A Limited Justice (#1 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (35 page)

Camille’s soft voice breathed his name gently. “Marco.” And the background tannoy of the airport departure lounge showing that he’d timed it exactly as intended.

“Camille, we need to meet.” Then, cutting confidently across her next words. “In London, the weekend of the eighteenth... you choose where.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

November: Lecce. Italy

The girls were playing ‘ring o’ roses’ in the small shaded courtyard, as Fiona drank wine and watched them, and Jessie fed Pia fresh peaches from the orchard on their three acres of land. A soft breeze blew her baby curls across Pia’s face and Jessie pushed them back, marvelling that all of them had inherited Michael’s golden waves and none of them her poker-straight brunette. Although their brown eyes were all hers, especially Pia’s.

She turned her face upwards to catch the last rays of the sun, as Fiona watched her protectively. She was so young and it was so wrong, but then, there was no ‘deserving’ death.

The breeze lifted suddenly, snatching a shutter that covered one of the Villa’s high windows and Jessie looked up, catching a glimpse of the strange shapes that the evening sun threw across the glass. For one short second she saw Michael’s wide smile looking down, watching his ‘girls’, as he’d called them. Then the breeze settled and rested the shutter back, and he was gone.

She saw him more often now. A glimpse in the mirror as she turned, a shadow among the trees in the orchard, and every day in her children’s faces. She knew it wouldn’t be long now before they were together, and she was at peace with it. Not welcoming it, for the girl’s sake, but calmer now that she knew they were safe. With the private adoption finally completed, making them the daughters of Signora Flavia Marino. Soon, Fiona McNamee would be gone forever, too.

Fiona watched Jessie and remembered the day months ago when she had first contacted her. A day that changed all their lives. She’d recognised the kind girl from the jury five years before, the only one to come and see her after the trial. Expressing her sadness at Brian’s death, and at how badly the legal system had handled the verdict.

Jessie had been different back then, fit and healthy, with the bloom that came from a happy marriage. And her joy had somehow hurt Fiona’s own new widowhood, making it even more raw, only the girl’s sheer kindness preventing it turning to bitterness. She’d been young, and full of the future, and Fiona had felt worn and spent beside her.

But the Jessie who had called at the quiet, lonely house in Glengormley six months before was a very different girl, worn down by grief and illness and afraid for the future. Not selfishly, but for her children. They’d chatted and their joint sadness had eventually struck a bargain that would give Fiona and the children new life, and Jessie lasting peace.

Suddenly, Ruby pulled Fiona by the hand, out of her dream, while Anya took Jessie’s, drawing them into their pretty game. Dancing clumsily around the small courtyard while Pia watched; again and again and again, until they ‘all fell down’. An hour later, when the girls were in bed, Fiona brought out more wine, and the blue folder that held the details of their future. And the preparations started for Jessie’s last journey, the saddest of all their lives.

Switzerland

It had been the hardest decision of her life, and she knew that she would never leave here now. She would never see her beautiful daughters again, except in her mind’s eye, but she was content.

Jessie looked around the small, still room, admiring the white sheets and walls, their soothing coolness enhanced by the view from her window over Lake Geneva.

Switzerland was famous for so many beautiful things; the Alps, priceless watches, scrumptious chocolate and... Egress, the most famous euthanasia programme in the world.

She hadn’t chosen her abusive childhood, she hadn’t chosen her sudden widowhood, and she hadn’t chosen the stranger she’d become, born of the mess inside her head. But she had chosen Michael and her children, and she could and would choose this, the way in which she died, rather than allow her children to watch her waste away, making them frightened and confused.

All the papers were secure now and the endless letters written, to be opened at important times like birthdays and graduations and weddings. The little trinkets and small notes had been left, wrapped in gift paper, to be opened when the girls cried too much, or asked about their parents. Pretty little things, to make them smile and give them answers. She trusted Fiona to make the decisions now, knowing that she loved them nearly as much as she did. She would be a good mother.

They’d driven here yesterday, leaving the girls with their new nanny, and Fiona had recorded her final words, typing them up neatly. Now the final letter lay in front of her, awaiting her signature.

In a moment, they would come, and Fiona would hold her hand. No priest, no vicar, just the doctor and them, and then just them alone. Then finally, just the peace that would descend on the small room a few short minutes later. Giving them just long enough to say goodbye and leaving Fiona in silence, but never alone again.

12th November 2012

The home invasion had been wrapped up. The killers had turned out to be the couple’s grandson and one of his friends. The disgust of the arrest stronger than any of them had felt before, as if there were no more taboos to break after this.

Craig’s relationship with Julia was simmering and she was giving him time. He couldn’t use her to forget Camille and he couldn’t forget Camille until they met and he dealt with the past between them. Their meeting was five days away now, still far enough for him to cope with.

Now he was looking out at his river, thinking, and hoping that something would happen soon to stop him. He reached into his briefcase for a file and caught sight of his sports kit, abandoned in the corner weeks before. Completely forgotten about. That’s what he’d do tonight. Time to get fit again, before his six-pack became a slab of toffee.

The sudden hard knock that shook his door could only have been Liam’s, and he called him in without turning.

“Here, how’d you know it was me? My Chanel?”

The coy tone he used for the last two words made Craig laugh. “Hardly – not unless Eau de Bricky is their new range.”

Liam feigned mock-offence, making to leave. “Ah now, is that any way to greet the bearer of interesting news? I’ll just leave then, will I?”

Craig put out his hand, for the paper he could see hidden behind Liam’s back. “Give.”

“I will, but I’ll tell you what it is as well,” handing it to him as he spoke.

“We’ve just had a call from the Swiss police. Hey, are they the ones who carry the poles?”

“You’re thinking of the Swiss Guard at the Vatican. The Swiss police wear military uniform. What did they want anyway? “

Then he made the connection and sat forward, urgently scanning the sheet. “Have they found Adams?”

“In a manner of speaking. She’s dead.”

“What? How? The tumour?”

“Nope. She did herself in. In that Egress clinic, on Friday. They cremated her. She left instructions in a letter, to be sent to us.”

Egress... Exit

“Have we got it yet?”

“Not the original, they’re transcribing and sending it over now. Apparently it’s quite something, or ‘Zut Alors’ as yer man on the phone said.”

“Was she alone when she did it?” The image of a living Fiona McNamee still haunting him.

“No, some old lady was with her, grey hair. They said it was her grandmother, but she doesn’t have one does she?”

“I doubt it. It’s Fiona McNamee in another disguise. Any details of the car they arrived in? Plane? Anything?”

“Davy’s on it but it’ll draw a blank. That pair have more passports than Jason Bourne.”

Craig nodded. The note in front of him gave details of the call that Liam had just taken, and it covered what they had discussed. The two women had arrived without the children on November 8th, the day before the assisted suicide. In a Fiat, bought or hired, who knew? There would be no trail on it, he was sure of that; there’d been none for any of the other cars they’d used.

“Who signed for her ashes?”

“Grandma. There’s a photo of her coming through now. She looks like Mrs Claus only thinner, name of Carola Brana.”

“It might as well have been Mrs Claus for all the good it will do us. Let’s see what the letter says.”

The transcript had just completed and Nicky brought them in two hot copies to match the drinks that Craig had already poured. They sat reading and drinking in complete silence for twenty minutes.

It started with ‘I, Jessica Adams’ and ended with her signature, faint and spidery, the way Craig remembered his grandmother’s becoming in her last illness.

It was all there, every tiny detail of how she’d killed each of them. Maria Burton, Ian McCandless, Lynsey Taylor and Liam Cullen, then had killed herself and been cremated. Craig looked at Liam, smiling grimly.

“How does it feel to be on a list of the dead?”

“Bloody lucky, that’s how it feels. Although if I could get my hands on her...”

“She’d run through your fingers...”

They nodded at the macabre reality of his words and continued reading. Everything was there, the wire, the bolt-gun, the deliberate fight in ‘The Ark’. The remand and bail perfectly timed. The pure heroin, her stint as a canteen worker using aconite from the farm’s Monkshood to spice up Liam’s chips, then the journey from Belfast with Fina Morales, her supposed ‘Spanish au pair’.

She claimed that everything had been one hundred percent her plan, and one hundred percent her fault. She was fed up with the injustice of a world that had killed her husband at thirty and was killing her at twenty-seven. And she’d never forgotten the treatment of Brian McNamee at all their hands.

She outlined her father’s abuse of her from the age of eleven to when she finally left home at fifteen, and how weak she thought the system was, accepting the word of a paedophile and his wife instead of the child’s. She’d documented the times, dates and details of the reports she made of his abuse to the school, all ignored. Craig wondered if it might be enough to bring a case against her father and the school even now. He was sure that Jenny Archer in Child Protection would be keen to try.

She had thought of absolutely everything, even including a copy of the fake adoption papers making Fina Morales the children’s legal guardian. The name and address would be false of course: there would be another legal set in completely different names hidden elsewhere.

Craig wasn’t sure that it mattered. Jessica Adams had loved her children and she described their new carer as a loving woman who would give them the best in life. Was it important if she was called Fina or Helga...or Fiona McNamee? They’d give the information to Interpol but Craig knew it would end up filed in a cupboard forever, unless the children came to their attention, and they never would.

They read in silence until their cups were drained, and longer, and then put the papers down, nodding at each other in agreement. There was no way that they’d get a conviction here. Jessica Adams had confessed to everything and she was dead. Even if they suspected Fiona McNamee was still alive and had colluded in the murders, there’d be no evidence to incriminate her. They’d been far too clever for that.

There hadn’t been any movement out of Fiona McNamee’s account since she’d ‘died’, or into Jessica Adams’. And without any evidence to link her directly to the murders what could they actually prosecute McNamee for, if they ever found her? ‘Falsifying her own death’? ‘Legally adopting while dead’?

As Lucia would say. “Good luck with that one”.

But Liam was a victim so Craig put it to him. “What do you think? Worth pursuing or not?”

Liam looked at him sombrely for a moment, until a small smile cracked his wide, pale face. Craig could hear a joke coming,

“I’m going to copy this and frame it. There’s mileage to get from being dead. It could get me all sorts of sympathy, maybe even a few free pints.”

Craig smiled wryly. “Maybe...but I wouldn’t hold your breath on it.” Then they both realised what he’d said and laughed.

“Aye well, at the end of the day, what’s the hope of finding them? A snowball’s in hell. And what happens to the kids if we do? They’ve already lost two parents, they don’t need to lose another one do they, and end up with a paedo granddad? Even if we managed to prove she was Fiona McNamee, we don’t have anything to tie her to the deaths. Everything we have, prints, photos, confession, everything, proves Adams did it.”

He put the paper down and linked his hands behind his head, rocking back on his chair precariously.

“I say let her rest, and that’s what I’ll be saying to the rest of the victims’ families, with your OK? We already have a dead killer, and not a hope in hell of punishing anyone except those kids in future, and that wouldn’t be any sort of justice. Let it go, boss.”

Craig nodded in agreement. “OK. You speak to the families and I’ll do the report for the public prosecutors. We’ll file it under ‘no further action’ unless they say otherwise, which I don’t think they will.”