Long Time Lost (33 page)

‘So you’ve uncovered our family’s grubby little secret. Good for you. Or not, as it happens.’

Connor shone his torch into Lloyd’s face, then Kate’s. They lowered their heads, raising their hands. But Miller wouldn’t allow him that satisfaction. He stared into the harsh white light with a burning intensity of his own.

‘Please, you can give the attitude a rest. And get against the wall. All three of you.’

Connor lowered the torch and Miller blinked hard against the translucent shapes floating before his eyes, looking towards his backpack, which he’d left close to the tunnel opening. He was thinking of the SIG he had inside. Of the bolt cutters he might use. He still had the knife in the back pocket of his jeans. Maybe he could reach for it.

‘You.’ Connor fixed the torch on Kate. ‘Throw that backpack over to me. Slowly. Good. Now step back in line with the others. I want you all to hold hands.’

Miller was in the middle and he felt Kate’s fingers squirm inside his right hand as Lloyd fumbled for his left. It felt oddly intimate to be holding hands with Lloyd, after she’d been searching for him for so long.

‘You have a choice, Detective Sergeant.’ Connor swung the torch beam towards her. ‘You could step over to this side of the room, behind Mike. We could talk about your possible role in the most favourable outcome from this situation.’

‘Tell me about the family secret.’ Lloyd was acting as if she was the one with the gun. Which was impressive, because Miller could feel her hand shaking. ‘Russell killed your parents, didn’t he?’

‘Hmm. How best to answer that? Or should I even care? None of you can leave here alive, if I do. You understand that, don’t you?’

Miller squeezed Kate’s hand. He wanted to let her know Connor was wrong. He wanted to signal that he had a way out. But he wasn’t sure that he did. He couldn’t get to his knife without letting go. And once he let go, Renner might shoot.

‘But, as it happens, I’m going to have to explain things to Mike here, anyway.’ Connor hitched his shoulders, grimacing at Renner. ‘It’s a shame you had to find out like this, Mike. I don’t believe Russell ever told you, did he? I know the two of you are close, though perhaps not as close as you imagined.’

Renner’s pupils were pinpoints of darkness in the dazzle of the torch. He was breathing hard through his nose, his free hand balled into a tight fist, the revolver pointed towards Miller.

‘Russell is burdened by guilt, if that helps,’ Connor went on. ‘It’s his cross to bear. He was the one who found Mum and Dad down on Dad’s boat. They were yelling and screaming, out of control. He rushed to the house to get me and I ran back with him. Dad was raging at Mum, calling her all kinds of things. He said she was having an affair. Did you know that, Mike?’

Renner shook his head dumbly, transfixed by Connor. Miller began to wonder if he might have an opportunity to try something after all.

‘Dad said he could prove it. He said she’d been cheating for years, he was getting a divorce and she’d get nothing from him. Mum saw us watching and it seemed to change something in her. She told him she was glad it was over. That she didn’t love him any more. That she hated what he’d become. We were on the bank when Dad first struck her. He’d hit her before, hit us, too, so neither of us moved to begin with. But this time he didn’t stop. He pummelled her face and he kept hitting her when she fell on to the deck. Then he strangled her.’

Renner peered at Connor, his face slackening. He took a half-step towards him, faltered.

Miller was fixed on his revolver, willing him to shift his aim. He was readying himself to burst forwards and make a grab for the gun.

Connor shook his head, as if the memory confounded him. ‘Russell got away from me and raced along the pontoon. I tried to catch up to him but by then he’d grabbed an oar and swung it at the back of Dad’s head. One strike, and Dad was gone.’ He paused and raised his eyes to the rafters, as if communing with the stars beyond. Then he looked back at Renner, a grim expression on his face. ‘We had a mess to clean up. I know Russell always thought it might have been different if he hadn’t run back to get me. If he’d fetched you instead, Mike.’

Renner lifted his gun to his face, mashing the cold metal against his cheek.

Was this Miller’s moment? He tried loosening his hand from Lloyd’s grip but she squeezed his fingers tight.

‘So you hid their bodies here,’ she put in, snagging Connor’s attention. ‘You buried them together.’

‘Russell insisted on it. He was always the sentimental type. I would have dumped them in the water. It was all they deserved, frankly. And it would have fitted with the rumours that went round after they vanished. But Russell wouldn’t agree to it. Here he was, having just killed Dad, babbling on about needing somewhere to visit him. I had to make a decision. I had to contain the situation.’

There was a splash of water and the flap of wings out on the lake. Connor whirled towards the blackened waters.

‘What happened next?’ Lloyd asked him. Her tone was tough and demanding, almost as if Connor was in an interview room with her at the local station.

‘Oh,’ he said, waving a hand, ‘I sent Russell in here to find something to cover Mum and Dad with. No real need. It was dark and we were hardly overlooked. But I thought it would give him time to calm down so I might convince him to ditch them overboard. He came up with the idea of putting them in here instead. Of building his stupid shrine. You’d taught him to build dens, hadn’t you, Mike? He worked at this one for days.’

Renner steadily lowered the gun from his face. ‘I can’t believe you never told me.’

‘But look at you now, Mike. This was years ago and see how it’s affecting you. It was already difficult enough for me to stop Russell from handing himself in to the police. If he’d seen the look you have in your eyes now . . .’ Connor shook his head. ‘Sorry, but it had to be this way. And I had to let Russell bury them here. I shouldn’t have agreed to it, but I did. Because it was Russell. Because he was special. Because we’d always indulged him and it was what he expected in life. What he expects still.’

‘But it bothered him, didn’t it?’ Miller put in. ‘It ate away at him.’

Miller had some understanding of how it would work. He was a man who knew what it was like to have a burden of guilt gnaw at you for years.

Connor sneered, pinning him with the torch beam again.

‘Russell was weak. He felt the need to confide in someone. He thought it would lessen his guilt. He even asked for therapy, though naturally I said no. I didn’t know what he might say. I think you know yourself by now that the truth is an infection. It spreads, no matter what you do. Better never to let the infection out, wouldn’t you agree?’

He held the torch on Miller’s face for several seconds more.

‘I’d very much like to get back all the money you’ve extorted from me. But I suppose I’m going to have to settle for killing you instead, then finding and killing your precious Melanie.’

He smiled thinly before glancing at Renner once again. ‘You should probably know, Mike, that Russell asked me right at the beginning if we could tell you. Can you imagine? I told him he was insane.’

‘You could have trusted me.’

‘No, I don’t think so. You were loyal to Dad. You would have walked out on us and thrown us to the wolves. We needed you then, Mike. Just like we need you today. And, over time, I think, you’ve come to respect me perhaps even more than Dad. Look at what we’ve built together.’ He shrugged. ‘Plus, I don’t think I need to remind you that there are things I know about you, Mike. So many unpleasant tasks you’ve helped take care of over the years.’

‘Like killing my wife,’ Miller said. ‘Like killing Anna Brooks.’

‘And trying to kill me,’ Kate added.

‘Oh, don’t hold that against Mike.’ Lane rolled the hand with the torch in it, whipping the beam around. ‘Or me, for that matter. It was Russell again. His stupid need to offload. First, there was Anna. I know he told her about Mum and Dad because she came to me for money. And I paid her a little, at first. But then she got greedy and I refused to pay any more, and all of a sudden, she accused Russell of rape. She tried to apply pressure. Too much pressure, for her.’

‘And Helen Knight?’ Kate asked. ‘I saw her here with Russell. That’s why they were arguing, wasn’t it? He showed her this place. He told her what he’d done. And she can’t have reacted the way he wanted. She wouldn’t absolve him. I knew Helen. She’d have told him to tell the police. So he killed her.’

‘Well, now.’ Connor weaved the torch through the air some more, looping spirals in the dark. ‘That’s not
quite
how it happened. Young Helen came to me, too, you see. She approached me first.’

‘Helen wouldn’t blackmail anyone. She wasn’t like that.’

‘No, she wasn’t. She came to tell me that Russell needed to own up to what had happened. That she was going to help him.’ Connor twirled his finger next to his temple. ‘Loopy. You’ll appreciate there was no way I could allow it. Not after all this time.’

He flicked the torch beam at Kate, seeming to enjoy the disgust on her face.

‘
You
killed Helen.’

‘There we go. You cracked the big mystery. But really, she as good as killed herself, the poor girl.’

And right then, Miller understood it fully for the first time. He understood why Lane had sent Wade to kill his wife and daughter. He knew why he’d set Renner and Wade on Kate and why he’d had them pursue the ghost of Anna Brooks throughout Europe. It wasn’t only about protecting Russell. It wasn’t even about the money Miller had been taking him for. It was also about eradicating anyone Russell might have confided in. It was about burying the truth.

‘You sicken me,’ Kate told him.

‘Oh, I sicken myself. Quite regularly. But I get over it. I’m sorry to say you won’t have that opportunity.’

Lloyd was growing tired of Connor’s performance. She swore under her breath.

‘Problem, DS Lloyd?’

‘Yes, I have a problem. If what you say about your brother is even halfway true, it was an accident when he killed your father. He didn’t have intent to murder. He hit him once. A single blow. To protect your mother. Even hiding the bodies, concealing what had happened . . . It never warranted this. Not all of it.’

‘See?’ Lane wagged a finger. ‘An infection. The truth begins to spread. But I can tell you the rest now, I suppose, because then Mike will shoot you, and you’ll have no way to spread the disease. The lake will swallow it up. I’ve learned from the mistakes I made with Helen’s body.’

‘It was you.’ Miller felt even more certain the moment the words were spoken. ‘You killed your parents. It wasn’t Russell at all.’

Connor’s eyes glinted. ‘You expect me to tell you that?’

‘We deserve the truth,’ Kate said. ‘Helen deserved the truth.’

‘You deserve nothing. And neither did she. But Mike? Well, Mike should probably know it all. So, look, Dad was dead, and that was all on Russell I’m afraid, but Mum wasn’t . . .
quite
. But she was so nearly gone already and she’d seen Russell hit Dad. She would have told someone about it. You know that, Mike. She was weak, like him. And she was the one who’d cheated. She was the one to blame. So I told Russell to run in here and I finished it. Finished her.’ He shone the torchlight on his hand, as if marvelling at what it was capable of. ‘I had to smother the infection before it could begin. You’ll understand that better than anyone, Mike. You’re the best I know at containing a situation. Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing if you’d been there.’

But he wouldn’t have. Miller could see that, even if Connor couldn’t. Because Renner was blinking, lips twitching, looking blearily around the boathouse and out towards the lake, as if he was caught in a trap he couldn’t see a way out of. The wash of light from Connor’s torch was dim at the edges, but Miller could glimpse the dampness in his eyes. He could read the emotion in his face.

It wasn’t rage or anger or disgust. It was something Miller recognised because he’d suffered from it himself for so long. It was heartache. It was grief.

It was love.

But not for Connor. Not any more.

‘No,’ Renner muttered, lifting his gun. ‘No, see, that’s where you’re wrong.’

And he shot Connor in the side of the head.

For the first time in his life, Mike Renner didn’t make any effort to cover up a crime. He didn’t attempt to run or to silence the witnesses. He let go of his revolver as soon as Connor fell, his sole focus being on grabbing the torch that was tumbling from Connor’s hand, ducking behind the sideboard and scrabbling into the tunnel.

  Alone in the musty silence, the din of the gunshot reverberating in his head, the torch beam slanted across the ground, he reached out his hand to the mound of earth where Diane was buried.

Finally, Renner had his answer. He’d found the woman he’d loved.

And with Connor dead, it would all unravel now anyway. He had so many crimes to answer for. So many offences that went far beyond betraying his best friend by falling for his wife.

‘What do we do?’ Kate whispered. She was backing away from Connor’s body, blocking the sight of his bloodied head with her splayed fingers.

Miller didn’t answer. He was busy crabbing sideways, snatching up his backpack.

Lloyd had been quick to make a grab for Renner’s gun and now she was holding it in a two-handed grip with the muzzle pointed towards the hole he’d crawled through. She looked as if she knew what she was doing. She looked as if she’d shoot if she had to.

Kate stooped for Miller’s torch, throwing light on the tunnel opening, the beam trembling against the timber planks.

‘I’ll call it in.’ Lloyd reached into her jacket, removing her phone. But she didn’t begin to dial. Not yet. ‘I have to get a team here. We’ll have to sift through everything Lane said. It changes things for his brother. Changes a hell of a lot of things, really.’

‘For us, too?’ Kate asked.

Miller tugged on her arm, trying to drag her away, but Kate resisted.