Blood Relative (18 page)

‘Thanks,’ I said. And then, as an afterthought, ‘What was Andy’s postcode?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Well, I need it for the satnav.’

She shook her head sadly. ‘You two … You were supposed to be brothers … You never even came to our house.’

‘I’m sorry, I should have made the effort, I know. But please, the code?’

Grudgingly, Vickie recited it.

‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ I said. Catch up with you later …’

I pushed my way back out again and made it to the Range Rover in one piece before I stumbled up into the seat, closed the door and slumped my head against the steering wheel.

‘Get a grip,’ I chided myself, leaning back into my seat and blinking hard. I cleared my throat, rubbed a furtive hand across my face and punched Andy’s code into the satnav.

‘At the first opportunity, turn around,’ said the prim female voice from the machine.

‘It’s a bit bloody late for that,’ I muttered, and headed off.

Only now did it occur to me to be scared. What if Weiss was there when I arrived? What if he had someone else with him? He must have had at least one accomplice, otherwise he’d have been holding the laptop when I saw him. And of course, there’d been two men at my house the night before last. So now I had a choice: I could either follow the satnav’s suggestion and turn around, go back to Yorkshire and forget the whole thing, or I could act like a grown man and deal with my own problems for myself.

‘You have reached your destination,’ said the voice a few minutes later.

‘You sure?’ I argued.

I’d had a picture in my mind of a scruffy flat on the first or second floor of a terraced house. But the satnav woman was telling me to stop outside a whitewashed period cottage on the main street through a village on the outskirts of Ashford. It wasn’t a big place, but it had a real four-square solidity to it: very simple and unapologetic in its plainness.

As I got out of the car, the nerves kicked in. I had to make myself walk up to the front door, wondering all the time whether someone was watching me as I came. An image planted by countless films and TV shows came to me – the man walking into a trap, a gun aimed at his head. I could almost feel the sights lined up on my skull and the impact of bullet on bone. I had to make a conscious effort to keep walking.

The house stood in a small patch of land, with space on all four sides, so I could walk round it easily enough, my heart pounding against my ribcage as though I were halfway through a marathon. I couldn’t see any broken windows or smashed-open doors. When I came full circle and tried the front door it was shut: both locks. My pulse began to slow down a little. Unless they’d teleported in, I couldn’t see how there could be anyone inside.

I unlocked the door, went in and turned on the lights. Now I could relax enough to take stock of my surroundings. The cottage had been given a thorough modernizing, with nice new oak floors and halogen downlighters recessed in the hall ceiling, but Andy and Vickie had kept plenty of old rustic touches: the wooden beams, the bare brick fireplace. They had a good eye for furniture, too. The stuff in the downstairs living room wasn’t fancy, but it was well chosen. There were lots of books on the shelves, as you’d expect from a writer, and some great framed photographs on the wall: an assortment of people and landscapes that were all very different, yet somehow seemed connected both to each other and the room where they were hung. Perhaps they’d been taken on Andy’s assignments, with a story behind each of those images: a story that I’d never heard.

It didn’t look as if anyone had been here. Everything was very neat and tidy, with none of the devastation I had expected to find. The kitchen and dining room were equally undisturbed. A pile of correspondence sat on the dining room table next to a box of headed notepaper with matching envelopes. Beside the paper stood an empty screw-top bottle of Aussie Chardonnay and a glass with a few dregs left in the bottom. I thought of Vickie dutifully answering the letters of condolence, keeping herself going with another sip of wine. I owed it to her, if no one else, to find out why her man had died.

Upstairs, the master bedroom and bathroom were equally untouched. There was just the second bedroom to go. I assumed that Andy used it as a study and I was right. This was where he’d worked, all right. And it looked as if a twister had torn through the window.

Whoever had been here had ripped the room apart. Every book, every box-folder, every one of the old interview tapes that Andy kept in carefully labelled boxes had been taken from the shelves that ran down the full length of one wall, examined, then thrown down on the floor. Every drawer of his filing cabinet had been emptied. The top of his desk was bare except for a large monitor screen – I remembered Andy telling me that he simply plugged in his laptop when he was working at home – and all the clutter that had been on it was now strewn beneath it along with all the other devastation.

The savage thoroughness with which the room had been taken apart contrasted sharply with the restraint that had been shown elsewhere and the extreme care that had been taken to go in and out of the property without leaving any trace. It was all of a piece with the man who’d been waiting for me by the Range Rover: that same sense of self-control and violence cohabiting seamlessly. A calculation had been made. The best use of limited time had been determined and all the intruders’ energy had been concentrated on the one room most likely to produce something of value.

And yet, whatever they were looking for, I had a strong feeling that they had gone away empty-handed. The screen of the computer was smashed, leaving it staring blackly like an empty eye-socket. It was the one example of pointless destruction anywhere in the house, and it suggested frustration: a parting shot, perhaps, as whoever had been here had left the room.

Was that really what had happened? I imagined Weiss and his accomplice, or accomplices, leaving the house, knowing they still had one more shot. The funeral was public knowledge. I was bound to be there … Then the triumphant smiles as they opened up the car and found the laptop.

I am not a violent man. The constant tension and temper I’d been feeling since Andy’s death were not natural to me. I’m no hero, either. I did a few terms in my school cadets, just because my mates were in it, but I’d never in my adult life had a fight, or fired a gun. As I stood in the middle of Andy’s office though, surrounded by the contemptuous desecration of his entire life’s work, I realized that I wanted very badly to take my revenge for what these bastards, whoever they were, had done. I wanted to hit back.

27

Back at the cricket pavilion, things were beginning to wind down. Just half a dozen guests were left and Vickie was already starting to clear up, scurrying about the place, picking up cups and plates and wiping down tabletops. At first glance, her energy seemed undiminished, but there was a palpable sense of strain about her. She was running on her last reserves of energy, barely able to maintain the brittle façade that had got her through the day. As I gave her back her keys I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was about to smash it down and leave her utterly exposed.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,’ I said.

There was a brief flash of panic in Vickie’s eyes as she answered, ‘What kind of bad news?’

‘It’s your house – someone got into it.’

Her eyes widened and she put a hand to her mouth.

I reached out to touch her shoulder. ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they took anything. I’m afraid they made a bit of a mess of Andy’s study. But it looks like every other room in the house was untouched.’

‘But why?’ she asked and I could see that she was fighting for every last shred of self-control. ‘What did they want?’

‘I think it’s to do with the research Andy was doing, looking into Mariana’s past. He may have stumbled on something someone wants to keep quiet. Or maybe they’re just afraid he did – I don’t know …’

‘Oh God …’ she began to take short, quick breaths. ‘What if they come back?’

‘Come over here,’ I said, guiding her to a chair. ‘Sit down.’

She bent over with her head in her hands and I got down on my haunches so that our heads were roughly on the same level.

‘They’re not coming back, I promise. They got into my car and stole Andy’s laptop. Everything he had was on there. I’ll bet you anything you like they’ve gone back to wherever it was they came from. You’ll be safe, I’m sure.’

‘I don’t care,’ she said, her voice catching as the tears began to flow. ‘It’s too late. They’ve wrecked it, haven’t they? That house was the one thing … the one thing I had left … the one place I could still feel Andy … And those … those bastards have taken that from me. I can’t go back now … I just can’t … Not now they’ve been in there. Oh God …’

She let out a wail of pure, primal pain and broke down in heaving, racking sobs. I stayed with her, offering words of comfort, fresh tissues and a glass of water until she had recovered some kind of composure.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ I asked, ‘Anything at all?’

Vickie looked me straight in the eye, took a deep breath and said, ‘Yes, you can go … I’m sorry, Peter, I’ve done my best to understand what you’re going through. I’ve tried to be reasonable. But when I look at you, all I see is the unhappiness you’ve brought into my life. Your wife killed the man I loved. I don’t know why. I don’t really care. What difference does it make? Andy’s never coming back. Now I’ve lost my house as well. Just go … right away … please.’

There was nothing to be said, nothing that could ease her suffering or my crushing sense of shame. I went back to my car feeling as low as at any point since Andy’s death and further away than ever from any kind of resolution.

And yet something was going on here that just didn’t fit with the cosy consensus opinion that the police and the lawyers seemed to have about the case. I called up Iqbal and told him I had new information on the case.

‘Really?’ he said, conveying a massive weight of scepticism with that one short word. ‘Perhaps you should tell me about it.’

I ran through the events of the past few days: the email; the break-in at my house; my meeting with Weiss; the raid on Andy’s place and the theft of his computer. ‘So what are we going to do now?’ I asked at the end.

‘I am not sure that there is anything we can do,’ Iqbal replied.

‘What do you mean? Surely the police will pay attention now that there’s been another two incidents.’

Iqbal gave the sigh of a long-suffering man whose patience has been tested to the limit. ‘Mr Crookham, please, consider what you have just told me. Or, more importantly, what you have not just told me. You talk about a threatening email, sent after the man who was threatened had tragically met his end. You say you met this German gentleman who called himself Mr Weiss, but you have no proof of his identity, no number plate of his car and thus no means at all by which he might be traced. Nor do you have any actual evidence that he stole your brother’s computer, let alone that he broke into your brother’s house, and certainly not that he was one of the individals who broke into your house and did nothing but enact a distasteful, but hardly illegal, re-enactment of a tragic crime.’

‘Look, I know I don’t have any proof,’ I said. ‘But I’m absolutely certain Weiss has had a hand in all this. It was obvious by the way he acted. You’d have thought so too if you had been there.’

‘But I was not there. Nor were any police officers. So they would have nothing to go on. As for the break-in at your brother’s house, I am afraid to say that this is an all-too-common occurrence. There are unscrupulous criminals, Mr Crookham, who take the trouble to read their local papers. They see the funeral notices and they know for sure that the home of the deceased will be empty at that time. So they take advantage of this opportunity and commit crimes very like the one you described.’

‘Oh yeah? And these criminals, do they get in and out undetectably? Do they ignore every room in the house – all the TVs, cash, jewellery, everything, but target a journalist’s study? Does that sound like the work of a typical provincial low-life to you, Mr Iqbal?’

‘There is no need to use that tone with me, Mr Crookham. I have given you my professional opinion, based on many years of experience in criminal law. I can say with absolute certainty that the police would take a very similar view to their colleagues in Yorskhire. Now, if you do not mind, I have work to be doing. As and when there are any developments in your wife’s court proceedings, I will, of course, keep you informed. Good day to you, Mr Crookham.’

The phone went dead and so did any hope I had of persuading anyone to take my concerns seriously. Iqbal was right. The police would only be as irritated as he had been by my unfounded allegations against an unknown man. So now what?

I couldn’t face just driving back to York and giving up. I’d had it with being told to be sensible, do nothing, let the system do its job; of taking the advice of people who seemed more interested in an easy life than the truth. But there would be no easy life for me until I finally found out for sure who Mariana really was and what had made her capable of such terrible destruction. And there was only one place I could do that.

I called Janice, my secretary. ‘Could you do me a favour? Can you get me on a plane to Berlin?’

‘Of course,’ she answered. ‘When do you want to go?’

‘Right now.’

28

Ninety minutes later I was in the departure lounge at Gatwick, eating lunch, when my phone rang. It was Janice. I assumed she was calling with some additional information about the hotel booking I’d also asked her to arrange, but I was wrong.

‘I just had the oddest call from a German lady,’ Janice said. ‘Well, she said she was German, anyway. She was definitely foreign, she couldn’t speak English very well. She said her name was Bettina König, and that she was Mariana’s mother. She’d heard about what had happened. Apparently some magazine over there just ran a story about … you know …’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said, thinking: Bettina was the name on the birth certificate.