Hilary Bonner: When the Dead Cry Out

Her priority had to be the future. She could feel her life spiralling out of control and she didn’t like it. She needed to do some concentrated thinking, and not let her brain be entirely led by her heart and her body. She did not need the ghost of Clara Marshall, nor the ghost of a lost daughter she was equally sure had been murdered, to continue to haunt her. She had to exorcise them. And she also had to abandon the near-obsession with bringing Richard Marshall to justice which she had harboured more or less throughout her career.

It was over, she told herself. For better or worse, it was over.

Karen was, of course, completely wrong. It wasn’t over at all.

Five weeks later, Richard Marshall was found dead in the apartment he still owned at Heron View Marina, Poole. He had been shot through the head with a single bullet from a revolver. No attempt had been made to conceal his body.

Karen received the news by telephone from Dorset CID. It seemed that the alarm had been raised by the local postman, delivering a package, who had noticed that the front door to the flat was standing very slightly ajar. And when there was no reply from inside, after he had knocked several times and called out, he attempted to push the door fully open. It moved only three or four inches before he could push it no further. Something heavy seemed to be preventing it from opening. Peering through the gap, the postman had seen the body of a man lying just inside the hallway.

“Oh, fuck,” muttered Karen to herself. And afterwards she sat very quietly and all alone in her office for several minutes. Her first reaction was shock. Pure shock. Her second, hard as she tried to prevent it, involved a certain sense of pleasure. She was glad Richard Marshall was dead. She couldn’t help it. She experienced a very strong feeling that a kind of justice had been done at last.

For just a moment she indulged herself, allowed herself to revel in the knowledge of his sudden violent death. She hoped also that whoever had killed him had made sure that Marshall was quite aware that he was about to die, and why. She hoped he had known fear, just as his victims must have done. She hoped that when he had looked death in the eye he had been absolutely one hundred percent aware that his end had finally come.

Karen sat with her fists clenched and her eyes closed, savouring the thought. After all this time, after all this heartache, she just couldn’t help it.

Then, abruptly, her mind switched track. The police detective in her swung into action. “Whoever had killed him.” That was the rub. It was now her job and that of the Dorset police to find Marshall’s killer. And that thought brought her firmly back down to earth. She was suddenly acutely aware that Richard Marshall’s death could only be welcome if it did not create another victim. And there was little doubt that was exactly what it would do. Indeed, Marshall’s murderer was almost certainly a victim already, and probably about to become an even greater one.

She turned her attention then to the question of the identity of Marshall’s killer. It just had to be someone who had suffered because of the crimes they all believed he had committed. It would stretch credibility even to consider any other motive.

Top of the list, Karen was well aware, had to be Sean MacDonald. Karen knew that. And she didn’t like the idea one little bit. Sean MacDonald, of whom she had become so fond. Sean MacDonald, who had made it quite clear that he’d had enough of British justice, and had virtually threatened to take the law into his own hands.

She reminded herself again that Sean MacDonald was eighty-three years old. Nonetheless he was a fit man and a volatile one. And a man who felt deeply aggrieved on behalf of a daughter whose killer had never paid the price for his crime. Until now, perhaps.

She picked up the phone again and called Inverness. Mac’s answerphone clicked in. She tried twice more and on the third attempt left a brief message. Then she called Inverness police and asked them to go around to Sean MacDonald’s address. After that she gathered her troops around her.

By the time she walked into the incident room it was obvious that the whole of CID and quite probably the whole of the nick knew that Richard Marshall had been murdered. Tompkins and Smiley were giving each other five in one corner. Everybody in the room seemed to be on their feet, laughing and talking. A bottle of whisky was hastily stowed in a drawer as she entered. She pretended not to notice that, but the rest of it had to be attended to.

“Right, that’s enough,” she called. “We’re going to a funeral here, not a bloody wedding.”

“Yeah, but it couldn’t be a better funeral, could it, boss?” responded Tompkins, to a general muttering of approval. He was looking almost cheerful, which was actually quite difficult for him.

“You think not, Chris?” Karen enquired icily. “Between us and Dorset we have to find out who murdered Richard Marshall. And that’s where this all goes pear-shaped.”

There was more muttering, of a different kind.

“I’ve got Inverness checking out Sean MacDonald,” she went on.

“Oh, fuck,” interrupted Tompkins, no longer appearing at all cheery.

Karen smiled grimly. “Oh, fuck, is dead bloody right, Chris,” she said. “Mac has to be our number-one suspect and I don’t like it any more than I know any of you will.”

She paused, aware that they were all quietening down now, growing thoughtful, which was exactly what she wanted. She was after as much thinking as she could get. She wanted to jerk their brains into action every bit as much as her own.

“Right,” she said. “We need to get to Poole and check out for ourselves what’s happened. Chris, I want you and Ron with me on that.” She nodded towards Smiley. “You came before, you know the set-up, and you, too, Phil.” She waved one hand at Cooper who had been resolutely keeping an extremely low profile. “And we’ll take two cars.”

As she said that she was aware of somebody giggling but she wasn’t able to identify who it was. In any case, she was in no position to do anything about it. Instead she headed for the door, but she didn’t shut it before overhearing a whispered: “And no guesses who’s riding with who,” again from someone unidentifiable, followed by a louder: “Fuck off, wanker,” from Cooper.

Outside in the corridor she leaned briefly against the wall. “Damn,” she muttered to herself. She’d already had quite enough to worry about even before the discovery of Richard Marshall’s body. Her affair with Cooper was now an open secret. And she didn’t know what to do about it. She couldn’t give him up. She just couldn’t. And yet she feared that she was courting disaster by continuing with such a potentially dangerous relationship.

She travelled with Cooper in his car, which was exactly what everybody expected her to do. But she couldn’t help herself.

“No point in disappointing the troops,” said Phil with a grin as he opened the passenger door for her. She grinned back. Just the prospect of being alone with him in his car for the best part of three hours made her feel warm inside. At least he seemed not quite as troubled by the part he had played in Marshall’s conviction being overturned as he had a while ago. She suspected that knowing that Marshall was dead had made him feel better, even if he was concerned, like her, about who had killed the man.

He drove with one hand on the wheel, and the other, for most of the time, on her knee. It was companionable. It was easy. That was how it was between them. As if they were joined at the hip. She glanced at him as they made their way out of Torquay and headed towards Exeter. He seemed to feel her eyes on him and turned and smiled. She loved him. She really loved him. And she knew he felt the same. How could she walk away from him?