Blood Falls (33 page)

He found her slumped in an armchair, one arm bent into her lap, the other stretched towards a low table, her hand loosely enfolding a heavy glass beaker as though she couldn’t quite bring herself to let it go. The beaker held an inch of whisky. A half-empty bottle of Glenfiddich sat on the table.

She struggled to lift her head and focus on him. Her cheeks were bright red and stained with tears, her eyes puffy and unbearably sad. She could have been twenty years older than the woman who had opened the door to him on Tuesday night.

‘Oh God, Diana …’ He was furious with himself for having departed on bad terms, but Diana was shaking her head.

‘Glenn,’ she said, then clamped her mouth shut. A shudder ran through her. The glass slipped from her hand, toppling to the floor in a splash of single malt.

‘Come on.’ Joe helped her up, Diana suddenly frantic: a clumsy
uncoordinated panic as he frogmarched her to the downstairs toilet. They made it with about a second to spare.

He held her while she vomited, lightly rubbing her back, making soothing noises. He hadn’t done anything like this for years. Not since he’d ceased to be a father to his daughters.

When she was done, she washed her face with cold water and he handed her a towel. She wiped her mouth. Tried to smile but couldn’t quite bring it off. She was still unsteady on her feet, so he took her arm and led her back to the lounge, batting away her apologies.

He put the kettle on, fetched a glass of cold water and a packet of Nurofen. Found a cloth to mop up the whisky.

‘I’m so sorry, Joe.’ Already her voice was clearer.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve spent all day drinking?’

‘No. Slept some of it. And wept. Slept and wept.’ She giggled, gesturing at the Glenfiddich. ‘That’s Roy’s. Found it in the cupboard. I don’t even like whisky.’

‘Good job. You might have drunk the whole bottle otherwise.’

He rinsed the cloth out in the kitchen sink, made strong coffee with plenty of sugar and encouraged her to eat a couple of biscuits. She was crying again, her chest heaving gently as she stared at the coffee mug cradled in her hands.

‘If it felt like I’ve been interrogating you, it’s only because I’m worried.’ Joe said nothing more until she made eye contact with him. ‘Ever since I arrived I’ve had the feeling that you’re in trouble. Even when you keep insisting you’re fine. But you’re not, are you?’

Diana shook her head, as forlorn as a little girl caught cheating in an exam. Her hands trembled as she lifted the coffee and drank. She swallowed, then exhaled gratefully.

‘I’ve been lying to you, Joe, for your own sake. That’s why I didn’t want you to get involved with Alise, or Leon. I know what you’re like.’

‘Stubborn,’ he said. ‘Same as Roy.’

She sniffed. Rubbed her nose with the side of her hand. ‘They were here this morning – Leon and Glenn. Asking where you’d gone.’

Joe was intrigued by that, but set it aside for now. ‘Let’s start at the beginning, when you moved down here. Something happened between Roy and Leon Race, didn’t it?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because he was a good cop, with the best instincts for people that I ever saw.’

Diana smiled sadly. ‘When Glenn came round to quote for the extension, Roy thought he was a flash bastard. Said he could charm the knickers off Mother Teresa.’

Joe winced. But there was no going back now. He had to tell her.

Then Diana said, ‘The first year we were here, a woman came to stay with us. She was searching for her missing daughter.’ She stopped, fearfully, as though she expected Joe to rage at her. But he merely nodded:
Go on
.

‘It was similar to the tale Alise told you. A young woman had vanished without trace. From St Ives, I think, but some vague reference had led her mother to Trelennan.’

‘And Roy offered to help?’

‘He jumped at the chance. For all his dreams of a new life, this wasn’t really what he wanted. There was always a ton of jobs to do, but nothing that got his adrenalin pumping. Whereas this, a bit of bona fide detective work …’

‘How did it get onto Leon’s radar?’ Joe asked.

‘You said it yourself the other day. Not much happens round here without him knowing. Roy was already convinced that Leon was up to his neck in crime, so that made a place to start.’ Diana sighed. ‘Even when the mother gave up and went home, Roy refused to let it go. He was making a nuisance of himself, following the security vans, trying to call in favours from the local police. Of course, they took a dim view: this retired big-shot London cop, trying to show his country cousins how to do their job.’

‘Hmm. Roy wasn’t always the most tactful of men.’

‘Quite. All he did was rub them up the wrong way.’

‘And incurred Leon’s wrath at the same time.’ Joe hesitated a moment, then pressed on. ‘Look, Diana, I’m sorry but I have to say this, but it’s not just about Leon. It’s Glenn, as well.’

‘What do you mean?’

He had to force himself to say it. ‘I think he was deceiving you from the beginning.’

Fifty-Nine

GLENN CALLED LEON
at three o’clock to report that Diana’s car was parked on the drive.

‘I haven’t actually seen him. I could go in, but after this morning …’

Leon agreed it wasn’t wise. ‘So was he with Ellie?’

‘No. I’ve just been to see her.’ Even allowing for the slight distortion caused by the speakerphone, Glenn sounded miserable as hell. Leon grinned at Fenton, whose shrug seemed to say:
Everyone knows women are nothing but strife
.

‘Sent you away with a flea in your ear, did she?’

Glenn ignored the question. ‘I’ve told her if she sees him any more she’s in trouble.’

Leon ended the call, and smiled pleasantly at Fenton. ‘Relief that he’s back.’

‘I’d feel more secure if we knew where he went.’

‘Yeah, but I don’t want Glenn barging in there now. We gave her a good scare this morning. Now we play it cool.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You remember that text we saw on the other one’s phone, about some feller in Dorset? I bet he followed up on it.’

‘So still probing, then.’

‘It doesn’t matter, not now we have Danny Morton on the horizon.’

He glanced at his laptop, saw a new email from Giles
Quinton-Price. He scanned the message, then opened the attachment that came with it.

‘Problem?’ Fenton leaned forward, puffing as his belly squashed against his knees.

Leon didn’t respond immediately: too busy reading.

‘It’s from the journalist. The article’s all ready to go.’

‘Favourable, I hope?’

Fenton sounded uneasy: Leon could have taken offence at that. But he was in a good mood. Joe was back within their grasp. Diana had been put in her place. And now this …

He beamed. ‘What else could it be, Clive? Didn’t you have any faith in the man?’

Diana said, ‘First, let me just say I have no defence. What I did was unforgivable.’

‘Your affair started when Roy was still alive?’

She nodded, then gave a hopeless laugh. ‘It all went wrong when we came down here. Running a B&B is like being a housewife, multiplied by ten. Roy had this image of himself as “mine host”, swanning around with a drink and a cigar while I did the cooking, and the cleaning, and the laundry. That only drove us further apart.’

‘So when Glenn showed an interest …’

‘I succumbed. I know it’s appalling, but I was so lonely. So unhappy.’

‘Di, I do understand. I remember how you felt on the night of the retirement party. You don’t have to justify yourself.’

‘But I do. It’s been eating away at me for years.’

‘When it began, was Glenn working at Leon’s place?’

‘I think so. There were months where he was going back and forth, and doing other jobs as well.’ Her voice was stuttering with shame, and then she saw the look on Joe’s face and said, ‘What do you mean – Glenn was deceiving me?’

‘If Roy was being a nuisance, then Leon needed to neutralise him somehow. But with an ex-cop he couldn’t do anything too
drastic. The wisest option was to find out precisely what kind of threat he posed. And the best way to do that was to place a spy in the camp.’

Joe tensed, anticipating every sort of reaction except the one that he got.

Diana nodded, quite calmly. ‘You mean Glenn was told to seduce me? It’s almost funny. If you’d suggested this to me at any time prior to this morning I’d have thrown you out on your ear. But I’ve spent most of the day working myself towards the same conclusion.’

‘It wasn’t necessarily quite so mercenary. To have lasted this long, there had to have been some genuine feelings.’

‘Maybe. I don’t know any more.’

‘What happened today? Did they threaten you?’

‘Not exactly,’ Diana said. But then she shuddered. ‘Leon’s clever. He just said that you were starting to remind him of Roy, which I took to be a warning of sorts.’

Joe was shocked. ‘Did Leon have something to do with Roy’s death?’

‘He contributed to it. When Glenn landed the contract at Leon’s, Roy thought he could exploit that. He made a somewhat ham-fisted attempt to entrap Leon, but it went wrong. Afterwards, Roy refused to talk about it. He was never the same again. The fight went out of him. His health deteriorated.’

‘What about the affair? I don’t see how Roy wouldn’t have been aware of it.’

‘No.’ Diana sounded deeply ashamed. ‘I kept it secret for a while. He was so preoccupied with Leon. But eventually he worked it out.’

‘And how did he react?’

‘Look, Joe. Some things have to …’ Her voice choked up. ‘He was … he took a sensible view. We’d had no sex life to speak of for years.’

‘But even if he forgave you, surely he wasn’t happy to let it continue?’

‘He wasn’t given the choice.’

‘What?’

‘That’s another thing I’ve only just worked out. I think Leon forced him to accept it.’

They took a break, moving to the kitchen because the smell of spilt whisky was making Diana nauseous. Joe refilled the coffee machine and made cheese on toast, and all the time he was trying to process what he’d heard.
Leon forced him to accept it
.

‘Okay, so they told you to warn me off,’ he said. ‘But what are they hiding?’

‘I really have no idea. And frankly I don’t care.’ She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I have a lot of horrible mistakes on my conscience. I don’t want to add you to that list.’

He grinned. ‘Neither do I.’

‘I’m serious.’ She told him what Leon had said to her this morning, picking away at Joe’s past. ‘If they had any inkling of your history they wouldn’t hesitate to capitalise on it.’

‘But you didn’t give them anything?’

‘No. When they asked where you’d gone, I suggested you might be with Ellie. I thought that was a fairly safe way of shifting their interest.’

‘Good idea,’ Joe said, though he would have to make sure that Ellie wasn’t at risk of any reprisals.

‘Are you seeing her again?’ Diana said, none too subtle code for:
Are you sleeping with her?

‘Maybe. We’re only friends, Diana.’

‘It’s none of my business. Of course, I take back what I said about you leaving. Although, to be honest, it might be safer if you went.’

‘Let’s take it a day at a time, shall we?’

‘All right.’ A tense moment, before she said, ‘Will you carry on working for Leon?’

Joe sighed. There was no denying that he was in a perilous position. The fact that Roy had tried to bring Leon down meant that Leon
would be especially vigilant against further attempts, perhaps to the point of paranoia.

‘I know you want me to say no. I know it’s probably the wisest thing to do. But I can’t give in to bullies, Diana. And I can’t shake off the idea that Alise’s disappearance is linked to the fact that she was seen talking to me.’

Once again, Diana surprised him with her response. ‘You make me even more ashamed of the coward I’ve become. You’re never going to take the easy way out, are you?’

‘Believe me, I wish I could,’ Joe said. ‘I guess it’s just not in my nature.’

Sixty

JENNY WOKE TO
confusion, to fear and self-loathing. Was this the fifth day, or was it still day four? How long had she slept: a nap, or a full night?

It was impossible to say. His last visit had been in the middle of the night, or so he had said. Afterwards it occurred to her that she had been awake when he came, which meant her sleeping patterns must be badly off-kilter.

Since that visit she had slept at least once, but possibly twice, and now she had absolutely no idea what time it was. Her precious calendar was already worthless.

And she was overdue a visit. She knew that from the state of the bucket, from the smell that clung to her nostrils. Something was wrong: some kind of crisis or interruption to his own routine, which invariably had repercussions for her.

If she was in the mood to take any comfort from the situation, she could tell herself that at least now she knew the score. What had he told her?

I didn’t kill her. She died
.

She didn’t understand the distinction. It hardly mattered that there was one, if the end result was the same.

* * *

Now it seemed she had a simple choice: accept death, in which case she was better off trying to kill herself, rather than let him select the manner and timing of her departure from the world.

Or escape.

Get out.

Put like that, in such short snappy little words, made it sound almost easy. Feasible, certainly. Just make a plan and get to work on it. She wasn’t chained up. She was still reasonably healthy, despite her confinement. Still reasonably strong.

She had a working brain, didn’t she? So use it.

She had illumination, and a set of dead AA batteries that could just about scratch a mark on the stone floor. Nothing really sharp, though. Nothing she could use as a weapon or as a tool.

So find something
…

Another fingertip search proved futile. The door was made of timber, thick and heavy and covered in gloss paint. The floor was bare untreated concrete, completely impenetrable. The ceiling was plywood and the walls had been crudely plastered. There were no cracks, no holes, no obvious weak spots at all.