Never Go Back (11 page)

‘Are you sure he’s dead?’ Chipchase asked as Harry stretched a shaking hand across the pool of blood to feel for a pulse beneath Dangerfield’s ear. But Harry already knew he was not going to find one. The angle of Dangerfield’s head to his body told its own story. A broken neck and a smashed skull were a fatal combination.

‘I’m sure.’ Harry stood up and retreated to where Chip-chase was standing in the doorway.

‘Bloody hell. How…’

‘From up there.’ Harry pointed to the landing. ‘Straight down. Smack onto the floor.’

‘Christ Almighty.’

‘Somebody did this to him. It was no accident.’

‘But…’

‘I’m going to phone the police.’

‘Hold on.’ Chipchase clasped Harry by the elbow. ‘This looks bad for us, Harry. They’ll try to pin it on us.’

‘What do you want to do, then? Scarper?’

‘It’s an idea.’

‘A bloody stupid one. That would clinch it in their eyes. We have to phone them, Barry. Now.’

—«»—«»—«»—

The phone call made, they retreated to the road and waited there. Neither wanted to remain indoors. The horror of what had happened in the house held them in an ever strengthening grip. Dangerfield dead; Dangerfield murdered: a killer on the loose somewhere, identity, motive and intentions… unknown.

‘He could be watching us right now, Harry. You realize that, don’t you? He could be sizing us up right this bloody minute.’

‘No. He’s long gone. Danger was… cold to the touch. He must have died… a while ago.’

‘You’re an expert, are you?’

‘No. I’m just saying—’

‘Who’s doing this, Harry? Who the bloody hell is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Danger was one of the good guys. Salt of the earth. He didn’t deserve… that.’

‘There isn’t something you’re not telling me, is there, Barry?’

‘What the hell do you mean?’

‘I mean… something that might explain what’s going on.’

‘I haven’t the first bloody clue what’s going on.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that’s a relief.’

‘Why?’

‘Because neither have I.’

—«»—«»—«»—

The police came in waves. First one squad car. Then two more. Then several white vans and unmarked cars. Lights were set up. Radios crackled into life. Men in disposable boiler suits padded in and out of the house. A photographer arrived. Then a pathologist. And, last but by no means least, Detective Chief Inspector Ferguson and Detective Sergeant McBride.

Harry and Chipchase had not been allowed back into the house. Left under the wordless supervision of a PC in one of the squad cars to await Ferguson’s convenience, they exchanged apprehensive glances, shrugs and shakes of the head as the elaborate but orderly response to violent death took shape around them.

Then, eventually, the PC was ordered out. McBride took his place and Ferguson slid into the front passenger seat.

‘Mr Barnett and Mr Chipchase,’ he said, turning to look at them. ‘Together at last.’

‘We didn’t move anything, Chief Inspector,’ said Harry emolliently. ‘It’s all exactly—’

‘I’ve heard what you’ve had to say for yourselves so far. You may as well know it won’t wash.’

‘It happens to be the truth.’

‘Bullshit. A few hours ago, Mr Barnett, you claimed to have no idea where your friend was. Now I’m to understand you’ve had an impromptu boys’ night out together. At the end of which Mr Dangerfield winds up dead. You’ll forgive me if I make a connection between those events, won’t you?’

‘The only connection is that we came back here and found the body.’

‘And we phoned you lot straight away,’ said Chipchase.

‘Can anyone vouch for what you were doing earlier?’

‘Well…’ Harry began.

‘Not sure,’ Chipchase finished.

‘Thought so.’ Ferguson drummed his fingers on the seat-back for a moment, then turned to McBride and said, ‘Have them taken to the station, Sandy.’

‘Are you arresting us?’ Harry asked, hoping fervently that he had somehow misunderstood.

‘Are we arresting them, Sandy?’

‘Aye, sir,’ said McBride. ‘I think we are.’

—«»—«»—«»—

The ironic and remorseless circularity of life presented itself with bleak force to Harry during the largely sleepless remainder of the night. His confinement with Chipchase in the guardroom cells at RAF Stafford had led them to Kilveen Castle and the apparent salvation of Operation Clean Sheet. Now, fifty years later, their connection with Kilveen unexpectedly re-established, they were confined once more, this time to the cells of Aberdeen Central Police Station.

He had not seen Askew’s body after they had scraped it off the railway line, nor Lloyd’s after it had been pulled from the wreck of Wiseman’s hire car. Until he had stepped into the lounge of Sweet Gale Lodge and caught his first, indelibly memorable sight of Dangerfield, lying where he had fallen, the deaths were at one remove from him, reported, imagined — but not experienced. All that had changed now. The possibility that Askew committed suicide or the car crash was an accident had been replaced by the sickening certainty of murder.

‘Who’s doing this?’ Chipchase had asked him despairingly. ‘And why?’ There was no answer that came close to making sense. Yet there was an answer. There had to be.

Who? And why?

In the end, one way or another, by hook or by crook, Harry was going to have to find out.

Who. And why.

The interview room was bare, stuffy and windowless. Harry sat on one side of the central table, opposite a flint-faced triumvirate of Ferguson, Geddes and McBride. To his left sat Kylie Sinclair, petite, crop-haired, bushbaby-eyed and, Harry had to assume, quite a few years older than she looked. The fact that the victim of one of the murders about to be discussed was a client of Legg, Stevenson, MacLean had not prevented her turning up to act as legal adviser to Harry and, at his instigation, to Chipchase as well.

Chipchase was still languishing in his cell. Ferguson and Geddes had decided to start with Harry. Perhaps they reckoned him the easier nut to crack. His thoughts scrambled by lack of sleep and general anxiety, his stomach churning after a breakfast of brackish tea and soggy toast, he felt unable to fault their reasoning.

A tape recorder stood in the middle of the table. McBride loaded the machine, started it running, announced the date, location and names of those present, then sped through the caution he had recited to Harry the previous night. ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if…’

Harry barely listened. Silence, he knew, would avail him little.

‘Done this kind of thing before, Mr Barnett?’ Ferguson asked when McBride had finished.

‘Sorry?’ Harry was instantly wrong-footed.

‘Been interviewed by the police, I mean.’

‘Oh, right.’ He watched McBride jotting in his notebook. What, he wondered, was the best — the wisest — thing to say. ‘Well…’

‘It’s either yes or no,’ said Geddes, in what was almost a snarl. ‘Surely you can remember.’

‘Of course. It’s just… Well, it depends what you…’ He smiled deliberately. ‘I was interviewed once by the Greek police. A long time ago. It was all a… misunderstanding.’

‘Rhodes, November 1988.’ Ferguson grinned. ‘It’s amazing what the Europol computer can turn up.’

‘Like I said: a long time ago.’

‘A missing-person inquiry. Suspected murder.’

‘But she didn’t stay missing. She hadn’t been murdered. There was nothing to it.’

‘Luckily for you.’

‘Is this relevant?’ Miss Sinclair asked sharply. ‘I understood you wanted to question Mr Barnett about rather more recent events.’

‘We do.’ Ferguson acknowledged the rebuke with a faint inclination of the head. ‘The death on Friday of Peter Askew. The death on Sunday of Mervyn Lloyd. The death last night of John Dangerfield.’

‘You were on the train Mr Askew fell from,’ said Geddes. ‘Correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you were staying in the Kilveen Castle Hotel when the car rented by Neville Wiseman on arrival at Aberdeen airport suffered unaccountable damage to its steering mechanism,’ said Ferguson. ‘Correct?’

‘I don’t know when or how it was damaged. Or even if it was damaged.’

‘Oh, it was damaged. There’s no doubt about that. And the rental company have the maintenance records to prove it left their hands in perfect condition.’

‘I’m sure they do.’

‘Which means it must have been tampered with while it was at Kilveen Castle. Where you were staying. Is that correct?’

‘I was there, yes.’

‘And you were also staying at Sweet Gale Lodge when Mr Dangerfield was killed.’

‘Yes. I was.’

‘Did you kill him, Mr Barnett?’

‘What?’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘No. Of course not. Like I told you, we—’

‘Found him dead when you got back there. Yes. We know. But there’s a problem. I’m referring to your fortuitous reunion with Mr Chipchase. How did that come about?’

‘I spotted Shona — Danger’s cleaner — buying Barry’s favourite brand of cigar. I suspected he was lying low with her. And I was right. Check with Shona if you need confirmation.’

‘Oh, we have.’

‘Well?’

‘Mrs McMullen confirms he’s been staying with her. But she was at home all last night and she saw nothing of you. Or Mr Chipchase.’

‘I stopped him as he was going in. We spent the rest of the evening in a pub. Cameron’s Bar. Near the docks.’

‘Start any fights?’ asked Geddes.

‘What?’

‘It might have made your visit more memorable to the staff.’

‘For God’s sake, this is—’

‘A doubtful story,’ Ferguson interrupted. ‘That’s what it is, Mr Barnett. Look at it from our point of view. We have two murders in which the victim was physically overpowered. It’s tempting to conclude a pair of murderers were responsible. Mr Askew may not have been capable of putting up much resistance, but Mr Dangerfield was certainly no pushover. We also have a third murder — and an attempted murder — in which the modus operandi requires expert knowledge of motor-car steering mechanisms. And then we have you and Mr Chipchase. A pair. A partnership. Former co-proprietors of a car sales and repair business, no less. With a criminal conviction, in Mr Chipchase’s case, relating to a fraudulent enterprise of which the dead men may well all have been victims.’

‘Danger didn’t invest in Chipchase Sheltered Holdings. He told me so himself. Nor did Peter Askew. You can check that.’

‘Can we? I doubt we’ll find Mr Chipchase kept meticulous records. Even if he did, they might lack a certain credibility, don’t you think?’

‘Neither of us has anything to do with this.’

‘Well, we’ll have to see about that. Mr Dangerfield clearly knew his murderer — or murderers. There was no sign of a break-in. And he certainly knew you two.’

‘We weren’t there when it happened, Chief Inspector. Find the taxi driver who took us out to the house last night. He can tell you what time we arrived.’

‘Can you describe him, sir?’ asked McBride. ‘Or the taxi itself?’

‘He was… middle-aged, I suppose. Local. Nothing… out of the ordinary.’

‘Pity,’ said Geddes.

Harry pressed on. ‘He was driving… an average saloon.’

‘Aren’t they all?’

‘Even if we traced the driver and he remembered you, Mr Barnett,’ said Ferguson with a long-suffering air, ‘it wouldn’t prove you didn’t kill Mr Dangerfield, then go into town and return by taxi for the specific purpose of establishing an alibi.’

‘In that event, Chief Inspector,’ put in Miss Sinclair, ‘wouldn’t my client have ensured he could give a better description of the taxi and its driver?’

Ferguson smiled coolly. ‘Perhaps he might think that… too obvious.’

‘That’s very tortuous reasoning.’

‘Goes with the territory, luv,’ said Geddes.

‘Mr Barnett,’ said Ferguson, a pursing of his lips hinting at irritation with Geddes, ‘I want to put it to you that Mr Chipchase has been the prime mover in all this. You’ve just… tagged along. No doubt you’re horrified by what’s happened — and your complicity in it. But I’m afraid protestations of innocence aren’t going to achieve anything. We need the truth. If you volunteer it to us now… it’s bound to stand you in good stead later.’

‘A man your age,’ said Geddes, ‘needs to think carefully about how many years he wants to spend banged up.’

‘Do yourself a favour,’ said Ferguson. ‘Nobody else will.’

Miss Sinclair shot her client a cautioning glance. They had come to the crunch.

Harry cleared his throat. ‘Let me make this very clear. Neither Barry nor I had any part in these murders — if that’s what they all were. We’re innocent men. And while you’re trying to prove otherwise, Johnny Dangerfield’s murderer is out there somewhere, busily covering his tracks — and laughing at you.’

A brief silence fell. Ferguson rolled his eyes. McBride scribbled in his notebook. Then Geddes leaned across the table and fixed Harry with a stare. ‘No-one’s laughing, Barnett. No-one at all.’

Another silence followed, broken this time by Kylie Sinclair. ‘Do you intend to charge my client, Chief Inspector? Your case against him so far seems wholly circumstantial. I note you’ve made no mention of forensic evidence linking him to any of the killings, presumably because there is none.’

‘Not yet, maybe,’ said Ferguson. ‘We’re still awaiting the results of several tests.’

‘And while you do?’

‘All right.’ Ferguson stroked his chin. ‘If Mr Barnett’s prepared to surrender his passport, we’ll release him on bail. To return here… one week today… for further questioning.’

Miss Sinclair leaned close to Harry’s ear. ‘The passport request’s not unreasonable in view of your Canadian domicile,’ she whispered. ‘I suggest you agree.’

‘Yes, but…’ Relinquishing his passport created a practical obstacle to what he most desired: an early return to domestic bliss in Vancouver with Donna and Daisy. It also seemed sickeningly symbolic of the gap opening up between him and the comfortable simplicities of family life. It was an admission of what he most feared: that his circumstances were bound to worsen before they improved — if they were to improve at all. And yet… there was nothing else for it. ‘OK,’ he said, pointedly ignoring Geddes and looking straight at Ferguson. ‘I agree.’