Saving Tara Goodwin (Mystery Book 1) (22 page)

Close beside a huge armchair there were four indentations in the thick pile of the carpet, and looking back to the disturbed curtain, Frank realised the curtain rope would have been too high to undo without something to stand on, and when he eased the armchair over, the feet slid perfectly into the indentations.

So the armchair had obviously been used and roughly put back, but not by a dead man, and now it was a fair bet that poor old Ambrose Dudley had been murdered.

Walking over, he sat down beside Evelyn, ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, I think so, but you said Ambrose betrayed his queen and country, so is that why he killed himself?’

He looked at her, ‘Evelyn, he didn’t kill himself, someone did that for him.’

She gasped, ‘What? What are you saying? Are you sure? But why?’

He shrugged, ‘Poor old Dudley knew far too much so he had to go, but the question now, is how much do you know?’

Sudden clouds of fear drifted over her grey eyes as a sheen of sweat came to her brow.

‘But I don’t know anything. I just did my job, that’s all.’

‘Yeah, but the trouble is, Dudley probably thought the same.’

Evelyn’s eyes suddenly became blank when she realised she also might be in danger.

Frank sighed and looked away, because now, two more victims had joined the list, first Ambrose Dudley who’d paid with his life, and quite possibly, Evelyn Carthwaite.

Taking her through to the calm of her own office, he settled her as best he could, and picking up the phone, made two calls.

The first was to Removals at the Section, and then he called the lodge at the main gate.

‘Sergeant Jenkins? This is Frank Lewis. Now listen, I want the following brought up to the house and I want it right now. A Land Rover, two strong officers and a body bag, and there’ll be no names and no fuck-ups. Got it?’

‘Yes sir.’ Putting the phone down, the sergeant stared vacantly out through the window.

‘Bloody hell. I knew this would happen, and now it’s started.’

Having sent Evelyn down to reception to meet the two officers, he went back through to Dudley’s balcony, and taking hold of the rope, began dragging him up over the balustrade.

But the hanging had not been a professional job and the rope was far too long, so the jerk of his body had almost ripped his head off.

It was a messy business, the terror of being thrown over the balustrade probably causing him to relieve himself, and this once proud man, now stank.

Gently laying him out on the flagstones, he looked at the ugly death mask on his face, and with a sigh, began to check his pockets, but the only thing he found of any interest was a brand new leather wallet, and zipped-up safely within an inner compartment was a photograph of a delicate looking young man.

He seemed to be in his mid-twenties and was smiling and waving to the camera from a wild and rocky coastline, and on the back of the colour print were written the words,
Happy birthday, my dearest beloved Ambrose. All my love forever and ever, Julian.

Frank committed the young man to memory, and checking further inside the wallet, found a red rose carefully flattened and sealed in a plastic envelope.

Hearing Evelyn calling from the door, he slid the wallet into his pocket and walked across the balcony to meet her, and as she hesitantly came towards him, he stopped her, took the bag from her tight fingers and firmly turned her around.

‘You’d better wait in your office. You don’t want to see this, it isn’t very nice.’

She nodded solemnly, and lowering her gaze, began to walk away, but stopped.

‘He wasn’t a bad man, Mr Lewis.’

Frank nodded, and taking her by the arm, walked her out of the room.

Having carefully zipped Dudley into the bag, he carried him out across his shoulder, and while Evelyn guided him through the labyrinth, thought back through the timescale.

It couldn’t have been much more than fifteen minutes between seeing Dudley out on the balcony and arriving at his front door, and a window of fifteen minutes for someone to overpower a man and fake his suicide by hanging, wasn’t long at all, and then to lock the door and get away from the scene of the murder.

So there must have been certain advantages in the killer’s favour.

One - having access to the labyrinth and an intimate knowledge of the layout.

Two - the opportunity to slip away from work without being questioned.

Three - having the strength to overpower and throw Dudley over the balustrade.

Four - having a key to lock the door.

21

It hadn’t been easy double swiping through the doors, but soon they were travelling down in the lift, and when Frank followed Mrs Carthwaite out through the turnstiles, the two officers glanced to each other when they saw the body bag over his shoulder.

Walking up, he cold eyed the two men, he didn’t need questions right now.

‘Okay, you’ve had a good look, and just so we understand each other, you will not let this bag out of your sight till it’s collected by my people, and then you’ll forget it. Got that?’

The men nodded, but their expressions were strained and nervous, ‘Yes sir.’

Watching as Mr Dudley was handed over, Evelyn realised her life had changed forever, but worse still, there was a homicidal maniac in the labyrinth, and Lewis had asked her,

How much do you know?

It was driving her crazy. Did she know something a madman would want to kill her for? A convulsion shuddered through her body, and watching the guards carrying their ugly package out to the Land Rover, she began to tremble when it suddenly occurred to her that the next package could be herself.

She came too when she realised Lewis was going back into the house, and ran after him.

‘Mr Lewis, wait for me. Are you going back up?’

He marched on, ‘Yeah, I need to check something before I leave.’

Her thoughts crashed, ‘You’re leaving?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But I can’t stay in my office all alone. Not now.’

‘Why not? You’ve got the computer section close by.’

‘Yes, but they’re swiped in and I’m not. I’ll be in my office all alone.’

‘Well I can see your problem, but someone’s got to keep the place ticking over.’

‘But Mr Lewis. I can’t. Please help me. Don’t leave me alone.’

‘Look, I know it’s difficult, but what the hell do you expect me to do?’

‘Just take me with you till he’s caught. Oh please …’

‘But what about Merlin and Leonardo?’

‘It’ll be alright because the computer section is autonomous, I can put the office on automatic and security could handle the phone calls. Oh please …’

He didn’t need this, but there again she could be useful now that Dudley was gone, and the only chance he had left was a bright red rose and a colour photograph.

‘Okay, but if I clear this for you, I want something in return, and if you hold back on me, the deal’s off. Agreed?’

‘Yes, alright, I’ll do anything. Just don’t leave me alone.’

‘Right. Well come on then, there’s a lot to do.’

Swiping back through the double doors, she followed him over to security, and ignoring the check-in window, went straight for the door, but it was locked.

‘Open this bloody door.’

A curt voice came back, ‘You’ll have to come round to the window.’

He kicked the door, ‘This is Frank Lewis from Cardinal, and for your information, I’m having a bad day, so if you don’t open this fucking door I’ll smash your kneecaps.’

The door swung open and the guard stood back, ‘Sorry sir, I didn’t know it was you.’

Frank marched in, ‘Well you do now. So show me the register.’

The guard reached for the book and flattened it out at today’s page, but Frank flipped back a week to get a feel for the usual entries, and when he came to today’s page, ran his finger down and stopped at the scrawl of a new name, ‘So who’s this?’

The guard read along the line, ‘That’s the clerk of works, Mr Anderton.’

‘What? Working on a Sunday? Is that usual?’

‘Well, not really. Tom Rogers was duty engineer but Anderton gave him the day off.’

‘Oh, did he? And what did he want?’

‘I believe it was a maintenance call, sir.’

‘Oh yeah, so what was the problem?’

‘I don’t know, he went in on his own.’

‘Really, and is that normal to let the maintenance crew wander around on their own?’

The guard looked embarrassed, ‘Well, no sir, one of us usually escort them.’

‘But not this time?’

‘No sir, I was on my own, the other guard was called off for special duties.’

‘I see, and who called him off?’

‘The chief, sir. Chief Inspector Hillsdown.’

‘So, without an escort, you just let this guy, Anderton wander off on his own?’

‘Well not exactly, sir, he did have a pass allowing authorised access.’

‘Oh did he, and who signed the pass?’

‘The chief, sir.’

‘Hillsdown?’

‘Yes sir.’

Frank looked along the entry, ‘But he was only here for twenty minutes.’

‘That’s right, he said there was just one little job that needed sorting out, and thinking about it, he came up just before you, and left just after you went in.’

Frank looked away into space.
The clever bastards.

Evelyn followed as Frank wandered thoughtfully back to the chamber doors, and as they went down in the lift, he tried to figure out the connection, because although Hillsdown and Anderton were both on Stacey’s list, Ambrose Dudley was not, and yet he’d been forced into blocking the Sanderson file and had been killed soon after, and almost certainly by Anderton with the help of Hillsdown.

So, just as Angela had said, this game was getting curiouser and curiouser.

Monty sat deep in thought as Tara gently pushed him through the hushed corridors, but on reaching the library door, he skewed round in the wheelchair.

‘Miss Goodwin, I have a question. When you told us of your discoveries in the master passage, you mentioned the Continuum and it was the name used to refer to the Matrix 40. So my question is, do you actually know what the 40 really means?’

Tara thought for a moment, her blonde curls suddenly shimmering as she shook her head.

Monty sighed and looked away, ‘Well thank goodness for that.’

The library was just as wonderful as Tara had said, there were thousands of books lining the walls on endless shelves, and leather armchairs with reading tables in snug alcoves of bright daylight shining through the high arched windows, and tapestries and thick carpets that confiscated any unwanted sound to leave the room with an ambience of tranquillity.

Pushing Monty into the enormous room, she walked back to the door and jammed the back of a chair underneath the handle so they wouldn’t be disturbed, and wheeling him across the room, eased his chair into a large bay window that looked out over a beautiful spreading tree.

Sitting back, Monty watched as Tara went to a bookcase that ran the length of one wall, and taking a tall wheeled ladder, pushed it down to a point where a large exposed beam became as one with the bookcase itself.

Climbing to the top, she slid her hand around the beam, and holding a book tightly to her chest, came back down, and when Monty saw the look on her face, it became obvious that this book really was of great importance to her, and sitting down beside him, she gently placed the book on the table, ‘Well, here it is.’

Looking at the large old book, he was surprised to see that for all its years it seemed to be untouched and in almost new condition.

Snuggling down in a huge armchair, Tara watched as he picked up the book, and as Monty began to turn the pages, she felt strangely content with this old man.

In less than a moment, Monty found himself totally engrossed in Thornley’s old book, and even though at first it seemed nothing more than a record of an era long since passed, with the turning of pages, a bittersweet life began to unfold and the book became a graphic account of a hard struggling life of sadness, hardship and even joy before destiny finally turned it all to dust.

Old Thornley had striven all his life against the odds, and even when he’d finally found his true love, it had been taken from him most cruelly and he’d fallen into a vengeful despair before madness itself had come to claim his life.

Reading on, it seemed that poor Thornley had gone through the whole of life’s gambit and down every avenue of its perversity, from abandonment as a child, escaping to sea, and later making his fortune on the trade routes before building Thornley Manor for his one and only, wonderful and beloved, Isobella.

Monty sighed when he felt a tragedy come looming, because the passion that Isobella and Thornley held for each other was forbidden by her family and it condemned them both.

The objection to Thornley was that he was a merchant and their union in marriage had brought disgrace on the lineage of the family’s aristocracy, and the vengeance they wreaked upon them was complete and final in all its forms, because Isobella had broken the class rule, and in doing so, had shamed the family beyond redemption.

The final act of her family’s revenge had fallen on an icy storm-lashed day in February 1852, when Isobella, so heavily in labour with their first child, began to sink into a sweaty, pallid spiral of outrageous pain, and Thornley, out of his mind with useless desperation sent the stable lad to saddle and ride the fastest horse to town, but despite all of the lad’s imploring, the doctors and midwives had refused all help because Isobella’s family had forbidden ministration to a scandalous daughter who’d brought shame to the family.

And so, in the bleak depths of a wild and desperate night, Thornley could do nothing more than cry as he tried to comfort his one and only love, and by flickering candlelight could only watch through his tears as Isobella and their unborn child finally slipped away into a hideous and convulsive death.

Through the following miserable year, Thornley laid out a copse of woodland and all manner of wild flowers around the church and crypt he’d built for them, and the instructions of his will were made quite clear, in that, when his own time came he was to be laid with them and they would rest together, just the three of them in the sanctuary of the copse, to lay together in peaceful everlasting solitude.

As time passed by, Thornley fell into loneliness, and while his brooding thoughts turned ever inwards, his hate for Isobella’s family became all consuming.

But then the most terrible news had come to Isobella’s family, when their only precious son Edward had fallen in battle during the Crimean War and had since died of his wounds.

The family had slipped into a dark void of grief and mourning, and later, Isobella’s father began to lose his reason, and retiring alone to their London residence, descended into bouts of morbid drunkenness, whoring, debauchery and wild reckless gambling, until within the space of a month he'd lost the entire family fortune and had shot himself dead.

The inevitable decision from the high court, was that the extended family were deemed responsible for his debts, but settling the creditors would bring the entire family to bankruptcy and shame would follow with destitution their only future.

Thornley danced in the rain that night, drinking port from the bottle while laughing and crying as he kicked through the puddles, his hair and coat flying like a tempest in the wind as he shouted at the clouds and spat into the rain, because for Isobella and their unborn child, revenge had finally come, and now he would take his, most cruelly.

Looking down to Thornley’s book, Monty was suddenly reluctant to turn the next page, because what terrible depths of vengeance had Thornley been capable of?

As he read on, it transpired that Thornley had settled in his mind that he would rescue the whole infernal throng of them from their misery, and the entire extended family of aunts, grandmothers, uncles, daughters, nieces, nephews and cousins would be his.

The whole high and mighty, soulless family could have his money, the money they had all despised so much, and the whole rotten barrel could use his wealth to keep their social standing, and they could have it on demand as they wished, but in return he would have their souls and their eternal degradation.

Isobella’s mother was summoned to Thornley Manor, and he made no allowance for her modesty as he described in detail what the family’s part in the bargain would be, because if they chose to have the security of his wealth, they could have it as they wished, but in return they would give themselves over to him, mind, body and soul.

And so it fell that six days later, Isobella’s mother, the dowager Victoria Clansfield drove her carriage down the long avenue to Thornley Manor, and with a lowered gaze, accepted Thornley’s terms on behalf of the family, and with the bargain struck, Thornley’s vengeance took its first step when he’d taken her out to the stables, and having knelt her down on her hands and knees in the dung, he’d buggered her.

Within six months he’d converted the labyrinth from a simple harmless folly into chambers of debauchery, and while bedrooms were equipped with every artefact of sexual perversion, paintings and drawings of every obscenity were commissioned in their dozens, and he’d purchased enough opium to snare and ruin the entire family.

They would now perform to his tune, each with each, and other with other until all the high and mighty were fallen and would fornicate in the pit like swine.

Resting the book down, Monty contemplated the revenge that had been exacted from a tortured mind, and looking up, saw Tara gazing thoughtfully at him, and in the intensity of her eyes, could see she was wondering if he understood the tragedy held in the pages of her favourite book.