Authors: Robert McCracken
An Early Grave (26 page)
He made his own way home on the bus. Tara didn’t offer him a lift. She never even said goodbye. As far as she was concerned the previous three days didn’t happen. And where did that leave him? Exactly the same place he was before they met.
‘You been away, Callum?’ said Billy Hughes, on his doorstep smoking a fag.
‘London for a couple of days.’
‘Missed all the fun round here, mate. That young gobshite Crawley was the one that killed the girl. And him gonna be a dad.’ Billy shook his head. ‘Crazy people round here.’
Callum smiled weakly and slipped his key into the lock. Billy stood watching, his gut poking out from under a faded T-shirt. He exaggerated his glance upwards at Callum’s window screens.
‘See those screens? You can probably take ‘em down now that dickhead’s inside for murder.’
Callum paid him the courtesy of looking up also, but tearing down the screens was hardly top of his list of things to do. He stepped inside, closing the door as his neighbour paddled down the path to toss his fag butt into the road.
The house was quiet as it should be, but he found it unnerving. Moving from room to room all he saw was Charlotte with a knife in her heart. He wracked his brain for a theory to account for the deaths of his friends. And why not him? If Kingsley were to blame, why hadn’t he come for him? Why wasn’t he lurking in a bedroom or keeping watch on the house from across the road? Nothing made sense. Tara may have learned a lot more about the people who were dead, about Tilly, having met her parents, about Justin, having encountered his father, Georgina, Ollie and Anthony. But he had gained nothing. None the wiser. All he’d done was accompany a stroppy policewoman on a journey through England, through his life, and it ended with him losing another friend. Tara got what she wanted. She had eventually coaxed the story of Audra out of him. She had found her killer; he’d got nothing.
He needed food in the house, the bare essentials for living: milk, bread, butter and tea. Some beer, maybe. For now, he saw nothing beyond the accomplishment of that task. Decisions on his future were for later. Climbing the stairs, he went to the bathroom and opened the door of the hot press. Inside, concealed by a couple of well-worn towels sat a Victoria Biscuit tin. He lifted it out and dropped to his knees, placing the tin on the floor. He had no idea how much cash was packed inside, but this was how he did his banking. There were half a dozen tightly rolled packs of notes: tens and twenties and several cheques, un-cashed, royalty payments from Tilly’s books. From a loose bundle of fives, tens and twenties, he pulled out a twenty and replaced the lid. A Chinese takeaway might just hit the spot. He replaced the tin in the hot press and went downstairs. As he opened the front door it slid over the mail he hadn’t bothered to lift earlier when he arrived home. He stepped outside, pulling the door hard behind him. Among the letters on the hall floor: one from the council, a gas bill, an invitation to sign up for a new credit card and notice of a clothes collection for a cancer charity, lay a booklet in a polythene package, the latest edition of the Oxford Alumni magazine.
*
Tara scarcely lifted her head all morning. It was one thing bringing a case to a close in the practical and verbal sense, it was quite another unenviable task to make sense of it all in writing. She thought if she immersed herself in the business of detective policing and only in the area relevant to her unit, her station, to the Merseyside Police, it would suppress the irritation of how matters were left with Callum Armour. Superintendent Tweedy, at the conclusion of their meeting the day before, had inquired of the scene she and Callum stumbled upon in Oxford. He spoke out of genuine concern, she felt, but offered no suggestions on a course of action, nor did he reprimand her over her relationship with a man, who had been a suspect in the murder of Audra Bagdonas. Kate and Aisling’s attitude surprised her. They saw something in her relationship with Callum that she hadn’t seen or, if she was honest, had tried to ignore. She thought she was helping him. He played his bargaining game, but in the end she got the truth about Audra, and he was no closer to finding his wife’s killer. Somehow, from her explanation to Kate and Aisling, the pair of them decided she had a thing for Callum. She helped him, because, deep down, she wanted him.
At lunchtime she went out on invitation from Murray. Not a celebration, but a sort of wrapping up of one case before the next would, all too soon, swirl around them like an incoming tide. They drove out to Sefton village, to the same pub where she’d taken Callum two weeks earlier. It was nearly three when they got back to the station, and Tara having enjoyed the food and, surprisingly, Murray’s company, felt quite relaxed. The feeling of being at ease for the first time in weeks very soon evaporated. Waiting for her in reception was Callum Armour.
Murray had the good sense to leave them alone but, before taking to the stairs, he cast an icy glare at the dishevelled creature. Callum, too, had the good sense to wait until Murray departed. Tara waited also. She intended to play it cool with him. Treat him courteously in a professional manner. She could hide her true feelings from him with an un-smiling expression, but she couldn’t hide them from herself. She felt a rise in her tummy, the sensation you get when a lift descends suddenly. She was pleased to see him.
‘How can I help you, Callum?’
He had difficulty suppressing his excitement. Realising she had every right to send him packing after the way he manipulated her case to suit his own ends, he had planned to apologise first then ask after her well-being. Instead, he gushed what he had really come to say. The dark stubble would soon be a beard once again, his two-week-old clothes, in need of washing, looking no better now than the decrepit jogging trousers and soiled T-shirts. His breath reeked once again of garlic and cheap lager. He reached her the latest Oxford Alumni magazine.
‘Take a look at this,’ he said.
Feigning indifference, she accepted the magazine and began leafing through it in a cursory manner.
‘Centre pages,’ he said, urgently.
She opened up at the centre, but he didn’t give her the chance to read.
‘The Annual Alumni Reunion. Third weekend in September.
In
Oxford.’
‘So?’
‘Look who’s invited to Latimer as the guest speakers.’
She skimmed through the first column of the article.
‘Anthony Egerton-Hyde and Georgina Maitland,’ he said, gleefully.
She read the legend beneath the photograph of the couple.
‘Two of Latimer College’s alumni successes of the last decade, Anthony Egerton-Hyde and Georgina Maitland. The husband and wife team will share some of the secrets of their amazing rise to prominence in British public life.’
She handed back the magazine, but said nothing.
‘Don’t you realise what this means?’ said Callum, brandishing the open pages. ‘We need to go there, Tara. Kingsley won’t miss out on the opportunity. If we show up and I convince Ollie to go along then all the survivors from our circle of friends will be there. It’s our best chance to corner Justin and get to the truth.’
‘It’s not my business, Callum,’ she replied, walking to the stairs.
‘What? You want to find the killer, don’t you? You’re the detective.’
She returned to face him. The airy feeling in her tummy had flown, replaced, once more, by a fiery temper.
‘Firstly, it’s not my business. Secondly, it’s no concern for Merseyside Police. They pay my wages. It’s not on my patch; I’m not interested, and most importantly, even if I was, I know from experience that I can’t trust you.’
‘But I can’t do it on my own.’
‘Can’t trust you, Callum.’
‘Look, I’m sorry for the way I acted, but you would never have helped me, you would never have given the slightest thought to my problem if I had told you everything from the start. You’d have got your murderer, and I’d still be languishing in that damned house of mine.’ He looked sincerely into her eyes, the last point of appeal. It hung between them for a moment until her head began to shake from side to side.
‘No, Callum. I gave you every chance to tell me all you knew. It wasn’t simply about Audra’s murder. You neglected to tell me about Peter Ramsey’s relationship with Egerton-Hyde; you didn’t mention Tilly and Justin having been a couple, and the best one of all you thought it irrelevant that you’d shared a bed with Georgina. You decided that this case, these murders, are all down to Kingsley and his disappearance, but there are secrets remaining, Callum, and they all seem to point to this band of people. Anyone of them could be the killer, and I’m afraid that I include you in the list.’
‘I need your help, Tara. Please.’
Suddenly, she bent down to her shopping bag and pulled out a copy of the
Daily
Mail
, shoving it into his chest.
‘Page five.’ Her eyes pierced him, her cheeks glowing.
He found the correct page, but Tara willingly recited the headline for him.
‘Former aide to junior minister found stabbed at home. Something else you didn’t tell me, Callum. Why? I thought you’d told me of all the relationships. Why didn’t you tell me that Charlotte had worked for Egerton-Hyde?’
‘I didn’t…’
‘Save it, Callum. But here’s something else for you to think about. We met Egerton-Hyde last Friday evening. You told him we were intending to visit Charlotte. We find her dead on Sunday. A connection? Go home and think of a reason why a government minister might want to murder his former aide. Think, Callum. Go home to that hovel of yours and bloody think.’
Sometimes the silence of an empty room induces loneliness, at others a feeling of tranquillity. Tara closed her door, dropped her bag on the floor, dumped her jacket on the stool at the breakfast bar and made for the fridge. Nothing much appealed within by way of drink. A day old carton of milk, a bottle of pressed apple juice and no more than a glass worth of a Zinfandel rosé: nothing took her fancy. Defeated, she removed a glass from the cupboard above the sink and filled it with water from the tap. By the time she’d reached her sofa she’d discarded both shoes. Legs outstretched, she faced the window and was blessed with evening sunshine over the Mersey, a giant cruise ship making for the docks. A familiar sight nowadays. Thousands of tourists at one go all eager for the delights of Liverpool, intrigued not only by its history but also its rebirth. She’d listened to politicians speak of it and of how the Merseyside Police were helping to shape the bright future of the city. Why then didn’t she feel a part of it? The old problems still simmered away, poverty, unemployment, crime and lack of prospects. Her parents could never have imagined this life for their daughter, an Oxford graduate, now a Scouse police officer, a young woman, pretty it was said, but at twenty-seven years old sitting alone trying to make sense of it all. Trying to make sense of her feelings. Thinking of a broken man living on a broken housing estate. No one could ever have dreamed up that one.
The cold water eased her thirst and revived her mood. When she’d emptied the glass, she set it on the coffee table and in doing so noticed one of the books she’d recently bought.
The
Clock
-
tower
, second story in the
Time
-
Travellers
Club
series by Tilly Reason. She picked it up and began reading from the first chapter. Perhaps she was in the right frame of mind, but she quickly became engrossed in the tale of children at an old boarding school embarking upon adventures by travelling back in time, and in doing so experiencing the ultimate lesson in history. The kids at Pendulum College had been introduced by their history master to an old clock, said to have been one of the earliest mechanical clocks built in England in the Fourteenth Century. As the story unfolds, they learn of the clock’s magnificent powers to transport people through time, to when the clock first sprang to life. The kids, of course, are keen to give it a try, but there are rules and lessons they must first learn. Much of this was the subject of the first novel in the series,
The
First
Form
Time
Travellers
Club
, but in
The
Clock
-
tower
, Tilly had recapped on the basic laws governing time travel. The most important lesson to note was that no one may travel through time in order to change the course of history. What happened has happened, whether or not it was recorded that some time traveller was present at a crucial event in history. Tara thought the explanations were quite complex in places, especially for children. She found the
Grandfather
Paradox
rather intriguing. The time traveller travels to a point in time when his grandfather had not yet married. At that moment, the time traveller kills his grandfather and, therefore, the time traveller is never born when he is meant to be.
Fading light interrupted her reading only as long as it took to switch on the lamp in the corner of the lounge. She returned to the sink and refilled her glass with water, snatching a bag of crisps from the larder while she was there. She felt true escapism in reading Tilly’s book. Tilly must have had great fun creating it. What a useful tool time travel would be to the police detective. To return to the scene of a crime as the crime was committed, or even before it was committed. She came across a word used by Tilly, its meaning explained in the text.
Kairos
is a Greek word with the literal meaning, the right or opportune moment. How strange to witness a crime and as a time traveller powerless to prevent it? Unable to change a thing? Enough to drive anyone mad.
But now, resolved to thinking instead of reading and instead of picturing a world created by Tilly Reason she considered the situation she had tried all afternoon to avoid. The case, Callum’s case, the death of his wife, daughter and alumni of Latimer College. What had been the
kairos
, the right and opportune moment that sparked all of these murders? Justin Kingsley’s disappearance? Peter Ramsey’s secret love affair with a future MP, one tipped for high office? That same MP’s relationship with Charlotte Babb? How did it ever involve Zhou Jian or Tilly Reason?
*
She never thought she’d be back on the Treadwater Estate so soon. The phone call that morning, made to Assistant Chief Kurt Muetzel in Lucerne brought about a change of mind. The Swiss policeman had once again been most helpful, he having made little progress in his investigation of the murder of Zhou Jian. The information he provided for Tara, however, suggested the identity of Zhou Jian’s killer, though still not a motive. It piqued her curiosity once more and prompted her to at least pay a visit to Callum.
Life moves on. Time passes. All places: Liverpool, Oxford, Canterbury, Lucerne, middle-class suburbs, working-class housing estates, all hold secrets, all harbour tales of tragedy, hope and happiness. She felt it as she drew up by the house of Callum Armour. A feeling of change, of moving on. Audra Bagdonas was now consigned to the history of this Netherton estate, the life of Mark Crawley changed irrevocably and that of the young mother Debbie.
Tara watched the girl approach, pushing slowly a pram containing her new born child. Curtis, the toddler, giggled in the arms of the scraggly kid, his father the lizard.
‘Hello, Debbie. You’ve had her then?’ Tara noticed the pink trim of the pram and assumed a baby girl.
Debbie stopped, and smiled warmly. She looked happy, the tension that wracked her face when Tara saw her on the night she came for Mark Crawley had slipped away. She looked a proud mother.
‘Do you want to see her?’ She peeled back the nylon flap across the front of the pram. Inside was a tiny bundle of pink wool, yellow-brown cheeks and a wisp of dark hair.
‘She’s lovely. Have you got a name yet?’
‘Edie, me gran’s name.’
‘Very nice. I’m sure she’s thrilled. Are you keeping well? Managing all right?’
‘Got back with Jamie. He’s helping me.’
Tara glanced at the youth; still he looked a mere child, head shaven, nose stud, left arm obscured in tattoos, a football shirt and shorts hanging on his skinny frame. He stared blankly, no attempt at interaction. She sincerely hoped him a better catch for Debbie than Mark Crawley.
‘Look after yourself, Debbie.’
She turned towards Callum’s house, and, to her surprise, Jamie suddenly broke his silence.
‘If you’re looking for Stinker, he’s not in. Saw him down Marion Square heading for the park.’
‘Thanks.’ The young family continued on their way, leaving Tara gazing at the changes to Callum’s house. Those damned screens were gone, the windows looked clean and the front door, though still battered, was now devoid of graffiti. She smiled her approval and turned back to her car.
Parking in Marion Way behind a supermarket, she crossed the road and walked through the gates into the park. She found him sitting alone on a bench staring idly across the green. It was a bright morning, but she felt early September days growing cooler. Even as she drew nearer he didn’t seem to notice until she stood over him, a rarity that she could look down upon him.
‘Used to bring Midgey up here for his walk,’ he said when at last he noticed her.
‘Nice place, lovely view,’ she lied. As dull a park as she could ever recall. She sat next to him on the bench joining him in staring straight ahead.
‘My father used to bring me here. He could remember the place before they built the houses and flats around it. Changed times.’
‘I read one of Tilly’s books.’
‘Looking for clues to the murders? I’ve tried that; drove me nuts.’
‘It’s a good story. Tilly was very talented.’ He didn’t respond. ‘She used a word that set me thinking.
Kairos
, do you remember it?’
He shook his head, no, and continued gazing to the distance. She looked at the side of his face, handsome in profile. His hair looked clean and combed, little breeze this morning to disturb it, his face shaven and his skin looking fresh. He’d even managed a clean shirt and a neat V-neck jumper.
‘It’s Greek. It means the right or opportune moment.’
He suddenly turned towards her.
‘You’re thinking about the murders again?’
Her eyes widened, but his continued to stare, boring inside her, searching her. His question hung between them. She didn’t feel inclined to answer. His staring didn’t seem to need one. Without warning, he leaned over, and in a single movement his lips touched hers. She recoiled in surprise, but then his arms encircled her narrow shoulders, and he completed the kiss. Several followed before she gently pushed him back, sufficient to cool the moment. Their eyes continued to challenge like a pair of boxers circling in the ring, squaring up for the fight. He kept his arms around her, but her hands lay flat upon his chest, braced, when ready, to push him away.
‘I see you’ve taken those awful screens down?’
He grinned, conceding that he knew the moment had passed. His arms released their grip, and instinctively, he slid away creating a space between them.
‘I’ve been thinking about the things you said. That I shouldn’t have sunk to this level. There are loads of people out there who lose their partners, the people they love. I shouldn’t be wasting my time here.’
She closed her eyes briefly. She had to or the tears would flow. She couldn’t help confusing her thoughts, mixing his problems with her own, thinking of him losing Tilly, her own loss at Oxford, her time spent with Callum and the kiss that had just occurred.
‘What do you mean?’
‘A fresh start.’
‘That’s great, Callum. I’m happy for you.’
‘As soon as I find the man who killed Tilly and Emily, and I’m not going to do that festering away in Netherton. I’m going back to Oxford, to that Alumni meeting. It’s the most likely place for Justin to show up. And if he’s there waiting to get the rest of us, I’ll be ready for him.’
‘In that case, I suppose I’d better come along, too.’