The Valley (24 page)

‘It’ll help me to help you,’ I said.

There was another extended pause. Finally she said, ‘I will call you back,’ and hung up.

I immediately got up and walked around the flat, checking all the blinds and curtains to make sure no one could see in. I was inspecting my window locks when my phone rang.

‘John, if one word of what I’m about to tell you gets back to me, I will make your life hell.’

‘Understood.’

‘The pathologist who looked at Charlie Wall’s body gave us a one week window in December during which he could have been killed. Passport control told us Max Grainger only spent four of those days in the UK. He arrived here on the 15th and flew back out to the Caymans on the 18th. He took the
Glen Avon
out for just one day on the 17th.’

‘Do you know for certain that Max was over here for those three days?’

‘Yes. We’ve got photographic evidence of him walking through Heathrow, flight records, the lot. Why is that date so important, John?’

‘I’ll let you know,’ I said, and clicked the line dead.

Max had lied to me. I went to the fridge and took out another bottle of beer. As I passed the backpack in the hall, I glanced at my watch. It was quarter past nine: nearly time to go to the bridge.

I sat down, and tried to work out why Max had told me he had not visited the UK that week. He had denied it when I had tried to talk to him about George’s murder, so it had to be connected.

I opened up my laptop and entered ‘Lord Ferreston murder’ into Google, searching for any new police announcements about the case. The only news was that there was no news. George’s murderer, having mugged two other victims in the three weeks prior to George’s murder, had disappeared into thin air.

I was just about to shut down my laptop when I realised that George’s murderer had disappeared about the same time that Charlie Wall had been killed. I reached for my phone and dialled Joy’s number again.

She must have recognised my number because instead of saying ‘Hello,’ she just said: ‘Are you calling to give me some information – otherwise I’m hanging up’.

‘I need to know one more thing,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s a harmless fact. Thousands of police officers must know it. It’s probably been in the newspapers –‘

‘Find it out yourself then.’

‘I don’t have time. How tall was Charlie Wall?’

I waited for her to answer, listening to the background hum of the telephone line before she spoke: ‘I don’t know, John. You’ll have to ask me at the station on Monday when I can see Charlie Wall’s records.’

‘Approximately.’

There was no reply.

‘Was he about my height?’ I said. ‘I’m five foot ten. You must have thought about that before you accused me of murdering him.’

‘You’d be about the same height. He was more heavily built than you though.’

I thought of the prop-forward figure I had seen in the photos, knifing George.

‘You mean he was stocky?’

‘Very, almost as wide as he was tall. Why are you so interested in his shape?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Well don’t bother ringing me again, until you can give me something back,’ she said and this time she hung up.

Grabbing a pen and paper, I returned to the kitchen table, stopping off at the fridge to pick up another beer. I started writing down the names of everyone connected to me who had either disappeared or been killed recently.

Top of the list was Lucy. Next to her name, I wrote ‘killed by Max’, before crossing it out immediately. Max had not killed Lucy. He had been in Spain the night she disappeared. But Charlie Wall could have killed her on Max’s orders, so that’s what I wrote down. His DNA was found in the house. As for motive, Max had told me his marriage had gone through a bad patch and Lucy had said she had miscarried, partly though stress. If they were running a multimillion-pound insider dealing scam, it was not hard to imagine one of them wanting to quit before the other.

Next on the list was Gerry. Beside his name, I wrote ‘killed by Max’. There would not be any crossing out of this line.

Number three on my list was Angela. All I could put next to her was a question mark. I did not know what had happened to her, but I no longer believed that when people connected to me disappeared it was just a coincidence.

Line 4: George Colebrook. Alongside this I wrote: ‘Max orders Charlie Wall to kill George’. It took me some time to work out how it could be done. First Charlie Wall prepared a false trail for the police. All he had to do was mug a couple of people in the preceding fortnight, threaten them with a knife and march them to an ATM, grab their cash and scarper. From what I had heard about Charlie Wall, that would have been meat and drink to him.

Then Charlie had to ambush George, which would not be hard to set up. George’s amateur dramatics play was well publicised and the rehearsals were scheduled weeks in advance. He drove to and from them alone. On the actual night, there must have been plenty of dark places where Charlie could have arranged to bump into George. Then all he had to do was pull out a knife and force George to take him to the nearest ATM.

For a while, I pondered why George had input the wrong PIN number. This had always bothered me. The newspapers had claimed that George was not the type to give into his attacker without a fight. But they were wrong: George was exactly the type. He was cunning. He knew when and where to pick his battles. His instinct would have been to co-operate with a mugger who was heavier and more powerful than him and armed with a knife.

And then it suddenly came to me. Suppose he had keyed in the wrong PIN number because that was what he had been told to do by his attacker? George might have questioned such an order but ultimately, with a knife to his throat, he would have carried it out. The moment the ‘incorrect number – please try again’ message came up on the ATM screen, Charlie Wall could then have killed him, knowing that when the police discovered George’s body and investigated the ATM records, they would assume it was George who had chosen the wrong numbers.

There was still the question of Max’s motive for killing George. I reckoned George was telling me the truth when he said he was not involved anymore in Alpha Tec, and simply took the dividend cheques that paid for his stately home’s new roof without asking any awkward questions. In that case he would have been no threat to Max – until I turned up at his house and Max learnt about it. George by himself might have not been a risk, but George and me together formed a link to Edward Fitzgerald that Max could not tolerate. Several people in PropFace knew of my visit to Ferreston. Any one of them could have mentioned this to Ian, who could then have told Max and he would then guess that I would pop in on my old flatmate.

Line 5: Max murders Charlie Wall. Max himself had as good as admitted this to me. The details Joy had given me also backed it up. And with Charlie gone, all the evidence that linked Max to his crimes had disappeared too.

Or almost. Because I was still around.

I thought again about Max’s invitation to me and my children to stay on his boat in a couple of week’s time. It was the third time I had been invited on board the Glen Avon. The first time, Max had killed Gerry. The second time, in a brief two day window, George and Charlie Wall had both been killed. The third time, there would be just me, Jack and Tom on board with him.

I glugged down my beer, and looked at my watch. It was nearly eleven o’clock. I was running late but there was still plenty of time to throw the gun away tonight. I put on my cycling gloves and walked over to the gun in my sink. I could see the wooden part of the stock had bleached to a pale dun colour.

If Max wanted to kill me and I wanted to survive, I only had two choices: I could ring Joy and tell her everything, in which case I would need the gun for evidence; or I could try to keep Max at bay myself, in which case I might need the gun as a weapon. Either way, it did not make any sense to get rid of it. The telephone was still next to my chair where I had been sitting in front of the TV. I walked over to it and dialled Angela’s mobile number.

I had not called it for over two months but I still knew it by heart. The phone line clicked through to the continuous burr of a wrong number. I stood with the receiver in my hand, feeling stupid. She had gone. I had known that for ages.

On a whim, I rang my mother. It was the one bonus of having relatives in Australia: there was always someone to talk to late at night.

My mother seemed frail when she answered. I realised that I had not spoken to her since Christmas.

‘Shall I ring back later?’ I asked.

‘No, it’s a good time,’ she said. ‘So tell me, John, what’s been happening in your life?’

This was it, my golden opportunity to tell her everything. And I gummed up. I could not tell her anything about what I thought was going on. I could not even tell her I had been arrested for murder five days ago, and then released. By the time I finished the call, I felt even more isolated. I looked at the kitchen table, where five empty beer bottles stood next to the piece of paper on which I had jotted down my theories. I inspected it more closely. It resembled a hastily scrawled mess full of misspellings and crossings-outs. I re-read it and realised there wasn’t any solid evidence to back up my theories. But I was not ready to throw the gun away – not quite yet.

I rinsed the gun under the tap, patting it dry with another J-cloth, then putting it back in the drawer, which I left unlocked in case I needed to hold it during the night.

As I lay in my bed, unable to sleep, I remembered my phone calls to Joy. Instead of talking to me about the case immediately, she had made me wait until she called me back. That would have given her enough time to discuss with her colleagues which titbits of inside information she could safely feed me to undermine my relationship with Max. And then I thought about what Max had told me on the boat, and several times since: the only way the police could connect me to Gerry’s murder was if I was stupid enough to connect myself.

I was at PropFace when Hannah called me from the reception desk, saying I had a friend waiting to see me.

‘Who is it?’ I asked, checking my Outlook calendar. There were no scheduled appointments.

‘A Miss Clarke,’ Hannah said.

I walked over to reception at once. Whatever Joy wanted to see me about, I did not want it discussed near my desk.

She was sitting on the sofa dressed in beige slacks and a green jacket, and wearing her shiny pointed shoes. She smiled as I approached. I leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, like I would an old friend. When we stepped inside the lift and the door closed, I noticed she was grinning.

‘My suspects don’t normally kiss me,’ she said. ‘But then again, they don’t normally call me on Saturday nights either.’

‘What do you want, Joy?’

‘A chat, that’s all. Do you have time for lunch?’

‘No.’

She looked at me. ‘So where are we going then?’

‘I’ll treat you to a coffee if you want.’

We walked to the nearest Starbucks, a place I normally avoided. Its blandness made me long for the greasy spoon café near our old office in Earlsfield. When I tried to pay for our coffees, Joy insisted on paying for hers separately.

‘You wouldn’t believe the forms I’d have to fill in if I accepted anything off you,’ she said, as we sat down.

‘So your boss knows you’re meeting me?’

There was a tiny hesitation. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I wanted to tell him at the same time as I told him your information.’

‘What information?’

‘The information you promised to pass onto me in return for what I told you.’

‘Your boss might have to wait a while, then.’

‘Come on, John, I went out on a limb for you. If you don’t play ball with me, you’ll have to deal with people like Milburn or Davies. Do you really want them turning up at your offices with twenty coppers in tow?’

‘You’ve tried that threat already. If you, Milburn or Davies harass me in any way, I’ll sue your arses off. Now what do you want to talk to me about?’

‘Why did you want to know about Charlie Wall’s height and weight?’ she said.

‘Idle curiosity.’

She smiled at me and I found myself smiling back. There was a part of Joy, I decided, that was rather like Starbucks: clean, neat, efficient, and superficially attractive. My problem was that it was not this side of her character that interested me.

She took a gulp of her latte. ‘You think you’re in control, John, but you’re not. Max owns you.’

‘Joy you’ve been down this path before.’

‘He’s been lending you money, hasn’t he? What happens if he calls in the loans?’

‘Is that all you have to tell me?’

‘There’s stuff you don’t know,’ she said, ‘stuff about Max Grainger.’

‘I’m all ears.’

‘First, you have to share what you’ve got.’

‘I don’t have anything.’

‘That’s not true,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve found out something. Not everything but something.’

I shook my head, drained my espresso and stood up.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Did you know Max and Charlie Wall knew each other? They first met at Bristol, when Charlie was working as the assistant kennel huntsman.’

‘You’ve told me that already. It doesn’t work. Max hates riding. He’s never been out hunting in his life.’

‘Nor has Charlie,’ she said. ‘I’ve done my research. An assistant kennel huntsman doesn’t have to ride. They’re the ones who look after the dogs at the kennels. They pick up sick horses and livestock from farmers, slaughter them and chop them up for the hounds to eat. That’s how Charlie earned his money. But his hobby was shooting: pigeons, clay pigeons, the odd rabbit…’

I leaned forward, putting both hands on the table and looked her in the eye. ‘Are you saying Max and Charlie went shooting together?’

‘They had mutual interests and mutual friends. They lived within ten miles of each other. They –’

‘You don’t have any evidence, do you?’

She touched my arm. ‘Not yet,’ she said, ‘but it’s only a matter of time. Help us and we can protect you. But if you don’t help, we’ll go for you as well. You do realise that, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said ‘That’s the one thing you’ve always been crystal clear about.’

I turned around and strode out, without waiting for her.

Back in the office, I considered what she had said. In many ways, it had been a cameo performance from her: a credible allegation but no proof; a few threats interspersed with friendly smiles; and an offer to help if I did exactly what she wanted. But this time she had hit a raw nerve.

I kept thinking about the people Max had gone shooting with when he lived with me in Bristol. One or two of them had worked for Max’s father which had secured his entry into their informal network. His skill in shooting, his knowledge of wildlife and his willingness to help out with chores like beating or cartridge making had done the rest. And any doubts they might have had about the fair-haired public school boy were eased by the money Max put their way, because they were the same people who supplied all the equipment and materials we used in our gardening business. Everything was paid for in cash, and even Max admitted that one or two items might have fallen off a back of a lorry, or more likely a tractor.

Cycling home from work, I tried to remember if anyone resembling Charlie Wall had ever visited our flat in Bristol. I could only recall anonymous, quiet men dressed in green and brown, turning up at dawn or dusk. They drove ancient mud-spattered Land Rovers and rusting pick-up trucks with dogs curled up in the back.

I could not remember seeing a chubby-faced skinhead but their faces were often hidden behind pulled-down deer-stalker hats and flat caps, and sometimes beards as well. Nor could I recall anyone called Charlie with a South African accent, but they were not the sort to volunteer names and their conversation was usually limited to ‘Is Max in?’ and ‘I’ll wait outside’. A kennel huntsman who liked shooting would have fitted in amongst them very easily.

Outside my flat I looked around to see if there was a police car. I had not seen one near the mansion block or around my office for several days. Presumably the message had got back to Joy that I no longer seemed intimidated by their presence and that was why she had upped the stakes by turning up at my office. As I unlocked my front door, I wondered what her next move would be.

I heard my phone ringing and dashed inside to pick it up. It was Max. As he spoke, I remembered I had emailed him to remind him that he was due to pay his final instalment in three weeks.

‘Is there any flexibility on the date?’ he asked.

‘None whatsoever.’

There was a long pause before Max replied. ‘It’s in the diary. It shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘You don’t sound very certain.’

Max sighed. ‘It’s a lousy time to be selling assets. Anyway, tell me some good news: you’re definitely coming sailing on the 19th aren’t you, with my godson and his brother?’

I swallowed. Max must have noticed my hesitation, because he quickly added, ‘Don’t even think about pulling out. Seeing you is going to be the one bright spot of my visit. I’m staying with Lucy’s family. It’s the week of the anniversary.’

It took me a few seconds to work out which anniversary. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Life goes on. And at least the
Glen Avon
should be in good shape for the boys. She’s just come back from the boat yard. The police took out all the showers, so I’ve had new ones put in.’

I remembered the bloodstained towel I still kept alongside the shotgun beneath my bed.

‘And you’re OK now, aren’t you?’ Max continued.

‘I’m fine.’

‘And PropFace is making me lots of money?’

‘As much as we can.’

‘And my godson is still keen to learn how to sail?’

‘Apparently so.’

‘All’s right with the world then,’ he said.

That night, as I brushed my teeth, I noticed Jack and Tom’s toothbrushes in the bathroom cabinet. If I took the children with me to the Glen Avon, it would not be only my life that I was risking.

Rather than go to bed, I returned to my desk and reluctantly turned on my laptop. Over the last six months I had read everything I could find about Gerry and George, and discovered nothing of any substance. Like Joy, I had lots of theories, and many of them blamed Max, but I had absolutely no solid evidence to support any of them.

For a long while I sat staring at the Google homepage, thinking about what Max had said about the coming anniversary of Lucy’s disappearance. It seemed so long ago. I had changed and my fortunes had changed, and this was partly because I had been able to put what had happened behind me.

But Lucy’s disappearance had been the start of everything else.

Very slowly I entered ’Lucy Grainger’ into the search engine and clicked on the first result. The same gory details that I had read about nearly twelve months ago reappeared. I even recognised the key words: ‘stabbed’, ‘frenzied’, ‘disappeared’ and ‘mystery’. I started to feel sick, but I pressed on. After thirty minutes, I had to get up, swallow some painkillers and splash water on my face, but I kept going.

It was well after midnight when I found what I was looking for. It seemed a loose end at first. It was only when I checked it and re-checked it, that I saw what it really was, and everything finally made sense.

As I lay in bed, unable to sleep, I remembered the old Chinese proverb: Be careful what you look for, in case you eventually find it.