Lynch (14 page)

Chapter 17

Thomas Walter slipped into a pair of joggers and a sweatshirt. He knew his girth was such that, jogging in public, he would likely frighten small children and fair maidens, and so he never ventured outside his gated house in
Sussex
in anything less than a suit. Not even his wife, God rest her miserable soul, had ever seen him without a tie.

Since her demise, he had put on four stone in weight—one for every year without her. But despite his weight gain, since his wife’s death his sex life had dramatically improved. It was remarkable that the higher your bank balance became, the lower your inhibitions went. The women he entertained didn’t care how big his waist was or how small his appendage, so long as he was stuffing their panties with money and their nostrils with white dust. His zip parties were legendary—the girls would zip a line and unzip his trousers. He never touched the stuff himself. Not since New Year 1999.

He took a towel and draped it around his neck like a professional boxer and walk-jogged to the gym room behind the kitchen. He had no mirrors in his gym; he was anything but vain. Instead, he had one panoramic wall of privacy glass that allowed him to look out into his enormous garden but did not award the gardener or the paparazzi the privilege of looking in. Journalists had become more than a nuisance since he was decorated with an OBE two years ago. The British press so loves a scandal among the honourable. But Walter would have no truck with that. His privacy—particularly in his business matters outside of the patent world—was paramount.

He opened the door of the gym and placed his towel on a rack by the cooling system unit. On a sensor relay, detecting his motion, the lights came on and the 54 inch television on the wall illuminated. Thomas Walter was a geek, surrounding himself in the newest technological advances, paying over the odds in order to acquire some tech-toys before they went on general sale. In fact, the 3DTV home cinema system in his converted loft was a Sony prototype that was eventually never released due to cost restraints.

As he eased himself down onto his rowing machine, he picked up the wireless control panel and tapped the screen, scrolling through the TV channel collections. He selected
Music
and then
Popular
, and tuned to a channel that was playing the current download charts.

He gripped the pull-handles on the machine and drew backwards, hearing the whir of the motor on the wheel at the front and feeling the air rush against his face as it turned rapidly. He remembered to breathe as he did so, inhaling as he heaved back, exhaling as he eased forward, carried by the draw of the returning oar.

He managed six rows before his cheeks were flushed and he could feel an uncomfortable tingling in his posterior. He let go of the handles and let it whip back into its holder. As he slid the seat back in the machine, he reached and picked up a can of Coke and a tube of Pringles that he had placed there earlier.

Picking up the control panel again, he skimmed through the TV channels, catching snippets of conversations and advertisements and jingles, until he settled on BBC News 24.

A reporter was live at the scene of a three-car pile-up on the A1, just south of
Peterborough
. It was a miracle, he said, that every single occupant of the cars had survived—although one was taken to hospital with relatively minor injuries.

What was a miracle, Thomas Walter thought, was that the reporter thought his tie matched his suit.

Walter was fastidious in his dress. He no longer visited Saville Row or
Jermyn Street
—he was such a good customer that they came to him for private fittings either at the office or his home. Of the eighty-seven ties he had, he wore sixty-four of them in random rotation, ensuring at least a thirty-two day period elapsed before donning the same tie again. It was thirty-two days for a reason: one exact month meant there was the two-in-one chance he could be seen wearing the same tie on the first of each month, which would be disastrous.

His remaining ties were reserved for special occasions, including novelty Christmas ties with light-up Rudolph noses and a Santa that chuckled when you pressed his belly; a series of silk cravats for the more extravagant social engagements he was required to attend, and a number of Old Boys ties that aligned him with one society or another.

He was about to change the channel when the field reporter handed back to the studio and the overtly pompous presenter turned from the VT to the camera, but the tickertape along the bottom of the screen drew his attention.

Yorkshire
man murdered outside apartment. Police seeking leads.

The news caption scrolled by among other footers and Walter held his breath until it spooled around again. He smiled. ‘Fernandez, you old goat.’ The Spaniard had acted quicker than Walter had anticipated. He was impressed.

He trawled through the higher-numbered TV stations until he came to the BBC regional channels on his subscription package and he stopped on BBC Yorkshire & Humberside. He popped the lid from the tube of Pringles and waited for the local news.

When it came on, the story got top billing. ‘A local man from Harrogate has been found murdered in the hallway outside his own flat this evening, shot twice in what police are calling a non-opportunistic killing,’ the news presenter said. ‘The door of his flat was left open but nothing appeared to have been taken; at this stage, police are not ruling out an attempted burglary, but consider it unlikely.’

The footage on the TV cut to a sweeping shot of the flats and the neighbours who stood around just outside the police tape.

‘The man, whose name has not yet been released by police but who has been named locally as Mark Stanton—seen here in this photograph acquired by
BBC Look North
—was described by local residents as a kind and compassionate man much loved in the community.’

Thomas Walter was disappointed. If it wasn’t Fernandez killing Kane Rider, there must be another murderous son of a gun in
Yorkshire
.

But the VT cut to an interview of a resident. ‘I live just downstairs from him. The guy from the other flat just ran and I didn’t know what to do. I have a daughter to protect. I locked my door and heard someone stumble down the stairs talking in a foreign language, like Spanish or something. So I called the police.’

Fernandez, you idiot. Could he have gotten it so wrong?

Walter lumbered to his feet and walked slowly to his study where his mobile phone sat on the desk. María Herrera would have to hear about this. And she would not be pleased.

María Castillo Herrera closed her eyes and listened to the sound of silence. She had been home from a long day in the field for only thirty minutes and she had already packed Lucia off to bed, saw Marianne out of the door with a hug, dined on microwave macaroni, and drank two fingers of gin.

Lucia was getting progressively worse and María knew it wouldn’t be long before she’d wake up wheezing and choking. Currently, all was quiet, but she was on constant alert for change. She would have to arrange another appointment with Dr Roth very soon.

Her daughter, now at the age of eleven, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when she was two years old. Her father, a two-year relationship that died the day María found him cheating on her, was no longer on the scene. She didn’t let him stick around for her third trimester, let alone the birth and subsequent upbringing. Cheating on your pregnant girlfriend, in María’s mind, was the lowest example of scum.

Three months after Lucia was diagnosed, she strapped her daughter into the child seat of her car and moved closer to Señor Ramirez in order to further her career within his international import/export organisation and accept the level of care that Ramirez could command from renowned clinical practitioners.

Her life had changed dramatically since then—the house she lived in was twice as large as before, the specialist care Lucia was receiving was of the highest standard, and she was better able to draw a line between her work-life and her home-life. Heaven forbid her family should find out the exact nature of her employment. But when she ‘clocked off from the office’ as she liked to call it—either when a job was done or when Ramirez had no further need for her specialist services for the evening—she would sit aside her job title just as easily as locking up her weapon. Apart from a small Glock which she kept under the mattress in her bedroom, a necessity in these turbulent times, she allowed no weaponry inside her house. If she had any visitors from that side of her life, every one of them knew the rule and abided by it—even Ramirez, who dropped by very occasionally but always with a smile and never a word about work in front of Lucia, regardless of how much she may or may not be able to understand.

In the hush of silence, María kept her eyes closed and counted the passing seconds. The transience of time is an inevitability, with only the crack of a clock marking the arbitrary distinction between one second and another.

She had counted to three hundred and seventeen when she heard a moan and a whimper from upstairs. María snapped her eyes open, flexed her neck, and stood erect in one swift and steady movement.

Lucia had managed to kick most of the sheets from the bed, one end twisted around her left foot as though unwilling to succumb to the floor. She was wagging her head the way she does, the fist of one hand popping in and out of her wide mouth as her head rocked back and forth. Her eyes sought the corner of the room and fixed a stare on the shadows of toys she never played with, and the high-pitched whine she offered the world came as much from the heart as it did the throat.

‘It’s okay,
mi hija
,’ María said. ‘Mama’s right here, sweetheart.’ She came to the side of the bed and knelt down, untangling the bed sheets and straightening Lucia’s legs. She plucked a sanitary wipe from the box on the bedside cabinet and wrestled with one of Lucia’s hands as her daughter quickly pushed the other hand into her mouth. Her chin and neck was awash with thick saliva. Finished with one hand, María took another wipe and cleaned Lucia’s face, trying to pin down both hands with her elbow as she did so. Lucia moaned her indignation.

‘Let me—just let me do this—okay,
mi hija
—nearly done—let me clean—no, let me finish.’ She ran her arm across her forehead and set about cleaning Lucia’s other hand, twisting out the fingers and cleaning deep between them. She began to sing a lullaby her grandmother had taught her as a child, and Lucia smiled and rocked her head and tried again to get a fist into her mouth.

‘Enough, now,’ María said. ‘Let me finish. Come on, sweetheart.’ As she cleaned the fingers, she also massaged the muscles in the palms of her hands and along each finger separately, attempting to straighten her hands out as best she could. Lucia kept crushing her fingers together again and María sighed. ‘Please,
mi hija
. Enough.’

When her mobile phone rang, María scrunched the wet wipe in her fist and dipped her head onto Lucia’s stomach.

‘Mama,’ Lucia said. ‘Mama, Mama.’

‘I know, honey. There’s always something.’

She struggled with Lucia’s arms as she dipped into her pocket for her phone. It was a British number calling her and so, in English, she said, ‘Hello?’

‘Bit of a cock up, I’m afraid,’ Thomas Walter said. She’d recognised his pompous voice from the first syllable.

‘Mr Walter,’ she said by way of greeting. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Where’s your old boy Fernandez?’

María pinned Lucia down with an arm across her body and pressed the phone to her ear as Lucia tried to resist restraint. ‘He’s yet to check in with me.’

‘I figured as much,’ Walter said. ‘I expect you don’t know the damage, then.’

Gritting her teeth against Lucia’s thrashing, she said, ‘Cut to the chase, Mr Walter.’

‘Is this a secure line?’

‘My line is encrypted. Please continue,’ María said.

Walter cleared his throat. ‘It would appear your friend may have…miscalculated his sums.’

‘Excuse me?’