The Wages of Desire (39 page)

“You and Lawrence Tigue met in the lay-by by the O'Hare house last night,” Lamb said. “It was then that you told Lawrence that the counterfeit deal was finished and that his escape plan was off—and that was a message he didn't fancy.”

“Yes,” Taney said. “He threw a tantrum over it. Maureen always did say he was weak.”

A pair of constables led Taney away in handcuffs to a holding cell in the basement of the nick. Lamb was inclined to believe Taney that Walton had no direct involvement in the counterfeiting scheme—though Lamb also believed that Walton must have noticed irregularities in the camp that he conveniently ignored and therefore had been seriously derelict in his duty. But his showdown with Taney—on the road and in the interrogation room—had left him feeling spent, and he felt in no rush to get to Walton. The captain could wait until the following morning.

He had begun to put together in his mind what he believed were reasonable connections between the events he possessed knowledge of—connections that, if correct, would yield a narrative of the crimes that had occurred in Winstead during the past few days and, perhaps, two decades earlier.

And yet his day was not quite yet done. While he was interviewing George Taney, the constable he'd dispatched to the magistrate returned with a signed warrant to search Lawrence Tigue's cottage.

THIRTY-FOUR

LAMB, RIVERS, AND VERA HEADED TO WINSTEAD IN LAMB'S CAR.
Although they were exhausted, Lamb had decided that he could not leave such an important job to the following morning. A car containing four uniformed men followed them to the village.

Night had fallen by the time they arrived at the school, where they fetched Sergeant Cashen from the incident room, then walked up the High Street to Lawrence Tigue's cottage, where they found Wallace sequestered across the street and sucking on a cigarette. Lamb saw Wallace catch Vera's eye for an instant and nearly smile before he realized that Lamb was looking directly at him.

“I take it that Tigue hasn't returned,” Lamb said to Wallace.

“No, sir. No sign of him.”

Lamb nodded toward the cottage. “All right, then.”

He led the small troop across the High Street to Tigue's residence, explaining that, once inside, they should keep an eye out for official-looking documents, such as identification or ration cards, which might be collected in bundles.

When they arrived at the front door, Rivers knocked upon it and yelled, “Police, Mr. Tigue. Open up. We've a warrant to search your premises.” He waited twenty seconds; when no one answered the door, he turned to Cashen and said, “Open it, please, Sergeant.”

Cashen, a stout-chested, squared-off man of slightly less than medium height, stepped back from the door to get a run at it. He threw his bulk against the door, though it didn't budge at first. He tried again and this time the door shuddered and emitted an audible crack.

“Once more should do it,” Rivers said.

Cashen, red-faced, gave the door a savage kick, which finished the job. Just inside the sitting room, to the right of the foyer, lay Algernon Tigue with a neat bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

Lamb squatted by Algernon's head and stared for a second into the man's dark, dead eyes. Blood had pooled on the rug by Algernon's head and his mouth lay open, as if in astonishment. A white envelope containing what appeared to be a letter was pinned to the front of Algernon's jacket. Lamb picked up the envelope and saw that it was addressed to him.

He sat in the same chair in which he'd sat when he'd interviewed Lawrence two days earlier and opened the envelope. It contained a handwritten letter on high-quality paper. Lamb read it through. The thing
was
a confession of sorts, but also a rambling and somewhat disjointed note of self-justification that laid out and explained in detail the reasons for all of the sins that Lawrence had committed in and around Winstead during his lifetime—sins he pinned on the influence, depredations, and humiliations wrought upon him by his younger brother, whom he admitted shooting to death. The thrust of the missive seemed to say that, had it not been for Algernon Tigue, Lawrence would have—could have—lived a normal and perhaps even an exemplary life. At the same time, the note cast Lawrence himself in a positive, nearly heroic, light, as a man who, despite enduring repeated humiliations at the hands of his brother and others, including his cousin, Maureen Tigue, and his wife, Alba, had nonetheless undertaken a series of brave risks that were designed to redefine and salvage his good name, reputation, and character for posterity.

Lamb put the letter in the inner pocket of his jacket. He went again to Algernon's body, where he joined Wallace, Cashen, and Rivers, who was searching Algernon's pockets.

“A confession, then?” Rivers said, guessing at the note's contents.

“Of sorts,” Lamb said. He nodded at Algernon's stiff body. “
This
definitely is his work.”

Given what Miss Wheatley had told him earlier and what he'd just now read in Lawrence's note, it seemed clear that Algernon must have come to Lawrence's cottage late on the previous night, some time after Miss Wheatley had seen him ghosting about the O'Hare property and the site of Albert Clemmons's killing. Lamb guessed that the two brothers had then discussed—and probably argued about—how best to address the obvious problem that confronted them. With the bodies turning up in the foundation of the house in which they had grown up as boys and the police on their trail, a perverted bond between the brothers—a secret they had kept and shared—had come undone. Lawrence, having killed his brother, had run, probably in Algernon's car. Lamb worried that Lawrence might be suicidal.

“The entry wound looks too small to have been made with .455-caliber,” Rivers said. “Not the same gun that killed Aisquith.”

“Yes,” Lamb agreed.

Lamb heard Vera's voice calling him from the foyer—a sound that initially alarmed him given the urgency he heard in her voice.

“Dad,” she said, stepping into the room. She hesitated for only an instant when she saw Algernon Tigue's body lying in the middle of the floor.

“It's Lilly,” she said. “She's outside telling a fantastic story. She claims Lawrence Tigue is holding Miss Wheatley hostage in the O'Hare house.”

Lilly was standing just outside the front door, waiting for them.

“Please,” she said as soon as she saw Lamb. “He's got Miss Wheatley, and he's going to kill her.”

Lamb went to Lilly and gently placed his hand on Lilly's right shoulder.

“It's all right,” he assured her. “Calm down now and tell me what you know.”

“He gave me this note and said that I must give it to you,” Lilly said, handing Lamb a neatly folded piece of paper. The handwritten note read:

Lamb:

We must speak or I shall kill Flora Wheatley. Come to the window and announce yourself. Once you get the signal from me you are to enter the room alone and unarmed. If you do as I say and I am satisfied at the end of our discussion, I will release Miss Wheatley unharmed. Otherwise, she will die.

Lawrence Tigue.

Lamb asked Lilly to tell him exactly what had occurred that night. Lilly then told a brief tale that indeed sounded fantastic.

She and Miss Wheatley had met that evening in Miss Wheatley's cottage with the intention of spying on Lawrence Tigue. “Miss Wheatley was desperate to know what he was up to,” Lilly said. They were about to set out down the trail to keep watch on Tigue's house when Tigue himself burst into Miss Wheatley's cottage holding a pistol. He took them at gunpoint to the O'Hare house and into the room in which Claire O'Hare had hung herself. He'd already placed a chair and a kerosene lantern in the room. He commanded Miss Wheatley to sit on the floor in the middle of the room and then had bound her ankles and hands.

“Then he told me to go to the school and tell whatever policeman I met there that he wanted to speak with you, Mr. Lamb,” Lilly said. “Then he gave me the note addressed to you. I was on my way to the school when I saw the police motorcars in the lane and Miss Lamb standing by the door. He says he'll kill Miss Wheatley if you don't come.”

The telling of the tale had brought Lilly to the verge of tears.

“It's all right, Lilly,” Lamb repeated. “You've done the right thing.” Vera moved closer to Lilly and put her arm around the girl.

“Where is your mother?” Lamb asked.

“At work, in Southampton.”

Lamb told Cashen to assign a constable to call Julia Martin's workplace and get word to Julia that she should come home as soon as possible to fetch Lilly and that Lilly was all right. Then the constable was to call Harding and inform the super of the situation.

He turned back to Lilly. “I want you to stay here with Vera until your mother comes from Southampton to fetch you,” he said. “She'll be here soon.”

Lamb had turned toward the door, preparing to confront what appeared to be a desperate man bent on mayhem when Vera suddenly said to him, “Please be careful, Dad.”

Lamb turned back toward Vera. The worried look on his daughter's face made him realize that he'd forgotten something vital. He went to Vera, took her hand, and said, “I will.” Then, in an act of unforgiveable nepotism, he kissed Vera on the forehead.

For the second time that day, Lamb retrieved his Webley from the glove box of his car, this time along with its shoulder holster, and loaded it. He put the three uniformed constables to guard Lawrence Tigue's house with orders to allow no one to enter. Then he, Rivers, Wallace, and Cashen headed up the trail to the O'Hare house.

THIRTY-FIVE

TWENTY METERS FROM THE O'HARE HOUSE, LAMB HALTED THE
troop and moved into the verge to the right of the trail, where he and the others could see the dimly lit window of the room in which Claire O'Hare had been found hanged.

Lamb first turned to Cashen and instructed him to go to the end of the trail and search for Algernon Tigue's car, which Lamb suspected Lawrence had been driving and likely had parked nearby. Given what George Taney had confessed, Lamb believed that Lawrence Tigue had reached an impasse in carrying out the plan of escape he'd arranged as part of his payment from the Irish for producing the counterfeit ration coupons—the plan that Ruth Aisquith's murder had scuttled. He reasoned that a distraught Lawrence intended to use Miss Wheatley as a bargaining chip for something, perhaps to regain that escape plan. If that was true, Lawrence would need Algernon's car. When Cashen was on his way, Lamb turned to Wallace and Rivers.

“I'm going to get closer and see if I can get a peek into that window,” he said. “Then we can figure out how to handle this. I think he wants something and intends to bargain for it with Miss Wheatley.”

“All right,” Rivers said. “But watch yourself.”

Rivers considered how Lamb already had played the hero once that day and thought that twice was likely pushing it. But he knew it was fruitless to protest.