Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

I turned back to Sarah, my gaze telegraphing the question it was hardly necessary for me to ask. “Why did you go along with it?”

“Because Rowena’s death was one death too many. I’d just about succeeded in putting what happened to Mummy behind me. In ceasing to imagine what it must have been like for her. Then Rowena threw herself off that bloody bridge. How I wished and wished I could have stopped her. But there was nothing I could do. She was dead and so was the baby I hadn’t even known she was carrying. That made a third generation touched by murder. I wanted to strike back, to retaliate. But I couldn’t see any way to. Until Paul told me what he’d been thinking and I saw there was a way to avenge them all.”

“And in the process portray your mother as some sort of nymphomaniac? What kind of revenge is that?”

Sarah bit her lip. “We had no choice. The record will soon be set straight. I only wish Daddy had lived to-” She broke off, grief washing back over her. “Tell me how he died, Robin. Was it his heart? He had a coronary about twelve years ago and ever since the murders I’ve been afraid-”

“He fell from a cliff, Sarah.”

“What? In Biarritz? Surely-”

“In Portugal.”

“I don’t understand. What was he doing in Portugal?”

“Nobody seems to know. The authorities think it was an accident.”

“But you don’t, do you?” She seemed oblivious to the tears glistening in her eyes. “You’re implying he killed himself. Like Rowena. And for the same reason. You’re trying to blame me, aren’t you? You’re trying to suggest the things Paul said about Mummy drove him to suicide.” She swayed slightly on her feet and raised a hand to her forehead. “God, if that’s true, we’ve-”

“It isn’t true,” shouted Paul. He rushed forward, pushing me aside and taking a stand directly in front of Sarah. His gaze was fixed so firmly on her-and hers on him-that I wondered for a moment if I should try to grab one of the guns. But as soon as the thought formed, I dismissed it. The only hope of a peaceful outcome was to reason with them. “Listen to me, Sarah,” Paul continued. “Do you want to waste all these months of planning and preparing? That’s what it’ll mean if you start blaming yourself for your father’s death. We don’t know the circumstances. You can’t trust a one-sided account of them. For Christ’s sake, if anyone is to blame, it’s Naylor, isn’t it? He started this. But we’re going to finish it.”

“Yes.” Every muscle in Sarah’s body tensed. Her knuckles blanched with the ferocity of her grip on the gun. “You’re right. It’s too late to stop now.” She glanced down at Naylor. “I’d have liked to get more from him on tape, but what we have will suffice.”

“For what purpose?” I put in, desperate to plant as many doubts in her mind as I could. “A confession extracted in these circumstances surely carries no legal weight.”

“None whatever.” She sounded calm again, but I knew she wasn’t. Her empty left hand was clasped as tightly as her right to stop it shaking. “This isn’t about the law,” she declared. “It’s about morality. It’s about making Naylor pay for what he did to my mother and indirectly to my sister. And from the sound of it to my father as well. He’s destroyed them all, hasn’t he? So now…”

“You mean to kill him?”

“No,” said Paul emphatically. “We mean to execute him.”

“You wouldn’t.” I looked at Sarah as I spoke, silently urging her to see reason. “You couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Her gaze challenged me as much as the question itself. “A bullet through the brain’s more merciful than rape and strangulation, isn’t it? Much more.”

“Maybe. But it would still be murder.”

“Only in the eyes of the law.”

“And doesn’t that matter? You’re a solicitor, for God’s sake. You’re supposed to believe in the law.”

“I did once. But not any more. Not since I’ve seen how powerless it is to draw the poison from the wounds people like Naylor inflict-on the living as well as the dead.”

“But if you kill him, you’ll only end up where he belongs. Behind bars.”

“So be it. Don’t you understand, Robin? What’s right can’t be made wrong by fear of the consequences.” I saw her certainty gleam like religious fervour in her eyes. And I saw beyond it the futility of debate. Part of me agreed with her. And the other part wouldn’t be able to talk her out of it. Only the truth-only the one discovery she hadn’t made-could sway her. “He deserves to die.”

“Why?”

“You know why. Because he murdered two people and wrecked the lives of several others.”

“He’s solely responsible for that, is he?”

“Of course he is.”

“What are you getting at?” Paul fired the question at me over his shoulder.

“I’m getting at the truth. Which is more complicated than you think.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sarah, staring at me intently.

“Has he said why he went to Whistler’s Cot that night?”

“Some crap about being paid to kill Bantock,” snorted Paul.

“It’s not crap. He was paid. Or would have been. By a man called Vince Cassidy. Who later testified against him at his trial.”

Sarah blinked in surprise. “How could you know he told us that?”

“Because it’s the truth. Somebody hired Cassidy to kill Bantock. And Cassidy sub-contracted the job to Naylor. Your mother simply got in the way.”

“You can’t know that for a fact.”

“I can. Because that somebody was your father.”

“No. It’s not possible.”

“I’m afraid it is. He was convinced your mother meant to leave him for Oscar Bantock. And he was prepared to commission Bantock’s murder to prevent her. It was to be dressed up as a burglary that went wrong. And it did go wrong. But not in the way he or any-”

“Shut up!” Paul rounded on me, raising the gun as he did so. His mouth was twisted into a snarl and his eyes were bulging. The mania I’d glimpsed in him before-the capacity for violence he probably didn’t know the full extent of himself-drove me back across the room until I collided with the wash-hand basin. “Do you think I don’t know what you’re trying to do?” he raged. “Do you think I can’t guess the way your mind’s working?”

“Daddy?” Sarah murmured behind him. “Daddy… started all this?”

“He’s lying,” Paul shouted at her. “He’ll say anything to talk us out of what we agreed we had to do.”

“But that was before…” She looked past him at me, insisting I return her gaze. “How can you know? How can you be sure?”

“He told Bella, to convince her Paul’s confession was false. Remember his certainty, Sarah. Remember his insistence that it couldn’t be true. All because he knew it wasn’t.”

“But… he let Paul go on.”

“He couldn’t stop him without admitting to complicity in his own wife’s murder. But that’s what he decided he had to do when he heard Naylor was to be released. He was going to make a clean breast of the whole thing. A former patient of his with underworld connections who’d retired to the sun was the man who’d set it up for him. That’s why your father went to Portugal. To warn the man what he meant to do. But he wasn’t allowed to do it. His death wasn’t an accident or suicide. He was murdered. To protect the people who’d hired Cassidy on his behalf. Ring any bells, does it? A faintly shady acquaintance living in the Algarve? You may have met him a few times in the past.”

Sarah stared at me without speaking for several seconds while a host of puzzling recollections and unanswered questions must have assembled themselves in her mind and assumed the unmistakable symmetry of truth. Then she murmured “Oh my God” under her breath and leant slowly back against the wall behind her. “Ronny Dugdale.”