Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

‘Yes, sir.’

I gaped at Monks as he leaned closer to me.

‘Just one thing,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I gather Caroline told you she was the one who pulled the funding for your internet business.’

‘Yes, the dot-com start-up.’

‘Well, it wasn’t her. It was Samuel himself.’

I would have shaken my head if it didn’t hurt so much. What he was saying didn’t make sense.

‘Why would she lie to me?’

‘Because,’ said Monks, ‘Caroline didn’t want you to think badly of him. What you think of her, she doesn’t mind. But she felt protective about her father, and of his reputation. It meant a lot to her what memory people took away of him, so she told you that untruth.’ His rugged face softened for the first time. ‘That’s what she’s like, you see.’

Not for the first time since I’d met Monks, I didn’t believe a thing he was saying. The word ‘liar’ was creeping towards my lips, but I couldn’t articulate it. Instead, I croaked something incoherent. He smiled as if I’d complimented him.

To my relief, I watched him go out of the door. Then I looked at Graham for an explanation. He laughed out loud when he saw my face.

‘You seem to have been upsetting Inspector Monks,’ he said. ‘Now, that’s not a good idea.’

Graham’s explanation left me with more questions than it did answers. He referred to ‘information’ the police had been given by a witness to the hit and run that killed Samuel Longden. The investigation that followed included surveillance of a possible suspect, by the name of Andrew Hadfield. The police had been preparing to move in and make an arrest, but when he slipped out of his house one night, they lost him. They’d been watching for his distinctive Jaguar XJS, but had only discovered it much later in the car park at The Friary. They hadn’t been expecting him to be travelling in my old Escort.

But then there had been a phone call from a person Graham referred to as ‘the lady who is your neighbour’, who’d asked for him by name and informed him that I’d gone to Fosseway with Hadfield, and that she believed I was in danger.

‘She was quite right,’ said DS Graham. ‘Obviously.’

‘It sounds as though everybody was right, except me.’

Graham grinned, a small, conspiratorial grin. ‘Did you really suspect that Detective Inspector Monks was the man who killed Samuel Longden?’

‘Yes. And Godfrey Wheeldon too. And that it was him who tried to kill me in the boat fire.’

‘All those were Hadfield. He’d been keeping a pretty close eye on what you were up to, and decided you were becoming too much of a threat. On the other hand, Mr Monks was the man who saved your life at Fosseway tonight.’

I frowned, cudgelling my brain to remember the details of the night. Some of them I didn’t want to remember. But it seemed to me that it was Andrew Hadfield’s life that Monks had been trying to save, not mine — and that I had, in fact, saved my own life.

‘But how did Rachel know to phone you?’

‘You’ve got Frank Chaplin to thank for that,’ said another voice.

I lifted my head and saw Rachel standing in the doorway, clutching a ridiculous bunch of daffodils and a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray. What on earth had made her imagine I liked flowers and chocolates? I thought of making a caustic remark, then swallowed it for fear that she might go away. At that moment, I didn’t want her to leave.

‘I’ll let you two be alone for a bit,’ said Graham. ‘We’ll have to talk to you again later, Mr Buckley, when you’re feeling up to it.’

He slipped away discreetly, as if we were two lovers, and Rachel came to sit on the side of my bed. She took my hand, and a curious tingle went through my fingers. ‘Hello, number six.’

‘Morning, number four.’

‘My God, you were a mess when they pulled you out of that wharf, Chris. Nobody could have recognised you under all the mud.’

‘Perhaps that would be an improvement,’ I said.

‘I don’t think so.’

I looked at Rachel for a moment, trying to remember all the things I wanted to say to her. But only one thought came into my mind.

‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘you mentioned Frank Chaplin. Where does Frank come into all this?’

‘Frank told me where you’d gone. He was very worried, because he thought you were making a bad mistake.’

‘Don’t tell me that Frank had it all figured out before I did, too.’

Rachel nodded. ‘He said he tried to tell you it was Andrew Hadfield he’d recognised at Fosseway, not Leo Parker. It was Hadfield who went looking for him at the bowls club. But Frank realised from the way you spoke about Hadfield that you’d got it all wrong. He didn’t know what else to do, so he came next door and told me where you’d gone. I phoned Detective Sergeant Graham, and he seemed to know exactly what I was talking about. The police reacted pretty quickly.’

‘It almost wasn’t quick enough,’ I said petulantly.

‘You didn’t come out of it too badly. Hadfield has two crushed legs.’

‘But why did he do all this?’

‘He’s not saying anything, apparently. But Inspector Monks and Sergeant Graham will work it all out, I dare say. One thing they did tell me is that Hadfield is Leo Parker’s nephew, the son of his sister Eleanor.’

‘I’ve seen her,’ I said.

‘Well, it seems she’s going to marry Lindley Simpson, the MP.’

‘Jesus, this is making my head hurt.’

‘The Parkers did very well for themselves, didn’t they? But you were threatening to bring it all down. You and your blessed Great-Uncle Samuel. So Hadfield set about finishing the Buckleys off completely.’

‘I never trusted him anyway, not really.’

Rachel laughed. ‘I know you didn’t. But you men — you don’t listen to what your hearts are telling you.’

And then I had to ask her the thing I needed to know most. ‘What about Laura?’

She smiled, and her fingertips moved in my palm. ‘I’ll let her talk to you for herself. She’s here, waiting to see you. She has something to explain.’

I groaned. ‘Not more explanations. I can’t stand it.’

And then she came in, the woman calling herself Laura Jenner. She carried no flowers and no chocolates, not even a bunch of grapes. And she spared no time beating about the bush.

‘My name isn’t Laura Jenner, of course,’ she said.

‘I know. You’re a Parker.’

She laughed bitterly. ‘Not at all. I’m Karen Mills.’

In my woozy state, the name didn’t click at first. I knew I’d heard it before, but couldn’t place it.

‘I was Samuel Longden’s secretary,’ she said. ‘His personal assistant.’

Karen Mills? Who had mentioned that name first? Frank Chaplin? Or had it been Leo Parker? Then I remembered how it fitted.

‘You were in the car with Alison when she was killed.’

She nodded. ‘I was driving, in fact. Alison was going shopping in Birmingham, spending Samuel’s money, but she didn’t like taking the train. She used me as a chauffeur sometimes. I didn’t enjoy that very much, but Samuel was always pleased when we were together, and he was paying me well. So I was driving her car that morning, a sporty Toyota that Samuel bought her. Ridiculous, really — she was fifty years old by then, you know. But Samuel still thought of her as his young bride.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, Alison was a bit frightened of the car, and wanted me to drive her. We were on the A38, the dual carriageway stretch between the A5 roundabout and Moneymore. I suppose I might have been going too fast, but it was the lorry veering across the central reservation that caused the crash. The car turned over when we hit it. Alison was killed instantly. But it took them about two hours to cut me out of the wreckage.’