KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) (29 page)

‘Rick Appleyard wants you to think about this … as they won’t accept that your uncle was killed by jihadis it then becomes convenient for the appeasers and cowards in Whitehall that he was killed by someone else, in particular, by you. They’re treating your lack of cooperation as an admission of guilt. Rick can extract you from this predicament if you will state in public that jihadis killed Sir Lew. He’s got a tame TV producer all set up to organise an interview. What do you think?’

I couldn’t say what I really thought … that every second I spent in her company put me in danger.

I played for time.

‘I don’t know. I need some time. I don’t like identifying people I’m not certain about.’

‘That won’t happen. Rick will be perfectly happy with a general statement that the men who came for you
could
have been Islamic militants, no more than that. He’ll deal with what happened to Sir Lew. It’s all a matter of giving things the right spin.’

My
head
was spinning.

Why were they so desperate to pitch the whole thing onto the Islamic community? She and Appleyard had to be working for Lew’s mystery plotters.

‘I can see you’re still undecided,’ she said. ‘Here’s Rick’s phone number and mine.’ She handed me a slip of paper. ‘Call either one of us. You have a few hours to decide but after that the deal’s off and you must take the consequences.’

‘OK,’ I said struggling to keep the relief out of my voice.

‘I’m out of here,’ she said, turning to go. ‘It’s nice to see how the other half live.’

With that she was off at a fast pace. I followed more slowly. She left via the main gates and strode off down the main road.

31

Thursday: afternoon

I entered through the kitchen door at the side the house, the tradesman’s entrance. I owned the house and didn’t feel like going through all the bowing and scraping that Peter Kelly had taken a fancy to. Sir Lew was a High Court judge, maybe that ceremony had been appropriate for him but I was only a ‘sleazy’ private detective and the expectations of my ‘servants’ were churning me up in ways I could do without.

The kitchen was large and suited to the size of the house but not at all excessive. It was also completely the domain of the ‘staff’. I couldn’t imagine Lew ever coming in here to eat his breakfast. I approved of it.

Beyond the kitchen there was a small breakfast room. It revived awkward memories of Aunty Magdalen trying to come up with a menu that I’d deign to eat. I’d been a faddy child. Yes, I certainly didn’t need to be introduced to Weldsley. That had all happened long ago but was still a painful memory.

I could hear Marvin’s bray in the distance. He was holding forth in correct English and standing in the entrance hall with the staff gathered around him when I sprang out of the dining room like a jack in the box.

There was complete silence. Marvin shut up in mid oration, a first for him.

Kelly spoke. His eyebrows were struggling to meet his receding hairline.

‘Sir! You’ve taken us by surprise. We were gathering here to meet you at the entrance of your new home.’

He clapped his hands and the other four joined in with him. It wasn’t a rapturous ovation but it was more than a polite greeting.

Now I was the one surprised and I blushed: a first for Dave Cunane. Was I supposed to make a speech? All I knew was that I wasn’t going to. I was here for information about who had killed my godfather and was still trying to kill me and everything else was rubbish. I guessed that Marvin had just relayed my ‘no-dismissal’ offer and that the assurance that they still had jobs was responsible for the warmth.

‘Now, Mr Kelly … yes I know it’s Peter, Peter,’ I said as he started to protest, ‘but you must allow me a little formality. I’m very familiar with this house. I roamed every corner of it as a child.’

‘Lady Magdalen often spoke of you,’ the woman by Kelly’s side piped up obsequiously.

Kelly introduced his wife, Janet, to me.

She was a small, well-rounded woman in her fifties. Her uncompromisingly grey hair was done up in a bob. She had rosy cheeks and was wearing a green pinafore over a blue dress. A crucifix dangled on a gold chain round her neck. I detected a certain chill beneath the surface warmth. Was she the iron hand in Peter Kelly’s velvet glove?

‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ she said in a broad Lancashire accent. She bent her head as she greeted me. ‘I could tell that Lady Magdalen had been very fond of you, sir.’

I decided I could do without people bowing to me as I replied ‘Not so fond after I broke one of her china cups and hid the bits behind a chair.’

‘Boys will be boys. I’m sure she understood.’

‘Talking of boys,’ Marvin Desailles interjected, ‘this boy here has to sign some things for me. If you could show me …’

‘Yes, yes,’ Kelly agreed. ‘I’ll show you both through to somewhere more private.’

I shook hands all round and then Kelly led us led into the imposing hallway dominated by large dark religious pictures in the style of Rembrandt that I remembered well. I looked around. It was a gloomy place and the religious paintings did nothing for it.

There was something missing, police tape.

‘Is the room where Sir Lew was killed sealed off?’ I asked.

‘No sir, a team came on Wednesday and spent all that day and yesterday cleaning the house up. They had steam cleaners and all kinds of chemicals and they removed every trace of what happened down to the tiniest dot. Apparently it was a blood bath in Sir Lew’s study but we never saw it, thank God.’

‘Surprising,’ I commented.

‘Yes, we thought they were trying to pretend that nothing had happened.’

‘But they had SOCOs here, you know crime scene investigators?’

‘Oh yes, the men and women in white coats, but they were leaving when we came back to the house on Tuesday evening.’

He led us into the well remembered breakfast room. Marvin put his briefcase on the table and quickly pulled out several imposing legal forms which I signed without reading.

‘It’s just a formality Dave, as your uncle didn’t die intestate. This gives me the right to do searches in his papers.’

I noticed that Kelly frowned during this exchange.

‘Now I must be on my way Dave, er … Mr Cunane. I need to see to that thing you told me about. I can let myself out,’ he said as Kelly moved to escort him.

‘Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?’ Kelly asked.

‘I wonder if we could go into Sir Lew’s study for a chat, Peter.’

He nodded and gestured to the door. Again I got the impression that something didn’t sit too well with him. Did he secretly resent having to show me round his old master’s home? I followed him to the study. It was the one room in the house I’d never been in before. As a child I’d been made to understand that it was Uncle Lew’s inner sanctum where he wasn’t to be disturbed.

Like the rest of this gloomy house it was dark, panelled in oak and crammed with bookcases extending from floor to ceiling. A full sized replica of Salvador Dali’s ‘Christ of Saint John of the Cross’ was displayed on one wall. The looming figure might be all very well in a Glasgow art gallery but here it was too much. There was also an ancient looking crucifix with an exquisite ivory figure of Christ on the open roll top desk. The religious atmosphere felt oppressive to me. The head of a particularly severe order of monks or nuns would have been at home.

There was a faint smell of disinfectant but otherwise nothing to suggest that Lew had been bloodily tortured and decapitated in here.

I went to the long table. I knew from glimpses in my childhood that this was where Lew arranged his books and papers when studying for a case. No one was allowed in the room for fear that anything was displaced.

Its surface was smooth and unblemished. I drew my hand over it. There were no scratches.

‘They had a French polisher in, sir. I saw his van.’

‘Sit down, Peter,’ I said as he continued to hover at my side.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘Oh man, I don’t want any more ‘sirs’ from you.’

‘But, sir … ’

‘Peter, I’m a private detective. I’ve been involved in some very nasty cases but to my mind I’ve always come up smelling of roses. Your late boss, Sir Lew, may have thought differently. He kept his distance from me in the last few years.’

‘He made you his heir.’

His expression had changed. No longer the willing flunky, he looked sour, almost hostile.

With a sudden insight I guessed why: he’d been expecting something for himself in Lew’s will.

‘As far as I’m concerned he could have left it all to the Cat’s Home.’

‘Oh, you’ve inherited it all right. Sir Lew’s solicitor was round here asking if we knew where you were. He couldn’t get in touch with you at your office or your home.’

‘OK, I’m Uncle Lew’s heir. I’ll treat the staff here as he would have wanted me to but you’ve got to drop all this ‘sirring’. In my job I’m more used to knuckle sandwiches than pats on the back.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘No sir, call me sir again and I’ll slot you … Joke, Peter.’

‘As you say,’ he muttered.

Curiously, having been ordered to cast off convention his whole body seemed to relax. He slumped into his chair and stretched his legs out.

‘There’s a problem, Peter.’

‘Yes, Sir Lew said you often had problems to solve.’

‘This problem is that some important people prefer to believe that Sir Lew wasn’t executed by Islamic terrorists while some hardliners in MI5 are demanding that I say he was. If I don’t agree with them the important people will say I’m the prime suspect. If I go against the other lot they’ll make my life difficult in other ways. So you see what the problem is?’

‘Yes, between them they’ve got your privates in a nutcracker.’

‘Precisely, Peter. Now you’re talking my language. Being a detective I have my own suspect who’s neither an Islamic terrorist nor, of course, me.’

‘I see sir,’ he said infuriatingly.

‘I think a particular man I’ve come across knows what happened to Lew and I believe he’s been in this house to threaten Lew.’

I described Appleyard’s distinctive appearance and speech without mentioning his name. Appleyard was probably a cover-name.

‘Has he been round here?’

Kelly took his time answering.

‘No, I’ve never seen anyone answering that description.’

‘What about the woman who was in the car with my lawyer, the one you thought was my wife?’

‘No, I’ve never seen her before today. She’s not the type you’d forget in a hurry.’

My heart sank.

‘I can think of only one person connected with the secret game that came here and that was Mr Pickering, but it couldn’t be him. He’d never harm Sir Lew. He was the son of Sir Lew’s oldest friend.’

‘Tell me about him,’ I said eagerly. At last I had a name.

‘No, sir, I don’t care to. Sir Lew was close to him.’

‘Peter, don’t you know that that’s what traitors do? They don’t go round in black hats like villains in a pantomime.’

‘I do know what a traitor is but Mr Pickering isn’t one or a murderer either. That’s impossible.’

It was beginning to look as if I’d hit another of the brick walls this case was so well supplied with.

‘Can you at least tell me when Mr Pickering was here?’

‘He was here on the Friday before Sir Lew’s death, a nice gentleman. We thought he’d be staying for the weekend but he returned to London.’

‘Do you know why he was here?’

‘It was something to do with the Inquiry Sir Lew was involved in. He and Sir Lew left the house and went to the far end of the garden and talked for hours.’

‘Do you know what they talked about?’

‘Oh, if I did know I wouldn’t care to say. Sir Lew was always very discreet and he expected discretion from me.’

‘Peter, Sir Lew, a kindly man whom I’ve known since childhood was cruelly tortured and murdered in this room. Would you like me to tell you the details?’

He shuddered and involuntarily put a hand to his throat.

‘You must have some idea of what they were talking about,’ I persisted. ‘Were they laughing and joking, arguing or what?’

‘No, er … Mr Cunane, Sir Lew was always a serious man. They both seemed down in the mouth, Mr Pickering more than he usually was.’

‘Pickering’s been here at other times?’

‘Yes, he was a frequent visitor. Sir Lew knew his father well.’

‘So Pickering’s his real name?’

‘Of course, Mr Cunane, but I don’t think I should say any more.’

‘Why not, don’t you know that the people who murdered Sir Lew are still out there?’

‘We had a call from London, someone important. He reminded us that we have to stick to the story they put in the newspapers that a passing madman killed Sir Lew. There’s a political party trying to stir up trouble … ’

‘The BfB?’

He nodded.

‘And we were warned to stick to the official story if the press came sniffing round.’

‘Peter, I’m not the BfB or the press.’

‘No, you’re not.’

I decided to try Jan’s approach for getting the children to take medicine. She bribes them with sweeties.

‘What age are you, Peter?’ I asked.

This produced a resentful look but he answered after a moment’s consideration.

‘I’m sixty four but what … ’

‘Bear with me, Peter,’ I interrupted, holding my hand up, ‘and your dear wife?’

‘She’ll be fifty nine in August if it’s any of your business.’

‘So if this awful thing hadn’t happened to Sir Lew you were going to carry on working for him until you both dropped, were you?’

‘Oh no, there’s a lovely cottage in the Trough of Bowland. It’s adjoining the Duke of Westminster’s lands but belongs to us; er … I mean it belongs to you. Sir Lew used to rent it out as a holiday let but … ’

‘You’d like it as a retirement home?’

‘Sir Lew as good as promised it.’

‘But there’s nothing in the will?’

‘No,’ he admitted, with a sad shake of his head.

‘I don’t see any problem with an ex-employee taking a cottage from the estate at a reduced rent,’ I said, gazing at him frankly and marvelling at my own chutzpah. ‘I’ll tell Mr Desailles to prepare the papers. I take it you have a pension coming from the estate?’

He nodded.

‘We’ll have to see if there’s a possibility of enhancing it.’

After that the story came out quick and fast.

Sir Lew had become a legal consultant to the SIS when he was a rising young barrister. His main contact was Alban Pickering’s father, Arnold Pickering. Lew and Arnold had been at the same school, surprise, surprise. Arnold later rose to high rank in the service just as Lew did in the legal profession.