The Impossible Dead

  ‘Hello?’

  It wasn’t the voice he’d expected. Female. Sounds of chattering all around.

  ‘Stephen Pears, please. He just phoned me from this number.’

  ‘Hold on …’

  The phone changed hands. It was a man’s voice this time.

  ‘Yes?’ Stephen Pears asked.

  ‘Enjoying the canapés?’ Fox commented. ‘Managed to get all those juicy directors’ bonuses past the shareholders?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m driving. Had to drop Donald MacIver off.’

  ‘The man who was with you?’ Pears pretended to guess.

  ‘Your old pal.’ Fox paused, watching a lorry hurtle past. ‘Not much wrong with his memory …’

  ‘What exactly is it that you think you’re doing?’

  ‘A bit of future-proofing,’ Fox stated.

  There was silence on the line for a moment. ‘Are we talking about money?’

  ‘We could be – or else your own future might not be too bright.’

  Pears gave a little laugh. ‘I don’t think I believe you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Nothing about you strikes me as the type.’

  ‘The type?’

  ‘To be bought off.’

  ‘How much do you know about me, though? You’ve got my phone number – but then I gave that to your wife. Did your little break-in provide any clues? I wouldn’t mind my laptop back, by the way – if you’re done with it. And the watch. You can hang on to Professor Martin’s book. What did you think of his thesis? All that political energy wasted …’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. And you were never known as Hawkeye when you were part of the Dark Harvest Commando. You never held up banks and post offices, never sent poison and letter bombs to London. Never stole all that money from Francis Vernal’s car after putting a bullet in his head.’

  ‘These sound like ravings, Inspector.’

  ‘You tell your version, I’ll tell mine.’

  ‘You’ll end up in a room next to your friend in Carstairs.’

  Fox tutted. ‘I didn’t say anything about Carstairs, Mr Pears. But you’ve got me wondering now – would John Elliot recognise you, given a nudge? Maybe there’ll be others who’ll come out of the woodwork. The police can do wonders these days. We’ll take a recent photo and change the hair colour and length, give you a beard … reverse the ageing process. Then we’ll start to see.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘See Hawkeye staring back at us. The man who wanted to bring down the government, the man with anarchy in his veins.’ Fox paused. ‘Until greed got the better of him …’

  ‘You’re making a mistake.’

  ‘I really don’t think so.’

  ‘I do.’ It was Pears’s turn to pause. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got more important things to attend to.’

  ‘You do that, Mr Pears. I’ll just give Mrs Pears a call. Alice Watts, as was. Have you seen that picture of the two of you, arm in arm at the cop-shop demo?’

  ‘Do what you have to do, Inspector.’

  ‘Fine by me. Just need to toss a coin to decide which murder we charge you with first. Or were there more than two? My arithmetic’s not what it was.’

  Fox ended the call, checked the quality of the recording, then sat for a few minutes, his hands resting against the steering wheel. He hadn’t got much; nothing that would begin to stand up in court. Hawkeye had learned caution somewhere along the way. Fox was about to head back on to the road when his phone rang again. Same number as before. He switched the recorder back on.

  ‘I seem to have hit a nerve,’ he commented.

  ‘I’m a man who likes a deal, Inspector. If there’s any sort of deal to be done here, I’m willing to consider it.’

  ‘It’s only when you don’t get your way that the killer instinct takes over?’ Fox speculated.

  ‘Business requires a touch of ruthlessness,’ Pears seemed to agree. ‘But accommodation is always preferable.’

  ‘And you’re a reasonable man?’

  ‘Unless pushed too far.’

  Fox stayed silent, pretending to weigh things up.

  ‘We need to meet face to face,’ he eventually stated.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We just do.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’

  ‘The Wallace Monument. Five this evening.’

  ‘I have plans for this evening.’

  ‘Five o’clock, Mr Pears.’ Fox ended the call and stared at his phone. He found that his heart was pounding, the blood whistling in his ears, and there was a slight tremor in his hands.

  Other than that, he felt fine.

  42

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Joe Naysmith said. ‘It’s too quiet.’

  Fox had to agree. He was seated in his Volvo, phone pressed to his ear, listening to his colleague. He looked out at the car park. The last time he’d been here, it had been the middle of the day and there had been a few tourists about. Now the place was almost deserted. Two other cars – belonging to the staff, most probably – plus, at the far end of the car park, the unmarked white van with Naysmith and Tony Kaye hidden in the back. It was their surveillance hub, filled with listening and monitoring equipment. Mostly, it didn’t stand out from the crowd, but there was no crowd here.

  ‘Could we park further away?’ Fox heard Tony Kaye ask.

  ‘Signal’s not brilliant as it is,’ Naysmith answered.

  Fox pressed his free hand to his chest. Beneath his shirt, a sticking plaster fixed the tiny microphone to his skin. Naysmith preferred plasters to ordinary tape – sweat was less likely to affect them. The microphone wire ran to the battery pack in Fox’s back trouser-pocket.

  ‘Is he sitting on the aerial?’ Kaye was asking.

  ‘Tell him I’ll strap it to my head if that’ll help,’ Fox commented. Joe Naysmith passed the message along.

  It had taken an hour’s paperwork before they were okayed use of the van and its contents, but that was fine – just a matter of box-ticking. Fox was adept at box-ticking. At some point, someone further up the ladder would see the completed form and maybe wonder about it, but that was for later. The van’s fuel tank was nearly empty. Fox had handed Naysmith fifty quid and told him to stop at the garage on Queensferry Road.

  ‘Your own shilling?’ Kaye had asked.

  ‘That’s the way I want it,’ Fox had confirmed.

  ‘Why here?’ Kaye was now asking. Meaning: why the Wallace Monument?

  ‘Resonance,’ Fox responded. His rear-view mirror showed him that the tables were being wiped down in Legends, the lights turned off at the end of another working day. It was ten minutes to the top of the hour. They’d been in position since half past four. Fox was trying to guess which car Pears would arrive in – the Maserati or the Lexus. He had his answer a couple of minutes later, the black Maserati emitting a low growl as it entered the car park.

  ‘He’s early,’ he said, ending the call. He watched as Pears passed the van without seeming to pause. The two other cars were empty, so he drew to a halt next to Fox’s Volvo, but left the engine idling. He lowered his window, so Fox did the same.

  ‘Get in,’ Pears ordered.

  ‘Why not my car?’

  Pears shook his head. ‘I know mine better.’ Fox could hear music from the Maserati’s stereo: jazz piano. Something similar had been playing at the house in Stirling the night he’d visited.

  ‘This is a deal-breaker, Inspector,’ the financier added.

  Fox hesitated, then slid the window shut, pulled the key from the ignition and got out. He walked towards the Maserati, his eyes fixed on its driver. Pears was studying the car park in his mirrors. Fox opened the passenger-side door and got in. Pears was wearing leather driving gloves, old-fashioned-looking things with stud fasteners. The moment Fox was in his seat, Pears put the car into reverse. Once out of the parking bay, he started for
ward, engine roaring. As they made to pass the white surveillance van, he slammed on the brakes.

  ‘Want to say goodbye to your friends?’ he asked, sounding the horn. Then they were off again, careering towards the main road. As the engine noise increased, Pears pumped up the volume on the stereo.

  ‘Think I’m that stupid?’ he yelled, baring his teeth as he pulled out to overtake traffic.

  ‘Stupid enough to get us killed,’ Fox retorted, reaching for his seat belt. The car was already up to eighty, and Pears showed no sign of easing off. He kept glancing in his rear-view mirror, until satisfied that no tail could have stayed with him while remaining unseen.

  ‘You’ve made your point,’ Fox conceded. He unbuttoned his shirt and started to tug at the wiring, hauling the battery pack from its hiding place. ‘See?’ He removed the batteries and tossed everything on to the back seat, then started doing the buttons of his shirt up again.

  ‘No gun?’ Pears asked.

  ‘No gun.’

  ‘And just that old van for back-up?’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting Wacky Races.’

  Pears took the hint and eased his foot a little from the accelerator, checking again in the rear-view. Eventually, he turned the music down.

  ‘Are we headed anywhere nice?’ Fox asked. He didn’t recognise the road at all.

  ‘We’re just driving,’ Pears said. ‘Driving and talking.’ He glanced at Fox. ‘I want you to understand why it’s all turned out like this.’

  ‘Do I need to know?’

  ‘Maybe you’ll see things in a different light.’

  ‘So you’re going to tell me why you killed Francis Vernal?’

  ‘You have to go back further. You have to understand how things were in the eighties.’

  ‘I was there,’ Fox said.

  ‘Were you, though? Or did you sleepwalk through it? All those newspaper stories you looked at – did you remember half of it happening at the time? The marches and protests, the fear?’ Pears glanced towards Fox. ‘Be honest now.’

  ‘Maybe I was too busy getting on with life.’

  ‘You and a few million others. But some of us wanted to change the world, and we knew politicians weren’t going to be much help to us … unless we prodded them.’

  ‘With letter bombs and anthrax?’

  ‘You don’t think terrorism works? Have you looked at Northern Ireland lately?’

  ‘Okay, so you wanted to smash the system – right up until the minute you saw all that cash in Vernal’s car.’

  ‘Francis was becoming a problem. He was drinking too much, shooting his mouth off. MI5 were all over him.’

  ‘You were following him that night?’

  ‘I was watching the house in Anstruther. Two minutes after he turned up, so did another car. Pretty obvious who they were. If Francis had drunk a bit less, he’d have been wise to them.’

  Fox thought for a moment. ‘When he left, you started to follow them – Vernal and the spooks both?’

  ‘By the time I caught up, the crash had already happened. I saw them searching his car. They weren’t especially good at it.’ Pears paused. ‘When they’d gone, I went over. Maybe Francis thought I was one of them. He was coming round, and pointing a bloody gun at me. I made a grab for it and it went off. There wasn’t much I could do after that.’

  ‘Except empty the boot of the DHC kitty.’

  ‘Okay, so I took the money.’

  ‘You did a lot more than that. Those two agents swear there was no gun in the car. That’s because the gun was yours, not Vernal’s. And it was no accident – it was a clean shot to the side of the head, identical to the way Alan Carter was killed. You assassinated Francis Vernal and I’ve only just realised why.’ Fox paused, waiting to see if Pears would say anything, but Pears seemed to be concentrating on the road ahead. ‘You said it yourself – you were watching the house in Anstruther. Meaning it was Alice Watts you were interested in. Either because you suspected her, or you had a thing for her. I’m guessing the latter. You had a thing for her, yet for some reason she preferred going to bed with the overweight drunken lawyer. I can see how that would rankle – you in your leather jacket and sunglasses, Mr Outlaw, losing out to Francis Vernal. Put a bullet in his head and Alice would think MI5 had done it. Maybe she’d want your shoulder to cry on.’

  As Fox spoke, he couldn’t help thinking of Charles Mangold and Imogen Vernal – another case of never-quite-requited love.

  ‘But before any of that could happen,’ he went on, ‘she had disappeared. You had the money to tide you over and a murder everyone was calling suicide. The group was in tatters, so you walked away from it all and fell in love with the system you used to hate.’

  Pears still had nothing to say, so Fox kept talking.

  ‘I saw something on the internet during a trawl: the qualities you need to succeed in business are the same ones cold-blooded killers have. No empathy, no emotion … whatever it takes to get the result you want.’

  Pears responded to this with nothing more than a half-smile.

  ‘Did you realise Alice was working undercover?’ Fox went on.

  Pears’s smile faded. ‘No,’ he conceded.

  ‘So how did you meet up again?’

  ‘A charity dinner. She was being fast-tracked through CID.’

  ‘You recognised her?’

  ‘Almost immediately.’

  ‘But she didn’t remember you?’

  ‘I’d changed more than she had.’

  ‘You managed to keep it from her?’ Fox waited for an answer, but none came. ‘You must have worked out that she was spying on you and your friends back then.’

  Pears nodded slowly. ‘It didn’t matter so much. Later, it didn’t matter at all.’ Pears glanced at Fox again. ‘I’d fallen in love.’

  ‘Again,’ Fox commented.

  ‘Properly,’ Pears corrected him. ‘For the first time.’

  ‘You must have known someone would eventually place you.’

  Pears gave a shrug. ‘Did MacIver really recognise me on that stage?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t think I believe you.’

  ‘He wasn’t sure where he knew you from,’ Fox lied glibly. ‘That’s what got him upset. But on the way back to Carstairs …’

  ‘With some prodding from you?’

  ‘Maybe a bit.’

  ‘He’s not going to make the most reliable witness in court.’

  ‘Not that you think this is going to court …’

  ‘You’re right.’ Pears paused. ‘I’m not even sure that’s what you want.’

  ‘Then what do I want?’

  ‘You want the truth known more widely, destroying my life and Alison’s reputation in the process. You think I’m a cold-blooded assassin who has been trying to protect his own back.’

  ‘When in fact you’ve been your wife’s shining knight?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Alan Carter had nothing on you?’

  ‘It was Alison’s name he had. His colleague had been put in charge of the Vernal “suicide”.’

  ‘That was Gavin Willis – the man who’d had a nice little sideline selling guns to you and your kind.’

  ‘MI5 got to him pretty damned sharp and said he had to keep the name of Alice Watts out of it. They told him she was actually a police officer, not long out of college and working undercover. If they’d bothered to give her an alias that wasn’t so bloody similar to her real name …’ Pears shook his head, the mistake annoying him even now. ‘Carter found some stuff hidden in Willis’s cottage – a little insurance policy of a confession, including the name Alice Watts and the information that she’d been an undercover cop as well as Vernal’s lover.’

  ‘He put two and two together and tried blackmailing you?’ Fox guessed.

  ‘I’m the one with the money. He knew what the tabloids would do with the story. Nasty little man – not the sort that can be reasoned with.’

  ‘I thought he was a
ll right when I met him.’

  ‘You saw what he wanted you to see.’

  ‘He invited you to Gallowhill Cottage, so you could pay him for his silence?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The door was unlocked, so you just walked in. He was seated at the table. A sitting duck, as it were. You didn’t kill the dog, though – it’s humans you have trouble with.’ Fox paused. ‘Francis Vernal might have been a spur-of-the-moment thing, but Alan Carter took a bit of preparation. First you asked a favour of your friend Sheriff Cardonald. You’d checked up on the blackmailer and you knew his history with the nephew. With Paul Carter out, you just had to set the scene – phoning his mobile a couple of times, luring him to the cottage. Then you went back home and snuggled up next to your wife.’ Fox paused. ‘How am I doing?’

  ‘Does it matter? I’m not hearing anything a court would consider damning.’

  ‘That’s because you’re good.’ Fox paused again. ‘Cardonald must have been livid when the prisoner he’d just released from custody was suddenly in the frame for murder. Won’t do his reputation any favours.’

  ‘Cardonald knows his place. I’ve made him a bit of money down the years.’

  ‘Plus I’d guess you can be persuasive when the occasion demands it. What about the arms dealer in Barbados? Was he proving troublesome too?’

  ‘You’re not seriously suggesting …?’

  ‘His name was Benchley.’

  ‘I know – he drowned in his pool.’

  ‘And that’s just coincidence?’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  Fox thought for a second. ‘Cigarettes and a fifty-pound note went AWOL from Vernal’s car.’

  ‘Then someone must have taken them – maybe one of your own kind, Inspector.’ Pears allowed himself another little half-smile and signalled on to a new road.

  ‘Seems to me you’ve a destination in mind,’ Fox commented.

  ‘Maybe I do.’ Pears was checking in his mirror again – no sign of any headlights behind him. His mobile rang, and he checked the display without answering.

  ‘Chief Constable wondering where you’ve got to?’ Fox guessed.