Gregory's Game (17 page)

‘True, we can always come back,' Nathan agreed.

They left then, Billy Harding a trembling wreck in his office, waiting for his employees to arrive and not quite believing he had got off so lightly this time.

‘D
id Katherine seem unhappy or worried about anything?'

It was a standard question but was met with bewildered looks.

‘We'd had a lovely weekend,' her aunt said. ‘It was such a long time since we were all able to catch up.'

‘It was a family wedding, I understand?'

‘Yes. A cousin. Not a close cousin, but you know … we thought it would be a good opportunity to get everyone here. Some of the older relatives, well, you don't know if … you know … It might be the last time and … there was little Desiree. It was the first chance to see her properly for a lot of people. Kat took such a long time to settle down …'

‘Mum, she's only thirty-seven. It's not that old these days.'

‘It was still a surprise,' Aunt Christina said. ‘She was always so set on her career. We never thought she'd find a man she wanted to stay at home for.'

‘I think she plans on going back to work,' her cousin objected.

‘If she comes back.' It was the first time the uncle had spoken and the whole party fell silent and turned to look at him.

‘Bert, you can't say a thing like that. You can't!'

‘But I'm right, aren't I?' he challenged. ‘The chances of getting either of them back unharmed are practically nil.'

‘It's hard to say,' Tess placated. ‘Each event, each kidnapping is so very different.'

‘I'm talking statistics here. People don't come back.'

Tess looked at Vinod, wondering how best to respond to Bert's statement. She wanted to argue, but it was a difficult thing to fight against. He was right, of course, but most families clung to the idea that they and their loved ones would beat the odds. Especially this early in an investigation.

‘You thought she'd take a different route away from here,' Vinod asked. ‘Why was that?'

‘Because that's what I always tell her to do. It's logical.'

‘Kat doesn't like being told what to do,' his wife stated. ‘And maybe if we'd realized that they'd have found her car a bit sooner. Instead, you were so bloody certain she'd have been a good girl and listened to her uncle—'

‘And if she had listened to me, stuck to the busier routes, she and that baby might still be with us. They might have made it home. Instead of which—'

‘You always have to be right, don't you?'

‘Please,' Tess almost shouted. ‘This is helping no one.'

Aunt and uncle had the grace to look shamefaced. ‘You asked if she had any worries,' Kat's cousin said. ‘Do you think she did? Do you think she'd been threatened?'

‘We've nothing to indicate that,' Tess admitted. ‘But I just wondered if, being among her family, she might have mentioned something. Professor Marsh says he can think of nothing—'

‘Professor Marsh,' the uncle snorted. ‘And when's he likely to have noticed anything?'

‘Bert. Please!'

‘You don't like Professor Marsh?' Vin asked.

‘I don't dislike him. I've just got no time for academics in their ivory towers, that's all.'

‘How did they meet?' Tess asked.

‘Kat worked in HR at the university. I'm not sure how exactly they got together, but I know they met there. It's funny,' the aunt went on, ‘but he was so unlike anyone she'd ever dated before. She'd always gone for the flashy ones, you know.'

‘And you think they've been happy together?'

Christina smiled. ‘Oh yes. He loves her and she loves him and there's little Desiree now.' Her lips trembled and her eyes filled with tears. ‘She's just a baby. Just a baby girl.'

They left soon after that, Tess feeling there was nothing to be gained from more prodding and poking at their collective pain.

‘What do you make of all that?' Vin asked.

‘Oh, I think every family has an Uncle Bert,' she said. ‘I don't get the impression any of them really took to Ian Marsh, but they accepted him because he was Katherine's choice. I don't think we can read anything else into it.'

Vin nodded. ‘Back to the crash site?'

‘May as well. Hopefully the CSI will have arrived and have something useful to tell us. Anything positive would be welcome right now. Then we ring the boss and await further instructions.'

‘And find somewhere to get some lunch,' Vinod said. ‘I'm starved.'

Jaz had decided to take a lateral approach to her search and had called up all unusual abductions happening in the past six months. Many she had discounted straight away – parents taking children abroad figured heavily, but didn't seem relevant, unless something really changed and they suddenly had reason to believe that Kat Marsh had run off with her little girl.

She ran a search both of official files and of the broader Internet and media reports, knowing that sometimes a different perspective could throw up interesting results. Jaz was acutely aware that her own profession was trained to see incidents in a particular way, your average journalist in quite another – and don't get her started on social media. By midday she had about a dozen reports tagged for further inspection.

Meanwhile, her colleagues had been looking for instances where monofilament had been used either as a murder weapon or as a means of torturing or restraining a victim. Jaz would have made bets on the number being low, but by lunchtime, they too had a clutch of examples and one in particular that seemed to merit a further look.

DCI Branch had arranged for everyone actually in the building to come and update him at twelve-thirty and so they gathered in the conference room. Branch put Tess on speaker phone. The line was bad. She was standing in the middle of a field, she said. And the rain had started an hour before, swept across the open country on a sharp wind.

‘CSI found a slug in the engine block. It had gone through the tyre and deflected upward into the vehicle. It's pretty bashed up but it's gone to ballistics. There's what might be some traces of the shooter in the tree across the road from the bend where she went off the road, but nothing very conclusive. However, it looks as though someone knew she'd come this way, waited for her and blew out the tyre.'

‘You've spoken to the family?'

‘Yes, but apart from the fact that the uncle didn't really approve of Ian Marsh, there's nothing more to tell there.'

‘Any reason for the dislike?'

‘He doesn't like academics. Look, unless you've got anything else for us to do, we'll grab something to eat and we can be back for the main briefing.'

‘Do that,' Branch said.

He looked out at the handful of officers gathered in the conference room. ‘Any thoughts?'

There was a moment of silence, then DC Fields spoke up. She had been working with Jaz on the background search and had come up with the other murder. ‘It seems like overkill,' she said. ‘And I don't mean just the tyre being shot out. It seems like someone wants to get someone else's attention.'

‘Except there's been no follow up,' Branch said. ‘No threats, apart from the implicit one in the photograph. No demands.'

‘Perhaps we're not the ones that are supposed to hear,' Jaz said quietly. ‘Look, I'm not sure what I mean, but maybe there's a message in all this that's not meant for us. Someone is seeing it and reading it loud and clear. To someone this silence is really a shout.'

Branch nodded again. ‘You could be right there,' he said. ‘And you've found something that makes you certain of it?'

Perceptive, Jaz thought. Not bad looking either. She found herself sneaking a look at his ring finger. It was bare, but, she reminded herself, that didn't always mean anything.

‘We've come up with a couple of connections, or possible connections,' she said. ‘But I think we'd like a bit more time making sure these aren't just wild geese before we share.'

Branch raised an eyebrow and then looked from Jaz to his more familiar colleague, DC Fields. She nodded. ‘Something's coming together,' she said. ‘But the pattern isn't showing yet. We'll have something worthwhile by the briefing or we'll have moved on.'

‘We should have pushed him further,' Gregory said. ‘You know he'll be on the phone to Franks by now.'

‘Of course he will. It doesn't matter. I'm not keen on taking Bernie Franks by surprise anyway; he tends to overreact.' Nathan laughed briefly; mirthlessly. ‘I doubt your friend Billy knew much more. I didn't want to overplay our hand. He thought we'd come to ask him about the dead man as well as Mae; if we'd carried on he'd soon have realized we didn't know shit.'

Gregory nodded, conceding the point. ‘So, we go and see Mr Bernie Franks,' he said. ‘You ever do any work for him?'

Nathan laughed as though the idea was absurd. ‘You think Clay would have let me lower myself to that?' he said. ‘Clay was fussy about what I did. Annie too.'

‘So, no lowlifes below a certain pay grade,' Gregory said. ‘None of your ordinary, common criminals. Didn't stop him putting you both in the line of fire though, did it?'

Nathan shook his head. ‘We did what we did. He had us well trained.'

Gregory sensed that the conversation was over. Nathan was still oddly sensitive about his erstwhile guardian. Had he cared about Clay, he wondered? He figured it was a difficult question and that Nathan himself probably didn't know the answer to it. Clay had been in
loco parentis
for both Annie and Nathan since they were just kids. That had to count for something.

‘How did you meet Mae?' he asked.

‘Would you believe at an embassy party? Clay had taken us with him, me and Annie. He often did, liked to show us the sights, and I think he wanted us to be prepared for the roles he'd got planned. Clay was ambitious for us. Anyway, I was seventeen and she was bloody gorgeous. Gregory, I was smitten and Clay knew it. He paid her to look after me for a few days.'

‘Seriously?'

‘Seriously. Rome,' he added. ‘It was Rome. I'm guessing she must have been, what, forty? Gregory, I think I was a little bit …'

‘In love?' Gregory asked.

Nathan shook his head. ‘I don't think I've ever been in love,' he said. ‘I watch other people, try to understand what they feel and sometimes, like those few days with Mae, I think I get close. Then I get bored. I lose interest and it's like someone flicked a switch, turned the feeling off. It's not meant to be like that, is it?'

‘I don't think so,' Gregory said. ‘I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask.' He hesitated, then said, ‘But there are people you care about. People like Annie. Like the prof and his family.'

‘You see, I think that's where you're wrong, or at least that's where
I'm
wrong. Annie, yes. I think I do love Annie. We shared such a lot over the years. Went through so much loss together and it's like we're locked together, tied up by memories and actions and just being around, you know. But the rest? No, it's not love, Gregory; it's possession, same as it was with Clay. Clay drew people into his charmed circle, he claimed them, made them his own and would do anything to protect them – so long as he didn't get bored or they didn't step over some invisible line. I don't think I've got an invisible line, but I'm not going to rule the possibility out. But I know I do the same thing as Clay. I mark people as mine, for whatever reason, and I protect them, do all I can to keep them safe, because … because I've claimed them.'

‘Sounds cold,' Gregory said. ‘I'm not sure you're that cold.'

Nathan thought about it. ‘I hope not,' he said. ‘But I suspect I am. I suspect I substitute possession for love – but, you know, I suspect there are a lot of people out there doing exactly the same thing. They make believe they love when the truth is they only possess. They say, “You're my wife, my daughter, my son. You're not doing x or behaving like y because that's not what a child of mine does.”'

‘You don't like people very much, do you?'

Nathan was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘When I was fourteen years old, a group of men broke into our house. They shot my father and tortured my mother. Then they raped her. I came home and walked into the middle of it. Thankfully, they were too busy to hear me come in. I took one of the guns from my father's cabinet and I walked into the room and I shot three of them before they even knew I was there. The fourth man … Anyway, Clay found me later, and he saw what I'd done, and he understood. He took me under his wing, as they say. I owed him for that. But I paid my debts.'

Gregory stared out of the car window watching the rain fall across grey fields. It was one of the few times Nathan had talked about his youth. He found himself thinking about Patrick and the difference between the two. Life had shut doors on both of them in different ways, but Patrick seemed to have coped by feeling
more
than was normal. Nathan had decided to feel less.

Gregory's own parents had been a mystery to him, just as he had been a mystery to them. They'd been good, honest, ordinary people, hard working if a little unimaginative. His mother had understood from very early on that Gregory was different. His path would be his own to tread and she would probably never understand it. So she'd done all she could to deal with the parts of his life she could control: made sure he had the best education she could manage, always turned up to parents' evenings and provided him with whatever kit he needed, even though that strained the family finances. He'd always been well fed and clothed, cared for, though not understood. He bore her no resentment for that; he'd not been the child she had expected to have. Neither did he resent the fact that when he'd announced, at seventeen, that he wanted to join the army, she'd been unable to hide her relief.