Family Reunion

by Robert F Barker

  From there, he went straight into another meeting, this one with The Duke himself. Supposedly, it was to go over some ‘housekeeping’ prior to his move. But Carver wasn’t the least surprised when, as he was leaving, his old boss nodded at the several boxes of case files on the table by the door. ‘If you fancy taking an early look at a couple, feel free.’ Carver declined, citing, ‘too much to finish up’. Outside The Duke’s office, he shook his head. Since his return, The Duke had been throwing himself into his work. Everyone recognised it as the coping mechanism it was. After forty years with someone, it’s not easy getting used to being on your own. Just the week before, Jess had told how The Duke couldn’t wait for his former deputy SIO to start. Carver wasn’t expecting to be granted any ‘settling in’ period.

  The early meet with Broom had been arranged during a late phone call the night before. It meant Carver having to postpone his catch-up/drop-in at Sarah’s on his way in to work. By the time he rang her - the moment he got back from seeing The Duke - the kids had left for school. It turned out a good thing as it gave them the chance to talk without distractions. He came away with a real sense that she may, at last, be turning the corner. She had sounded more positive about what the future may hold for them all than she had in a long time. Her new job was, he was sure, a big part if it. Which reminded him. He needed to sort flowers, or something, for the lady in Tesco’s Human Resources. At the time, she had made it sound that in giving Sarah her old job back, she was simply following Company policy by recognising, Service To The Community, which fitted with Sarah’s helping to identify Lucy. In reality, Carver knew she was doing him a favour. But on top of the job, Carer knew that for some, closure can be life-changing. He hoped to God it would prove so in Sarah’s case.

  After Sarah, he rang Kayleigh Lee to wish her luck with her exams. He had tried the night before, but his call went unanswered. He went to bed wondering if it was normal for eighteen-year old girls to not answer their phones the night before exams. In his imagination, possible scenarios as to why she might not be answering battered to be let out, but he refused to give them air. And whilst he could have settled for sending a message, he didn’t relish getting one back berating him for not caring enough to speak in person. He had intended the call would be brief. But Koloyan’s shooting and the police hunt for ‘The Monster’ had been all over the media. Having not spoken for weeks, it took close to half-an-hour to escape from under her persistent grilling.

  ‘I thought you’ve got exams?’he said at one point.

  ‘First one’s not until eleven.’

  After the call the thought came that, God forbid someone may one day ask him to explain his relationship with the young girl - woman - to whom he owed his life. He had tried to get a handle on it many times. He was still to do so.

  The emails were responses to the replies to his own, twenty-fours previous. Of the twenty-plus invitations he had sent out, eighteen were confirming their attendance at the inaugural meeting of the Inter-European Cross Border Crime Liaison Group at the College of Policing in Ryton-on-Dunsmore in two weeks’ time. Many were asking about accommodation options - something he needed to start looking at. And he was glad that his good friend, Reme Crozier, had agreed to ‘chair’. The Paris Police detective was as politically astute as any policeman Carver knew. It would also forestall any attempt by Nicholas Whitely to even old scores by dropping disparaging remarks about egos and suspect motivations.

  Jess was at her desk as he walked in, Alec at her shoulder. It was the first time Carver had seen Alec since his return from his Armenian jaunts. He still looked jet-lagged, and showed not a trace of having seen any sun. The Duke was in the chair against the wall, reading. He still looked gaunt. Jess had said she thought he was still a long way from being the man he once was. After Kathy’s funeral they had all tried talking him into taking a break. He would have none of it, but it was early days yet.

  They barely acknowledged Carver as he entered. He tried the obvious.

  ‘It must be a mistake. Have you spoken to the lab?’

  Jess looked up at him. Her face said, Gosh, thanks. I would never have thought of that.

  He shrugged. ‘And?’

  ‘They’ve checked. There’s no mistake.’

  He looked at each of them in turn. Their faces told him they were out of ideas. ‘Let me see.’

  Jess pushed the lab-results across the desk and he picked them up.

  The Duke tossed the report summary he’d been reading onto the desk with a gruff, ‘Hmphh. If you can make sense of it, you’re a better man than me Gunga Din.’

  Carver spent a few minutes reading it all. Then he read it again. And again. It couldn’t be right. He held the two reports, one in each hand, comparing them.

  ‘You can look at them any way you like,’ The Duke said. ‘The result’s the same. Vahrig Danelian isn’t our man for the Durzlan’s.’

  Carver shook his head. ‘This is crazy. He must be.’

  ‘And that’s not all,’ Jess said. As Carver looked up, she put her feet up on the desk and folded her hands in her lap. ‘Look at this.’ She kicked at another report with the heel of her shoe. He picked it up. ‘It’s the analysis on the samples Alec brought back. From the last family Vahrig is supposed to have killed.’

  Carver picked it up, remembering what she had told him about Alec’s week-long tour. Apparently he’d almost pulled out what little hair he had left trying to track down the samples from the various murder scenes. Whereas those from Cyprus had been spot on, Armenian crime-scene procedures were, it seemed, still playing catch up. Nevertheless he finally managed to find a SOCO equivalent who took his job seriously and with his help finally located what he was looking for. The specimens had been stuffed into cardboard boxes and ‘put away for safe keeping’ in the local police station’s found-property store. No one objected when he asked about taking some of them back to the UK.

  As he read, Carver blinked, several times. Despite the caveats alluding to the ‘regrettable’ way the samples had been stored and the consequent possibility of contamination, the message was clear.

  There was incredulity in his voice when he said, ‘The offender’s DNA doesn’t match him either? How can that be?’

  ‘Maybe Doctor Kahra-what’s-his-name took samples from the wrong body,’ Alec said. ‘Or he was mistaken, and the body in the mortuary wasn’t Vahrig Danelian’s in the first place.’

  Carver felt something start to creep up his spine. Surely they couldn’t be that wrong, could they? He turned to Jess.

  ‘Where’s the Durzlan case-file?’

  ‘Over there.’ She pointed to the table behind the door. It was stacked with box-files and piles of folders.

  ‘And the stuff Mikayel brought us on Vahrig?’

  She leafed through the stack of folders on her desk. ‘Here.’

  Taking it, he spread the documents out, running his eyes over them.

  Cobbled together from various sources after the originals were destroyed along with the Institute, they summarised Vahrig’s extraordinary case history; summaries of his crimes, arrest and trial, ending with the date of his transfer to the asylum. Everyone gathered round. Alec spoke up.

  ‘What’re yeh thinking, boss?’

  Carver didn’t reply. He went to the table and returned with the box-file marked, ‘DURZLAN.’ Taking out the first sheet of paper, the case summary, he laid it on top of Vahrig’s notes.

  After staring at it for almost a minute, The Duke turned to Carver. ‘Are you after anything in particular, or just trying to look the part?’

  Carver, shook his head, eyes riveted on the papers. He covered his mouth with a hand. ‘Uuumm….’

  Jess recognised the reaction. ‘Jamie?’

  His other hand came up. Wait. More silence.

  ‘Ugh.’ Carver flinched like he’d been punched in the gut.

  ‘What?’ they all said.

  ‘FUCK.’

  With his left hand he pointed at one of Vahrig�
�s case notes, the one containing details of his arrest. His right did the same with the Durzlan case summary sheet. At the same time his eyes scanned another sheet from Vahrig’s file, this one written in a different hand to the first. It summarised his various appearances before courts and medical assessment tribunals. They all looked. No one saw it.

  ‘What?’ Jess said. She hated it when he did this.

  He checked each of them out, his excitement obvious. ‘What are we looking at?’

  ‘His arrest sheet,’ The Duke said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘The Durzlan Case Report.’

  ‘Look at them again.’

  They did.

  ‘What do they tell us?’

  They ummed and scratched their heads. The Duke’s impatience grew. ‘That the Durzlans were killed some months before Vahrig was arrested.’

  Carver nodded his head, vigorously.

  ‘Wrong.’

  They looked at him as if he was speaking Mandarin.

  Jess checked again. ‘The Durzlans were found on the twelfth August.’ She referred to the arrest sheet. ‘Vahrig was arrested on the fifth of December. We’re assuming the family must have visited over here at the time of the Durzlan killings, or at the very least, Vahrig did. Then he returned home and was later arrested. Apart from the damned lab result, what’s wrong with that?’ Her annoyance was obvious now.

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ The Duke said. ‘Just tell us what you are saying.’

  Carver grabbed the three sheets of paper and held them up next to each other. They all leaned forward, straining to see his point. Their faces remained blank.

  ‘I’m saying, The Monster Of Yerevan is still out there.’

  CHAPTER 53

  Lucy Donovan set the mugs down on the kitchen table, then took her seat on the stool. Carver gave her a reassuring smile as he reached for his, before glancing across at Jess. He could see she was tense, but ready.

  Carver had seen Lucy twice since that night, though each time only briefly. He had wanted to spend more time with her, to try to understand some things, but other matters kept getting in the way, not least his attempts to tie up loose ends, his own included. In the end he’d left it to Jess, which was probably best. Lucy had come to trust Jess and was now happy to talk with her at length, about herself, her parents, their history. She even remembered accompanying her parents the time they went to see Radi Maleeva. She was devastated when she heard what had befallen him and his family.

  As far as Carver knew, the only thing Jess hadn’t yet managed to resolve, were the details of her father’s accident that left his legs all but useless. Apparently Lucy seemed sketchy about it, and the hospital couldn’t find any record. Apart from that, seeing Lucy now, he got the impression she was more at peace with herself than before, though somewhat sadder. He felt the weight of their task more than ever.

  ‘How are you coping?’ he said to her.

  She gave a wan smile and heaved a sigh. ‘Alright, I think.’ The attractive eyes that now seemed always full of sorrow turned on Jess. ‘You have been very kind to us. Both of you. I must thank you.’

  A knife pierced Carver’s heart and he exchanged another glance with Jess. Her pained expression told him she felt the same. He turned his mug round on the table. The painted figure of a rearing stallion came into view.

  ‘This is very hard for us, Lucy. I am sorry.’

  As the words registered she froze, just for a moment, then relaxed again. She nodded. He waited until she met his stare.

  ‘We know,’ he said.

  It was as if in that single instant, everything she had suffered since coming to England came back to her. The pain, the fear, the sorrow. She came upright in her chair, staring straight ahead. Her eyes widened and her features became taut as she fought to prevent herself breaking down. But after a few moments, the control she had practised for so long reasserted itself. She let it all out in a long, slow breath and turned back to him.

  ‘I am glad.’

  She didn’t ask how he knew, or even why it had taken so long. She just accepted it.

  On the way there, Carver had wondered whether there would be a need to explain things, not least why it had taken all this time for them to realise. And if she asked him now he would tell her, gladly. Even if it did make the police, the Institute, them all, look like idiots. But she didn’t ask.

  He squirmed inside as his thoughts turned again to their ridiculous blunder. Okay, no one was actually calling it that, not even Terry West. But Carver couldn’t help feeling it was one of those things that, when they heard of it, most would claim they would have picked up on. He also suspected that in 99.9% of cases, they would be kidding themselves. He had tried it out on several people - colleagues, CPS solicitors, even West himself - shown them the various documents, explained their origin, then challenged them to spot it. So far no one had. People just like to think they are cleverer, that’s all.

  He looked at her again, sitting quietly, waiting. He wondered how much of what was going to happen she had foreseen. So far she hadn’t shown any great surprise.

  ‘You know what we have to do, Lucy?’

  Her head dropped and she nodded. After a few moments she rose, slowly. ‘This way.’

  As he witnessed her calm acceptance, Carver felt again the guilt-pangs he had felt on their way there. Jess kept saying it wasn’t his fault - no way. After all, officially, he hadn’t even been on the case. Nevertheless, he knew in his heart he had cocked up. He had been the first one to go over the documents. If it was ever going to be spotted, it should have been then. But he’d missed it.

  Lucy led them out of the kitchen and into the hallway.

  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t travelled for God’s sake. Most of Europe, Russia, once, America three times – especially America - The Balkans, Egypt, Thailand. It was something he had known for a long time. Something he had consciously had to think about during some of his travels. Not this time.

  She opened the door to the front room. The one He had been hiding in that night. It was dark.

  The trouble was they had all taken it as read. The Durzlan’s were murdered on the twelfth of August, no question. It was there on the case summary sheet, clear for everyone to see; 12.08.97

  They approached the bed.

  ‘Dadda.’

  Carver could hardly see. Why didn’t she pull back the curtains?

  And the papers Mikayel brought with him showed the date Vahrig Danelian was arrested, several months later; 05.12.97. Also clear as a bell.

  Not.

  ‘Someone to see you, Dadda.’

  Is that someone lying next to him?

  He would ask Mikayel about it, when next he spoke with him. Ask who he had tasked to research Vahrig’s case history and compile a duplicate dossier he could bring with him to England. He had his suspicions. He remembered Mikayel speaking one time about a young assistant who’d worked at the institute. Someone who was half-Armenian but born to a local family, a family that for some reason had come to adopt its own conventions on such things; though how they had managed to emulate the most powerful country on earth in this regard for so long without anyone saying anything was something that remained to be explained. Carver had since checked and now knew that the rest of Armenia followed Europe in the matter, which, presumably, is why Mikayel never picked up on it either.

  There is someone next to him.

  Lucy stepped away from the bed to let him in. Her head was bowed. Carver looked at the sleeping man, then back at her. Why hadn’t she woken him?

  ‘Lucy…?’

  Dates.

  Simple enough to write. Or get wrong. If you were brought up using the American convention of month/day/year, rather than day/month/year, as they do in most other places.

  He looked across at Jess. Through the gloom he could just see her face. Realisation dawning.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said.

  Carver glanced back over his
shoulder. Lucy was standing with her back to the wall, head bowed, respectfully. Jess pulled the curtains back. Light flooded the room.

  Giragos Danelian’s sunken eyes stared up at the ceiling, mouth gaping, the soft cushion between him and his wife still damp with his spittle. It was then Carver realised. Lucy had foreseen it all after all. Almost to the hour.

  At first glance her mother also appeared to be asleep. Only people don’t usually take their bottle of pills to bed with them. Not unless… Jess reached over and pressed two fingers to her carotid artery. She turned to Carver, shook her head.

  He turned to Lucy. She was crying now, softly.

  ‘How long have you known?’ he said.

  She sniffed. ‘Soon after we arrived in England. I read about it in the paper.’

  ‘You mean the Durzlans?’

  ‘Yes. Apparently they knew us back home, though I never met them. They would have realised. Gone to the police.’

  He looked back at the bed. ‘Your mother?’

  ‘She always knew about him.’ He nodded.

  It wasn’t that hard to understand. Lucy’s mother was a simple woman. Despite her British blood she had been brought up in the traditional Armenian way. Women such as her don’t expose their shame for the world to see, they hide it. Especially when the source of that shame has corrupted your only son into his same, vile ways.

  Carver pulled back the coverlet. Giragos Danelain’s pyjamas barely covered his withered legs. What he could see of them were covered in vivid scars, the flesh so thin in places you could see the bone right through.

  ‘This?’

  Lucy gave a nod. ‘He was a mechanic. Used to repair the neighbours’ cars. When I realised the truth, that they…. Him and my brother… That they had both been involved…. And that he was going to carry on here…. Mamma said we could not tell the police because he would go to prison and we would be sent back. It would have killed her.’