Evil Turn (Nathan Hawk Mystery) (34 page)

The door opened a little further and Liam Kinsella tip-toed in. He walked over to the bed. As far as I could tell he wasn’t carrying a weapon. He didn’t think he’d need one. He leaned down over the bed and said quietly, “Emma ... Emma, wake up.”

Receiving no answer, he leaned forward and prodded the ruck I’d left in the duvet.

“Emma, Emma, you’ve a visitor...” he said, in a normal voice.

I slammed the door, mainly to wake up Grogan, then reached across to the light switch and turned it on. Kinsella spun round. We were both blinded for the moment but I was the one holding the gun, aiming it straight at his chest. He stood there, eyes seemingly frozen in their sockets. Eventually, he spoke, breezily, almost matily, but surely without realising what he was saying.

“Hi! How you doing?”

The door burst open, though it didn’t need such rough treatment. Grogan entered, dressed as I was, boxers, T-shirt, socks.

“Man wants to know how we are, Bill.”

He went straight over to Kinsella, threw him to the floor, turned him and applied the handcuffs. He then frisked him in that position for anything he might be carrying, but, arrogant to the last, Kinsella had thought he could get what he wanted just by talking.

Grogan hauled him to his feet, by the collar of the black tracksuit he was wearing, and leaned towards him.

“We’re fine,” he said.

Grogan handcuffed Kinsella to a central heating downpipe in Emma’s kitchen and went back into the spare room. When he reappeared he was not only dressed but he was carrying his rounders bat. Kinsella looked at me.

“Your human rights?” I asked.

“You know what he’s like, don’t you?” he said.

I glanced up at the kitchen clock. “Three thirty. Too early to call Commander Blackwell, tell him you dropped in.”

“You’re right, that’s all it was. An old friend, coming to see...”

“You came because you thought she was dealing some of that heroin, to pay the bills. Wasted journey. I found it.”

He smiled, almost playfully. “Where, out of interest?”

I shook my head. “You’d kick yourself if I told you.”

He tried to fall back on one of his many personae, the apologetic coward who’d made mistakes out of fear for his own safety. “Alright, so I chickened out of giving evidence against...”

“Shut up! You murdered those two men...”

“Me?”

“...and you played every card in the deck, from terrified victim to bullied witness. Christ, you even had me believing Carew and Sweetman had written your statement for you.”

The handcuffs slid up the down pipe, taking paint off it, as Kinsella rose from the stool he’d been sitting on. He pointed at me with his free hand, offended now. “I was right there. I saw it all.”

“I believe you. You saw it because you were standing next to them.” I went over to him, right into his space. “As close as we are now.”

He was appalled. “Even if that was true, how could you prove such a thing?”

“I don’t have to prove it; I just have to give Blackwell justification for building a case against you. The evidence is up to him, but if he thinks you’re guilty he’ll find it.”

“And this ... justification?”

“That day at my house when Sillitoe took you through the evidence, you said you’d witnessed the murders from twenty metres away. Aaron was head and shoulders above the other two, you said. Vic was looking sprauncy, that was the word you used. And Freddie was Freddie, same old anorak, same old cords. And he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days.”

He shrugged. “I can’t remember what I said yesterday, let alone six weeks ago...”

“That’s alright, because the whole thing is on tape. Marion Bewley. Her ‘career development’.” He still hadn’t drawn level with me. “You couldn’t have seen two days’ growth on his face from twenty metres away. You had to be standing next to him.” I pointed two fingers at him, pistol fashion. “Bang, bang.”

He sat down again, leaned back against the wall.

Grogan came over to us, rounders bat in one hand, slapping it gently in the palm of the other. “I’m going to ask Mr Hawk to go and put some clothes on now.”

“No...” said Kinsella, trying to back away into the plasterwork.

“I want to know what happened to Petra Fairchild and, if you’ve any sense, you want to tell me.”

I made my way to the doorway through to the hall.

“Don’t go!” Kinsella called out.

“Can’t walk around all day like this.”

Grogan looked him over, then homed in on his right knee. As he raised the bat Kinsella yelled out, “She’s alright! Two days after leaving your house, she disappeared.”

“That’s a nasty word, Liam,” I said.

“Maybe she realised you weren’t Clyde Barrow after all,” Grogan suggested. “Where?”

“I don’t know. She just ... took off.”

I went back to the bedroom to get dressed, closed the door behind me. I heard one or two screams from the kitchen but Kinsella didn’t change his story. Fairchild had just vanished.

I arrived back at Beech Tree to praise and blame, the former for having found Liam Kinsella, to say nothing of the heroin, the latter for having taken so long about it. Fee and Yukito were anxious to return to Tokyo but she hadn’t wanted to do so without saying goodbye.

That night as I sat in the cabin, e-mailing Blackwell a receipt for a cheque from ‘the safe-house contingency fund’ and clearing up fifty or sixty details with Angelica Carter, Fee knocked on the door. They’d booked a taxi for eleven the next morning. Meantime she wanted me to know that she was going back with Yukito of her own free will, not because of anything I’d said, done or implied, not because of an emptiness brought on by Ellie, Jaikie and me moving on, not because of age creeping up on her, not because...

Suffice to say that she had a bagful of reasons and I listened to each one of them, nodding sincerely.

Before she went back into the house she looked at me intensely and said, “What’s wrong?”

I gave her the answer I thought she expected. “I’ll miss you...”

“Not that! Jesus, it’s Christmas in six weeks’ time. We’ll be back. I meant what is wrong?”

I must have a neon forehead or something. I smiled. “Petra Fairchild, if you must know.”

“Dad, if he killed her as well, go find the body. If he didn’t, go find the woman herself. It’ll give you something to do.”

It was a great plan, I said, mocking her, and so simple to execute. Did she have any suggestion as to where I might start the search? She thought about it for a moment, then answered with her gift for spotting the elusive obvious.

“If I were in really deep shit, and assuming I was still alive, where would I go? Back home to Mum. Or, in my case, Dad.”

Two days later I drove into the Fairchilds’ yard in Ashendon, with that gentle swish of old tyres on new shingle. I can only say that nothing looked out of place. Why that should have made me suspicious I’ve no idea; my jaundiced view of human nature working overtime, I guess. There were two cars parked in the thatched carport, a His Jag and a Hers VW. Nothing else. No tyre tracks in the gravel, no sign of a hasty retreat. Or advance.

I got out and as I stood looking across at the house a man my age, only better dressed, came out through the back door with a ‘who the fuck are you?’ look on his face. He was tall, with collar-length white hair but a complexion like overripe fruit, bruised here, shrivelled there. A drinker’s face, old before its time. His voice was smoky with a flat battery of a cough to go with it. “Morning. Can I help?”

“My name is Nathan Hawk.”

“Jack Fairchild.”

As we shook hands I explained that I was a friend of his daughter, that we’d brought a dishevelled young man here to have his hair cut a couple of months ago. He nodded.

“Is Grace about?” I asked.

“She’s hoovering, I believe.” He paused to listen. No sound. “Maybe not. Ah...”

Grace had come to the door and stepped out onto the patio. “Mr Hawk, how lovely to see you again.”

She was polite smiles and gentle manners and, taking his cue from that, her husband relaxed a little. Nevertheless, we stood unnaturally still, three points of a masonic triangle, the Fairchilds waiting for me to dictate the angles.

“I need to talk to you about Petra.”

She closed her eyes, maybe trying to squeeze out a tear. I wasn’t sure. “I can’t tell you how upset we’ve been by all this,” she said in a small voice.

“May I come in?”

“Yes, yes, please do...”

The kitchen was the same as I remembered it: pin-neat, everything put away after use, surfaces wiped, floor swept. And just as you’d expect from any mock farmhouse there was a pleasant smell of baking in the air. I moved slowly around the room, an old trick I’d learned from yet another ancient desk sergeant. The slower you move, the more likely it is that others will stay put. By the time you reach your destination it’s too late for them to stop you.

“Has she been home since ... you know?” I asked.

“Why would she have been?” said her father.

I shrugged. “Get some clothes, reassure you, borrow money, any number of things.”

“No, she hasn’t...”

Jack Fairchild couldn’t lie to save his life, never mind his daughter’s.

I’d reached the oven, picked up the mittens and put one on. They stood and watched, reacting only when I opened it, reached in and took out a tray of Danish apple bars.

“Your daughter’s favourite. I got a whiff of the cinnamon out in the yard. Go and get her, Mr Fairchild.”

As he passed me on his way to the hall he stopped and glared at me. “What would you have done, for your daughter?”

I shrugged. “The same. Only better.”

A few moments later Petra entered the kitchen ahead of her father. She must’ve been behind the door, listening. She stood perfectly still and I couldn’t determine her mood, if it was one of horror, surprise or fear. I settled for the last, rating it the kind which runs through you when you’ve done something so stupid it defies belief. It isn’t the act itself which terrifies so much as the knowledge that you did it willingly and, having done it once, the chances are you’ll do it again, then again...

I told her she wasn’t looking too bad, given the circumstances. It was true. The clothes were fresh, the make-up reasonable, the hair immaculate. The voice was small, though, that of a girl and not the woman who’d tried putting me in my place on more than one occasion.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I wonder if we’d all be better in the lounge,” said Jack.

No doubt that was where the booze lived. I said I preferred kitchens and sat at the table. Petra slithered down onto the bench opposite me.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“Worried about you.”

She believed me, but when I told her Bill Grogan was also worried she laughed, then from somewhere she dredged up some grit and flung it at me. “I suppose you want to know all the torrid details, how a police officer of eight years fell prey to a con artist?”

“I don’t want details, I can work them out for myself...”

“Maybe you’re worried that you should’ve stepped in and done something about it?” said her father.

“She’s thirty-two years old, for Christ’s sake! She may be a child to you, but to the rest of the world she’s fully grown and smart enough to be a member of SOU.”

He said he’d still like to know how it had happened right under my nose, hoping perhaps that when the time came it could all be blamed on me. Petra stretched a hand out to her father and he backed off.

She spoke carefully, haltingly, but the gist of it was that she’d started off feeling sorry for Kinsella and, yes, he had a talent for getting sympathy from the most unlikely places. So, before she knew it, she was helping him, buying presents and cards for his friends, posting them off. And why not? she insisted. He was meant to be on our side but Grogan bullied him, beat him up, cuffed him to the plumbing, kept him on a rope when we went for a jog. No wonder the defeated, bullied little boy came through, bewildered, frightened, vulnerable. Scared of Grogan, scared that Flaxman was out to kill him, scared of me, his reluctant host. Somewhere along the way he told her she was the only human being in the house. Then he told her he loved her.

I started drumming the table, both sets of fingers. “Then he told you he was rich?”

She nodded. “But I never believed he had money. It was a pipe dream, a way of impressing me.”

“But you still fell for him...”

“I wasn’t the only one he fooled. Doctor Peterson had him down as a casualty of the system; your daughter thought you’d abused his human rights. Jesus, you even pleaded his immunity to Henry Sillitoe.”

“Not quite the same as falling in love with him.”

“It’s
exactly
the same, just taken to another level...”

“How come you’re still alive, Petra?” I asked.

The idea that Kinsella might have killed her, had the chance arisen, the circumstances been different, still troubled her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “If we’d been on our own for longer...?”

She leaned forward on both arms and stared down at the table, took her time recounting. He’d got rid of her just an hour after leaving Beech Tree. They were four, five miles away from Ashendon. He stopped the car she’d provided him with, on a narrow, twisty lane, turned to her and told her to get out. She’d laughed, believing it was a joke, but then his whole demeanour changed, his temper flared. He screamed at her to get out of the fucking car and thank her lucky stars he didn’t have time to kill her and dump the body. He pushed her against the door; she opened it, stepped out and he tore off, knocking her onto the muddy verge. She saw him brake half a mile down the road and, out of fear that he was having second thoughts, she scrambled over the gate beside her and ran off across the field. She didn’t stop until she reached her parents’ house.

I nodded and leaned back.

“So now you know,” said her father. “She made a mistake, but she’s as much a victim in all this...”

“No! She believed he had 15 million quid in the offing.”

“She’s just told you, it was a pipe dream.”

“And who do you think will believe her? They’ll prefer the version where he offered her a cut to help him escape. And she took it.”

Petra sat rigid on the bench and stared at me. I half-expected a blast of invective but instead she began to melt into tears. That brought her mother back into the fray, bristling with unconditional love. She’d hardly said a word since we’d entered the house and now, with both hands on the table, she leaned into my face.

“You may have earned a few stars in the eyes of your cronies. Murder solved, drugs found, police officer tracked down? Just don’t expect us to be impressed.” She waited, eyes darting all over my face, and then cut me down to size. “You can go now.”

“Or what? You’ll call the police?” I stood up, reached into my inside pocket for an old business card, the only one I’ve ever been given and kept. I dropped it onto the table. “You’ll have to play ball with the system, sooner or later, Petra. Get in touch with that man there. He saved me from being charged with assault, then secured my pension in the wake of my, well ... having thumped a fellow officer for being a prize twat. Tell him it was me recommended him.”

I headed for the back door.

“So when?” she called after me.

“When what?”

“When will you tell Blackwell you found me?”

“Couple of years’ time.”