Cause of Death (20 page)

Don't let him know you're there
.

And Karen could so vividly remember how she had hidden her face and crammed her fists into her mouth and bitten down hard enough for it to hurt, but she hadn't made a sound while Brig Morten raped her mother only yards away.

Now he seemed to pause outside the door and she wondered if he suspected something, but a moment later he slid the key into the lock, fumbling the operation twice before completing it. He swung the door wide and stepped over the threshold, then paused again, sniffing this time, like some massive old hound. He could smell her, she thought. The only clean thing in this filthy room.

Then two things happened very fast. Brig grabbed the door and slammed it closed and Karen fired, hitting him in the gut.

Brig Morten staggered back, momentarily surprised. He stared at her and she saw the recognition dawn. Karen fired again, this time aiming for a head shot, but Brig was far from finished. He snarled, launched his full weight towards her. Karen side stepped and her shot went wide, grazing his shoulder, deflecting him for a split second before he came again.

Karen swore softly. She was exactly where she did not want to be now, wedged between the door and the bed and the man mountain about to throw himself on her.

Karen knew she had one chance. She did not fire again. She waited. In reality it was less than seconds, but that waiting time seemed to stretch beyond all reality. She knew this was the only way, knew also that she had, quite literally, just the one chance to get it right this time.

He grabbed her hair, tugging her head back, then went for the gun hand. Karen could feel his breath on her face, feel the spittle as he panted with the sudden exertion. He was bleeding heavily but nothing seemed to slow him down. Karen had expected that. Nothing ever slowed Brig Morten down.

That sense of stretched time seemed even more acute. His hand was about to close over hers, but she snatched it away. Her final shot was upward through his lower jaw, not at quite the angle Karen would have liked, but it did the job. As he began to fall, Karen pushed hard, deflecting the body away from her and skittering away into the corner before leaping on to the bed. She stood there, poised above the man, still not sure, in spite of the fact that the top of his head was absent from the rest, that he was actually dead.

He didn't move.

The noise of Brig Morten crashing down on to his bedsit floor had aroused the ire of the tenant below. Karen could hear him shouting and cursing. Without another glance she hopped off the bed and out through the kitchen, down the fire escape. She tucked the gun into her raincoat pocket and removed the coat and latex gloves. She had blood on her black trousers and just a little on her dark T-shirt. She folded her coat so that the mess was concealed on the inside, barely pausing in her headlong flight down the rusted stairs. A shout from the room she had just vacated evidenced the fact that the tenant below had done more than shout at Brig Morten through the floor.

Karen loped down the last flight and ran out of the yard and between the houses. Then she slowed down, walked at a moderate pace to the end of the road and only then did she risk looking back. Nothing. No one in pursuit.

Could have been worse, Karen thought, adrenalin still surging through her body. She turned right at the end of the road and slipped into an alleyway she had scouted earlier, between two rows of houses. Rubbish was out for collection and soon Karen's coat and gloves and gun had joined it, stuffed in a black plastic bag and then into a half-empty wheelie bin. Then she walked on to where she'd left her car, an odd feeling of emptiness mingled with relief replacing the adrenalin.

Now what? Karen Parker thought.

A
ndy had managed to make an appointment with Terry Birch for three thirty that Monday afternoon. He was working as a full-time primary teacher now and finished around three.

‘Come to the school,' Terry said. ‘We can chat before I drive home. If that's OK?'

St Anne's Primary was the sort of village school that had only a few dozen kids, one teacher and a headmistress. Terry met him in the yard and showed him through to the office.

‘Sit yourself down. This is about Kath?'

Andy nodded cautiously. ‘Mr Birch, can I ask you something? Your relationship with Kath Eebry—'

Terry Birch hesitated. ‘We had a brief affair,' he said. ‘I don't think anyone knew about it. I loved her very much but she loved her husband and kids more. We decided it would be better if we broke things off. So she did. Next thing I know, Kath had gone.'

‘
You
reported her missing and not her husband.'

Terry nodded. ‘She didn't turn up for work. That wasn't like her. She hadn't called in sick, she'd not been in touch at all. None of that was right, not for Kath, she was far too considerate, far too conscientious for that.'

‘Did you try and call her?'

‘I did, and the principal at the school, Dan Ingrams, he called her too, but there was no reply. In the end I called round. A neighbour told me Ted and the kids had gone away but that no one had seen Kath and she hadn't been with them. Ted Eebry had told them she'd gone away.'

‘And how long after you decided to break it off was that?'

‘About a week. We met one last time for a drink. Nowhere local, we didn't risk that, and we talked things over and decided it couldn't go on. It was fair to no one, least of all me or the kids.'

‘And did you see her at all after that?'

Terry nodded. ‘At work. We met on the Wednesday evening. She worked Wednesday evenings and we stole a half hour after that. She came in on the Thursday and the Friday. She said the kids were going out with some friends at the weekend, I think. I said goodbye to her on the Friday afternoon and I never saw her again.'

‘Kath had a sister. Did she ever talk about her? Did you not think she might have gone there?'

Terry shook his head. ‘They didn't get along,' he said. ‘I don't know all the details. Kath didn't talk about her a lot. When their parents died, and I think they were both gone within a year, everything was divided between the two sisters. Kath, I think, invested most of her share in the house she and Ted bought. She said her sister got through her share in a couple of years and came looking for more. Kath told her where to go. It's funny, she could be so soft with everyone else, but Jean just got up her nose.'

‘What happened to the sister – do you know?'

‘Um, someone told me she died a couple of years after Kath disappeared. She was an alcoholic. Kath always reckoned she would never make old bones.'

‘And what do you think happened to Kath Eebry?'

Terry shook his head. ‘What I always thought,' he said. ‘Ted found out about us and he killed her. I'll never forgive myself, or him, for that.'

Mac had reported back to Kendall what Stan had said and what had happened to him.

‘You've taken a formal statement?'

Mac laughed. ‘No, and I doubt he'd agree to make one. We're not likely to be bringing charges, are we?'

‘We could try.'

‘Oh sure, we bring Haines in on a GBH charge and see how many minutes it doesn't take his solicitor to make fools of us. You'd not get Stan to testify. He wants to hang on to what life he's got left.'

Kendall sighed. ‘And this threat to young George Parker?'

‘I don't know. It may just be rhetoric. Haines has it in for Karen. She's crossed him a few too many times.' He paused, trying to remember exactly what Kendall knew about Karen. There was a lot that wasn't public currency, even among his colleagues, for reasons that had seemed good at the time but now seemed less than wise.

‘I've heard a lot of rumours about her,' Kendall said. ‘Most seem implausible. She's violent, though? Anyway, her brother is the concern here. You'll talk to him?'

‘I'll make sure I see him later on,' Mac said. ‘Extra patrols up around Hill House wouldn't come amiss, and a safe house?'

Kendall laughed. ‘I'll do what I can,' he said.

Mac was sure he would, but knew that wasn't likely to be much. The threat was too vague and had emerged from too unreliable a source.

‘Perhaps put a watch on George,' he said. ‘He's pretty safe while he's in school and extra patrols would help up at Hill House. Let them know something is up, but tell them not to alert George. He's had enough of being the centre of attention. It's the walk from the college to where the minibus picks them up that's the real danger point.'

‘Mac, I'm already fighting for resources.'

‘And if any of Haines's men try to make contact? Worst case scenario is that Haines actually carries out his threat. Where's that going to leave you? Worse off than just fighting for resources. Stan might not be happy making a formal statement, but I can sure as hell put this conversation on record. Information received of a viable threat.'

Kendall frowned, but Mac could see he was taking this on board. ‘I'll do what I can,' he said. ‘That's all I can say.'

‘That'll have to do then,' Mac said.

A
ndy had headed back to Frantham and was taking another look at the photographs of the bones from the dig site and at the report the pathologist had sent through. It seemed too vague – approximation of age, a guess at sex; it bothered Andy that they were still not one hundred per cent even about that. The bones were gracile, estimated height around five feet five inches, so probably female.

Wasn't this meant to be a more exact science?

Most puzzling for Andy were the marks that had been observed on the tibia. Back at the dig site, Elodie had mentioned them and wondered if they were shallow cut marks, but closer inspection showed them to be criss-crossed by others, so that an uneven grid had been marked out on the bone. The pathologist had speculated that something had been on the body as it decomposed, that something had pressed down through the layers of flesh until it came to rest against the bone.

Andy felt he needed more. He needed something definite in this morass of might bes and could bes and probably isn'ts.

He hesitated before calling Miriam, knowing that his boss's girlfriend hadn't been working as a CSI since late the previous year, so she definitely didn't qualify as official channels. Where she did qualify was that she was something of an expert on bones.

Andy stared at the pictures. He could hear Frank Baker in the front office chatting to a woman about yet another lost dog. Hadn't people heard of leads? The number of holidaymakers who let their dogs run on the beach unsupervised every year astounded Andy. In his experience dogs not used to the sea often freaked and ran. It stood to reason, he thought. However big and noisy the dog, the sea was going to be bigger and noisier.

Mac was off somewhere doing something on the other murder enquiry no doubt – the ‘more important because we've got a proper body' enquiry – and so Andy figured it was his call. He picked up the phone and called Miriam Hastings.

‘Miss Munroe said you might have some concerns, so I'd like to assure you I'm here and available to answer any questions. And in the years to come, provision has been made for you to make use of our services should you require them – you or George Parker.'

Munroe, thought Rina. She had seen the signature on the documents but it still seemed strange to hear the solicitor using that name. ‘Did Miss Munroe say why she wanted me to be her executor?'

‘She said she knew you well and trusted you. That you were an old family friend.' He looked discomforted, but then so did most people when they had dealings with Karen, Rina thought. She nodded agreement and he looked a little more relieved.

‘May I ask where this money comes from?'

‘Of course. Look, the paperwork is all very clear and simple. A relative of Miss Munroe left her a great deal of money. Perhaps you know the Canadian branch of the family?'

Rina did not. She doubted they existed.

‘Well Miss Munroe is obviously a very generous young woman. She was aware that the elderly relative, a Miss Simmonds, didn't know about young George. She was sure that if she had been aware then some bequest would have been forthcoming and so she took it upon herself to fulfil that role.' He looked grave for a moment and then said, ‘She explained about the divisions within the family, that George's family and hers had, shall we say, become estranged over time.' He leaned forward across the desk. ‘I understand that George's mother made a rather bad marriage and the family cut her off.'

‘You could say that,' Rina agreed. ‘It's been painful for everyone concerned.'

‘I can imagine. So because of that and because she lives abroad, she thought you could take over the role of executor of the trust, alongside ourselves, of course.'

‘Of course. So what exactly do I have to do?'

‘Ah, well.' He smiled, on much firmer ground now. ‘I've prepared a portfolio for you, so you can study the assets, and I've taken the liberty of drawing up a rough plan. As you'll see, George is entitled to a small allowance now, and then when he is eighteen a slice of the capital. The remainder will be made over to him at ages twenty-one and twenty-seven. All you have to do really is be adviser to the young man. Answer any immediate questions he might have, and attend a meeting here once a year to discuss interest on the capital and how to reinvest that amount.'

‘Interest?' Rina asked. ‘How much interest?'

He clearly thought it was a slightly odd question, given all those she might have asked, but he said, ‘I estimate about twenty-five thousand pounds a year at current rates. Of course, all funds are being invested in low to moderate risk bonds, Miss Munroe was quite explicit about that, even though our financial department advised her that she could get a far better return.'