A Ghost at the Door (39 page)

Suddenly his words were cut off. Harry had stretched his arms around the front seat so that his handcuffs were under the chief inspector’s chin and he was pulling back on them, hard.
Edwards couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, he was choking. All three men knew that one severe jerk on the manacles could kill him. Harry was gasping with pain but he kept the pressure up
on the policeman’s neck. The sergeant, in the driver’s seat, was frozen, unsure what he should or even could do.

‘Hughie, you’d better hope I’m not that murdering psychopath you’re after. You understand?’

Edwards was making desperate gurgling sounds. He managed to nod his head.

‘So I’m going to let up. Just a bit. Your sergeant’s going to sit there as quiet as if he’s got scorpions crawling up his leg. And you’re going to listen to me. Are
we clear on that?’

More choking. Another stiff nod. And slowly Harry released the pressure, just a little. Edwards started coughing, breathing once more, and almost immediately cursing profoundly. Harry ignored
it.

‘Someone else at the table, Hughie. Does that make sense?’

‘Could do.’ The policeman’s voice was hoarse.

‘If you don’t stop her, if something happens to her just because you’re too busy gloating over me, they won’t give you time to pack a cardboard box before they kick your
sorry Welsh arse out the force.’

Edwards took his first full breath. Damn, but this had been going so well, his superintendent’s badge already warming a spot deep in his trouser pocket, but what Harry had to say had begun
to sow doubts. He couldn’t afford to ignore them. He wasn’t a bad copper, certainly not a bent one, but he’d always been in a hurry, which meant he cut a few corners. Results, old
boy, results. And maybe he’d hit the kerb a little too hard on this one.

‘I’m not going to stop her, Harry. If she’s involved she might be leading us to the proof we need to sort this. I can’t ignore that possibility. What I can do is follow
her, see where she’s going. Keep her company.’ His words still came as though sifted through gravel.

‘A helicopter?’ Harry moved the handcuffs back against his throat but the policeman refused to be bowed.

‘Not a chance. If this
is
all down to you, Harry, as I still think it probably is, then I’m not going to make a complete bloody fool of myself by calling out the cavalry.
This is down to just you and me.’

‘But she’s got almost an hour’s head start.’

‘Then we’d better pull our bloody fingers out, hadn’t we?’

The journey out of London had been smooth this late in the evening. Jemma didn’t push the old estate car to its limit: it had enough miles under its cambelt to feel the
potholes. In any case, she wanted time to think. She had never wanted to be involved, yet now she was being dragged in deeper than she could ever have feared. She couldn’t avoid it: she owed
Harry, for Steve, for doubting him. So she had called the only man she knew who might help cast a little light into the dark corners of the croquet club.

She was off the main carriageway now, into the depths of the flat Essex countryside, following the instructions he had given her. The beams of her headlights picked out deserted roads, nothing
but trees and hedgerows to see her on her way. A final village, which seemed to consist of no more than a dozen homes, doors firmly closed against the outside world, then she saw the driveway
opening up to her left, guarded by red-brick pillars and towering ash trees, and places where elms would have stood before the blight got them. Up ahead, silhouetted against a pale half-formed moon
in a cirrus sky, she saw the outline of chimney-stacks with their Tudor crenellations that grew from the roof of the gabled house. A light shone from a downstairs window, another from above the
weather-stained timbers of the oak door. As her tyres came scrunching to a halt in the gravel, the door opened. He stood on his step, waiting for her.

‘Jemma, welcome. I’m so glad you called me.’

‘Give it some welly, man,’ Edwards growled at his sergeant. They were already well above the speed limit, the lights flashing through the night, the siren blaring in
warning. With every moment the chief inspector had grown more impatient, glancing at the icon on his tracker screen. Jemma was still many miles ahead but now she appeared to have stopped.

In the back seat Harry made little sound apart from an occasional groan as he drifted through intermittent bouts of pain and dark dreams.

Edwards picked up his radio. ‘Central Command, Chief Inspector Edwards.’

‘Go ahead, Chief Inspector.’

‘I’ve got a location I want you to check. I want to know what it is, who lives there, anything you can tell me about it. And I need it all about five minutes ago.’

They had left the A12, their pursuit slowed by roadworks and roundabouts. Staunton skimmed one a little too closely, throwing the car around, rousing Harry. He moaned, struggled to sit upright,
to focus his thoughts.

‘It’s the snake shit, don’t you see, Hughie?’

‘Don’t I see what?’

‘The synthetic cobra stuff. He’s a biochemist.’

‘What are you prattling on about, Harry?’

‘The man behind the camera. The missing diner. The man who murdered Delicious and who probably killed Finn Francis and, I guess, Susannah Ranelagh. The others, too.’ He caught his
breath as the car hit another pothole at speed and played havoc with his senses. ‘He told me. Done all sorts of cutting-edge research. In biochemistry. He was a young research fellow, a
lecturer. At Brasenose.’

‘And where’s that when it’s at home?’ Edwards asked, perplexed.

‘Piss out of the front door of Christ Church and you hit it.’ He gasped once more. ‘It’s Alexander McQuarrel.’

‘And he is?’

‘One of my father’s best friends.’

Harry cried out yet again, more sharply, in a deeper state of torment. ‘He killed them all. He’ll kill Jemma, too, Hughie. Please. Please hurry.’

Jemma couldn’t contain her surprise as she walked across the threshold and into the house. The darkness had hidden the size of this manor house, and much more. The old
red-brick porch that protected the main door gave way to a hallway of extraordinary, almost palatial proportions. The flagstones were softly worn, the dark oaken central staircase with its
elaborately carved newels was wide enough for a man to lie across at full length, while every wall was covered with portraits, escutcheons and other evidence of McQuarrel’s Scottish roots.
Against the wall on one side of the hallway was a broad stone fireplace; against the wall on the other was an elegant coffer covered in framed photographs.

‘I never expected anything like this,’ she said, breathless with wonder.

‘My family came down from Scotland with King James four hundred years ago,’ he explained, an unmistakable tinge of pride in his voice.

‘It is beautiful.’

‘Thank you, Jemma.’

She continued to gaze around in awe. A piano, a baby grand of considerable age, stood in a place of honour near a mullioned window. ‘You play?’ she asked.

‘No, that was my wife. And that,’ he said, indicating the piano, ‘is a Broadwood. When she played it her music floated to every corner of the house. But come, you said you have
news of Harry. Let’s go through to the library.’

He led the way but Jemma hovered by the mirror above the coffer, seemingly distracted by the need to tug at her hair. McQuarrel thought it an unnecessary expression of vanity. ‘You said
the news was urgent.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and followed meekly. Flagstones gave way to polished wood and soon she was sitting in a cracked leather armchair set by another hearth, surrounded by
soaring overstuffed bookcases and the warm paraphernalia of an academic’s study.

‘You look as if you could do with a drink,’ McQuarrel said, his hand already on the decanter. ‘A little of our Scottish water?’ He raised an enquiring eyebrow, Jemma
nodded, and he busied himself pouring measures into two crystal tumblers. Jemma couldn’t take her eyes off him. He handed one of the glasses to her and settled in a winged chair opposite,
separated from her by a low table. Beyond his shoulder and through the garden windows she caught the reflection of the moon shimmering on the dark waters of a lake.

He studied Jemma; she seemed disorientated, her eyes and thoughts unable to settle. ‘
Slainte
,’ he murmured, raising his glass. She followed his lead, and drank; he noticed
her hand was trembling.

‘Jemma, whatever it is, please let me help you.’ His voice was warm, smoothed by the wisdom of many years. ‘When you called you mentioned that something had happened to
Harry.’

‘He met with the bishop this evening.’

‘Bishop Randall?’

She nodded. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Harry? May God have mercy,’ he blustered in alarm.

‘No, not Harry. The bishop.’

He didn’t press for details. Instead, he sat cradling his whisky, and his thoughts. His mood grew sombre and Jemma had the impression that the walls and bookcases were drawing in on them,
the atmosphere suddenly claustrophobic, heavy with misgiving. ‘What would you like me to do?’ he said eventually, his voice soft and painfully solemn.

‘Help me. Help Harry.’

‘Shouldn’t we leave all that to the police?’

‘They think he’s guilty.’

‘What is it, precisely, you would like me to do?’

‘I don’t know. Ask questions. Make a fuss.’

‘With what?’

‘The photo of the Croquet Club. We’re sure the answer is in there somewhere.’

‘Ah, Oxford.’

‘You were there with them, weren’t you? Do you have a copy?’

‘Of the photo? I’ve seen it, of course. Harry showed it to me.’

‘But you have your own copy.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘Because I think you took the photo. And because your wife was in it.’

Harry no longer had any ability to fight. His physical pain had become so twisted up with his fears for Jemma that they had become one, leaving him exhausted, numbed, beyond the
point where he could even groan to express his torment.

He’d lost other women, other immense loves in his life. Lost? The wrong word, made it sound no more than clumsy but Julia, his first wife, had been killed in a skiing accident. His fault.
And Martha the irrepressible, impossible American, on yet another mountainside, and again down to him. Now Jemma, too?

And, of course, his mother. Like all children he had blamed himself for what had happened, carried the guilt for his parents, no matter how unreasoning such guilt was. That burden was in part
why he’d wanted to find out more about his father, to settle old scores; instead he’d discovered altogether too much.

‘Please hurry,’ he pleaded once more.