The Power of One (7 page)

‘I know, I know how hard it is to lose someone. Here, wipe your eyes and I'll make some tea and you can tell me what's going on here and we can start to work out what we can do about it.'

‘There's nothing to be done,' Lydia told her tearfully. ‘They killed Paul and now we're just sitting here, like we're waiting for our turn. Edward won't see … he just won't see.'

Rina tried to stay calm, not to push too hard. ‘Who killed him, Lydia? Who is threatening you?'

Lydia shook her head. ‘I can't tell you. I can't tell anyone.'

‘You have to confide in someone,' Rina objected gently.

‘I can't, Rina. I really can't,' Lydia said, but her expression said something very different.
Persuade me
, it said.
Make me tell you, and then I won't feel to blame
.

Rina opened her mouth to speak but then, echoing through the house with a piercing jangle, the doorbell rang. ‘Bugger,' Rina thought. She got up with a placatory smile. ‘Probably someone trying to sell you something.'

Lydia sniffed and wiped her eyes, the moment lost. Rina knew she'd have to work hard to get it back. ‘We've had journalists calling all morning. I put the answerphone on. It might be …'

‘I'll get rid of whoever it is,' Rina told her. ‘You stay there. You don't need to talk to anyone.'

Irritated, now, she marched back into the hall. The front door was partly glazed and it became obvious before she got there that she'd be unable to keep her promise.

‘Mac, you do have the most lousy sense of timing. Can't you just go away and come back later?'

Andy, standing just behind his superior officer, sniggered at the sight of him being told off by the redoubtable Mrs Martin. Mac scowled.

‘No, Rina, I can't. What are you doing here anyway?'

‘Well, I was on the point of making a breakthrough, that's what. Fat chance of that now.'

‘Making a … Rina, this is a murder investigation.'

‘I know that! Look, Lydia says she doesn't know the name of the man on the boat but I'm pretty sure she knows why he was there and I'm equally sure now that he was some sort of bodyguard. Not that he did much good.' She lifted her chin, daring Mac to argue about her conclusions. Revealingly, to Rina, he did not.

‘Rina, please. Go home, leave this to the police.'

‘She's in the kitchen,' Rina said. Still irritated, she led the way.

Lydia's eyes were reddened by the tears she had shed, but she'd had time to compose herself again and she stood, leaning against one of the counters, the kitchen towel Rina had given her screwed tightly in her hand.

‘Inspector McGregor,' she said. ‘Do you have any news?'

‘Very little, I'm afraid. Mrs Martin, I really don't want to delay you. I'm sure Mrs de Freitas will understand if you have to go.'

Rina glared at him, her eyes shooting daggers. Andy, catching only the backwash of her anger, nevertheless took a quick step back. Rina gathered up her bag.

‘Lydia, if you need me, you know where I am,' she said. She swept out of the back door, and strode across the lawn to the cliff path.

Mac watched her go with very mixed feelings, knowing that, for her own good he had to make her back off but aware also that he'd offended a friend.

D
I Dave Kendal was waiting for him when they returned to Frantham. Pre-warned, Mac had brought him coffee from the cafe on the promenade. Andy had arrived first and Mac could hear him regaling Kendal with descriptions of Hale and his associates and his speculations that they were caught up in some sort of spy ring.

Kendal looked up with a smile as Mac deposited his coffee on the desk. Sergeant Baker came through from the front office, pulled up a chair and claimed his coffee and Andy took up a position by the door so he could keep an eye on the outside world while being included in the briefing.

Mac brought everyone up to speed. Hale and the papers they had taken from the flat; the fact that Hale had claimed the second man on the boat as one of his own and that Lydia de Freitas had clammed up ever tighter than before.

‘You should have let Mrs Martin wear her down,' Sergeant Baker decided. ‘I don't know of many people who can resist that woman. Maybe you should give her details to that Hale bloke. Chief interrogator to Her Majesty's Forces.'

Mac laughed but he was aware too that Baker was probably right. Had he not interrupted, Rina would probably have the whole story by now, but that was hardly the point, was it? Rina was a civilian. She should learn when to leave well alone, shouldn't she?

‘From what I've seen of Mrs Martin, I'm inclined to agree,' Kendal said. ‘Though I suppose we really shouldn't even be thinking about it. This Hale, Mac. Did he give a rank?'

Mac shook his head. ‘No, I don't believe he did. He was adamant that Superintendent Aims knew all about him and so it seemed, when I called in to ask.'

‘Well, Aims has certainly been briefed,' Kendal confirmed. ‘Being his usual officious self, he's keeping us plebs in the dark as to what that briefing told him.' Ostentatiously, Kendal tapped the side of his nose. ‘Need to know and all that and apparently all we need to know is that we'll have an officer from the MOD assisting us in our enquiries. He should be joining us later today.'

‘Do we have a name?'

Kendal consulted his notebook. ‘Jackson,' he said. ‘Abe Jackson. Sounds American. Do we have Americans working with the MOD? Who knows? Anyway, I'm told he's a military man, a redcap originally, now on secondment. I did ask what the military police had to do with a civilian operation. I mean, you wouldn't find them bending over backwards to assist us if we were on their turf. However, Superintendent Aims seemed to think that was
need to know
as well.'

‘Which,' Mac commented acidly, ‘probably means that no one thought he needed to know either.'

‘Very likely. Mac, just what is going on here? We've got a man shot aboard his yacht, together with another man who may or may not be MOD but is almost certainly a minder of some kind and now various government departments running interference on our investigation.'

‘Not to mention two people too afraid to confide in anyone,' Mac added. ‘Though one of the big questions in my mind now is what Lydia was about to tell Rina.'

‘You've got more than one?' Sergeant Baker queried. ‘And here's those experts saying we men can't multitask.'

Mac chuckled. ‘Andy, where's all the stuff from Paul de Freitas' flat?'

‘In the corner, back of DI Kendal.'

‘Ah.' Mac got up and rummaged in the box. All of this would have to be gone over later, see what needed to be shipped out to documents for further analysis. ‘Two more things actually.' He dropped a couple of evidence bags on to the table, slid the contents of one out and, after donning a pair of gloves, unfolded it carefully. ‘This was slipped, like a bookmark, in to one of Paul's books. He seemed to have a habit of using torn paper from magazines and the like.'

‘Lots of people do that,' Sergeant Baker commented.

‘True, but this was in a first edition. Would you really want to risk marking a collectible book with newsprint?'

‘Maybe Hale's lot just put it back in the wrong place,' Andy suggested. ‘We know they searched the place.'

‘Maybe, but I happen to know that the book was mentioned in Paul's will. It was left to Lydia de Freitas. His sister-in-law. I just find that interesting.'

‘So, what's on it?'

Mac sighed, turned the paper over, and shook his head. ‘Probably not a thing and Andy's right.'

‘Something from the classified ads by the look of it,' Kendal said. ‘What's on the other side?'

‘Half of an announcement in the personal ads,' Mac said. ‘Looks like a funeral announcement, but there isn't enough to tell.'

‘Imagination running away with you?' Kendal suggested.

‘Oh, probably. You know, I think I was just so eager to get one over on Hale, I'd convinced myself … anyway, these are maybe more interesting. What woman leaves her contraceptive pills in a man's bathroom?'

‘One who expects to be there to take them,' Baker said. ‘You sure that's what they are.'

‘I'm sure,' Mac said, earning himself a guffaw and raised eyebrow from his Sergeant.

‘Lydia de Freitas?' Kendal suggested.

Mac shrugged. ‘I asked. She said no. Then she got annoyed with me and asked me to leave. After which she said she hoped I'd be sensitive enough not to ask her husband about them.'

‘Which implies …'

‘Which
may
imply that she was having an affair with her brother-in-law, but that would also imply she spent sufficient time at the flat to be able to take half a pack of pills without missing one. I think her husband or the housekeeper might have noticed that and while he might not have said anything I'm betting Margaret Simms might.'

‘So, he had a girlfriend,' Kendal shrugged. ‘Is that so unusual? Though I agree, it might be useful to know who and where she is now.'

‘Well she missed the last four days of her pill,' Andy commented, looking at the pack. ‘See. The days of the week are marked and she stopped taking them four days ago.'

‘That's two days before Paul de Freitas was shot.' Significant?

‘That's if it's not an old pack that just got left behind months back,' Kendal objected. ‘Have them dusted for prints, you never know, we may get lucky.' He rose to leave, pushing back the chair and scraping it across the red lino that Mac kept meaning to get replaced. ‘I'd best be going, I'm supposed to be meeting this Abe Jackson.'

‘And when do I have the pleasure?' Mac asked.

‘If you're a very good boy, I'll bring him over tomorrow. Oh, you can join me today, if you like, but I'm warning you, Superintendent Aims has set up the meeting and he's insisting he has to be there, oversee us lower orders.'

‘In which case, I'll pass,' Mac told him with a wry grin.

‘Lucky you. It all makes you wonder though, if Andy's pleasant flights of fancy really are so wide of the mark.'

T
im, an expert reader of Rina's moods, had realised immediately that she was upset about something. He had swiftly but gently deflected the Peters sisters and ushered Rina into the small sitting room at the front of the house that everyone knew as Rina's Den.

‘So,' he said. ‘What went wrong?'

‘Is it that obvious?'

‘Oh yes. It most certainly is. Who upset Rina's master plan?'

She flopped down into one of the fireside chairs, wishing that it was cold enough to have the fire to go with it. There was something comforting about a fire; something that salved bruised feelings. ‘Mac,' she said. ‘With his impeccable sense of bad timing and then he had the affront to suggest I leave!'

Tim hid a smile. He threw himself into the other chair. ‘So tell,' he said. ‘Then I'll go and fetch some of Matthew's cake and the coffee Steven is making for us and we'll discuss what to do about it.'

By the time Matthew handed over coffee and cake – chocolate, on account that it was apparently good for the nerves; Tim knew better than to debate that – Rina had finished ranting and was in a calm, considered mood.

‘Do I call Mac and tell him an apology and a white flag are required,' Tim wanted to know, ‘or are we talking chocolates and flowers here?'

Rina sectioned her cake with delicate actions of her fork and Tim winced as she stabbed a selected piece, wondering which part of Mac's anatomy she was visualising. Then she sighed, her shoulders relaxing for the first time since she'd come home. Tim wondered if Matthew could be right about chocolate cake.

‘He was only doing his job,' she said. ‘I think an apology will do in the circumstances.' She stabbed the second morsel of cake more thoughtfully and Tim, relieved, saw that she was recovering her usual good humour.

‘So what did you think she might have been about to tell?'

‘That's the thing, Tim. I'm really not sure. I really
don't
think she knew who was aboard with Paul, at least, not the man's name but I'm pretty sure he was there to look after him in some capacity or other.'

‘Well, on that score, I don't think he'll get a reference,' Tim said. ‘So, some sort of minder then. Presumably the de Freitas's didn't employ him so … Do you think Paul hired him?'

‘Possibly, but again, surely his family would know all about that … mind you, Paul wasn't confiding in them, I don't think. I got the distinct feeling the day he was shot that they knew something was going on but were in the dark as to precisely what and I also got the very strong feeling that Lydia wasn't used to that. She expected to be in Paul's confidence. She was most put-out to realise that wasn't the case.'

‘Well, Rina, sorry to say this, but unless she comes and tells you what's going on, I'm not sure there's much more you can do.'

Reluctantly, she nodded her head. ‘You're right, I'm afraid. Timing is everything, Tim, and mine was off today. I missed my moment and now all I can do is leave the door open and hope she decides to walk through.'

S
even when she looked at the clock. When she looked again it was only a quarter past. Rina tried to concentrate on the game but Bridge didn't hold her attention at all tonight. Steven and Matthew partnered one another as usual and played with the same eccentric intensity they brought to everything they did. The Peters sisters – in tandem – were paired with Rina and they were losing badly tonight. Rina's turn to call. ‘Three clubs,' she said, then realised that she'd be lucky if she got two. Relieved, she realised that Steven had called a higher bid and she wouldn't have to back it up.