Blood Ties (22 page)

‘Ah,' Alec said. ‘Well, the quality isn't brilliant, but . . . Do you have a Wi-Fi link?' He produced his mobile phone and scrolled through the images, showed it to Blezzard. ‘I took it last night, when he was in The Lamb.'

‘Enterprising of you. Sergeant Dean, find the man a computer, will you? Let's see if this Gavin Thame really is who he says he is.' Blezzard pushed off from the desk and started to leave.

‘Before you go,' Alec said. ‘Kevin Hargreaves?'

‘Isn't completely off the hook.'

‘Right. The other thing is, Karen Thame's accident. Do you know who the lead officer might have been?'

‘It was twenty years ago,' Blezzard said.

‘But it'll still be on file.'

‘He'll be retired.'

‘Even so.'

Blezzard sighed. ‘Dean, get him what he wants,' he said and Alec knew that curiosity, if nothing else, was getting the better of Inspector Blezzard. Occupational hazard, Alec thought, and he should know. After all, that was what had got him into this.

Brian was not impressed by Gavin's performance so far. Sure, he'd been interested, more than interested, when Gavin had approached him outside of Susan's flat and put his proposal, but it was clear now that Gavin was lacking in the subtlety department.

‘You can't go in all guns blazing,' he said. ‘That just puts her back up. She's a stubborn woman, is my ex.'

‘That why she's an ex, is it?'

Brian grimaced. He shook his head. ‘My fault,' he said. ‘I got cocky, didn't bother to hide the latest blonde. She took umbrage then took a hike, and next thing I know she's trying to take half the house.'

Gavin glanced around at the rather pleasant house that Susan very clearly hadn't obtained her half of. ‘Looks like you won that one,' he said.

‘I did and I didn't. She got the money, I got a restraining order. Eddy paid her my share.' He shook his head. ‘I didn't realize the old man had money until then, but he said he'd pay me off if I promised never to go anywhere near Susan again. Not to call her and not to let her know where the money came from. I told her I'd cashed in some insurance policies my dad had left me.'

‘You went along with it? She believed you? Why didn't you try it on with the old man? Tell him you wanted more if he wanted you to stay away?'

‘Because, my friend, our Eddy was a brighter old sod than you give him credit for. He tied it all up tight, got his solicitor to draw up this paper I had to sign. I had to give Eddy a fifty per cent share of the house, didn't I? The same as that bitch would have had if I'd had to sell.'

‘So, why'd he do it? What is she to him?'

Brian shrugged. ‘I don't know. All I know is I didn't have to sell, didn't have to give her anything so long as I signed this bit of paper. I got a good deal,' he admitted reluctantly. ‘She could have got Cole involved and dragged it through the courts and she would have bankrupted me if that had happened. The way I saw it at the time was that he'd given me a get-out clause.'

‘So, where did you think he got the money from?'

Brian shrugged. ‘Didn't know, didn't care.'

Gavin frowned. ‘He was a bastard,' he said. ‘He wrecked my life. Killed my father.'

‘Yeah, you told me. At length.'

Gavin flushed but he said nothing, just poured himself another drink. That was something else, Brian thought, he couldn't half put it away. ‘Look,' he said. ‘Go tonight and apologize for coming on so strong. Play on her conscience. She's got more than enough of it, God knows. You don't get anything from Susan by trying to railroad her, but make her feel guilty and we'll both be in the money. Just don't overplay your hand. Don't get greedy. A share, that's all, she'll go for that. I know Susan and she'll want to salve her conscience. She's into all that do as you would be done to you stuff.'

Gavin took a large mouthful of spirit and washed it round his mouth before swallowing. ‘She doesn't deserve any of it,' he said.

That evening Naomi and Alec had elected to go back to Wells for the concert they had seen advertised. This time they sat in the main body of the church while members of a local choral society and a string quartet joined with choristers and presented a very mixed programme, from sacred music to something Naomi vaguely recalled came from
The Merry Widow
.

She thoroughly enjoyed the experience, but was aware that Alec grew restless in the second half.

‘Are you OK?'

‘Hard seats and I'm hungry. They go on a bit, don't they?' he commented as members of the choral society performed an aria from
Madam Butterfly
.

‘Alec, you philistine!'

‘The philistines were a very sophisticated people.'

Naomi shook her head in mock sorrow. She was aware that the restlessness had nothing to do with hard seats or hunger and everything to do with his anxiety about what was going on at The Lamb. He was sure Gavin would return. Had both wanted and not wanted to be there. Naomi's desire to go to the concert had swung the decision making and she had made certain he had switched off his phone – which he hated doing – and had also insisted he call a restaurant they had spotted earlier in the week and book a table for after the performance.

Bugger Gavin, Susan and even poor Eddy. Naomi wanted a proper night off.

They emerged from the cathedral into a chill but clear night. Naomi didn't need Alec to tell her that; she could feel the frost begin to bite as soon as they stepped from the porch, hear the crackle of already frigid grass as she stepped on to the green. She shivered, but breathed deep of the cold, crisp air, suddenly exhilarated.

Alec took her hand and slipped it through his arm. ‘Such a bright moon,' he said. ‘And there's a ring around it. Doesn't that mean storms?'

‘It means there are a lot of ice crystals in the air.'

‘Then how come they all line up and form a circle?'

‘How can things line up to form a circle?'

‘You know what I mean. So, tomorrow we go and see ex-Inspector Bradford. I'm not holding my breath. As Blezzard said, it is twenty years ago.'

‘And as I said, coppers have long memories. Elephantine. You'd remember, I'd remember. He will.'

Alec squeezed her arm. ‘Hope you're right,' he said. ‘We need something to pull all of this together, and Karen's death seems to be the pivot point somehow. I just don't get the mechanics of it yet.'

He switched his phone back on when they got back to the car, as Naomi knew he would. She sighed, was unsurprised to find that he had three missed calls and two texts. All from Susan. He also had a missed call from Kevin, who was obviously trying on her behalf.

Naomi sighed. ‘What do the texts say?'

‘Well, Gavin, whoever he is, came back. The locals kicked him out. She wants to know where I am and why I'm ignoring her.'

‘Okaay. So phone Kevin, find out what's been happening and then text her back.'

‘
Text
her back? That will go down like a lead balloon.'

‘Well, call Kevin first. He's likely to be a bit more reasonable.' She could imagine Alec's expression. She laughed. ‘And next time we go away anywhere and someone wants to know what you do for a living, tell them you're a chartered accountant or something. Or a zoologist. Anything but a bloody policeman.'

TWENTY-FOUR

B
rian had visited Edward Thame's house only on a couple of occasions and had not been made to feel welcome. He was not inclined to return, even though the occupant was now deceased, but Gavin's frantic phone call had dictated that he should.

He'd thought about ignoring it, telling Gavin where he could go; the initial idea that Gavin could force Susan's hand, with Brian's help and information, and that both he and Brian could benefit from the will had seemed like a good one, but increasingly Brian was regarding Gavin as a liability.

‘Tell me about her,' Gavin had said at that first meeting, when they'd sat relaxing over a pint, Brian's curiosity piqued by the notion that Eddy had a relative he didn't know about.

At that point, he told himself, he'd actually thought he was doing a good deed. Susan had, inadvertently, denied the true relations of Edward Thame their right to inherit and that just had to be wrong. The promise of a cut, should Brian be able to help Gavin rectify that situation, seemed only fair.

‘Think of it as a fee,' Gavin said. ‘You know, like these no win no fee lawyer blokes that advertise on the telly.'

The first warning bells had sounded then. It was the no fee bit that alarmed. But he had chatted about his ex-wife and even indulged in a bit of alcohol induced nostalgia. Susan may doubt it now but there'd really been a moment when Brian had thought she might have been ‘the one'.

But, as the conversation meandered and Gavin outdrank Brian two to one, the truth emerged: Gavin was no more a relation than Brian; his agenda had more to do with profit and revenge than it had to do with anything resembling natural justice. The alarm bells had rung again, but Brian had failed to give them the proper amount of attention. It was only afterwards, when he'd sobered up and thought about the deal, that Brian thought to himself: this bloke's mad as a box of frogs.

He had decided to tell Gavin where to go with his ideas and that he wanted nothing more to do with a plan so absolutely doomed to failure, but the Gavins of this world, Brian discovered, don't take no for an answer. He had his mind set and he would not be swerved, diverted or otherwise distracted from his goal.

Driving out to Eddy's, Brian asked himself why he hadn't just put the phone down. Why he was obeying this new summons, which had come so late at night that he'd been getting ready for bed.

‘Must be as nuts as he is,' Brian said. He thought about turning round and going home, but something stopped him. Several somethings stopped him, if he was being totally honest.

The first was curiosity. What if the old man really
had
found something worth laying hands on? Compared to Gavin's convoluted game, simply swiping something from the house seemed clean and simple and Susan had plenty coming to her from the sound of it. She'd not miss . . . whatever it was.

The second, in a contradictory way, was a faint vestige of loyalty. Susan was essentially a good person and he knew he'd been a fool to muck her about the way he had. She hadn't deserved it and, in his heart of hearts, he knew he'd been the real loser in the situation.

Third was fear. There was something about this Gavin bloke that was feral, vicious and that didn't operate by anything resembling normal rules. Brian, skipping all his life along the verges of dishonesty, recognized the type and knew to be afraid of it. If he let Gavin down now, Gavin would come looking to find out why.

A few more brains and he'd be dangerous, as my gran used to say, Brian thought. She'd used to say that about Brian, actually, but he'd never felt he really deserved the vague insult. Gavin certainly did. So, thinking about it, did Eddy, with the major difference that Edward Thame had had the required number of brain cells. Edward Thame had shown himself to be both devious and dangerous, and Brian was sort of looking forward to demonstrating that fact to Susan. That particular revenge would be very sweet.

This obsession that Gavin had about Eddy, seemed, to Brian, to exactly mirror that which Eddy had demonstrated towards Gavin's father. ‘Twenty years,' he said aloud. ‘Twenty frikking years? That's commitment. Boy, is that commitment!'

When Gavin had first told Brian about Eddy's persecution of his father he'd thought he was joking.

‘Sent cards and presents. Aw, come on, that's just—'

He broke off, Gavin's face darkened. ‘Letters, too, and press cuttings. He kept the pressure on, didn't let my dad get over what had happened. Eddy Thame kept my dad in prison for twenty years, just like if they'd put him away. But if he'd gone to jail he'd be out by now, he'd have served his time. Eddy didn't see there was an end to it. He'd have carried on till the day he died.'

‘So, you're claiming he drove your father to suicide. Right. Gavin, why didn't he just go to the police? Tell them what Eddy was doing? There are such things as restraining orders, you know.'

‘Oh, you'd know all about them.'

Yeah, actually, he did. Susan wasn't the only woman who'd taken the legal route to separation.

‘Why didn't he go to the police? Because he was guilty, man, you can see that. He caused that crash but the police couldn't do nothing about it. So Eddy Thame acted like a bloody vigilante.'

A vigilante that sent presents and cards. OK, so presents and cards for a dead child, which was a bit weird, and Brian could sort of see how that would get to someone after a while – if that someone had a guilty conscience, anyway.

It was to Brian's credit – at least, in Brian's eyes – that he'd been curious enough to ask around and find out a bit about the accident that had killed Karen and her friends. He could sort of countenance leaving the scene of a crime, but what he'd found out actually made him think. At least one of the girls was likely to have survived if Gavin's dad had phoned an ambulance. Even if he'd left the scene, he could have stopped somewhere and got help.

That, in Brian's view, made Eddy's persecution of him more comprehensible and it also made it clear why Gavin's dad hadn't gone to the police. He wasn't sure what crime he'd have been charged with, but something like leaving the scene of an accident and that leading to involuntary manslaughter came to mind.