Time to Pay (40 page)

‘Well, you can stop paying now, I guess, and get on with your life.'

‘Yeah.' Stephenson didn't look overjoyed at the news. ‘What will you do? Will you tell the police?'

Gideon shook his head and shrugged.

‘As I said, it's up to Tilly. Personally, I won't do anything, but I can't answer for her. And if it has any bearing on Damien's murder, I guess the police will have to be told. Sorry.'

‘No, it's all right,' Stephenson said dully, shaking his head, and Gideon lifted his jacket off the back of the chair and put it on.

‘You sent the cash to a PO box, in an unmarked envelope . . .'

‘Yeah. Once a month.'

‘Well, if it's any consolation, it all went straight to Damien's favourite charity, so some good came out of it.'

Gideon drove home with the story of Marcus' tragic death playing and replaying in his mind like a film.

Had that been Damien's intention in blackmailing the culprits? Was it so he could be sure they'd never forget? ‘
It wasn't as if he was asking for a huge amount
,' Stephenson had said. Had he perhaps asked what he felt each individual could afford? After all, what would seem a crippling amount to a nightwatchman like Tetley would be just so much pocket money to ‘something in the City' Robin Tate, with his manor house and motorbike museum. And the consequence of revelation would surely be less for Tetley than the owner of a health spa or a would-be politician; it probably wouldn't even make the news. This made it all the more ironic that it should have been Tetley who'd reacted with such catastrophic violence.

On the seat beside him Gideon's mobile phone chirruped several times, announcing messages left while he was out of range, and then began to ring. The display told him it was Tilly and, having ignored her call earlier, he felt it was only fair to pick up.

‘Gideon! I've been trying to get you for ages. Where have you been?'

‘Sorry.'

‘I was getting a bit worried. Did you get the diary?'

‘Yes, I did. Look, we need to talk but I'm in the car at the moment . . .'

‘Well, where are you? Could you come over?'

‘I could do but I'm not terribly close. I might be rather late.' Gideon knew it had been close on half past nine when he'd left the Goose and Ferret.

‘I don't mind, if you don't.'

‘OK.' He did a quick calculation. ‘I'll probably be about thirty – thirty-five minutes.'

‘I'll put the kettle on.'

By the time Gideon reached Puddlestone Farm it was getting on for half past ten, and he apologised to Tilly.

‘The Land Rover is more of a staying chaser than a five-furlong beast,' he said lightly. ‘Hope I haven't woken your parents.'

‘They're in the front room watching a film. Or at least Mum is. It's a fair bet Dad nodded off about ten minutes after it started. Come in and sit down.'

Gideon followed her through to the newly refurbished kitchen and sat while she made them each a mug of coffee. She put a biscuit tin on the table beside his mug and it was only then that he realised he hadn't eaten since a sandwich lunch at midday.

Tilly sat opposite him, and quickly spotted the bag-wrapped package he'd laid on the table.

‘Is that it?'

‘Yeah.' Gideon took the book out and pushed it towards her. ‘What you want is on the last written page, where the ribbon is. It seems he abandoned the diary after that.'

She reached for it with shaking hands, and he helped himself to a biscuit and watched the frown grow on her face as she read.

She reached the bottom of the page, glanced briefly at Gideon, and then started again at the top, as if needing a second chance to take it in.
When she finished, this time, she put the book down and fished in her pocket for a handkerchief.

‘I don't know what I expected,' she said a little unsteadily. ‘It wasn't suicide, was it? Marcus didn't kill himself.'

‘No, he didn't.' Gideon couldn't quite gauge her mood.

Her eyes were swimming with unshed tears but suddenly she smiled and they spilled over and down her cheeks.

‘He didn't kill himself!' she repeated, and what Gideon heard in her voice was immense relief. It completely vindicated his decision to tell her what Damien had discovered.

‘We always worried, you know?' she went on. ‘We thought perhaps it was because he was away from home; that he was homesick. He didn't want to go, you see. At the last moment he got cold feet but Damien persuaded him – no, that's not fair – we all did. We all wanted him to do it, because we thought he'd always regret it if he didn't. And then, when . . .' She plied the handkerchief again. ‘We all felt so
guilty
! It was awful!' she concluded with a rush of remembered grief.

Gideon didn't know what to say, but he felt he'd lived through so many emotions with this family that he knew them well enough for silence, and so just waited, occupied with his own, far from pleasant, thoughts. The journey from Charlton Montague had given him plenty of time to reflect on the sequence of events since Damien's death and, finally, he felt he was beginning to see just a glimmer of light at the end of the long and very dark tunnel.

After a few moments, Tilly picked up the diary and looked at the page again.

‘It's amazing to finally know, after all this time, but there's a lot he doesn't say. I mean, this game they were playing . . .'

‘I think I can help you there. That's where I was this evening. I went to see one of the guys who was there that night. The one Julian calls Gary. He filled me in.' And starting from the beginning, much as Stephenson had, he told Tilly exactly how her younger brother had died.

She listened, for the most part in silence, until he reached the part about Marcus looking scared, then she broke in, ‘Yes, he would have been. He never liked heights.'

When Gideon came to the end, she frowned. ‘Tell me again. That part about the ruined castle.
Who
did he say dared Marcus to climb the wall?'

Gideon searched his memory.

‘Lloyd, I think. Yes, I'm sure he said it was Lloyd. Why?'

All at once, Tilly looked bitterly angry.

‘Why would he do that? He knew very well that Marcus was terrified of heights! Why did Lloyd pick the one thing he knew he would really hate?'

‘
YOU THINK LLOYD
knew he'd be scared?'

‘I don't just think it, I know it,' Tilly asserted. ‘When Marcus was fifteen, he and a friend climbed up a haystack Dad had made down in the lower pasture, and when Marcus got to the top he just froze and wouldn't come down. In the end we had to dismantle half the stack so that it was like giant steps and he managed to kind of shuffle down those on his bottom. But he was in a hell of a state; he almost fainted and he was as white as a sheet.'

‘And Lloyd knew about that?'

‘He was here. He helped us with the bales. So he knew damn well Marcus couldn't have walked along that wall!'

She faced Gideon over the old pine table, her expression a mixture of anger and bewilderment.

‘They'd all been drinking,' Gideon pointed out, in Lloyd's defence. ‘I don't think any of them were capable of being very rational.'

‘But that was deliberately cruel! He was our friend.'

‘I know. But reading that diary this afternoon, I think I got a pretty good idea of what it was like on that course; Julian wrote in some detail and he wasn't enjoying it much. Most of the trainers were ex-army, and they were pretty tough, especially on the fitness side of things. From what he said, Lloyd came in for quite a bit of teasing from them because he was the oldest, while Marcus seems to have done extremely well. Julian wasn't even sure that Lloyd would make the team . . .'

Tilly was watching him intensely.

‘You're saying he was jealous of Marcus?'

‘Well, it wouldn't have been surprising, would it? Lloyd probably saw it as his last chance for glory – at thirty-odd, he wasn't going to be in contention for another Olympic team – and it's quite possible that he saw Marcus as the young gun who was going to cost him his place . . .'

‘Gideon! You don't think he did it on purpose? That he
meant
him to fall?'

‘No, I wouldn't go that far. I don't think he
planned
it, as such. I think it's more likely that it was a spur of the moment thing, brought on by the drink and a fair bit of resentment. Basically, it was a chance to get back at the boy. If Marcus bunked out and didn't try, he'd be humiliated in front of his peers. If he tried and fell, there was always the chance that he might be put out of action, which would have been all to the good from Lloyd's point of view, but to be fair, I'd guess he was thinking more along the lines of a sprained ankle or a broken arm. I should imagine Lloyd was probably as shocked as the rest of them by what actually happened. No wonder he was
so keen to cover it up. If Damien had found out that it was him who suggested the dare – knowing what he did – he'd really have been in hot water!'

‘But he was our
friend
 . . .' Tilly said, brokenly, the sense of betrayal bringing tears to her eyes again. ‘And what about yesterday? Do you still think he attacked Reuben?'

‘I don't like the idea, but I can't really think who else, can you?'

Tilly shook her head.

‘No, I suppose not. But I still find it hard to believe Lloyd would do something like that. I mean, it's one thing to goad someone into a dangerous situation – if that's how it was – but quite another to go to them with the cold-blooded intention of beating them up! I'm sorry, I just can't get my head round it.'

‘He may not have done the physical part himself,' Gideon suggested. ‘I've a fair idea Lloyd knows where he can get his hands on a bit of extra muscle when he needs it and, unless I'm very much mistaken, this isn't the first time he's tried to get hold of the diary.'

Then, realising that if Lloyd was to be brought to book, Tilly would almost certainly find out anyway, he took a deep breath and told her everything he knew, from the break-ins, the attacks on himself, and what he'd discovered about Damien's blackmailing activities.

Strangely, she accepted this last information more readily than he'd expected, especially when he explained his theory as to where the money had gone.

‘He just wanted them to suffer like we did,'
Tilly said when he came to the end. ‘Oh, God! This is a nightmare!' She buried her face in her hands momentarily, then rubbed her eyes and looked up at Gideon. ‘What are we going to do?'

‘Well, I've got the beginnings of an idea,' he said slowly. ‘I was thinking about it on the way over. The thing is, although we've got a lot of pointers, we haven't actually got much evidence, so we're going to have to trick Lloyd into showing his hand. It may not work, but I think our ace in the hole is the fact that, as yet, he doesn't know that
we know
about the diary . . .'

The grand opening of the Dorset Cottage restaurant was at lunchtime on Friday, five days after Gideon retrieved Julian Norris' diary from its hiding place in the hollow tree. Owned by friends of Eve's who had entered, at her instigation, into a mutually beneficial business relationship with Giles and his sparkling apple wine, all the Priory crowd had been invited to its launch, and it was at this function that Gideon intended to set his plan in motion.

In the intervening time he worked on a portrait commission, saw a woman about a dog with a travel phobia, rode work with Tilly twice, and took Blackbird over the cross-country course on Home Farm, practising for the upcoming team chase.

His relationship with Pippa was still strained and for the most part she seemed to be avoiding him, but the upside to this unhappy state of affairs was that it made it easier to keep his newfound knowledge about Lloyd to himself.

On Thursday evening, which was unseasonably mild, he and Eve took the motorbike out, collected fish and chips, and ate them from the paper on the seafront at Lyme Regis.

Despite his busy schedule, barely an hour passed when Gideon didn't find himself going over the plan that he and Tilly had hatched in the early hours of the Monday morning, searching for possible flaws or loopholes. Gazing out over a calm sea, with Eve leaning against him, the leather of her motorcycle jacket creaking as she unashamedly picked the crispest chips from their joint portion, Gideon's mind wandered once again. It seemed to him there must be a myriad of opportunities for their scheme to fail, but he could see no way they could make it any more watertight.

Beside him, Eve sighed deeply.

‘You OK?' he asked, giving her shoulder a squeeze.

‘Yeah, just thinking.'

‘'Bout what?'

‘Things.'

‘What kind of things?' Gideon felt a little uneasy. It was the kind of non-conversation that he felt sure was shared by lovers everywhere and which, in his experience, often presaged a discussion of some importance. ‘Is something wrong?'

She turned her head to look at him, her heavy loose plait flopping over her shoulder.

‘No, not really. It's perfect. Almost
too
perfect. That's what makes me feel a little sad. It's like . . . nothing this good can last. It reminds me of those films where the hero and his girlfriend are
just blissfully happy at the beginning, and you think – uh-oh, that can't last. Trouble ahead!' She smiled. ‘Listen to me – what am I waffling on about? Take no notice.'

Gideon squeezed her shoulder again, harder this time. Considering his plans for the next day, it wasn't really what he needed to hear.

‘C'mon, it's turning cold,' he said cheerfully, slapping her leather-clad rump. ‘Let's get back and have something deeply warming and disgracefully alcoholic!'