Rina hadn’t told her where he was, but that had been easy enough to find out. A simple question, directions to the children’s home – Karen had assumed there would only be one close by – had given her directions to Hill House.
She started the engine and drove a little further along the quiet road, hoping that the trees would thin and provide the view she wanted, but she was disappointed. Only a few hundred yards further on, the road turned away. She saw a sign pointing the way towards the cliff path that would lead back to Frantham and which, she assumed, passed at the rear of the children’s home. She considered getting out of the car and walking the path, but the day was cold and damp and she was hardly dressed for hiking.
How, she wondered, was he doing at school these days? She had a new school all picked out for him. One that would push him just that bit harder. George was a bright kid, but he tended towards laziness if left to his own devices. She’d make certain he made the best of his talents, help him with his homework again, just like old times. It had shocked and appalled her just how much she had missed her little brother: their closeness, their talks. For so many years it had just been George and Karen, the two of them against the world. Their mother had seemed so much like just another child – a slow and often rather awkward child – that Karen barely even considered her, beyond her being just someone else who needed looking after. It was George who had been her co-conspirator, her friend, her confidant, the one she had planned for and supported and who was going to have the brightest of futures under Karen’s guidance. Far better than any sodding kids’ home could ever provide.
Rina had said that George wouldn’t want to leave, but Karen had no room for doubt, not a moment of it. George would jump at the chance to leave with his big sister, to be back with the only family he had, and he’d enjoy the life Karen had planned for him. It would all be just as it had always been – only better. No violent father, no weak and ineffectual mother. Just George and Karen and whatever opportunities the world might bring, and if there was one thing Karen had learnt these past months, it was that opportunity was everywhere for the person who had the courage, the nerve, the intelligence to grasp it.
Alec and Mac rejoined their colleagues for the three o’clock briefing. DCI Wildman was already holding court. A big man, tall and portly, dressed in what Mac was sure was the same dog-tooth check jacket he’d been wearing the first time Mac had met him ten years before and a pair of dark brown slacks – worn below the belly – Wildman was a figure destined to draw attention for all sorts of reasons. His red hair was thin on top now, Mac noted, shocked at how much that fact pleased him, and the round face was now just a little jowly and somewhat more podgy in the cheek than Mac recalled.
Wildman, chatting to a group of officers at the far end of the room, noted Alec and Mac as they arrived, jerked his head in acknowledgement and then beckoned them over.
Alec groaned, then fixed a welcoming smile and led the way through the mess of desks and orange plastic chairs. ‘Chief Inspector, good to see you again. You remember DI McGregor?’
‘I remember.’ Wildman shook hands with Alec and then with Mac. ‘You up to this?’ he asked bluntly.
‘I’m up to it.’
‘I bloody hope so. Last thing we need is a weak link.’ The implied ‘this time’ hung between them like a threat.
One thing Mac was certain of: Wildman would not have rushed to the child. Wildman would have chased Peel down and flattened the bastard. He looked at Mac and found him lacking, and the painful fact was that Mac looked at himself and saw that selfsame thing, even though he could not have promised to react differently should that choice be presented again.
‘Right.’ Wildman clapped his hands and silence did not so much fall as land. ‘Let’s make a start, shall we? Gather round, children, and I’ll choose someone to kick off the show-and-tell.’
Polite laughter, the odd groan, a muttered insult from Alec that Mac didn’t quite catch but thought might well be sexual. The collective scraping of chairs and settling down that did, indeed, remind Mac of a classroom. And then it all began: the results of the house-to-house enquiries carried out around the B & B where Peel had stayed, the officers tasked with reviving the original case making their recommendations as to which of Peel’s former associates should be approached again. Mac was unsurprised to learn that several were now serving at Her Majesty’s pleasure; slightly more surprised to discover that three of Peel’s closest friends were now deceased.
‘How?’ Wildman demanded.
‘One, Kevin Hill, had a heart condition, collapsed at home. Wife found him when she came back from shopping. DOA, never regained consciousness. Been under the doc for several years, so . . .’
‘So no PM,’ Alec mused. ‘What’s on his sheet?’
‘Oh, mostly small beer. In his younger days he was known for being handy with his fists and light on his feet. Enforcer for a couple of the local loan sharks. Later he seems to have gone a bit upmarket, stealing cars to order. Nothing recent, as in the past five, six years. No job, living on disability benefit of one sort or another. Wife works a part-time job in a local hairdresser’s.’
‘Nothing sexual?’
‘Not on record.’
‘Check him out again,’ Wildman said. ‘Find out who came to see him the days before he popped his clogs.’
Mac, resentfully, found he couldn’t argue with that. ‘And the other two exes?’ he asked.
‘Car crash, part of a multi-vehicle pile-up on the M5, that did for Henry Clark. He was on the sex offenders’ register and facing arrest. We raided his flat but came up empty.’
‘Saved the cost of a trial, then,’ Wildman said.
‘Evidence came from Peel’s computer. Emails sent between Peel, Clark and a woman who has yet to be identified. They exchanged images.’
Mac remembered the images; he pushed them aside before they broke his concentration.
‘A woman?’ Wildman questioned.
‘Called herself Sophia,’ Mac said. ‘Used a series of disposable email addresses. So we handed it over to the techies.’
Wildman nodded acknowledgement.
They didn’t even know if ‘Sophia’ was female, Mac thought; only that she, or he, had a library of images that could be requested by some kind of catalogue number, though how users had received those numbers or accessed the catalogue no one had been able to ascertain.
‘And the third death?’ Alec asked.
‘Suicide. Stuart Evans. Hanged himself. He was—’
‘Cara Evans’s uncle.’ Mac nodded. ‘He was the link between Cara and Peel.’ Evans had taken Cara from her parents’ home, given her to Peel: that much had come out previously, though not why. He had never really told them why, and Mac had sat through hours and hours of interrogation with Stuart Evans. Dimly, he recalled hearing about Stuart Evans’s suicide in the days that followed Cara’s death. Those few days before Mac had finally imploded and been removed from the case and from the scene altogether, been given compassionate leave which turned out to be neither compassionate – too much time to think, to blame, to despair – nor leave. Some things just can’t be departed from.
‘Someone will have to go back and talk to the parents,’ Wildman said. ‘Tell them the case is live, that we have new leads. Best do it soon, eh, before the media get wind and pre-empt us. Best talk to Peel’s kid too.’
His gaze had been wandering about the room, flitting from face to face, but came to rest finally, inevitably, on Mac.
‘I’ve already spoken to Emily,’ Mac said. ‘There’s a local liaison officer in place, and she’s given permission for her phone to be monitored. She’s pretty sure her father will show up there sooner or later.’
‘Right, then,’ Wildman said. ‘So just the parents of the dead child to deal with. Best get on to that today, don’t you reckon?’
Mac nodded, shifting his attention to his notes and hoping Wildman would look away before he raised his gaze again. Alec rustled papers and c
leared his throat before delivering their report. Mac listened as Alec outlined the day’s interviews, putting flesh on the bones of swiftly compiled observations and contemporary annotations.
‘We think there’s little doubt that Rains and Peel had recent contact,’ Alec summarized, ‘and, more disturbingly—’
‘It looks like our Mac has picked up a stalker,’ Wildman finished. He seemed amused by the prospect. ‘And what about this Richard Marlow? From what I understand, he’s already made a formal complaint.’
This was news to Mac and Alec. ‘Very prompt of him,’ Mac said. ‘We only saw him a couple of hours ago.’
‘Well, it looks like he didn’t appreciate your techniques,’ Wildman said. ‘To which, I say, bollocks to him. Sounds to me as if he’s hiding something, so I want to know what. Anything else?’
Small points, quickly cleared up. Other contributions to the briefing, but nothing of great significance, and then they were dismissed to prepare for the next step, to drink coffee and create an action plan. To go and speak with parents whose grief was still so fresh that Mac dreaded being in the presence of it.
‘He’s testing you,’ Alec said.
‘I figured that one out, thanks.’
Alec half smiled. ‘You want to drive?’
‘No, I’ll let you do the honours. I’m a lousy driver when I’m distracted.’
‘You want me to go on my own?’
‘And fail Wildman’s bloody test? No. No way I’d forgive myself, anyway.’
‘Isn’t that the whole problem?’ Alec said.
A message was waiting for Karen, alias Carolyn Johnson, when she got back to the hotel. ‘A lady called Rina Martin phoned for you,’ the receptionist told her. ‘She suggests four o’clock on Saturday. She said you’d understand.’
‘Carolyn’ thanked him and made her way up to her room. Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow she would see George and tell him what she had planned for them both.
EIGHT
It had been a day for confessions and explanations, Rina thought as she made her way back home. Tim had left her mid-afternoon for a meeting with a local computer games company he was now consulting for. Rina had made her reluctant way to see Sergeant Baker and PC Andy Nevins, to ask for any news of Mac and to tell them, as she had promised Mac, that Karen Parker was now back in town and that Rina was very anxious about her intentions.
To her relief, Mac had already spoken with Sergeant Baker and Rina found herself to be presenting old news. Sergeant Baker seemed happy with the simple knowledge that Karen ‘was trouble’ and that ‘Young George is the only concern here’, and Rina had left it at that, not confessing either her part in Karen’s sudden departure or that she suspected Karen to have been guilty of far more than mere troublemaking.
Walking home, she was wryly amused but also oddly concerned to realize that Mac was also part of this silent conspiracy. Frank Baker knew that Mac had been bringing Karen in for questioning, knew that Mac was seriously concerned about something, but it had not crossed his generous mind that the cause of concern was the death of Mark Dowling.
‘I think Mac was worried about the lass, see. Her dad was heavily involved in some really dodgy areas. I think the boss felt that there was the worry Karen might have been involved too, might have had some gen on what her dad had been up to. Turned out he was part of a much bigger problem, didn’t it, Mrs Martin?’
It had indeed, Rina thought. The repercussions of Edward Parker’s death and Edward Parker’s associates had, shortly afterwards, rippled out through the quiet backwater that was Frantham and linked it all too painfully with the wider, crueller world.
Getting home, Rina came to a decision. Mac was absent, Tim too preoccupied with getting on with his own life – as was right and proper; he’d spent far too much of his life hiding away with a group of oldies, and it was time he stood on his own feet – but she did need help from somewhere.
In the privacy of her little room, Rina made two phone calls. One to a man called Fitch and another to one Abe Jackson, a man Rina had once suspected of being anything but a good guy. That done and help promised, she felt better, able to face the remainder of her mad little household and the welcome ritual of dinner and dominoes – and the feeling that she could put Karen aside, just for a little while.
Mac and Alec arrived at the Evans house a little after six. Lights shone through half-closed curtains and the car was in the drive. Mac had not been to their new house, but he had heard that Cara’s parents had moved about the time that he left for Frantham. Somewhere, he recalled, he even had a change-of-address card, the strange and strained bond that had formed between them adding him to the list of those who should be personally informed that they had moved.
‘They don’t blame you, you know that,’ Alec said as he pulled up in front of their house.
‘I know it, but I don’t understand why they don’t. I was there, Alec. How can they accept I could do nothing?’
‘Because they know you,’ Alec said quietly. ‘They watched you tear yourself apart for months looking for their child’s killer. You sat with them, hour after hour, while they waited for news. You cried with them, Mac, and when they saw you at the hospital with Cara . . . Mac, I was there; I saw the state you were in. No one could have blamed you after that.’
Mac tried hard to steady his breathing and to slow his heart. It thumped against his ribs, deafened him. He couldn’t remember – was grateful that he had somehow buried that memory so deep even he could not access it – but they had told him he had held on to the child, trying so hard to save a life that could not be saved: had held her in the ambulance, carried her into the hospital, laid her on the trolley and begged anyone who would listen to help her. He could not believe that all the months of searching had come to nothing, and then later, when he had been told that there were no new leads, that the case had been wound down pending later review, he had felt betrayed, not just because of Cara Evans and her parents, but also on his own behalf.
He wanted to go home now.
Alec opened the driver’s door and got out. Mac followed, going ahead of his friend past the parked car and up to the front door. Becky Evans opened it. She stood stock still, staring at him.
‘Mac,’ she said. ‘You’ve found him? Tell me you’ve found him.’
‘We’ve been upgraded back to active,’ Mac said softly.
Joe Evans appeared behind his wife, taking in the scene, a look of combined hope and dread fighting for precedence on his too-thin face. Joe Evans was never meant to be a skinny man. Mac knew what he was feeling. They’d never let go of the hope that Cara’s killer would be brought to justice, but they had, nevertheless, reached some measure of, if not peace, then equilibrium, and now that was to be destroyed all over again.
Joe Evans, Mac knew, was wondering if he had the strength for it. As Mac watched, he stiffened his shoulders and lifted his chin, reminding Mac of Emily’s Calum, the whole world resting on his back but determined to take his best shot at carrying it.
‘You’d best come in,’ Joe Evans said.
NINE
There was no way down to Frantham Old Town by car. The little fishing village had been the only Frantham before the Victorians had come along and constructed Frantham-on-Sea, with its promenades and boarding houses and now defunct railway. Frantham Old Town, by contrast, had never been intended for the tourist trade; it tumbled down the steep slope from coast road to seafront and little harbour via cobbled streets only just wide enough for a bicycle, and was occupied by a company of fiercely protective local families, many of whom had been there for generations.
Miriam, therefore, had two options. She could either park in the pull-in at the top of the hill and walk down the length of the little settlement to the boathouse, or she could drive a quarter of a mile further on, park at the newly built marina, close by the lifeboat station, and then walk back across to the boathouse, a matter of five minutes at a fast pace – and Miriam rarely walked at any other.
> Miriam, unlike Mac, was not a creature of habit; it was a matter of nightly impulse as to which she should do. That and if she had shopping with her, in which case the marina was a better, flatter and more evenly paved option. Tonight, though, one of those cherished winter sunsets, witnessed as she had driven back to base from the scene of a serious road accident, was still hanging around when she had deposited her paperwork and box and left for home. Red still streaked a blackening sky, but close to the horizon a band of silver and peach remained, and she knew from experience it would still be there by the time she reached the pull-in on the coast road above her destination.
Miriam had never really been a weather-watcher before – in fact, she had always rather scoffed at the peculiarly British obsession – but, almost imperceptibly, she had come to realize that she had been caught by the cloud-watching bug and, in part at least, Mac was to blame. Frantham Old Town and the little boathouse apartment revealed the most delicious opportunities for the activity, and she had become as obsessed by the ever-changing view of sea and sky as Rina and Mac.
Having parked up, Miriam paused before wending her way down through the narrow streets. That silver streak still clung tenaciously to the horizon, though the sky above was solid black and the stars were starting to appear. Miriam was sure there was a sound meteorological reason for it all, but privately she viewed it as a bit of Frantham magic. She took little notice when a second car pulled up, just glanced over to see if the driver was anyone she knew, then dismissed it from her attention when she realized it was not. It crossed her mind that the driver might wonder what she was doing, standing there in the dark, staring down at the ocean, and she was mildly surprised when the driver did not move to get out. She glanced at him again, noting a middle-aged man, glasses perched on a rather broad nose. He too seemed to be staring out to sea. Another weather-watcher, Miriam thought, and when the man turned his head and looked her way, she summoned a polite smile. The man did not respond; he just continued to stare.
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