Perfect Sins (27 page)

So while Ash was watching Graves's face for reactions, he was also listening intently for the words that would give him away. And he didn't hear any. This may have been because, so far, Ash had done most of the talking. It may have been because Graves knew that the less he said, the less he would have to explain. Or it may simply have been that the man was as stunned by developments as he appeared to be. With all his experience, Ash couldn't tell. He needed Graves to open up. What he talked about hardly mattered as long as he started talking. There are people who can't find a gap in the conversation without trying to fill it. Such people are an interrogator's dream: They can't keep a secret to save their lives. If you ever want to rob a bank, don't do it with someone who finishes your sentences. You'll definitely go down, and no one will help you finish your sentence then.

“Mr. Graves,” said Ash, “I need you to help me here. I think we're within striking distance of the truth. I think what's happened proves it. Someone you know, or who knows someone you know, is passing back intelligence that makes it possible for African pirates to keep hijacking British arms shipments and to keep getting away with it. I think it possible, likely even, that you know something that would tell us who. Maybe you don't
know
that you know, and I don't know what questions to ask.

“So will you just talk to me? Tell me about the industry. Tell me how it all works—the difficult bits, the tedious bits, how much government interference you have to put up with, if there are ways of getting around it. I swear to God, I am not interested in your VAT returns. But I need more background information. I'm sure I asked you a lot of this four years ago, you and the other people who'd been targeted, but a lot's happened since then and I may have forgotten some of it. Will you humor me? Will you talk to me as if I was writing an article for
Big Guns
or whatever your industry magazine is called?”

“
Big Guns
?” said Stephen Graves faintly.

“It's not called that?” Graves shook his head. “Whatever.”

So, overcoming an initial hesitation, Graves talked and Ash listened. He talked Ash through the events that had led to their first meeting. He described three further lost shipments in the intervening years, in forensic detail that suggested he'd spent many a sleepless night going over what he might have done, or not done, or done differently to make things turn out otherwise. He described all the losses in the British arms industry that had been or could be attributed to these pirates, going back some six years and including several Ash was unaware of. He described the makeup of his own company, starting with his professional background and concluding with the service history of the night watchman.

Then he did the same, in almost as much detail, for his competitors' companies. It was a small, tight-knit world in which, despite strenuous efforts to protect commercial secrets, everyone knew everyone else's business.

He talked for an hour, almost without prompting. At the end of that time, Ash didn't believe he'd caught him out in an untruth. Stephen Graves was either an honest man or a skillful liar.

Left with nothing more to ask, all Ash could do was thank him for his time, wake Patience, and leave.

*   *   *

A familiar and still muddy car was waiting in the Bertrams car park—in, Ash couldn't help but notice, the space reserved for the company chairman. Hazel didn't get out or even wave; she just sat waiting for him. Watching to see what he would do. As if he had options. He swallowed the last of his pride and walked toward her. “Car for Ash?” he mumbled with a faint, ingratiating grin.

“Actually, no,” said Hazel coolly. “I thought Patience might like a lift.”

The dog waved her scimitar tail in agreement. Or perhaps just at the sound of her name.

Ash considered. “How about if I sit on the floor and promise not to shed or chew the upholstery?”

Staying angry with him would be like holding a grudge against a child. She popped the lock on the passenger side. “Get in.” And when he had, and Patience was sprawled gracefully on the backseat, Hazel said, “Well? Did you get what you came for?”

Ash considered. “I don't know.”

One day, she thought, I'll actually do it. I'll deck him. “Is there someone we could ask? Perhaps Mr. Graves could tell us.”

Ash gave a little muffled chuckle. “That's pretty much what I've been wondering. If there's something Mr. Graves could tell me and isn't doing. He's told me all there is to know about the arms industry—manufacturing, sales, regulations, loopholes in the regulations, the makers, the sellers, the buyers. I'm not sure he's told me anything useful. And I don't know if that's because he doesn't know anything about the pirates or because he knows enough not to let me
know
how much he knows.”

It took Hazel longer to understand that than it had taken Ash to say it, but she got there in the end. “So what do you want to do now? Go home?”

“You're not going back to Byrfield?”

Hazel shook her head. “All done, for good and ill. I
will
go back, before very long, to see how everyone's coping with the new situation, but there's nothing more I can do there right now. These people need to talk to one another. I'd just be in the way.”

“How did it all end?”

Hazel yawned. “Can I tell you later? I
am
ready for home.”

Ash bit his lip. “Actually, could we stay here a little longer? Half an hour—an hour at most?”

Hazel looked surprised. “We could. Why would we want to?”

“I'd like to see what Stephen Graves does next.”

“Why should he do anything?”

“He may not. Or he may want to tell someone I've been back to see him.”

Hazel looked around her. “I suspect they have telephones in Grantham.”

“Telephones can be hacked. Telephone calls can be overheard. If you had something to discuss urgently with someone, and absolute discretion was the only way to ensure you stayed out of jail, I don't think you'd want to phone at all. But if you had to, you wouldn't use your office phone, your home phone, or your mobile. I want to see if Mr. Graves wants to talk to someone so discreetly that he feels the need for special measures.”

“Such as?

“If he goes out to buy a new phone. If he goes to an Internet café, or a public phone, or a house that isn't his to make the call.”

“How will you know?”

“I know where he lives.”

Most of the time it was easy to forget that Gabriel Ash was an intelligent, astute man who had once been highly regarded in national security circles. Then he said something like that, and a little shiver traveled down Hazel's back. I know where you live: the oldest, and still the most chilling, threat in the book.

Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, then twenty. Relenting, Hazel told Ash what had happened at the police station.

He seemed less surprised than she had expected. “How did David take it?”

“I don't know. DI Norris was going to tell him after I left.”

“It's a hard thing to hear.”

Hazel nodded somberly. “And yet, at some level, he already knew. Norris isn't so much telling him what happened as reminding him. Anyway, he was five years old. He
must
know it wasn't his fault.”

“He shot his brother dead. I'm not sure common sense will be much comfort to him,” said Ash. “His whole world's gone to hell in a handcart in the last few days. Let's just hope that, when the dust has settled, he'll get more support from his new family than he got from his old one.”

“I'm sure he will,” said Hazel, who'd known the Byrfields most of her life. “Pete and the girls will see him right. They're decent people. They'll make sure he gets everything he's entitled to, and everything he needs.” There was a long pause while she thought. Finally she said, “You know, Pete wasn't far from right after all.”

Ash nodded slowly. “He was afraid his parents had killed his older brother. And it turned out one of them was indeed responsible.”

“Yes,” agreed Hazel. “But that isn't quite what I meant. He thought the child died to protect Byrfield—the estate, the land—and he was right. Keeping Byrfield safe for the next generation was the only reason the twenty-seventh earl wasn't with the woman he loved and the mother of his sons. If he had been, Diana would never have allowed him to take a gun anywhere near them.” She shivered, as if a cold breeze had crossed the car. “Pete said that land holds you in an iron fist. Henry Byrfield lost his son because of the compromise he made to keep his land.”

Ash said nothing. Perhaps his thoughts were somewhere else. Patience got up, turned around, lay down again.

Then she sat up, gazing across the car park. The front door of Bertram Castings opened and Stephen Graves came out, locking up behind him, and walked quickly to his car.

Hazel glanced at her watch. “Late for lunch? Or has somebody dropped a match in a bucket of detonators?”

“Can we follow him?” asked Ash, watching intently.

The beckoning mirage of putting her feet up with a trashy magazine at home receded into the desert of duty. “Of course we can.”

The car ahead made for the center of Grantham. “He isn't going home,” observed Ash.

“Where does he live?”

“A little green-belt village to the west of town.” Graves was leading them in the opposite direction, more or less back the way they'd come.

“It could still be a late lunch,” said Hazel. “Or maybe he wants to use a cash machine.”

“Maybe,” said Ash diplomatically.

But he wasn't surprised, and actually neither was Hazel, when the car in front passed through the center of Grantham and out the far side. The signs indicated destinations to the south and east—Peterborough, Norwich, Cambridge. Graves picked up the A1 and they followed.

Ash risked a sideways glance at Hazel. “Are you all right with this? I mean, I've no idea how long it's going to take. But we aren't going to be home for tea.”

“It doesn't matter.” She looked at him and she was smiling. “Gabriel, it doesn't matter. Neither of us has anything to rush back to. We'll go where he goes. If you think he can cast some light on what happened to your family, we'll follow him to Hull, hell, or Halifax. But if it turns out it's his day to visit his maiden aunt in Saffron Walden, you can buy me dinner before we head back.”

He nodded gratefully. Out of the corner of her eye Hazel saw him mentally patting his pockets. “Only…”

“Ah, yes. You spent all your money on the taxi, and you can't go to an ATM because you don't know the pin for your credit card.” Ash had the grace to look embarrassed. “We have
got
to reintegrate you into the twenty-first century. Meanwhile,
I'll
buy us dinner before we head back, but you're going to owe me big-time.”

“I already do,” mumbled Ash.

“Bigger than that.”

On the open road, Hazel left two cars between her own and Graves's, confident she wouldn't lose him if he pulled off or pulled over. And indeed, when he signaled approaching Peterborough, thinking journey's end was in sight, Hazel did the same. But Graves just wanted petrol. Not knowing how much farther they were going, Hazel filled up as well. In the shop, she also bought milk, sausage rolls, and chocolate—emergency supplies in case the pursuit went on into the evening. As an afterthought, she picked up a box of dog biscuits as well.

She was paying when Stephen Graves came into the shop. Under the pretense of checking her change, she watched to see what he would buy. But apparently he wasn't intending to be on the road all night: all he bought apart from his fuel was cigarettes.

Hazel let him leave before her, to give him no reason to notice her or see who was waiting in her car. Only as he drove off did she hurry the last few paces and jump behind the wheel, with Ash muttering, “We're going to lose him” in an anxious whine.

“It's a dual carriageway,” retorted Hazel briskly, “we're not going to lose him because he has a hundred meters' head start.” With no appearance of haste, she nevertheless closed the distance back to the two cars it had been before.

Signs invited them to consider the possibilities offered by Huntingdon and St. Neots. But Graves stayed on the main road to Cambridge, so Hazel did, too. Spires began to appear among the trees. “You know,” she said lightly, “we're going to feel pretty foolish if he's playing silly beggars with a twenty-year-old undergraduate at Queens' College.”

“It's a long way to come for a mistress,” remarked Ash. “I'm fairly sure you can get one closer than”—he craned to look at the mileage—“seventy miles from home.”

“Who knows what a man will do when he thinks he's in love?” Hazel chuckled. And even the silence that followed didn't warn her she'd strayed onto dangerous ground.

It took Ash a couple more miles to respond. “Is that what you think I'm doing?” he asked in a low voice. “Acting like an idiot because I think I'm still in love?”

His reaction to her throw-away humor jolted Hazel to the core. Every time she thought she was getting to know this man, one or the other of them did or said something to highlight a chasm of understanding that yawned as wide as and perhaps even deeper than ever. She had never meant to hurt him. Once again, however, she'd managed to do it anyway. Was the fault hers? Was Ash unduly sensitive—and if so, was it something he could, or could be expected to, help? He was as he was, a product of his history. She didn't need to be sitting here beside him. Perhaps it would be better to leave him to find his own way to salvation. She didn't think so. But perhaps she was wrong, and always had been.

“Gabriel,” she managed to say, “I didn't mean that. I didn't mean anything
like
that. Because (a) we weren't discussing you, we were discussing Stephen Graves. And (b) even if he has a mistress in Cambridge, what has that got to do with your search for your wife? He has a bit on the side, you have a family. There's no point of comparison, and it never occurred to me to try to make one.”