? Just what was going on? After a while, getting nowhere, he switched to wondering what Paul was doing now, fantasizing about what they’d do together when all of this was done. He was surprised to find that even the daily monotony of going to school seemed oddly comforting and inviting.
George left his perch and lay down on the bed, staring at the cracked plaster on the ceiling, wondering if he should try and sleep. He understood now why his mum and Paul had found that activity so appealing. Voices from the stairs attracted his attention. He slipped off the bed and pressed his ear against the door, recognizing his father’s voice and that of the blond man. He guessed that the three of them were alone in the house.
‘I know time’s bloody short,’ Parker senior was protesting. ‘But he can spare me an hour or two. That’s all it’s going to take.’
‘Better be all,’ said blond man. ‘Look, he’s been tolerant, Ed, but try his patience, take too many risks, and he’ll drop you just like that. He doesn’t like it when personal matters get in the way of business.’
‘And I’ve not let it, have I?’
George backed away from the door. His dad was shouting and he could hear him clearly enough now.
‘Just so long as you remember.’ George was struck by how unconcerned blond man sounded. ‘You miss the boat; no one’s going to wait.’
The door opened. His dad was holding George’s coat and his other belongings. He dropped them on the bed.
‘Twenty minutes and we’re leaving,’ he said. ‘Be ready.’
‘Where we going?’ George asked, but his dad ignored him and George was soon alone again.
He checked through his stuff, glad to find that Tim’s card and his watch had been returned to him. His watch told him that it was two forty-five. He put it back on his wrist, tucked his belongings back into his pocket and put on his coat.
Mac had returned to the flat to tell Karen that he’d got some bodies looking at the camera footage. Knocking but receiving no reply, he let himself in, calling out that it was only him. He’d leave a note for Karen.
Carol didn’t look up as he came in, staring at the television; she didn’t seem to have moved since Mac last saw her.
‘Carol? Is Karen not here?’ Receiving no response, he came over to the sofa. ‘Carol?’ He touched her hand, a cold chill in his stomach. ‘Carol!’
Her hand was still warm, but Mac noted the pallor of her face. He touched her wrist, her throat. She slipped sideways, away from him, her head striking the arm of the sofa. ‘Carol!’ What had she done? Had she taken something? Karen kept her pills hidden. But not here; maybe there was no hiding place here. No pulse, she was not breathing – should he try CPR? Instinct told him it was far too late for that.
‘Oh, God. No. No, you can’t do this to them. You stupid woman, don’t you know what this will do to them? What reason have you got to kill yourself now?’
He stared at the prone form of Carol Parker and felt the same sense of utter despair he had encountered that night on the lonely beach, watching the little girl die. But this time the despair was tempered with slow-burning fury. How dare she choose to cop out now? How could she choose to die when her kids were doing everything they could to live?
He pulled his mobile from his pocket and called an ambulance, then called Eden. He’d been kneeling by the couch but he got up now and paced the room, willing Eden to pick up, scanning the floor for anything that would give him a clue as to what she’d done.
Bending, he could see that a glass had fallen beneath the sofa, fallen from her hand. He schooled himself not to touch it, but he could see traces of milk coating the inside. Stuffed beneath the cushion beside the dead woman he saw the box, the bubble pack, nothing left inside. How many had she taken?
Eden’s voice came on the phone. ‘Mac, Andy’s just spotted your boy on the CCTV footage. Shop under your flat. There was a man with him, looks like Parker senior but he doesn’t show us his face unfortunately.’
‘She’s dead, Eden.’
‘Who? Mac, are you OK?’
He took a deep breath. He was beginning to feel like Jonah. He’d come here and brought the taint with him to a place that hadn’t known a violent death in more than two decades.
‘Carol Parker,’ he said. ‘I can hear the ambulance. Overdose, I think.’ A sudden calm seemed to have descended upon him, the panic and fury fading as suddenly as it had come. He closed his phone and went to open the door for the ambulance crew, wondering again where Karen had gone and aware that the brief note he had planned to leave when he came to the flat just couldn’t begin to cover this.
Thirty-Six
Despite Karen’s objections Rina had used a trip to the bathroom to try and contact Mac. He was out, she was told. Something had come up unexpectedly and no one knew when he’d be back. She considered trying Eden but Karen was calling from the bottom of the stairs that it was time to go, and Rina, peering at her watch, was inclined to agree.
This was her lucky watch. It had a tiny, elegant little face and a pretty leather band. Her husband had given it to her on their first anniversary and Rina would not dream of doing anything important without slipping it on. It was her touchstone.
‘I’m going to need you watching over me this afternoon, love,’ she whispered. ‘This is going to be a tough room.’
Karen was pacing impatiently. ‘Tim’s gone to get the car. We’ll be in time, won’t we?’
‘My dear, we’ve got plenty of time. We’ll get there well ahead of them.’
She heard Tim’s car pull up outside and hustled Karen through the door. Matthew Montmorency stuck his head around the living-room door.
‘You off out, then?’
‘Yes, won’t be long.’ She checked that Karen was out of the way and then placed a piece of paper by the phone, putting her finger to her lips as Matthew opened his mouth to ask a question.
‘Bye, Matthew,’ she said, hoping he would do as she asked and just keep on trying to reach Mac, hoping he would understand the brief message she had left.
It was a ten-minute drive to the hotel at Marlborough Head. They parked in the car park and then made their way on to the cliff path. Tim remembered the day he had come here with Rina. He consulted his watch. ‘High tide soon,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I thought I heard a boat engine a minute ago. It’s a bit hard to tell with this wind.’
‘Where are they?’ Karen fretted.
‘It isn’t time yet,’ Rina reminded her. ‘We got here ahead of time.’
Tim shivered. He could see that the women were cold too, their faces pinched and reddened by the stiff breeze. Karen’s strawberry-blonde hair whipped around her face. Impatiently, she pushed it back, but had nothing to keep it in place. She turned, trying to escape the worst of the blast, but the wind had other ideas and just tugged the hair free of her grasp, flailed at her again.
It’s going to chuck it down, Tim thought, looking up at the rain clouds. He caught the sound of a boat engine again and squinted out to sea. A motor launch sat halfway between the shore and the horizon, but the sound he had heard sounded closer in, nearer to the cliff. A boat could land at high tide, he remembered.
‘They’re here,’ Rina murmured.
Tim looked back towards the hotel. A black car swung into a parking space and three people got out. A shock of bright red hair disclosed the smallest figure as George.
‘Oh!’ Karen made as though to run towards them but Rina took her arm.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Don’t make sudden moves, we don’t know how he’s going to react and it looks to me as though he’s got a gun.’
‘A gun?’ Tim was horrified. He studied the three figures and realized that Rina might be right; something was pressed against the boy’s side, something his father held. How could a parent threaten his child that way? Tim, whose parents had been gentle, sweet, if slightly ineffectual at times, found it incomprehensible.
‘What do we do?’
‘We wait,’ Rina said. ‘And we play our cards the way they fall, Tim. The aim is to get ourselves and the children out of this safely, nothing more.’
Children, Tim thought, looking sideways at Karen. Was she a child?
He eyed the two men warily. The other one, the blond one, looked ex-military to Tim. His uncles were, and so were both his grandfathers. He knew the look. It occurred to Tim that he and his father really were the odd ones out in their clan. His father was an artist and he was a … well, just now he felt more like a failed clown than Marvello. It occurred to him too that it had never mattered, not to any of them, that he and his father had taken a different path.
‘I must go home,’ he said. ‘When this is over. See the folks.’
‘Good idea.’ Rina approved. ‘I’ve been telling you that.’
Karen blinked at them, uncertainty and disbelief reflected in her eyes. She clearly thought that they were both ever so slightly mad. Right now, Tim was inclined to agree.
‘You brought your nan with you,’ Parker senior said. ‘What’s with the old woman?’
Tim could see Rina bristle.
‘Well, you can both clear off. This is nothing to do with you. It’s between me and the kids.’
‘You’ve got five minutes,’ the blond man said.
‘Plenty of time.’
Tim watched, bemused as the blond one pushed past Rina and headed for the steep little path he and Rina had climbed down that day after the kids’ party. Parker senior was now waving the gun towards Karen.
‘Get over here.’
‘Why, can’t you hit me at that range? Lousy shot then, aren’t you?’
‘I said get over here.’
‘Not until you let George go. Not until she’s taken him out of here.’
‘Like you’ve got a choice.’
‘Oh, she has a choice and she’s making it,’ Rina said. ‘You want her dead, shoot her now. You want them both dead, then you’d better shoot young George as well, and us two witnesses, and I don’t think you want that, do you, Mr Parker? Just too many deaths to explain away. And the police will know it’s you. I can’t think your employer will be too impressed, you drawing that much attention to yourself.’
Parker had turned his attention to her now, brandishing the gun in her direction. Rina backed off steadily as he advanced, gesturing slightly to Tim that he should move aside.
Puzzled, Tim did so, and then it became clear. Rina was drawing Parker closer to the edge. He remembered that day when they’d slipped and slithered their way down the cliff path. The rocks below. The cold sea. Inwardly, he shuddered.
Parker was paying him no attention. He had one arm round George, across the boy’s chest. Tim caught his eye, wondered how much nerve the boy actually had. He bared his teeth, grimaced; he opened his mouth and snapped his teeth shut, silently.
George’s eyes widened, but he nodded almost imperceptibly. They had moved now, on to the path itself, and Karen was talking to her father.
‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘So what now, we dance around on the cliff all day? That bloke said you had five minutes. That must be almost up. That boat waiting for you, is it?’
‘You’re coming with me,’ Parker senior said. Tim watched him, waiting for the moment when the gun was furthest away from George, pointed nowhere. The man’s eyes were hard as blue chipped ice. He’s the one that’s crazy, Tim thought. He’s truly lost it.
Catching George’s eye again, he nodded. George lowered his head and bit down hard on his father’s hand. Parker senior yelled out, shook the boy, raised his gun and brought it down hard on George’s shoulder, aiming for the head but missing as the boy struggled aside. Only then did George let go.
Rina threw herself at the man’s chest. He stumbled back, the gun firing into empty air as Tim swung George aside then ran to Rina’s aid. He flung himself at the hand holding the gun, praying that something of his martial forbears might just have filtered down and into him. He knocked the arm up and back, his full weight already committed. Parker stumbled, but he was so much stronger than Tim. With a roar that chilled Tim’s blood he swung round, gun still in hand, and put his right foot down into empty air.
For a moment he hung on, slipping sideways over the grassy edge of the cliff, his hands grappling for purchase, gun falling to crash on to the cliff below. His fingers dug so deep into the tussock and the clay that Tim thought he might just save himself.
‘Dad!’ Despite himself, George was horrified.
‘Help me, son. Help me now.’
George took a step and Tim grabbed him by the coat sleeve, pulled him back. Then the moment was lost and Parker was gone. Below them they heard a boat engine roar into life and a small launch speed away.
The sound George made was feral, bereft, appalled.
‘Nothing you could have done,’ Tim said softly. ‘He’d have taken you over with him.’
‘No, but you could have,’ Karen said. ‘But you didn’t, did you?’
She was smiling.
Thirty-Seven
A week passed in Frantham. The media circus departed, satisfied that Mark Dowling, murder victim two, had been the killer of Mrs Freer and so the young man was now of less interest than he might have been.
Mac had read most of the reports. Many were, to his mind, tainted with a faintly satisfied inflection. Many of the additional officers had left too. No leads, no forensic, no suspects equalled no process. Their services were required elsewhere.
It was, Mac thought, the week for funerals.
He’d been surprised at how many people turned up to give Mrs Freer a good send off. Saddened by the thought that few of them had visited her in life, though he suspected a sense of collective guilt that just slightly assuaged that. She was cremated and, there being no living relatives, Rina scattered her ashes in the garden of remembrance. Mac found some solace in the knowledge that her husband’s remains had been scattered there too.
Mark Dowling’s body had been released for burial. Mac attended that too. The gathering was smaller. Family, close friends. Mac kept apart, not wanting to intrude, not welcome or belonging.
He watched as the parents wept over their lost son and recalled the mother, the slash of red lipstick on the tired face when she had answered the door. Her evident dislike of the boy playing too-loud music in the upstairs room and of Mark himself. Threatening and feral and thoroughly unpleasant.
No one had money to pay for Carol’s funeral and so it was a sad, simple affair organized by social services, though Rina had provided food for the wake and the Montmorency twins cooked with flair and aplomb.
Carol was cremated. Her children attended, along with Paul and his family and Rina and her entire household. And Mac. Neither George nor Karen wept. They seemed beyond that.
‘What will you do?’ Mac asked.
Karen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Work, try to keep on with my studies. Social services say there are benefits I can claim and such. We’ll get by.’ She was cool with Mac since that day at the flat when George had been abducted. Unforgiving.
Later, Mac sat in Rina’s sanctuary and drank some very good scotch.
‘I think she did it,’ he said. ‘I can’t prove it, of course.’
‘No,’ Rina said. ‘You could prove it if you had a mind to. You just don’t know if you want to yet.’
‘That isn’t true.’
‘Isn’t it? Look, Mac, no one’s that clever; no one commits murder and leaves nothing behind. The proof is there. You’
ve just got to want to find it.’ She paused. ‘Have you shared your thoughts with anyone else? Has she appeared on anyone else’s suspect list?’
‘No, to both,’ Mac said. ‘Rina, what really happened that day on the cliff? Did he really fall?’
‘He lost his footing and he fell,’ she said. ‘Yes, I pushed him, and yes, Tim grabbed his arm and tried to take the gun. He was very brave. But no one could have done anything to help Parker, even if we’d wanted to.’
‘Ah, there’s the thing,’ Mac said. Rina proffered the whisky and he accepted gratefully. ‘She’s all George has.’
‘But is she good for George?’
‘She loves him.’
‘Undoubtedly, but such a love! One day George will want a life of his own. He won’t want or need his sister’s protection. Might come to resist such obsessive love.’
‘Is it obsessive?’
‘Oh, I would say so.’
‘But to lose her too … Rina, I couldn’t do that to him. There’ve been so many lives lost and ruined already.’
‘So, you’ll let a murderer go free?’
He swallowed the last of the scotch in his glass. He was drinking far too much, especially after such a long period of abstinence. He really shouldn’t be drinking at all, should he? Rina leaned over and refilled his glass.
‘The boys,’ she said. ‘What about them? They broke into Mrs Freer’s house. What will happen?’
Mac shrugged. ‘The family court will deal with it in time. They’ve been cautioned. There’s mitigation. We’ll have to see. I can’t see either of them re-offending. Paul’s seeing a counsellor. George refused … I should go. Did I tell you I have the flat for another month? Suicide and holiday lets don’t go together, I understand. Bad publicity.’
‘And how do you feel about it?’
He shrugged. ‘How should I feel? I still can’t believe she did it. It seems so … pointless. She came all this way, she survived so much, and suddenly she just decides to end it all. Just like that.’
‘You don’t think Karen might have …’ Rina began. ‘No, forget I even uttered the thought.’
A Reason to Kill Page 21
