by Ian Rankin
Fox stayed silent, pretending to weigh things up.
‘We need to meet face to face,’ he eventually stated.
‘Why?’
‘We just do.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’
‘The Wallace Monument. Five this evening.’
‘I have plans for this evening.’
‘Five o’clock, Mr Pears.’ Fox ended the call and stared at his phone. He found that his heart was pounding, the blood whistling in his ears, and there was a slight tremor in his hands.
Other than that, he felt fine.
42
‘I don’t like this,’ Joe Naysmith said. ‘It’s too quiet.’
Fox had to agree. He was seated in his Volvo, phone pressed to his ear, listening to his colleague. He looked out at the car park. The last time he’d been here, it had been the middle of the day and there had been a few tourists about. Now the place was almost deserted. Two other cars – belonging to the staff, most probably – plus, at the far end of the car park, the unmarked white van with Naysmith and Tony Kaye hidden in the back. It was their surveillance hub, filled with listening and monitoring equipment. Mostly, it didn’t stand out from the crowd, but there was no crowd here.
‘Could we park further away?’ Fox heard Tony Kaye ask.
‘Signal’s not brilliant as it is,’ Naysmith answered.
Fox pressed his free hand to his chest. Beneath his shirt, a sticking plaster fixed the tiny microphone to his skin. Naysmith preferred plasters to ordinary tape – sweat was less likely to affect them. The microphone wire ran to the battery pack in Fox’s back trouser-pocket.
‘Is he sitting on the aerial?’ Kaye was asking.
‘Tell him I’ll strap it to my head if that’ll help,’ Fox commented. Joe Naysmith passed the message along.
It had taken an hour’s paperwork before they were okayed use of the van and its contents, but that was fine – just a matter of box-ticking. Fox was adept at box-ticking. At some point, someone further up the ladder would see the completed form and maybe wonder about it, but that was for later. The van’s fuel tank was nearly empty. Fox had handed Naysmith fifty quid and told him to stop at the garage on Queensferry Road.
‘Your own shilling?’ Kaye had asked.
‘That’s the way I want it,’ Fox had confirmed.
‘Why here?’ Kaye was now asking. Meaning: why the Wallace Monument?
‘Resonance,’ Fox responded. His rear-view mirror showed him that the tables were being wiped down in Legends, the lights turned off at the end of another working day. It was ten minutes to the top of the hour. They’d been in position since half past four. Fox was trying to guess which car Pears would arrive in – the Maserati or the Lexus. He had his answer a couple of minutes later, the black Maserati emitting a low growl as it entered the car park.
‘He’s early,’ he said, ending the call. He watched as Pears passed the van without seeming to pause. The two other cars were empty, so he drew to a halt next to Fox’s Volvo, but left the engine idling. He lowered his window, so Fox did the same.
‘Get in,’ Pears ordered.
‘Why not my car?’
Pears shook his head. ‘I know mine better.’ Fox could hear music from the Maserati’s stereo: jazz piano. Something similar had been playing at the house in Stirling the night he’d visited.
‘This is a deal-breaker, Inspector,’ the financier added.
Fox hesitated, then slid the window shut, pulled the key from the ignition and got out. He walked towards the Maserati, his eyes fixed on its driver. Pears was studying the car park in his mirrors. Fox opened the passenger-side door and got in. Pears was wearing leather driving gloves, old-fashioned-looking things with stud fasteners. The moment Fox was in his seat, Pears put the car into reverse. Once out of the parking bay, he started forward, engine roaring. As they made to pass the white surveillance van, he slammed on the brakes.
‘Want to say goodbye to your friends?’ he asked, sounding the horn. Then they were off again, careering towards the main road. As the engine noise increased, Pears pumped up the volume on the stereo.
‘Think I’m that stupid?’ he yelled, baring his teeth as he pulled out to overtake traffic.
‘Stupid enough to get us killed,’ Fox retorted, reaching for his seat belt. The car was already up to eighty, and Pears showed no sign of easing off. He kept glancing in his rear-view mirror, until satisfied that no tail could have stayed with him while remaining unseen.
‘You’ve made your point,’ Fox conceded. He unbuttoned his shirt and started to tug at the wiring, hauling the battery pack from its hiding place. ‘See?’ He removed the batteries and tossed everything on to the back seat, then started doing the buttons of his shirt up again.
‘No gun?’ Pears asked.
‘No gun.’
‘And just that old van for back-up?’
‘I wasn’t expecting Wacky Races.’
Pears took the hint and eased his foot a little from the accelerator, checking again in the rear-view. Eventually, he turned the music down.
‘Are we headed anywhere nice?’ Fox asked. He didn’t recognise the road at all.
‘We’re just driving,’ Pears said. ‘Driving and talking.’ He glanced at Fox. ‘I want you to understand why it’s all turned out like this.’
‘Do I need to know?’
‘Maybe you’ll see things in a different light.’
‘So you’re going to tell me why you killed Francis Vernal?’
‘You have to go back further. You have to understand how things were in the eighties.’
‘I was there,’ Fox said.
‘Were you, though? Or did you sleepwalk through it? All those newspaper stories you looked at – did you remember half of it happening at the time? The marches and protests, the fear?’ Pears glanced towards Fox. ‘Be honest now.’
‘Maybe I was too busy getting on with life.’
‘You and a few million others. But some of us wanted to change the world, and we knew politicians weren’t going to be much help to us… unless we prodded them.’
‘With letter bombs and anthrax?’
‘You don’t think terrorism works? Have you looked at Northern Ireland lately?’
‘Okay, so you wanted to smash the system – right up until the minute you saw all that cash in Vernal’s car.’
‘Francis was becoming a problem. He was drinking too much, shooting his mouth off. MI5 were all over him.’
‘You were following him that night?’
‘I was watching the house in Anstruther. Two minutes after he turned up, so did another car. Pretty obvious who they were. If Francis had drunk a bit less, he’d have been wise to them.’
Fox thought for a moment. ‘When he left, you started to follow them – Vernal and the spooks both?’
‘By the time I caught up, the crash had already happened. I saw them searching his car. They weren’t especially good at it.’ Pears paused. ‘When they’d gone, I went over. Maybe Francis thought I was one of them. He was coming round, and pointing a bloody gun at me. I made a grab for it and it went off. There wasn’t much I could do after that.’
‘Except empty the boot of the DHC kitty.’
‘Okay, so I took the money.’
‘You did a lot more than that. Those two agents swear there was no gun in the car. That’s because the gun was yours, not Vernal’s. And it was no accident – it was a clean shot to the side of the head, identical to the way Alan Carter was killed. You assassinated Francis Vernal and I’ve only just realised why.’ Fox paused, waiting to see if Pears would say anything, but Pears seemed to be concentrating on the road ahead. ‘You said it yourself – you were watching the house in Anstruther. Meaning it was Alice Watts you were interested in. Either because you suspected her, or you had a thing for her. I’m guessing the latter. You had a thing for her, yet for some reason she preferred going to bed with the overweight drunken lawyer. I can see how that would rankle – you in you
r leather jacket and sunglasses, Mr Outlaw, losing out to Francis Vernal. Put a bullet in his head and Alice would think MI5 had done it. Maybe she’d want your shoulder to cry on.’
As Fox spoke, he couldn’t help thinking of Charles Mangold and Imogen Vernal – another case of never-quite-requited love.
‘But before any of that could happen,’ he went on, ‘she had disappeared. You had the money to tide you over and a murder everyone was calling suicide. The group was in tatters, so you walked away from it all and fell in love with the system you used to hate.’
Pears still had nothing to say, so Fox kept talking.
‘I saw something on the internet during a trawl: the qualities you need to succeed in business are the same ones cold-blooded killers have. No empathy, no emotion… whatever it takes to get the result you want.’
Pears responded to this with nothing more than a half-smile.
‘Did you realise Alice was working undercover?’ Fox went on.
Pears’s smile faded. ‘No,’ he conceded.
‘So how did you meet up again?’
‘A charity dinner. She was being fast-tracked through CID.’
‘You recognised her?’
‘Almost immediately.’
‘But she didn’t remember you?’
‘I’d changed more than she had.’
‘You managed to keep it from her?’ Fox waited for an answer, but none came. ‘You must have worked out that she was spying on you and your friends back then.’
Pears nodded slowly. ‘It didn’t matter so much. Later, it didn’t matter at all.’ Pears glanced at Fox again. ‘I’d fallen in love.’
‘Again,’ Fox commented.
‘Properly,’ Pears corrected him. ‘For the first time.’
‘You must have known someone would eventually place you.’
Pears gave a shrug. ‘Did MacIver really recognise me on that stage?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t think I believe you.’
‘He wasn’t sure where he knew you from,’ Fox lied glibly. ‘That’s what got him upset. But on the way back to Carstairs…’
‘With some prodding from you?’
‘Maybe a bit.’
‘He’s not going to make the most reliable witness in court.’
‘Not that you think this is going to court…’
‘You’re right.’ Pears paused. ‘I’m not even sure that’s what you want.’
‘Then what do I want?’
‘You want the truth known more widely, destroying my life and Alison’s reputation in the process. You think I’m a cold-blooded assassin who has been trying to protect his own back.’
‘When in fact you’ve been your wife’s shining knight?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Alan Carter had nothing on you?’
‘It was Alison’s name he had. His colleague had been put in charge of the Vernal “suicide”.’
‘That was Gavin Willis – the man who’d had a nice little sideline selling guns to you and your kind.’
‘MI5 got to him pretty damned sharp and said he had to keep the name of Alice Watts out of it. They told him she was actually a police officer, not long out of college and working undercover. If they’d bothered to give her an alias that wasn’t so bloody similar to her real name…’ Pears shook his head, the mistake annoying him even now. ‘Carter found some stuff hidden in Willis’s cottage – a little insurance policy of a confession, including the name Alice Watts and the information that she’d been an undercover cop as well as Vernal’s lover.’
‘He put two and two together and tried blackmailing you?’ Fox guessed.
‘I’m the one with the money. He knew what the tabloids would do with the story. Nasty little man – not the sort that can be reasoned with.’
‘I thought he was all right when I met him.’
‘You saw what he wanted you to see.’
‘He invited you to Gallowhill Cottage, so you could pay him for his silence?’
‘Yes.’
‘The door was unlocked, so you just walked in. He was seated at the table. A sitting duck, as it were. You didn’t kill the dog, though – it’s humans you have trouble with.’ Fox paused. ‘Francis Vernal might have been a spur-of-the-moment thing, but Alan Carter took a bit of preparation. First you asked a favour of your friend Sheriff Cardonald. You’d checked up on the blackmailer and you knew his history with the nephew. With Paul Carter out, you just had to set the scene – phoning his mobile a couple of times, luring him to the cottage. Then you went back home and snuggled up next to your wife.’ Fox paused. ‘How am I doing?’
‘Does it matter? I’m not hearing anything a court would consider damning.’
‘That’s because you’re good.’ Fox paused again. ‘Cardonald must have been livid when the prisoner he’d just released from custody was suddenly in the frame for murder. Won’t do his reputation any favours.’
‘Cardonald knows his place. I’ve made him a bit of money down the years.’
‘Plus I’d guess you can be persuasive when the occasion demands it. What about the arms dealer in Barbados? Was he proving troublesome too?’
‘You’re not seriously suggesting…?’
‘His name was Benchley.’
‘I know – he drowned in his pool.’
‘And that’s just coincidence?’
‘Of course it is.’
Fox thought for a second. ‘Cigarettes and a fifty-pound note went AWOL from Vernal’s car.’
‘Then someone must have taken them – maybe one of your own kind, Inspector.’ Pears allowed himself another little half-smile and signalled on to a new road.
‘Seems to me you’ve a destination in mind,’ Fox commented.
‘Maybe I do.’ Pears was checking in his mirror again – no sign of any headlights behind him. His mobile rang, and he checked the display without answering.
‘Chief Constable wondering where you’ve got to?’ Fox guessed.
‘I’m beginning to wonder if you’re jealous.’
‘Jealous?’
‘It’s a normal enough emotion,’ Pears said, ‘when you see someone with something you’ve not got and probably can’t get. It’s what drove Alan Carter – doesn’t matter if it’s money, status or love, it can make you a bit crazy.’ Pears paused. ‘How’s your father doing?’
Fox glared at him.
‘I know your own marriage didn’t last long,’ Pears continued. ‘You’ve got a sister who’s seen some trouble in the past. And now your father’s been in hospital. He’s home, though, right? Not at that care home – but home with you?’
Fox was still staring. Without looking, Pears knew it.
‘Private care costs money,’ he went on. ‘A sister with no job can be a bit of a drain. Then you look at what Alison and I have got – not that we didn’t work hard for it, but sometimes there’s luck involved too.’ He paused again. ‘I know you’re not after money, but that doesn’t mean you can’t feel bitterness at others’ good fortune.’ Pears gave Fox a good long look. ‘How am I doing, Inspector?’ he asked, throwing Fox’s question back at him. ‘The world’s missing one alcoholic womaniser and one blackmailer. Three cheers for the world…’
‘I think I know where we are,’ Fox said quietly, gazing out of the passenger-side window.
‘Where else would we be?’ Pears pulled into the lay-by, braking hard. There was a churning of gravel. He switched off the engine and turned to face Fox.
‘A walk in the woods?’ he suggested.
‘I’m fine here, thanks,’ Fox replied.
But Pears had reached beneath him and brought out another handgun. A pistol this time. ‘Kept a few souvenirs of the old days,’ he explained, aiming the barrel at Fox’s chest.
‘You’re forgetting the witnesses,’ Fox stated. ‘The surveillance van, for one thing.’
‘As plans go, it’s by no means perfect,’ Pears allowed.
‘So am I shooting myself in the head,
or what?’
‘You’re going to hang yourself.’
‘Am I?’
‘At the scene of your obsession. I saw proof enough of it at your house – all those papers, a computer filled with guesswork. Francis Vernal got beneath your skin. Add that to your recent problems at work, and an ailing parent…’
‘I decide to end it all?’ Fox watched Pears nod. ‘And what are you doing all this time?’
‘We drove here together. You proposed some crazy theories. You directed me to this place, thinking it would mean something to me. Then madness got the better of you and you ran into the woods. I left you to it and drove home.’
‘It’ll all still come out – you and Alice, Vernal and Alan Carter …’
‘There’ll be hearsay,’ Pears agreed. ‘But I doubt the media will make much of it.’ He paused. ‘I have a battery of lawyers at my disposal, and I believe injunctions are all the rage. Trust me, precious little will be allowed to emerge. Why not toss your mobile phone on to the back seat? You won’t be needing it.’
Fox hesitated, and Pears dug the tip of the gun into his ribs. He winced and removed his phone, threw it into the gap between the two seats.
‘Out,’ Pears ordered. He had opened his own door, keeping the pistol pointed at Fox. Fox undid his seat belt and got out of the car. The air was cold and clear: country air. They were next to the small cairn commemorating Francis Vernal’s life.
A patriot.
It was a silent rural road. There would maybe be another car passing in half an hour or so. Plenty of time for Pears to carry out the execution – and no witnesses. There was a barking in the distance – a farm dog, or maybe a fox. Fox wished he was more like his animal namesake: swift and lean and nimble.
Cunning, though: there was always cunning…
Pears had closed the driver’s-side door and come around to Fox’s side of the Maserati. He slammed shut the passenger door.
‘Not often you see an expensive sports car parked here,’ Fox speculated. ‘Sure you don’t want to leave it somewhere less visible?’
‘I’ll just have to risk it,’ Pears responded. ‘Let’s get going.’
‘No rope,’ Fox told him.
‘It’s waiting for us.’ Pears waved the gun in the general direction.
