The Drowned Man (37 page)

Renaud's moan almost matched Seep's as he moved around Peter to untie his helpless rival. Peter stopped him.

“Pascal, I want you to go to the kitchen, turn on the lights, and see if any dog dishes are sitting on the floor.”

“Dog dishes?”

“He's bound with a cord that might be a dog leash. Do you know if he owns a dog? The thing we don't need is a Doberman launching itself at us.”

“A dog? No bloody idea.”

The cascade of blood from Seep's mouth made it difficult to check for a pulse under his jaw but Peter tested his left wrist and found a strong beat. He would live. Peter worried for a brief moment that Alida might have killed the professor's pet but concluded that this wasn't her kind of perversity. Monitoring the entrance to the dining room, he shot a glance towards the kitchen, now brightly lit by overhead neons. Renaud looked back and shook his head. When Pascal made to return to the sideboard, Peter held up a traffic cop's palm then moved to join his friend in the kitchen. Peter noted that the chain was on the back door. The attack would come from the front of the house. Peter crouched at the kitchen entrance to the dining area, less than six feet from the wounded man.

The centre hallway did not connect directly to the kitchen, so the two men could not be seen from the front vestibule. The light from the chandelier in the dining area would lead the attacker that way, Peter hoped. He motioned to Pascal to extinguish the overhead in the kitchen. A further hand motion kept him quiet, although Pascal continued to watch with distress the bloody figure bound to the sideboard.

This time Peter kept the gun at the ready. After a short while, he saw Pascal, his knees cramping, slump to the floor, back against the kitchen cupboards, inadvertently mimicking Seep in the dining room. It would only be a few minutes. There was no point in shutting off any lights; they didn't matter now. Another five minutes passed. Peter was content to wait but he could detect his friend's growing agitation. He had a point: calling an ambulance was the responsible thing to do.

Peter took the moment to revisit Alida's appearance at the townhouse. He understood Alida's cryptic parting words: “I have the last two letters.” Alida had stolen the Williams–Thompson document from Greenwell the night of the killing. She had tracked down Seep and stolen the Booth–Williams letter to complete the set. Now she possessed all three letters.

Peter heard the sound from the direction of the front door. He stood up in his stocking feet. He waved to Pascal to remain still. Peter shifted to the dining room from the kitchen and took a position in front of Seep's crumpled figure. He concealed the gun by holding it below table level.

Dunning Malloway, pistol in his right hand, squinted against the chandelier's glare as he entered from the hallway. Peter remembered the two pairs of shoes in the vestibule; the intruder would be fully alert to the threat from
two
men. Malloway was sweating but otherwise was composed. He seemed puzzled by Peter, but not angry or particularly focused on him.

Peter knew that the massive dining room table and his own upper body blocked Malloway's view of Seep. Perhaps the younger man heard a sound or smelled the blood, but he did not hesitate further. He raised his .38 and, striking a duellist's stance, aimed it down the length of the polished table.

They sat in the car in the rain and stared at the back of the Violet Care Home.

“Joe hasn't been here,” Maddy said, almost disappointed.

The crumbling asphalt parking area contained only a few staff cars, including a Vauxhall, which displayed a “Visiting Chaplain” card in the side window. The rear door of the institution appeared firmly locked, the whole building tranquil.

“We guessed wrong,” Michael said. But he wasn't entirely displeased. Husband and wife had argued about whether to come down to Henley at all. “If Joe Carpenter is spinning out of control, the Thames Valley Police should handle it,” he had said.

“They won't consent to posting a constable here for hours at a time,” was Maddy's retort.

Michael refrained from asking whether he and Maddy themselves would end up stationed outside Avril Nahri's place the whole day. His wife was playing detective and was determined to impress her father-in-law, though Michael kept that opinion to himself. Instead, he deferred to her obsession with the Carpenter case, as Maddy knew he would. An hour after the panic call from Carole Carpenter they were on their way from Leeds to Henley-on-Thames.

They agreed that Maddy would investigate the Violet Care facility while Michael took Jasper for a pee on the grass fringe of the parking lot. Maddy had to walk around to the front of the home in order to gain access. She returned in twenty minutes. The drizzle had increased and Michael was waiting inside the car with the damp dog.

“There's been nothing,” she reported. “Security seems pretty good. A lot of it to keep the residents in, but they're confident that anyone intent on causing a disturbance will be stopped at the door. A buzz-in is required to get past the first gate. And all the security stuff we both know well.”

They both managed difficult people, inmates in his job, wife batterers in hers. He had been through two hostage-takings at regional prisons; she had been present the night a vengeful husband broke into a hostel where his wife had taken refuge and stabbed two staff members.

Maddy rushed out the passenger side, went over to the grass verge and threw up. Back in the car, she said, “I'm calling Peter.”

Michael's action was counterintuitive, a bit unreal to him. He reached over and covered Maddy's cell phone with his hand. “No.”

He had been the cautious one until now, ardent to protect his pregnant wife, while sceptical that they would find anything at all in Henley or Shiplake. Ambivalent, he had even agreed to bring Jasper, thus making the trip a family excursion. But now he saw that Maddy, who had spent so many hours chasing down Alida, remained serious. She sat next to him, holding back nausea, her hair soaked. If she was this obsessed, let this husband-and-wife adventure play out, Michael ruled.

Besides, Jasper, panting in the back seat, was proxy for her master, Chief Inspector Peter Cammon, father and father-in-law. She leaned forward between the seats, ready for their next adventure. Peter would have been proud to know that Michael and Maddy felt his presence in the car.

“No, Maddy, we're going to Shiplake.”

The rain seemed to be on a cycle; it returned in shimmering veils, as if bent on submerging cars and pedestrians alike. At the assisted living home the story repeated itself: only a dozen cars in the car park and no recent in-and-out traffic. The building seemed battened down to the Cammons. Residents of old-folks' homes eat early and without doubt the elderly residents had already been led off for their afternoon naps. Maddy had her husband drop her by the side door so that he could take the sedan somewhere out of plain view. The rain faded again as Michael pulled over by the long, curving driveway and let Jasper run off leash in the nearby copse of sumacs and poplars. The home was out of sight around the curve. He spent fifteen minutes looking without much interest at the sodden trees. Jasper, free at last, ran through the mucky forest bed until Michael was forced to enter the wood to find her. He dragged her out of a ditch and bundled her into the back seat of the sedan. Her stench forced him to wind down the driver-side window a few inches.

Michael got out and strode along the mucky access road towards the residence. Still out of view of Maddy, he heard someone say, distinctly, “I've seen you.”

He halted. There was no one on the roadway or in the woods. Some strange thermal inversion had caused the voice to bounce off the underside of the cloud bank and reach him seventy yards away. As he crept around the final curve, the clouds broke and allowed a shaft of sunlight through. Fog steamed off the asphalt and hung three feet from the ground. Outside the side door of the residence, Maddy was standing still, facing Joe Carpenter through the haze. Joe was pointing a large handgun directly at her breastbone.

Tommy Verden lived much closer to Henley-on-Thames than Michael and Maddy did but he had to fight his way out of the London suburbs that morning. He brought the Mercedes, the company car and the one he savoured driving. It won some respect from other vehicles and he made progress through the morning rush. Peter's message had been a little too brief in that it left Tommy unclear about what Joe Carpenter hoped to achieve by threatening Alida Nahvi's family. Like Michael and Maddy, Verden set his Sat Nav for the sister's place first — having obtained the location from Bartleben's assistant — since Avril was supposedly Carpenter's primary target. By late morning he reached the car park of the Violet Care Home. Peering through the pelting rain he sized up the situation, and without stopping the Mercedes decided that all was normal here; the car park was a still life and the building an adequate fortress. His sense of urgency grew. He quickly reset the Sat Nav for Shiplake. On the last stretch before the nursing home he took his Glock out of its special case and positioned it on the passenger seat.

The long driveway up to the building appeared quiet but the heavy rain had given way to a hovering blanket of steam and it was impossible for Tommy to discern the layout of the grounds, let alone be sure that no shooter was skulking about. There was a familiar figure up ahead, just at the curve, but it wasn't Joe Carpenter.

Michael turned at the purr of the approaching Mercedes. He hadn't yet seen the car, but in a state of uprooted amazement recognized the purr of the engine. It was a sound from his childhood at the cottage, the floating chariot — or its modern replacement — driven by the man they called Uncle Tommy. For Michael and Sarah, Tommy had always been the family protector. Michael crept back around the curve, sure that Joe Carpenter had not yet seen him. He waved to Tommy to halt, worried that Joe might hear the big car. The older man caught the fear on the other's face; he immediately got out of the Mercedes and beckoned to Michael. When Jasper, in the Saab, saw her temporary master walking away, she began to whimper. Tommy opened the back door of the Mercedes.

“Bring the mutt back here,” he hissed.

Though there was little time, Michael followed Tommy's instructions and opened the Saab to let Jasper into the road. The retriever vaulted over the front seat and scampered onto the muddy path before Michael could grab her. Tommy, his disgust ill concealed, ushered the dog into the luxurious interior of the E-Class Mercedes and closed the door.

“Tommy —”

“Who cares about upholstery?” Verden said. The Mercedes stood farther from the nursing home than the Saab, and maybe a barking dog wouldn't be audible at that distance. He shook his head and put the Glock in his jacket pocket. Michael was supposed to be the moderate, sane one in the Cammon family and now here he was bringing his mutt to a potential shootout. The Cammon girls were usually the wild ones. Sarah was so independent that every move in her life seemed made out of contrariness. Joan ruled the roost and was tougher than Peter (Tommy liked that very much). Maddy was cut from the same cloth and he had no doubt that she was the leader in this adventure. Michael, in his view, was lucky to have her; she was family now and no different than the other “kids.”

“Tommy . . . He — he has a gun,” Michael said finally, dispelling Tommy's ten-second reverie.

“Where's Maddy?”

Michael explained.

“Michael, she's pregnant! How could you let her . . . ?”

Tommy headed silently up the muddy lane, the Glock at the ready. Michael followed.

Maddy saw Joe the second she had emerged from the building. The staff inside had encountered nothing unusual, and she surmised that she and Michael had arrived first. As she exited the side door of the home, there he stood under a tree, his clothes and hair soaked. He held a large, battered gun in one hand.

“I've seen you,” he said in a daze.

“We talked,” Maddy called to him. “At the funeral.” Joe was several yards away and it felt awkward conversing at this distance. “Your sister called me. What do you hope to gain here, Joe?”

“That bitch killed John. It wasn't the book dealer.”

“How do you know?”

“From a solid source. There's a murder warrant out for her. She's killed other people.”

“She won't come back for her mother or her sister . . .”

“She keeps in touch with them.”

Maddy thought it significant that Joe hadn't rushed inside. He had hesitated, but if he chose to shoot her, he would to try to breach the side door and probably continue shooting his way up to Ida's room.

“She's gone, Joe. Harming these women won't lure her back.”

Tommy Verden, with Michael trailing, appeared on the path. Maddy saw them first and then Joe turned as he followed her gaze through the fog. Michael moved to one side, prepared to interpose himself between the gunman and his wife. Tommy stayed in place and held his weapon straight out towards Joe Carpenter, who looked in awe at the figure with the gun.

“This isn't going to happen,” Tommy said.

“This is the
second
time, fella,” Joe said. He started to whine. “Why shouldn't I find out where she is? I've the right.”

“Are you sure she killed John?” Maddy asked, but it sounded like the delaying tactic it was. Joe swung his gun towards Verden.

Tommy spoke: “It was Dunning Malloway who told you she did it. Malloway is on the take. You can't trust him.”

“I have the right,” Joe repeated. He held his weapon pointed at Tommy's head. “Malloway told me Greenwell is dead. The girl killed John.”

Maddy knew a standoff when she saw one. She watched Michael, in an agony of fear, edge forward to block Joe Carpenter in case he swung his gun back towards her. Maddy knew that his intervention would set off the duellists. She moved between the two armed men, altering the trigonometry.

“You can't kill three people.”

“Why not?” Joe said. “You're protecting that bitch.”

Maddy took another step towards the mechanic. He couldn't miss at this range. “Because I'm expecting a son,” she said.

Joe Carpenter took a long time to lower his firearm, and Tommy did not move. Even when Joe relented, the veteran detective kept the Glock trained on him. Maddy came even closer, ensuring that Tommy would have no clear shot, and began to talk softly to the Lincolnshire man, who now seemed forlorn and pitiful. Tommy gave Michael a frustrated look but Michael could only shrug. Neither of them could hear the conversation. The older man kept his aim steady.

Tommy's mobile phone rang. Maddy continued speaking to Joe, who began to cry. The caller could have been anyone, but Tommy's decades of experience had made him slightly psychic and he flipped open the cell, all the while keeping his Glock trained on Joe Carpenter.

“Hello, Peter,” he said, as evenly as possible. He listened for a minute before walking over to Carpenter and handing him the phone in exchange for Joe's weapon.

Maddy insisted that Tommy Verden release Joe Carpenter, who stepped backwards, now unarmed. While the three men stood apart, like western gunfighters who had missed their moment, she disappeared into the rest home.

Fortunately for Maddy, the facility administrator hadn't heard the confrontation outside and she let her upstairs to the old woman's room. Mabel Ida Nahri snored peacefully in her bed. Maddy kissed her forehead. Then she went to the bookshelf and took the boxed set of
Avatar
DVD
s, still shrink-wrapped in its plastic, and tucked it under her sweater. No one would challenge her; a pregnant woman had her privileges.

When Maddy emerged, Joe Carpenter had gone and the other two men were standing guard at the door. Down the long driveway, they heard Jasper begin to howl. The dog was hungry.