Cherringham--The Vanishing Tourist (11 page)

“The cottage, used to be mine, you see,” said Latchmore. “That’s how he tracked me down.”

“But he didn’t know you’d moved out …” said Sarah.

“Sold it to Peter when they got married,” said Latchmore. “Built the shack here — so I could be near …”

“But alone,” said Jack.

“How I like it.”

“So, Karen — what happened?”

“I tried to get him to calm down, but he wouldn’t listen. Then—”

“Then I turned up,” said Latchmore. “Good timing — or bad. Take your pick.”

Jack nodded. He knew this story was going to come out. It just needed its own time …

“I told Karen to take the baby — come up here and wait. I thought I could talk him round. Explain. I told him the truth about that day. Or at least — the truth as I see it. But he didn’t want truths. He just wanted one thing …”

“Revenge,” said Jack.

“In the end I just held my hands up and said there was nothing else to say. In war, we all lose people we love. I lost men. I lost my son-in-law. Blaming gets you nowhere. I turned to go — and he just threw himself at me. I got the knife off him — though he did cut me.”

Latchmore took a breath. So hard to be reliving this.

“I didn’t want to hurt him but he wouldn’t stop. Kept coming at me, punching, kicking. In the end I just hit him. You know? Just to put him down. But it’s a stone floor. He hit it hard. He didn’t get up.”

Jack watched Latchmore — so matter of fact, calm, talking about Patrick O’Connor’s death.

But then he was a man who had seen a lot of death — how else would he talk about it.

“What did you do then?”

Latchmore shrugged.

Jack pressed on. “What did you do, Richard?”

“I put him in the wheelbarrow, took him up to the copse, laid him down out of sight. Then I came up here, told Karen he’d gone away — and she was safe. Told her it was best not to mention him to anyone. She understood — didn’t you love? Always best to keep your head down — you know?”

Jack nodded. “And then?”

“Went back to the wood that night. Brought the body up here. Buried it by the barn. Under the woodpile.”

“Why not just tell the police?” said Jack.

“Right. Sure. When the Army let me go they said I had mental health issues. PTSD — you know? Who was going to believe my side of the story? Trained killer versus grieving father. And what about Karen here? They’d have hounded her. TV. Press. Journalists. No, I did the right thing.”

“The right thing by Patrick?” said Jack. “Like you say — he was a grieving father.”

“I said some words. Over the grave.”

“What about his family?” said Sarah.

“What about
mine
?” said Latchmore.

Jack watched him get up and stand by his daughter.

“So then — what do we do now?” said Jack. He looked across at the shotgun, leaning against the wall, then saw Latchmore’s eyes follow his.

Though nobody had a gun in their hand — it was a kind of stand-off.

“There’s only one thing you can do, Richard,” said Sarah. “Come back with us to the police station in Cherringham.”

“She’s right, Dad,” said Karen. “What’s the worst that can happen? You go to jail? Not when they hear your story. We get the press in our faces for months? But I can deal with that. And then you’ll be home and we just carry on.”

“She’s right. You wouldn’t go to jail, Richard,” said Sarah.

“Oh no?” said the ex-soldier. “How do you know?”

“O’Connor’s sister is here in the village,” she said. “And I have a feeling she knew what her brother intended to do. And that she’ll do the right thing.”

“The right thing?” said Latchmore. “Does it even exist?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do all along, Richard?” said Jack. “For your men, for those Americans up on that hill, for your son-in-law — and now for Karen and your granddaughter?”

Jack watched Latchmore.

Would these words have any effect? It was impossible to tell.

Jack got up and went over to the shotgun. Then he broke it, checked it wasn’t loaded and put it under his arm.

“Come on, Sarah,” he said, and he watched her get up from her chair.

He turned to Latchmore who stood at his daughter’s side. The baby cooed and reached across to her grandfather, her hand touching the stubble on the man’s face.

“We parked by the cottage,” said Jack. “We’ll wait for you.”

He opened the door of the shack and nodded to Sarah to go ahead of him.

They walked down the path through the woods in silence.

*

When they reached the cottage, the sun was just setting, but there was still a pool of warm sunlight on the little bench in the front garden.

Jack propped the shotgun up against the bench and sat. Sarah sat next to him.

“So all along, Patrick O’Connor was just pretending to be a tourist?” said Sarah.

“Uh-huh,” said Jack. “In some ways, he was planning the perfect murder. Slip away from the tour group — do what he came to do — and then re-join them two hours later for the rest of the tour. Who would have suspected?”

“He just didn’t count on getting mugged,” said Sarah.

“And maybe — when he saw the girl, and the baby — he lost heart a little? Pulled back …”

“I’d like to think that,” said Sarah.

“Who knows?”

Jack didn’t know. He just hoped it had maybe been like that …

“You think Latchmore will come?” said Sarah.

“Yeah,” said Jack. “I think so.”

“Because it’s the right thing?”

“Hmm. The right thing? Not sure. Isn’t that what everybody has been trying to do all along? Even Patrick, coming here. He thought the right thing was to close it all down, to punish the man who could have saved his son.”

“And out there in Helmand — how on earth could anyone know the right thing to do?” said Sarah.

Jack looked across the little garden at the wood and the winding lane. What a wonderful place for a child to grow up. A child who would need her grandfather.

“Most times we don’t get any choice,” said Jack, turning back to Sarah.

“If you’re a soldier that’s probably a good thing,” she said.

A movement caught Jack’s eye at the end of the lane.

He looked up, squinting into the setting sun.

Richard Latchmore was walking toward them, one hand resting on his granddaughter who nestled, asleep against his shoulder.

His other hand was wrapped around his daughter’s arm, and together, in silence they walked towards the little cottage.

“The right thing,” said Jack softly.

And he and Sarah stood up and prepared to head back to Cherringham.

END

Every Halloween, the supposedly haunted Bell Hotel hosts its famous ‘Ghost-Hunters Dinner’, complete with scary stories, spooky apparitions and things that go bump in the night. But this year’s event ends in a terrifying accident, and suddenly everyone wonders …is there a real ghost loose in the hotel? Jack and Sarah are convinced that the culprit must be human: who would want bad things to happen at the classic hotel? But soon they’re forced to confront their own superstitions as they find themselves on the trail of an unsolved Victorian murder …

Cherringham — A Cosy Crime Series
Ghost of a Chance
by Matthew Costello and Neil Richards

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