Legacy of Lies (21 page)

‘Does your dad know you're here?'

Danny shrugged. ‘He's out,' he said. ‘Don't know when he'll be back.' He had made Napoleon's acquaintance when he talked to Patrick that night he had texted him, and he renewed the friendship now, patting the dog's back and stroking his ears.

Patrick led him through the garden and into the house, entering through the kitchen door. ‘You want something to drink?'

‘You got coke?'

Patrick got a couple of cans from the fridge. ‘Here.'

‘Thanks.'

Danny stood just inside the kitchen door as though ready to make his escape. He allowed his gaze to travel around the room and Patrick noted as it fell on the blue bowl filled with eggs, the flowers Naomi had cut in the garden and the various gadgets Rupert had filled his kitchen with.

‘Did you make the list?'

Danny nodded and finally left the kitchen door. He took a couple of sheets of lined, crumpled paper from the back pocket of his jeans and sat down at the table. ‘This is everyone I could think of. I've ticked the ones I tried already.'

‘Did you try the hospitals?' Harry asked. They both jumped, neither having heard him come in from the hall. Danny got to his feet as though ready to run away. ‘Don't mind me,' Harry told him, ‘I've just brought you these.' He laid on the table a telephone directory and the Yellow Pages and the cordless phone.

‘Thanks, Dad.'

Harry nodded. ‘I'll just make myself some coffee.'

Danny watched him warily and Patrick found himself observing as though through Danny's eyes. He was so used to his father that he rarely noticed that he looked older than most parents, largely due to the fact that his hair was already grey and a little thin. He wore it cropped short, despising anything resembling a comb over. Harry's eyes were grey too and his skin a little wrinkled at the corners. Patrick liked his father's eyes. He was, lately, a little fatter round the middle than he really ought to be but, again, Patrick rarely noted that either. Patrick himself, slim and dark haired, olive skinned, resembled his mother, though his eyes, an almost navy blue, were inherited from Mari, Harry's mother and, so he had been told, were like those of Harry's long dead sister.

Danny examined Harry and Patrick knew he was comparing him to his own father. From what Patrick had seen so far that would not be an easy thing to do, though for that matter, it wasn't easy to compare Harry to any father he could think of. Harry was, well, Harry. He found himself thinking about his stepfather. A tall, strong, fit outdoorsman with red hair and a beard to match and again wondered what on earth had possessed his parents to get married.

‘You can tell my dad anything,' Patrick found himself saying. ‘He just wants to help, too.'

For a moment, Danny turned his gaze on Patrick and Patrick got the impression that he had crossed some line, made some incomprehensible statement. He shrugged, muttered something that Patrick didn't catch but which he guessed expressed disbelief.

Patrick pulled the list towards him and began to read.

At Harry's suggestion they worked back through the list from the beginning, starting with those numbers Danny had already tried – his mother's sister, a cousin and a maternal grandfather that he never saw.

There were a few friends listed, some without numbers. It was clear that Danny had just written down anyone with a connection to his mother, however tenuous.

Harry took over. He sat down at the table and examined the list. ‘We should try hospitals,' he said. ‘You never know she might have been in an accident and not had anything with her to say who she was.'

‘You mean like, she might have lost her memory?' Danny sounded hopeful.

‘I'm not saying that's what happened, Danny,' Harry warned. ‘But we should look at all possibilities. Now, you'd better tell me about your mum, her age, what she looked like, what she might have been wearing on the day she left.'

Danny and Patrick watched as Harry found the numbers he needed, asking Danny's advice about local hospitals and which his mother was likely to have been taken to.

Patrick listened with amusement and Danny was in evident awe as Harry began his spiel. ‘Oh, good morning. I wonder if you can help me. I certainly hope so, the family is terribly worried …' He paused, listening. ‘It's my sister,' he said, his voice shaking slightly. ‘You see, she's missing and we're worried she might … oh, thank you.'

He covered the mouthpiece and said, ‘They're redirecting me. This could take a little while.'

‘Sister?' Danny asked.

‘They won't tell you anything if you're not a relative,' Patrick whispered as Harry resumed his conversation with someone else.

‘Yes, my sister. Sharon Fielding. Yes. No, it would have been just over two weeks ago. We did call just after she disappeared but …'

Harry allowed his voice to trail off as though distressed and Patrick could hear the sympathetic tones of the woman on the other end of the line.

Harry repeated the description Danny had given him and then covered the mouthpiece again. ‘She's gone to check,' he said. They waited and the woman returned. Harry thanked her and hung up the phone.

‘No, no one there,' he said. ‘She did tell me though, that if they'd had an unknown patient for this long, they would probably have put out an appeal in the local paper. She gave me a couple of numbers to try, local papers, I think, just in case we missed it. We'll try the other hospitals first and then get on to them.'

Patrick got up and filled the kettle. He was reminded horribly of watching Naomi go through this very process earlier in the year when a close friend had gone missing. She had called the hospitals for him then, asking the questions Harry was asking. Later the friend had turned up dead. Drowned in the canal with a mix of drugs and booze in his stomach and an accusation of murder hanging over his head. Watching Harry do this brought back such painful memories. He could imagine what Danny must be going through.

He made tea and gave Danny another can, watching and listening as Harry worked his way through the hospital list and then the numbers for the local papers. At the end of that he replaced the phone and blew out a frustrated breath. Gratefully he picked up the mug his son had placed on the table beside the directories.

‘Nothing?' Patrick asked, though that was self evident.

‘No, we can cross those off the list. Now, what else do we have here?' He glanced through the contacts that Danny had written down. ‘Let's try the ones you have phone numbers for first,' he said, ‘then we'll try to figure out the rest. Do you want to talk to people or shall I?'

‘You think you can do it?'

‘Sure I can.' Harry smiled at the boy who eyed him speculatively.

‘What you doing this for?' Danny asked.

‘Why not?' Harry shrugged. ‘You need help. And besides,' he added, meeting the boy's eyes and knowing more was required, ‘I had a sister once, she went missing. It was twenty years before I found out what happened to her. Twenty years of wondering and never being able to settle properly because there was always that thought that she would come through the door.'

Not the best of analogies, Patrick thought anxiously. Helen had died. Been murdered. But he knew what his dad meant. Patrick had grown up in the shadow of her memory and in the end it had been a relief for everyone that they could finally know what happened to her.

Danny, he noticed, did not ask. He sipped his coke and blinked hard and Patrick knew that he was trying not to cry. He looked away and Harry turned his attention back to the next number on the list.

‘Ah, good morning.' The fourth call now and so far nothing gained. ‘No, I'm not selling anything. I'm calling about Sharon Fielding … My son is a friend of Danny's.'

Pause. Harry listened, then, to Patrick's surprise he raised his voice and spoke angrily into the phone. ‘Look, I've got the boy here now, sitting at my kitchen table, tearing his heart out because he doesn't know what the hell happened to his mother. If you can't give me a few minutes of your time …'

Pause, Patrick heard a woman shouting down the phone.

‘I'm sorry if you feel like that,' Harry said. ‘But whatever you might have thought she was still his mother. I'd have thought a little compassion …'

Harry stared angrily at the phone. ‘Hung up,' he said.

‘What was all that about?'

Harry shrugged. ‘Danny, this Ellen March, was she a close friend?'

Danny shrugged. ‘I don't know,' he said. ‘I just found any numbers I could and writ them down. That was on a bit of paper under the phone book.'

‘Right. I see.' Harry leaned back in his chair and stared at the remaining numbers.

‘What was her problem?' Patrick asked.

Harry shrugged, but Patrick could tell this was something he didn't want to talk about in front of Danny, so he let it go when his father simply said, ‘I think she was just touchy about a stranger asking her questions.'

Danny looked even more depressed than when he had first arrived. ‘You think it's worth trying the rest?' he asked.

Harry smiled at him. ‘Let's give it a go.' He glanced up at the kitchen clock. It was half past twelve. ‘Tell you what, you and Patrick make some lunch and I'll do the rest of these on the other phone. The battery's going on this one. I could hear it beeping on that last call.'

That wasn't the only thing that needed beeping, Patrick thought. He'd caught enough of the woman's language to register that.

Danny shrugged uncomfortably. ‘All right,' he said. ‘I guess so'

Patrick got up and went to the fridge. ‘What do you want?' he said. ‘We've got ham and cheese and corned beef. Salad …'

Harry picked up the list and the phone and made his escape. One useful thing he had found out from Ellen March was that she wasn't a friend of Sharon's. From what she'd said to him, Harry would make a bet she was having an affair with Danny's dad.

D
anny left just after two and Patrick wandered back upstairs to Rupert's study. He had been flicking through the earlier journals he had noticed on Rupert's shelf, looking for previous references to Kinnear. So far, he had found nothing and the journals did not appear to go back to the time of the robberies, but were obviously a habit Rupert had acquired only in the last ten years of his life.

A car pulling up on the gravel brought him to the window, thinking Alec and Naomi had returned. He was shocked to see Marcus.

‘Shit!' Patrick muttered. He had left the journals and laptop downstairs in the dining room in plain view.

Racing downstairs he passed the front door as Marcus rang the bell for a second time. Harry was about to open it as Patrick dashed by, grabbing his record bag from the coat pegs as he ran.

‘Patrick?' Harry had the door open now and Marcus was coming inside.

Patrick scooted into the dining room and grabbed the books and the ledger, stuffing them into his bag. Marcus stuck his head around the door to say hello just as Patrick was attempting to do the same with the laptop.

‘Hello, Patrick. How are you?' Marcus smiled broadly, then his expression froze. ‘You've found Rupert's laptop.'

‘No,' Patrick lied. ‘It's mine. I've been using it for homework.'

‘Homework? I thought you'd finished for the year.'

‘I have, but I've got a project to start. Get ready for next term. I'm carrying on with the same subjects, you see, so I can kind of get ahead.'

Marcus eyed him thoughtfully and Patrick knew he did not believe a word of it.

‘Coffee, Marcus?' Harry asked. ‘Come on through. I was just washing up. Alec and Naomi should be here soon. Patrick, maybe you could give them a ring and find out how long they're going to be?'

Patrick nodded. He waited until Harry had ushered the reluctant Marcus away and then ran upstairs. He put the bag in Rupert's study and locked the door, slipping the key into his pocket. Then he sat down on the top step and called Naomi on his mobile, grateful when she said that they were almost home.

‘Marcus saw the laptop,' he said. ‘I told him it was mine but he didn't believe me. I've locked it in the study.'

‘Good,' Naomi approved. ‘Patrick, you and Harry keep him amused, we'll soon be there.'

It was interesting, Patrick thought as he rang off, that they had all come round to his way of thinking as regards Marcus just when, oddly enough, Patrick himself was starting to have some sympathy for the man. He sat for a minute more, analyzing where that feeling had come from and decided it was that he genuinely believed that Marcus cared for Rupert. And if he was scared of Kinnear, Patrick thought, no one could really blame him for that, but what they didn't know for sure was if Marcus and Kinnear were in this together or if Marcus was just acting out of fear.

He thought about it as he went downstairs and joined his father but reached no conclusion. Marcus smiled at him as he came through into the kitchen. ‘They're coming back,' Patrick said. ‘Should be here in just a few minutes.'

‘Oh, good. I was just asking your father if you'd had any luck with the search.'

Patrick shook his head. ‘Rupert had some interesting stuff, though,' he said. ‘Some great old books and that. He's got maps from the 1640s when they drained the fens and all sorts.'

Marcus smiled again. A genuine smile this time. ‘He was working on a second book about the Fen Tigers,' he said. ‘I don't know all the details but I know one chapter concerned their descendants who still lived around here. He'd discovered that quite a few of the local families have roots going back to that time, including your neighbour, I believe.'

‘Our neighbour?'

‘Yes, the Fieldings at White Farm. He was quite enthused by it all.'