'I don't blame you; I'll instruct a real estate agent on your behalf, once the police give me the all clear to proceed.'
'Good,' she said. 'Now if that's al , I must be going. I have another engagement.'
Oakdale held up a hand. 'There is just one more thing.' He rose, ponderously, and walked towards the wal of his office. Behind a mirror, there was a wall safe, which he opened by dial ing in a combination. He reached in and took out a long legal envelope, with a red wax seal on the back.
'A few weeks ago,' he announced, 'Leo gave me this, with the instruction that should he fail to reclaim it before his death, I was to give it to your husband; to no one else but him. I have spoken with him by telephone, and he said it was okay for you to receive it on his behalf, as long as you don't open it.' He handed it to her. 'I must say that I was surprised that he gave it to me rather than to Jack, who was, after all, my senior partner at the time.'
'Do you have any idea what it is?' she asked.
'No. All I can tell you is that, from your father's demeanour when he entrusted it to me, it is very important.'
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72
Skinner was still dazed by the enormity of Joe Doherty's death as he walked along the tree-lined street in which the Walkers lived. He had stopped believing in coincidences when he was around eighteen years old.
'Why couldn't you take a hint, old pal,' he muttered, sadly. 'As if Wylie's boat blowing up when we should have been on it wasn't enough to give you the message.'
The thing that surprised him to an extent was that he felt no real threat to his personal safety. He was sure beyond any doubt that the explosion had now been reclassified as an accident, and that the remains of Jack Wylie's computer were as useless as they had no doubt looked when they were recovered from the hulk.
The secret was buried once more; there would be no sense in disturbing the ground by killing a foreign national, and a policeman at that. Yet he could not be one hundred per cent certain; that was why Leo Grace's Glock, all fifteen rounds in its magazine, was tucked into the waistband of his slacks, nestling cold but comforting against his back.
The day was still warm when he reached the clergyman's house, large by British standards but modest when set against Leo and Susannah's home. He crunched his way up the drive and rang the bell; after a few moments, the door was opened by a pert, blonde woman, around Sarah's age.
Until then, he had not been aware that he had met Babs Walker. He remembered only an encounter with one of his wife's friends, during the period of their separation, when he had been in Buffalo to visit his son, rather than with any hope of patching things up. The thing he recal ed most clearly about that meeting was how frosty the woman had been towards him.
There was still a faint chill about her as she greeted him at the door. 'Bob. Right on time; won't you come in.' She held the door open for him, then escorted him through to their main reception room, where her husband was waiting. From somewhere below, the den, he guessed, he heard a child's laugh.
'Welcome,' said the minister, 'it's good to see you again, but for the circumstances.'
'Yes,' Babs added. 'We never seem to meet in happy times, do we, Bob.' He had no doubt from her tone that she stil disapproved of him.
He guessed that there was little forgiveness in the preacher's wife.
He glanced around the room. The Walkers were keen collectors of family photographs; they stood in frames on every surface; parents, he supposed, children at various stages from birth, and the couple themselves, individual y in high school graduation robes, and together on their wedding day.
'Nice,' he said, absently. 'I hope Sarah isn't too much longer. She said she'd get done with Oakdale as quickly as she could.' A glance was exchanged between husband and wife; he caught it, and Ian realised as much.
'She will be a little later, actually, Bob,' he confessed. 'She has another meeting to fit in.'
Babs Walker was out of his vision as he looked at her husband, but he knew that she was smirking at his discomfiture. 'That guy?' he asked.
'Yes. He cal ed this afternoon, and said he was in town. I caught Sarah on her cellphone just as she was driving to meet the lawyer. She agreed to see him immediately afterwards.'
Skinner shrugged, feeling the gun move against his back. 'Fair enough.
She's thought it through; she reckons it's the thing to do.'
'Will you have some lemonade while you're waiting. Bob?' Babs asked.
'No, thank you very much. But coffee would be appreciated.'
'Sure,' said lan. 'I'l make it.' He headed off towards the kitchen, leaving his visitor with his wife.
She shot him a vixen smile as soon as they were alone. 'Please be seated,' she urged, indicating a deep blue couch. As he settled himself in she went over to a sideboard, took something from it that he could not see at first, then walked round to sit beside him.
It was an album. 'While we're waiting,' she said, 'I thought you might like to see some more of our photographs.'
'That would be nice,' he answered, insincerely.
She opened the volume at the start; the first page showed two girls; they were in their very early teens at most, but he recognised them both.
One of them was by his side; the other was his wife. 'Most of these have 286
Sarah in them,' Babs told him, as she flicked through the pages. It was almost a montage of his wife's life; school student, prom queen, diploma winner, undergraduate. And then there were adult shots, the two of them together, Sarah and Babs, friends together at barbecues, on a ski trip, some with Ian and with other young men, boyfriends of the time, of whom he had heard, no doubt.
His hostess stopped to point one out. 'That's Ron Neidholm, the footbal player. He and Sarah had this red hot thing going while she was in med. school; they couldn't keep their hands off each other. But he went off to Dallas and she got bored. She was quite a girl in her youth, was my friend.' Bob kept an icy smile fixed on his face.
Finally, she came close to the end. 'This is the most recent one I have,'
she exclaimed, as she turned the page, 'her last big fling ... to which she was certainly entitled, since you were being a very naughty boy at the time.'
The photo showed two couples in evening dress, at a formal dance.
'Sarah's hospital ball,' Babs explained. 'She had one too,' she said, with a lascivious chuckle. He stared at the photograph, his smile gone, looking at the two Walters, at Sarah and at another man, young, confident, handsome, smiling, a big cigar held between the first two fingers of his right hand.
'That's him,' she said. 'The guy she's gone to meet.'
He was on his feet in a single lithe moment. 'Where?' he barked.
'What?'
'Where are they meeting?'
'I can't tel you that,' she protested.
He reached down and yanked her to her feet. 'You can,' he hissed, 'and you will.'
She looked at his face and realised that he was right. 'At lan's church,'
she croaked.
'Where is it?'
'Go left, to the end of the street, then right and it's about half a mile.
But what. . .'
He shoved her back on to the couch and left her, speechless, as he ran out of the house, racing for dear life towards the meeting place of his wife and the man he had known until that moment as Special Agent Isaac Brand.
73
The two detectives stood at the door of the secluded, detached house in the East Lothian vil age of Onniston. 'If we're wrong,' Mcl henney grunted, 'we're up to our armpits in shit . . . and when the tea-break's over we'l be back to standing on our heads.'
'We're not wrong,' Mario McGuire whispered. He flexed his shoulders to ensure that his pistol was loose and accessible in its holster. 'Your checking revealed that she's resigned her job. It turns out that George Rosewell's absence from work has never been reported to the council.
Walter Jaap more or less identified her from her staff mug-shot as the woman who paid for Magnus Essary's funeral.'
'Aye, only more or less; I like my witnesses to be definite.'
'She didn't tell me about the beard, Neil. She gave me Rosewell's photograph but she didn't tell me that he had a beard.' His smile gleamed in the moonlight. 'It was enough for the sheriff to give us a warrant; be content with that.'
'My life in your hands, pal.'
'It was ever thus.' McGuire glanced at his luminous watch, then at the light in the bedroom window upstairs. 'Just after eleven; if he's there, they'll be tucked up by now.'
He reached out and rang the doorbell, keeping his finger on the button for at least ten seconds, hearing the strident cal from inside the house.
Pat Dewberry came to the door, attractive in a long pink nightgown, even without make-up and with her hair ruffled from the pil ow. 'Don't tell me. You've forgotten your...' she exclaimed, stopping with a gasp as she saw the two figures on the doorstep. She gave McGuire a look of pure terror, and in that instant even Mcl henney was convinced that they had come to the right house. He drew his gun as McGuire pushed the woman into the house and closed the door behind them.
'You take her,' he said. 'I'll get Rosewell.'
'There's no one here,' Mrs Dewberry called out. 'There's no one here.'
'Nevertheless,' said the big inspector. He headed upstairs.
'How did you kil the priest?' McGuire asked, once he was gone.
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She was deathly pale, and shaking violently, like a tree in a gale.
'What priest?' she wailed.
'Father Francis Donovan Green. The man you had cremated as Magnus Essary was a Catholic priest. Didn't he tel you that when you picked him up?'
The woman's eyes seemed to glaze over; she started to buckle at the knees, but the detective caught her by the arms and held her up. She seemed to crumple into herself as he looked at her.
'I didn't kil him,' she whispered. 'George did; he used an electric stun gun and then he suffocated him. It was horrible; I had no idea he was going to do that. He told me he just wanted to talk to him, that was all.'
'Don't make me laugh. Where did you pick up Father Green?'
'But it's true,' Pat Dewberry pleaded. 'We saw him at a pub cal ed the Last Drop, in the Grassmarket.'
'Appropriate. How long did you have to trawl there?'
'We didn't trawl there; at least not that I was aware of. It was just one of the places we used to go for a drink. We chose pubs well away from the school, where there was little or no chance of bumping into parents.
Then one night, George pointed out that man; he was on his own, and looking around. He told me that he was his brother, and that he hadn't seen him for years. He asked me to pick him up and bring him outside, so he could surprise him.'
'And you believed that?'
'Yes! They could have been brothers . .. twins, almost.'
'So you did what he asked.'
'Yes. It was easy, really; the man was only after one thing. In less than half an hour we were on our way. I took him across to the car, knowing that George would be hiding in the back. He got in and that was when George hit him with the stun-gun. That was when it al went crazy.'
'So why didn't you stop it? Why didn't you go to the police? Why didn't you tell me everything when I visited the school?'
'Because I was afraid by then,' she whispered.
'You didn't seem too scared when you opened the door just there.'
She looked at him, her eyes shifting around, as if she was searching for something in her mind. 'Listen,' she exclaimed in a voice that was suddenly stronger, as if she had glimpsed a ray of hope, 'I'l give evidence, I'l do anything you want.'
McGuire smiled at her, mocking her. 'I'm sure you will; but only if we let you,' said Mcllhenney, appearing downstairs with a shake of his head.
'How did you get into this?' he asked.
'It was all George's idea,' she answered at once, 'you have to believe that. I fell in love with him. We had an affair; it began not long after he came to the school. He's an extraordinary man, mesmerising, charismatic; I've never met anyone like him. But there's another side to him . ..'
'We know,' the inspector growled. 'And it's pure evil. Yet you went along with him, just the same.'
'I thought the wine company was real,' she protested. 'He told me that he knew a lot of good Portuguese wines that we could import into this company and sell to private customers.'
'Some janitor!'
'It was only a job to him; he told me it was just something to keep money coming in while he set up the business. Then he asked me to be his partner.'
'Using false names?' Mcllhenney exclaimed.
'He told me that he didn't want any hassle from the education authority; I thought that made sense, so I agreed. It's not il egal, after all.'
'What about the insurance policies?'
'George told me it was common business practice for partners to insure each other.'
'Why weren't there any policies on you?'
'He said we could do that later after the business was established.
First, he said we had to set it up properly. I believed him, really, and then that awful thing happened, with that man.'
'When George shot my uncle, were you there too?' McGuire demanded.
'Your uncle?'
'Beppe Viareggio.'
She shook her head, violently. 'I drove him there. I thought he was just going to talk to him about the lease. I didn't know about the murder until I read about it in the papers next day. George told me that it had to be done, that with him out of the way we were free and clear and able to go and join our money without anyone ever being any the wiser.'
'Okay,' McGuire snarled. 'So where is he now, this charismatic devil?
You were expecting him back, so where's he gone?'
'He said that he had one last thing to do, one last loose end to tie off.
He muttered something about someone who had crossed him a long time ago, and before he could go anywhere, he had to get even with her.'
Suddenly, it was the big superintendent who was trembling. 'Oh Christ,' he gasped. 'Oh Christ, Neil. He's gone after Maggie.'