Michael Ridpath - See No Evil

‘I’m sorry,’ Anne said. ‘I know how much you like her. Is there any chance you can sort something out?’

‘I doubt it. She says she would have to change her job, and I don’t want to ask her to do that. I can’t help thinking it ought to be possible for her to manage things slightly better. I suppose it’s just not going to work.’

‘Shame.’

‘Yeah. Shame.’ Calder stared glumly out of the window. ‘Clever of you to find William.’ William was Anne’s husband of eight years. At first Calder had thought him a little stuffy and boring, but he had grown to appreciate the man’s consideration for his sister, and the way he put up with her chaotic existence.

There was no reply.

Calder glanced at Anne. She was biting her lip.

‘Are things OK with you two?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘We’ve grown apart these last few months. Like Sandy he works so hard. Never home before nine, often working over weekends. It’s a funny thing but when I was running around like a lunatic after the children all day, I didn’t mind. Oh, I complained, but I could put up with it. But since both the children are at school now, I get the odd minute to think about it and it rankles.’

William worked for a venture-capital company. Anne had been a barrister until a year after Phoebe was born, when she had given up. William’s firm had struck gold in the dot-com boom, and weathered the bust, and he had made some good money. But he was nowhere near as bright as Anne. This was something that was obvious to Calder, and presumably was to Anne herself. Calder had always suspected that this bothered his sister, but he had never seen any sign of it.

Anne glanced at her brother. ‘Don’t worry. It’s just a bad patch. All marriages have them, don’t they?’

‘I suppose they do,’ said Calder.

It was a pleasant flight back to Langthorpe from Elstree. Anne was right, Calder’s experience in the Yak was slightly more serious than falling off a bicycle, but he was pleased that he hadn’t found it difficult to climb back into an aeroplane. The cloud cover at 2,000 feet over Hertfordshire broke as he flew north and the Southern drawl of the USAF controller guided him through blue skies above the airbases of Lakenheath and Mildenhall. He descended to 1,500 feet over Thetford Forest and within a little over an hour from his departure from Elstree he spotted the familiar patch of green that was Langthorpe Aerodrome, with the poplars to the right, the village church with its round tower set on a small hill to the left, and the North Sea shimmering ahead. He joined the circuit a safe distance behind Jerry and an erratic student in a Piper Warrior and landed smoothly on the grass runway.

Kim was waiting for him outside the flying school, the wind blowing her dark curls into her face. She was dancing from foot to foot in her agitation. They moved into Calder’s tiny office and closed the door. Kim sat in the chair in front of Calder’s desk.

‘So it was sabotage?’ Calder said.

‘Definitely,’ Kim said. ‘They found fragments from some kind of bomb.’

‘And presumably they have no idea yet who planted it?’

‘No idea at all. Did you find out anything from Benton?’

‘Not really,’ Calder said. He described his breakfast at Claridge’s.

She listened to him with disappointment. ‘Do you believe that’s all there was to it?’

‘Don’t know. Tarek didn’t know either. Benton seemed to be telling the truth. But the cynic in me thinks that he lies for a living. There’s no doubt that Zyl News was right on the brink of bankruptcy back then, and I suspect that would have been a shock to Martha.’

‘Yes, but enough for her to insist that her mother fly to New York if she died? And why would that information scare her? Because she was scared. All that stuff about “if something happens to me”. There’s something else, there must be.’

Calder nodded. ‘You’re right. Maybe that’s only half the story. Maybe the diary holds the other half.’

‘Or perhaps Benton Davis is lying?’

‘Possibly. But I know for sure he won’t tell me more. Perhaps the police can get him to talk.’

‘That’s what I wanted to speak to you about,’ Kim said. ‘They’re going to want to interview you, I know they are. They asked me where you were, and I said you’d be flying back here this afternoon. They’ll be here any minute.’

‘Good,’ said Calder. ‘I’ll be happy to talk to them.’

Kim looked down at her hands. ‘Well...’

‘Kim?’ He looked at her suspiciously. ‘You don’t expect me not to tell them about seeing Benton?’

‘Er... I’d rather you didn’t. Or at least only if you have to. And if you do have to, don’t link it to the bomb in the Yak.’

‘But you said—’

‘I know what I said, but I can’t be sure,’ said Kim. She was staring hard at Calder now. ‘You see Todd and I talked about this a lot before the crash. He was adamant that he didn’t want to get the police involved in his family’s business. That’s why we came to see you.’

‘Yes, but things are different now, surely? He was nearly killed.’

‘I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to help the police find who planted the bomb; of course we should. But I don’t think we should encourage them to ask too many questions about Martha’s death.’

‘But we can’t hide it from them,’ Calder said. ‘That’s probably against the law. Conspiring to pervert the course of justice or something.’

‘Please,’ said Kim. She said it with her voice and she said it with her eyes. ‘If it was just me, I’d be happy to tell the police all they wanted to know. But I know that Todd would want us to keep them out of Zyl News. And with him lying in that bed in hospital in a coma, I’d feel terrible going against his wishes.’

‘So what do we do?’ Calder said. ‘Sit back and let the police faff around without telling them the most likely motive?’

‘We don’t sit back. We find out what Benton knows, what the Laagerbond is, why Martha went to that game reserve, who she was scared of, and then we find out who killed her and why. And then we tell the police.’

‘We?’

‘Me and you. Well, OK, mostly you. But please, Alex.’

Calder sat back and thought about it. Then he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, we have to tell them that Todd was asking awkward questions about Martha’s death. And I’ll have to mention the letter and my visit to Benton.’

Kim’s pale cheeks reddened. ‘Oh, Alex—’

Calder held up his hand. ‘Hold on. We’ll give them the bare minimum. We won’t tell them what you suspect or what Todd suspects. We let them investigate Cornelius and anyone else they want to investigate. Who knows? Maybe they’ll find the guy who planted the bomb. Maybe it had nothing to do with any of this. Maybe Todd had some enemies we know nothing about—’

‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘We don’t know, we can’t be sure. In the meantime I will help you try to find out what happened to Martha. And if we discover there is a direct link to the bomb in the Yak we tell the police. OK?’

Kim smiled. ‘OK.’ To Calder’s surprise she ran round the desk and kissed his cheek. ‘Uh-oh,’ she said looking out of the window. A man and a woman were making their way along the footpath to the entrance to the flying school. ‘That’s them.’

Two minutes later Kim was on her way back to the hospital and Calder was talking to two detectives. The woman was thin, with a pale face and short red hair. The man was slightly younger and much chubbier, with a brush of fair hair sticking straight up. The woman introduced herself as Detective Inspector Banks, and the man as Detective Constable Wardle.