The Valley (19 page)

I drove down to George’s funeral, arriving at the church early and choosing a seat at the back. As more and more people filed in, I spotted one or two familiar faces from the old days in Bristol and London, but they were all people I had not seen for years, and most were accompanied by wives or husbands I had never met.

Gail eventually entered, holding the hand of a small child, who in his other hand clutched a toy car. A gaggle of family members surrounded them and swept them forwards to a pew at the front.

Max walked in just as the first hymn was being sung. When I saw him looking around, my first instinct was to avoid his gaze and try to melt into the other mourners. But he stood in the middle of the aisle, his eyes continuing to search, as if trying to spot a stag hidden against a hillside. Bowing to the inevitable, I waved my hymn sheet at him and he smiled in recognition, before jostling through the other mourners to take his place by my side.

The church was on the edge of the Ferreston Hall estate, and at the end of the service, the vicar told us we were all invited for tea at the main house. Most of the people went back to their cars, but a few locals headed off down a footpath that led from the graveyard to a narrow track bounded by stone walls.

‘Come on let’s join them,’ Max suggested. ‘I could do with a walk.’

At the end of the path was a style. Max seemed to cross it without even breaking his stride. ‘I’m glad I came,’ he said, as I clambered over it. ‘It’s good to say goodbye. Lucy’s service taught me that.’

Max was a fast walker and we soon overtook the locals. When we were far enough away not to be overheard, I turned to him.

‘Max, I need to know if George’s death is in any way related to Gerry’s, or to Lucy’s.’

’There’s no link,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘George was quite keen on Lucy once but she hadn’t seen him for ages. As for George and Gerry, I suppose they might have met when George was working in the City, but that would have been ages ago.’

Then he stared at me. ‘Of course I’m assuming you didn’t tell George about Gerry when you met him, because theoretically, that could be a connection.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ I said, hastily.

‘There’s no connection then,’ Max said.

In the distance we could now see Ferreston Hall. People were parking and walking up to the backdoor, just like I had done less than a month ago.

‘Actually, Max, there are two connections,’ I said. ‘Gerry, George and Lucy all knew us; and now they are all dead.’

Max turned around. When he spoke, he almost spat out the words. ‘Look, John: of course, Gerry’s death and Lucy’s death are linked – he helped to kill her and that’s why I killed him. But neither of them was connected to George. I know that for a fact because there are only two people in the world who even know that Gerry is dead, and that’s you and me, and I know I didn’t murder him and I’m pretty certain you didn’t either because Karen told me you were in France when he was killed. And just for the record, I was two thousand miles away as well.’

‘I thought you were coming over to the UK that week?’

‘That was my plan,’ he said, ‘but I wasn’t going to see George, I can promise you that. Ask Gail if you don’t believe me. And, as it happened, everyone I wanted to see, including you, wasn’t around that week, so I postponed my trip and stayed in the Caymans. You can see the stamps in my passport if you want. ‘

He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘John, I read through all the reports in the newspapers. George was killed by a carjacker who wanted his ATM card. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. His death had nothing to do with Gerry’s or Lucy’s.’

‘Who was Gerry then?’

‘Gerry was dirt,’ he said, and started to move away.

‘But –’

Max cut me off. ‘Don’t get involved, John. I’ve told you: no one can possibly connect you to what happened on board the boat unless you connect yourself. Now come on, we’ll be late for the reception.’

At the house the post-funeral buffet was a suitably grim affair. I managed to have a few words with Gail who looked every inch the grieving widow. She introduced me to George’s mother who chatted to me for quarter of an hour without ever convincing me that she really knew who I was or how I had known her son.

I talked to a couple of people I recognised from the old days back in London when George had lived with Max and me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Max talking to Gail. And then, without meaning to, I drifted into a group composed of members of the local amateur dramatics society. As they took turns in extolling George, and all he had done for them, I looked out through a large bay window, and saw a woman playing with George’s son on the lawn.

Shortly afterwards I left, slipping out through the back door with a minimum of fuss. I was about halfway down the track leading back to the church, when I saw a man following me. It did not take long for Max to catch up. With his long rangy stride, he could overhaul anyone.

‘You didn’t warn me you were leaving,’ he cried out as he approached.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m not good with funerals. They remind me of my father’s.’

‘I can’t really remember my mother’s,’ he said. ‘I was only seven years old. I’m not even sure I went to the church. I remember visiting the grave though, when it was freshly dug. The soil was still brown and moist. And then I was sent off to prep school and when I came back we’d moved to a different part of Scotland.’

I looked at him. ‘You mean you didn’t always live at Glen Avon?’

‘No, we used to live in the Borders. We only moved up there after my mother was killed.’

‘How did your mother die?’ I asked.

‘Riding. She went out hunting, fell off and broke her neck. I’ve hated horses ever since.’

We carried on walking towards the village.

‘You had a long chat with Gail,’ I remarked, casually.

‘She was telling me about the estate. Apparently George was trying to develop the fishing.’

‘Is that all you were talking about?’

‘Not really, no,’ he said, and kept on walking. He looked up and saw I was still watching him. ‘Oh you might as well know,’ he said. ‘As a goodwill gesture to George, I gave him some shares in Alpha Tec. They’re now worth quite a bit. But they are hidden away in a Caymans bank, safe from the taxman. And it seems that George didn’t just hide them from the Inland Revenue: Gail doesn’t know about them either.’

‘Did you tell her?’

‘I dropped a few hints. I didn’t think it was the right time to go into details.’

He pointed to a black Mercedes driving along the road to meet us.

‘That’s my chauffeur’ Max said. ‘I’ll give you a lift to your car.’

‘Thanks, but it’s only a hundred yards away.’

‘Well, you might as well hop in as I’ve got something to give you.’

For a brief moment I hesitated. But his arm swept around my shoulders and before I knew it, I was being drawn into the back of the car.

On the floor was a large box enclosed in expensive wrapping paper.

‘What’s this?’

‘Jack’s Christmas present,’ he said. ‘It’s a remote controlled catamaran. I thought he could practise tacking on Clapham Common or wherever it is you go for walks, before we all go out on the Glen Avon.’

‘That’s really kind of you.’

‘Devious, not kind. I want my godson to like the things I like and sailing is a pretty good start.’

‘I suppose I should be thankful you didn’t give him a gun.’

Max laughed then turned to look at me. ‘I enjoyed meeting him. I’ve been a pretty useless Godfather up till now. But I want to be a better one.’

His chauffeur drove us to where my car was parked. We pulled up beside it, and Max carried Jack’s present over to my boot.

‘Happy Christmas, John,’ he said. He put his hand on my shoulder and whispered. ‘And remember, there’s nothing to worry about. No one can prove Gerry’s dead, let alone that we killed him. As long as we keep our mouths shut, no one can touch us. We’ve just got to hold our nerve that’s all.’

‘Happy Christmas Max,’ I said with a smile. But I was relieved when he relaxed his grip, and I could get into my own car and drive off.

Returning to my flat with Max’s present made me realise I did not have a single Christmas decoration up. There did not seem much point with the boys away in France and no guests coming. Later that night I went to the tennis club’s Christmas party, hoping it would improve my mood. Instead my thoughts kept on returning to what had happened to George and what Max had said. In the end I left early. On my way out, I noticed a large sign advising members to empty their lockers because the club house was going to be refurbished. I used my locker so infrequently that I could not remember if I had left anything inside it or not, and so decided to check.

There turned out to be two items inside it: an old fleece and some heavy grey tracksuit bottoms that initially I did not recognise – until I remembered that they were the ones Angela had worn at the tennis tournament. For a moment I just stared at them, before bundling them up and taking them home with me.

Back in my flat I held up the tracksuit trousers, feeling an urge to bury my face in them, hoping to inhale some lingering aroma that would remind me of Angela. But at the last moment, I stopped. This was not only odd, it was dangerous; a route back to my all-night trawls through the internet, obsessively searching for a girl who clearly no longer wanted to be with me, and then going to sleep cradling a gun.

But I also knew that I could not completely forget about what had happened to her, Lucy, Gerry and George. I looked around my empty flat. Whether I liked it or not, in two days it would be Christmas and rather than celebrate it with loved ones, I was going to have to spend it alone. I could either wallow in self-pity, or use the holiday period to find out what I needed to know, but this time do it in the right way: no manic, all-night internet sessions; just short bouts of calm research, punctuated by frequent breaks and regular meals. And after I had discovered what I needed to know, I could stop worrying and get on with my life.

I opened the drawer, but instead of taking out the gun, I folded up the tracksuit trousers and stashed them away with it.

By the time Christmas Day arrived, I had mapped out what I needed to do – which was find out who Gerry was, and then see if he could be connected to all the other deaths and disappearances. And I had also decided what I didn’t have to do, which was to be overly scared of creating a data-trail. I no longer believed there any immediate threat of my Internet history being tracked and used against me. That was all part of the paranoia which I had decided to put behind me.

The task at hand was quite simple: George had said Gerry was an accountant in the Caymans, and I had already found and checked out twenty-two accountants who worked for firms in the Caymans that had links to Alpha Tec, and whose first name started with G or J. I now had to find twenty-two more, and if necessary another twenty-two after that. Sooner or later, I would get my man.

Except I did not. When I finally put my laptop away at the end of the day, and called my children to wish them a happy Christmas, I had only found another eighteen possible suspects, but on closer inspection, none of them could possibly have been Gerry. I was back at the beginning again, having made absolutely no progress.

It was only much later at night, when I was trying to resist opening the drawer below my bed, that I realised that George was not my only source on who Gerry was. There was also Gerry himself. I could still remember our walk from the coffee shop to the marina and what he had said about his ninety-six foot Benetti yacht, and how he had used it for overnight races.

I resumed my search just after dawn. A quick glance at the Benetti corporate website left me in no doubt that that their yachts were exclusive and expensive, and ownership of a ninety-six footer would be very rare indeed. I then used Google to track down every major sailing club in the Caymans, wading through the overnight race results, hunting for any mention of a successful Benetti. By lunch, I had found some but none of their owners had G or J in their initials. Returning to my work after gulping down a bowl of soup, I pried deeper and deeper into the Cayman yacht-owner world, reading the club newsletters, and following all the links. And an hour later, I spotted Gerry.

He was in a photograph on a sailing club website, standing next to two other middle aged sailors, all wearing Hawaiian shirts, and holding up three small cups. The article said he had come third in an around the island race twelve months ago. Except he was not called Gerry. His name was Edward FitzGerald.

The next eight hours disappeared in a blur as I tracked his life and career backwards and forwards, jotting down notes every time I spotted a mention of my man. I was gripped, oblivious to the gathering darkness and the weather outside, as I pieced together a life story from accountancy websites, sailing clubs, company annual reports, FriendsReunited, accountancy magazines, LinkedIn pages and Cayman Island newspapers.

Edward FitzGerald had been born in Ireland and attended Trinity College in Dublin. By the time he joined Price Waterhouse in London in the early 1980s, he had already been nicknamed ‘Gerry’. He worked in their International Tax practice for ten years before transferring to their Bahamas office, and then onto the Caymans by 1994. Five years later, he left to set up a local firm of accountants in Grand Cayman called GWF&B, of which the F stood for FitzGerald. The firm were regulatory consultants – but never auditors – to Ferreston Investments Ltd then Alpha Tec Holdings, as well as dozens of other hedge funds and investment banks.

From what I could tell, Gerry was gay. This was never publicly stated but there were repeated nods and winks hinting at it, from an article in a Cayman Islands’ lifestyle magazine describing Gerry as a fun loving bachelor, to the photographs of him in sailing club magazines where he was often shown alongside younger men.

At the time Gerry disappeared, he did not seem to have a regular partner. When he did not come back from his business trip to the US and Europe in October, it took a long time for the alarm to be raised. Only in November, two weeks after Max had shot him, was his disappearance made public. That triggered a brief flurry of reports in the Cayman Island newspapers, but a consensus soon emerged that he had probably committed suicide, brought on by the recession. He had always played the stock market and there were rumours that he might have over-played it and been caught out.