CXVI The Beginning of the End (Book 1): A Gripping Murder Mystery and Suspense Thriller (CXVI BOOK 1) (24 page)

“Phew,” Barnes said, regaining her composure.

“Go on,” Woods encouraged.

“Fredrick Williams is Geoffrey Drummond - Rose
Mathewson’s first child. She became pregnant at sixteen and her mother and
father adopted the baby and raised him until his mother married Philip
Mathewson who she’d met at university. Geoffrey, like his mother and stepfather,
went to Cambridge where he studied Russian. . .”

 “And no doubt was recruited to the SIS,” he
interrupted.

“That’s how it looks. Williams is definitely
Drummond; I found an old image on the internet and matched it to the photo
Bedford gave me.”

“That makes a great deal of sense. If Williams
worked for the SIS, stationed in Russia where he met Crean, and his whole
family was wiped out by his employers, there’s no wonder he wants revenge.
Together with Crean, he’s hatched a plan to murder eight people.”

“Well maybe you should go and talk to Gerrard?”

He furrowed his brow. “You know where he is?”

She grinned. “I’ve got a good idea. If you remember,
Pauline said the kids were having a gap year travelling in Asia.”

He nodded.

“Well, I’ve analysed the data from the Skype calls
and they definitely don’t originate from Asia. They’re coming from the
Seychelles – the small island of Praslin.”

Woods’ senses were on high alert.

“As you’ll know, there are over one hundred islands
in the Seychelles, not all inhabited, and I doubt the calls will have been made
from the one they’re living on; but I think I might have narrowed it down to
Gecko Island, which coincidentally has Russian sovereignty. It’s where the
Russian billionaires hang out.”

“So you think the kids are staying with their father?”

“It’s a strong possibility. Maybe you should take a
holiday.”

He rubbed his chin. “I wonder,” he said. “I think
you’d need to come with me.”

“I can’t. I don’t have a false passport, and
Dudley’s chums are all over me like a rash. If I leave the country they’d know
the second I went through border control.”

Woods formed a wry smile. “I’ve got a passport you
can use, and you wouldn’t generate the slightest hint of suspicion.”

She frowned.

“How old are you, Maria? Twenty-seven?” h
h
e ventured, cringing.

“I’m twenty-eight, if you must know,” she snapped.

“Laura and Holly are nineteen, nearly twenty. You
could easily pass for either of them. No-one would raise an eyebrow at Pamela
and me going on holiday with one of our daughters.”

Barnes smiled to herself and shook her head.
“Something about protocols,” she said.

Tuesday 5
^th
June – Wednesday
6
^th
June.

Barnes spent three hours with
Woods up near the footbridge planning the trip to the Seychelles. Having
checked the availability on the next flight out of Manchester, Woods booked
three business class seats on Wednesday evening’s 9.05 p.m. Etihad Airways flight
to Abu Dhabi, scheduled to land in the UAE on the 7
^th
at 7.20 a.m.
local time. They would then depart Abu Dhabi at 9.00 a.m. on an Air Seychelles
flight to Mahe, scheduled to land in the Seychelles at 1.35 p.m. local time, finally
departing Mahe at 3.00 p.m. on an Air Seychelles flight to Praslin, scheduled
to land on the small island fifteen minutes later. A private transfer to the
Coco De Mer Hotel would arrive on location around 4.00 p.m. Total journey time,
including time zone differences: around nineteen hours. The flights were
reserved in the names of Gregory Woods, his wife Pamela and daughter Laura,
whose passport Barnes would be using.

Barnes insisted Woods brief her on Laura’s hobbies,
interests, likes and dislikes; he also had to provide an in-depth account of the
university degree she was currently undertaking. Woods argued this to be
unnecessary, as he considered bearing a similar resemblance to Laura was the
only essential requirement she needed. Nevertheless she’d persisted and been
rewarded with the information.

Woods’ intention was that his twin daughters Holly
and Laura would stay with their Aunt Maureen, Pamela’s older sister. It had
been agreed that when he dropped them off at Maureen’s house, early tomorrow
morning, Barnes would already be there, and would then leave with him, having
swapped clothes with Laura, giving the impression to any surveillance officer
that Woods had dropped Holly off at the house and was taking Laura away with
him. Barnes was confident she could lose anyone following her; in fact her plan
was more complicated than Woods’.

Later this afternoon she would see her doctor,
saying she felt unwell, completely drained, lethargic and unable to
concentrate, blaming the long, stressful working hours, and asking for some time
off to recover. She assumed she would have no trouble persuading the doctor to
sign a sick-note, because in the past seven years she hadn’t taken a single
day’s sick leave; if necessary, she was prepared to exaggerate her symptoms
should the doctor require further proof. Once she had the sick-note she would
telephone Foster, claiming she was ill and advising him her doctor had insisted
she convalesce and re-visit him in two weeks’ time. She intended posting the
sick-note to Foster and returning to her flat where she would spend the evening
compiling an anonymous detailed dossier.

She would ensure her fingerprints and DNA were not
on the document. The dossier would outline the suspicion that the deaths of
Rose and Philip Mathewson were a British Secret Service contract murder,
undertaken to prevent the Russians increasing their hold over the European
energy market and driving up gas prices. It would detail the link between Crean
and Freddy Williams, who, it would claim, worked undercover in Russia for the British
Secret Service. An unmarked copy of the photograph Bedford had provided would
be attached as evidence that Crean and Williams knew one another. The dossier
would state that Williams’ true identity was that of Geoffrey Drummond, Rose
Mathewson’s first son, who’d been adopted and raised by her parents. The
conclusion would be the supposition that together Crean and Williams had hatched
a plan to murder eight people: the six already known about, plus two others,
with the strong possibility that the person who’d murdered the Mathewson family
was one of the remaining two. The suggestion that Jonathan Plant was the agent
responsible for that contract killing would be the final paragraph. No mention
would be made of the assumption that Crean had faked his own death and was
probably in the Seychelles.

Barnes’ intention was to post the dossier to Foster
when she covertly left her flat early tomorrow morning, prior to the rendezvous
with Woods at his sister-in-law’s house.

In addition, tonight she needed to arrange for Felix
to stay with her neighbour, prepare the flat so it appeared she was still in
residence, put contingencies in place in case unexpected visitors entered while
she was away, and reprogram the entry intercom system so it called her new unregistered
mobile. Finally she’d destroy the hard drive used to produce the dossier. All
this would take a considerable amount of time; the overriding factor being that
it should be completed with precision.

Wednesday 6
^th
June.

Foster was holding an early
morning impromptu catch-up meeting in Woods’ office. McLean, Jacobs, West and
Dudley were in attendance.

“I’m sorry to inform you that Maria won’t be in for
a couple of weeks,” Foster reported. “She spoke to me yesterday evening after
visiting the doctor and she’s been advised to rest.”

McLean nodded, “Aye, I knew she was doing too much; she’s
been working night and day. You can’t maintain that level of commitment,
otherwise you burn yourself out.”

“Did she update you on yesterday’s progress?” Dudley
enquired.

Foster was irritated by the question. “She sounded
absolutely dreadful. Do you understand that?” he snapped. “I thought it better
if I rang her today, after she’s rested.”

“Aye, she told me she’d worked it all out,” McLean
said squinting. “Did she not mention anything to you?”

Foster glanced at Dudley, whose appearance suggested
he was keen to know the answer. He shook his head. “I knew she’d been to see
Bedford on Monday morning. She’d told me about Crean’s involvement with the
Russians, the development of shale gas extraction, and the deaths of the two
scientists. . .”

“She asked me to look at the deaths to see if there
was anything suspicious,” Dudley chipped in. “The investigation concluded
there’d been a gas leak on the boat, and an explosion caused by an electrical
spark.”

Foster turned up his nose; he’d reached the stage
where believing anything said by Dudley proved difficult. “On Monday when Maria
rang she said the pool car had broken down in Manchester; she’d come back on
the train. The funny thing is, when recovery went to fetch it, there was
nothing wrong with it.” He turned to Dudley. “You wouldn’t know anything about
this would you?”

Dudley looked blank and shrugged his shoulders.

Foster’s glare indicated more annoyance; he was
rapidly running out of patience with the detective. “I’ll check with her this
afternoon,” he said, then turning to McLean, “I understand you’ve made some
progress on the cloned vehicles. Would you care to update us?”

Dudley jumped in. “I’m sorry, I’ll have to go. There’s
someone I need to see urgently.” Not bothering to wait for Foster’s
acknowledgement, he simply walked straight out of the room.

Foster instantly turned to Jacobs. “Follow him Chris.
I want to know where he keeps disappearing off to.”

“No problem,” Jacobs said, standing up and heading
to the door. He stopped and checked through the vision panel before exiting out
into the Incident Room.

“Sorry,” Foster said, turning back to McLean. “You
were going to update me on the cloned vehicles.”

Dudley arrived at the Hepworth
Gallery at 9.25 a.m., only to discover it was closed and not due to open until
10.00. He scanned the area outside the complex and spotted Faulkner-Brown
sitting on a bench overlooking the river; he went across and joined him.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“In her flat, presumably resting,” Faulkner-Brown
replied, looking deadpan. “Why?”

“She told McLean she’d worked it all out.”

Faulkner-Brown raised an eyebrow. “I doubt that.”

“What happened on Monday morning?”

“Twelve vehicles! Can you believe that? Twelve!”

“What?”

“It took twelve vehicles to follow her undetected to
Manchester. She parked a mile away from Bedford’s office and was then followed
on foot. She constantly checked for a tail, but somehow they managed to remain
unseen.” Faulkner-Brown looked over the water. “Then what did they do? They’d
worked as a team following her on foot, that’s why she didn’t spot them, but
the guy who’d followed her last radioed his partner who came to pick him up and
then simply parked right outside the office, waiting for her to come out. Talk
about fundamentals; a child could have done better. Of course she spotted them,
created a diversion and disappeared. The next trace was when her phone was
reconnected in Wakefield.”

“Has Bedford been brought in for questioning?”

Faulkner-Brown sighed and shook his head. “He’s
taken to having six bodyguards with him at all times; it’s not as though we can
stroll up to him and have a quiet chat. He’ll know what we’ll be planning and
he’ll have it covered. A bloodbath on the streets of Manchester is the last
thing we need right now.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange that she goes off sick
after speaking to him, and divulging to McLean she’s finally worked it all
out?”

“She’ll be bluffing, trying to throw us off the
scent. Bedford doesn’t know everything. Now stop worrying, I’ve got her flat
under surveillance and her phones monitored; she can’t move a muscle without me
knowing about it.”

“Monitoring her phones didn’t do much good on
Monday.”

Faulkner-Brown smiled cynically. “Listen, she’s a
professional; I’m tempted to say it’s a pity you’re not. I can’t
surreptitiously slip a tracker in her bag or attach it to her clothing; she’s
too sharp. She knows what to look for and how to avoid it. That’s why she
always uses a pool car. Are you expecting me to place trackers on all of them?
If she switches her phone off there’s not a great deal I can do about that, but
if she leaves the flat I’ve a team of five covert specialists who’ll follow her.
They’re the best there is, she won’t know they’re around.”

“Teething problems was it, on Monday morning?”
Dudley sneered.

“Maybe it was a wake-up-call. Now they all know what
they’re dealing with, they’ll be more vigilant.”

Dudley stood. “Let’s hope so… For all our sakes.”

Woods arrived at his
sister-in-law’s house just after ten; Holly and Laura were with him. He carried
a rather large suitcase up to the front door and the trio went inside. Barnes
was waiting in the living room. Woods’ daughters said hello and went upstairs
with their aunt to unpack.

“Were you followed?” Barnes asked.

“I don’t think so. I didn’t see anyone.”

She sighed. “I told you they’re using multiple
vehicles; they follow for a short period, drop back and another one picks up
your tail. I’ll keep watching on the way back to your house.”

“Don’t you think this is a bit over the top?” Woods
asked, then, realising his mistake, quickly added, “by the way, I like your
hair; you’ve had it restyled.”

“It’s a wig!” Barnes snapped. “To match Laura’s
style.”

“Oh, I see,” Woods replied awkwardly. “Do you need
to go swap clothes with her?”

She nodded and headed upstairs.

Jacobs walked nonchalantly back
into the Incident Room sipping a carton of coffee. He looked across and
acknowledged Dudley who was sitting eating the cheese and onion pasties he’d
bought from the bakery on the way back up from the Hepworth. Jacobs had
deliberately waited ten minutes after following Dudley before coming into the
building; he had then called in at the canteen, grabbed a coffee and come
upstairs. He now ambled over to the office, knocked on the door and went
inside.

“Where did he go?” Foster asked.

“The Hepworth.”

Foster scowled.

“He met a guy.”

“Can you describe him?”

Jacobs smiled. “Short, stout guy, wearing a garish
suit, sitting on one of the seats overlooking the river; looked a bit like Coco
the Clown,” he laughed. “Never mind, I got a photo,” he said, handing over his
iPhone.

Foster looked at the picture. “How do you make this
bigger?”

Jacobs reached across and enlarged the image.

“Faulkner-Brown,” Foster said, rubbing his chin.

“Who’s he?”

Foster didn’t answer; he gazed out of the window
lost in thought. Finally he turned to Jacobs. “Ask McLean to join us; I need to
explain a few things.”

Jacobs creased his brow. “Has this something to do
with the guys who were following me in France?”

Foster nodded.

On the journey back to Woods’
house Barnes was sitting in the passenger seat. She’d stuck a cheap rear-view
mirror in front of her on the windscreen and adjusted her door mirror so she
could monitor following traffic. She’d bought the low-priced mirror earlier at
a motorist discount centre. After ten miles she was confident they were not
being followed.