If Mrs Crabtree was right and Tariq had been making some or all of the tapestries sold at the North Star Grocery when he should have been sleeping, doing schoolwork or having fun like other boys his age, it was nothing short of slavery. No wonder he’d always seemed so tired and thin. No wonder Mrs Mukhtar had been so concerned about his hands when he cut them falling off the ladder.
And now he’d been snatched away.
Somebody needed to help him, but who could she trust? The police wouldn’t believe her; Mrs Crabtree had a good heart but she was more than a little bit eccentric; and her uncle was leading a double life.
The clock chimed six, making her jump. The house was cloaked in twilight and so still she fancied she could hear the ghosts of past residents. Laura put on a jumper and turned on the lights. As they lit up the hallway, Skye rushed to the front door, hackles raised. He snuffled and growled at the crack. Then he threw his head back and howled. The sound sent chills through Laura.
‘Stop it, silly, it’s only my uncle,’ she said, grabbing the husky’s collar and dragging him away with difficulty. But no key grated in the lock. Heart beating, she peered through the letterbox, but could see no one.
She told herself off for her nerves. What did she have to be jittery about? After all, there was no proof that anything bad had happened. Tariq could be on holiday, Mrs Webb could be sick in bed with flu, J could be an ex-girlfriend of her uncle’s who had moved on very happily with her life, and Calvin Redfern could be a regular fisheries man, as he’d always claimed.
She was on her way to the kitchen to make a cheese sandwich when she noticed her uncle’s study door ajar. His laptop was sitting on his desk. After detention, Laura had stopped at the library to see if she could use the internet to investigate his background. The librarian had refused to let her in with Skye and Laura had refused to leave him out on the street. She’d left disappointed. It occurred to her now that she could do a quick search on Calvin Redfern’s computer. He’d told her to feel free to use it any time. Only thing was, he’d said to ask his permission first. Laura looked at her watch. Her uncle rarely came home before 7.30pm. An internet search took seconds. She’d be back in the kitchen long before then.
Before it was even a conscious thought, she was sitting in her uncle’s office chair. The computer hummed to life. Contrary to what she’d been expecting, it was no dinosaur model, but cutting-edge and powered by the latest technology. His files were laid out neatly and all were labelled with fish names.
Laura’s nerves had returned with a vengeance. She was so scared of what she might find, and also that Calvin Redfern might blow up if he came in to discover her toying with his computer, that it was hard to breathe. It didn’t help that Skye had disappeared. She called him, but he didn’t respond. With trembling fingers, she typed her uncle’s name into Bing and hit the Search button.
The Daily Reporter website was the first to come up. What Laura hadn’t anticipated was hundreds of other results - twelve whole pages of them to be exact. The Daily Reporter alone claimed to have forty two stories on him. She clicked on the most recent, dated a year earlier.
As she waited for the document to upload, Laura called Skye again. He didn’t appear. She drummed her fingers anxiously on the desk. Every passing minute increased the chances of her uncle walking in and catching her. On the screen, a banner newspaper headline was revealing itself slowly, letter by letter. It fanned out in a blaze of scarlet:‘I’M RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATH OF MY WIFE’
Calvin Redfern in Shock Admission.
Beneath it was a grainy black and white picture of her uncle. He was smartly dressed but in a state of disarray. His tie was crooked, his jaw unshaven and his hair tousled and wild. He was shielding his face from the photographer but there was no doubt it was him.
The screen blurred before Laura’s eyes. A favourite warning of Matron’s came into her head: ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’
A floorboard creaked. Laura’s stomach gave a nauseous heave. Calvin Redfern was framed against the light from the hallway, Lottie by his side, just as he had been on the night she met him. He was a stranger at this moment as he had been then. The slope of his shoulders and bunched muscles in his forearms still spoke of a latent power, barely controlled.
‘So now you know,’ he said. ‘Now you know what sort of man I am.’
20
LAURA WALKED TO the kitchen as if she was going to the gallows. Now that her worst fears had been realised, now that she was face to face with the truth about her uncle, she was no longer afraid of him, only of what would happen next. They sat down at the table as if they were an ordinary family preparing to eat a meal. The bread knife lay between them, beside the pepper grinder and the tomato sauce. Laura stifled an impulse to laugh hysterically.
‘So what sort of man are you? A murderer?’
There. It was out. She’d said it.
Calvin Redfern met her accusing gaze unflinchingly. The light fell on his face and there was no rage in it, only pain. ‘In some people’s eyes I am. In mine most of all.’
‘You killed your wife? You killed “J”?’
It was a guess, but she saw from his expression that she was correct.
‘Jacqueline was her name,’ Calvin Redfern said. ‘We were married for twenty years. I loved her more than anything in the world. I’d have faced down sharks, marauding elephants or run into burning buildings for her. But on the day that she needed me most, I wasn’t there for her. I could have saved her, but I was blinded by ambition. My work had become my obsession. By the time I came home, she was gone.’
‘Gone?’ A silent earthquake was taking place in Laura’s head. Theories and accusations came crashing down like skyscrapers. ‘Are you saying that you didn’t actually kill her? You didn’t shoot her or something?’
‘What?’ Calvin Redfern was appalled. ‘What do you take me for? You surely didn’t think . . .? You did, didn’t you?’ He covered his face with his hands.
Laura wanted to rush to him and beg his forgiveness for imagining him guilty of the worst crime of all, but she held back. She still didn’t know where the truth lay.
Finally, he looked up. ‘Truly, I must have been the worst uncle on earth if you think me capable of murder, and for that I can only blame myself. I’ve left you in the dark too long. You were right when you said the house was full of secrets. No, Laura, I didn’t kill my wife, but I feel as if I did. In the midst of my grief, I made the mistake of telling that to a tabloid reporter of the worst kind, an old adversary, who promptly went and printed it to even the score. Just the other night, he appeared out of nowhere and confronted me in an alley. He wanted to rake it all up again.’
Laura looked away. Here she was judging her uncle when she herself was guilty of concealing things from him. The fact that he’d volunteered the information about the reporter made her believe he was speaking the truth about everything else.
‘So what did happen to Jacqueline?’ she asked quietly.
He gave a bitter laugh ‘We thought it was a cold, Jacqueline and I. Or rather, she thought she had a cold. I thought she had a bout of flu coming on. She had a headache and was feverish. I tried to insist on taking her to the doctor, but she told me I was making a fuss about nothing. She promised to stay in bed and drink lemon and honey. To be honest, I was relieved. I had a career-making . . .’ he searched for the right word - ‘project ahead of me that night and I knew it would need all of my attention and energy if it were to succeed. Which it did. When I came home the next morning, the house was quiet. She’d . . .’
His voice broke. ‘She’d died of meningitis in the night. I’ve never forgiven myself. I spent a week or so dealing with things there was no escaping - funeral arrangements, reporters, and the handing over of work files to the relevant people, then I left Aberdeen for good. I walked away with nothing but Lottie and the clothes I stood up in. I put my affairs in the hands of a lawyer and an estate agent and they organised the sale of the house. I told them to gi
ve everything else to charity.’
Laura could hold back no longer. She jumped up and put her arms around him. Her fear and anger had gone. She wanted nothing more than to show him she loved him.
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t have known and you probably couldn’t have saved her.’
He shook his head, but it was clear he was deeply moved.
She sat again. ‘What was this job you were so obsessed with?’
Calvin Redfern went over to a print of St Ives, which hung above the kettle. He took down the picture. Behind it was a safe. It clicked open when he typed in the combination code. He removed a scrapbook and handed it to Laura.
She opened the first page and gasped. On it was another newspaper article about her uncle, this one from The Times. It was dated two years earlier and headlined: SCOTLAND’S TOP COP VOTED NATION’S BEST DETECTIVE FOR FIFTH YEAR RUNNING. Below it was a photo of a handsome, smiling Calvin Redfern receiving a medal from a member of the royal family.
‘You were a detective like Matt Walker!’ marvelled Laura. ‘Then why on earth - ?’
He folded his arms across his chest. ‘Why did I try to discourage you from dreaming of becoming one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because people like the Straight A’s are the very worst that humanity has to offer and I can’t stand the thought of you having to deal with them.’
‘The Straight A’s - they’re a gang?’
The murderous expression Laura had glimpsed on her first night as her uncle stared from her bedroom window flitted across his face. He began flipping through the pages of the album. Article after article documented his pursuit of the Straight A’s and high profile arrests of various members.
‘Yes,’ he said grimly, ‘but they’re no ordinary gang. They’re criminal masterminds. It pains me to say it, but within their evil profession, within organised crime, they’re brilliant at what they do. The godfather of the Straight A’s, Mr A - we’ve yet to discover his identity or real name - has recruited the most skilled criminals the underworld has to offer. A brotherhood of monsters, you might say.’
A brotherhood of monsters. The phrase stuck in Laura’s head. ‘What sort of things do they do?’
He shrugged. ‘You name it, they’re into it. If it’s illegal and it makes money, they probably have their fingers in the pie.’
‘Wow.’ Laura’s head was spinning. ‘But you’ve arrested a lot of them?’
‘I’ve stopped a few bank raids and arrested one or two of their key members, but the Straight A gang is like an octopus. As fast as you cut off one tentacle, another grows. On the night Jacqueline died, I was out leading a swoop to capture some of the Straight A’s’ most notorious bank robbers. They’ve now been jailed for life. If I’d carried on in the Force, I might have made a difference but I’m done with that now. After Jacqueline died, I resigned from my job, got in my car and drove until I couldn’t drive anymore. Somehow I ended up in St Ives. I moved into the first place I found.’
He gestured in the direction of the hallway and lounge. ‘As you can see, I haven’t done much in the way of decorating. It was a mess and I wasn’t up to dealing with it. I advertised for a housekeeper. For a long time there was no response. I had almost given up when Mrs Webb turned up. She’s a funny old stick but she’s good at her job. Sort of.
‘To begin with, all I did was brood. I relived that fateful night a thousand times. Gradually, I pulled myself together. With the help of an old contact, I found a job investigating illegal fishing in the waters around Cornwall. Then, out of the blue, I received a letter from Social Services informing me I had an eleven-year-old niece. It was a shock, but not an unpleasant one.’
He smiled. ‘It wasn’t easy to persuade them that a reclusive man who counted fish for a living was a suitable guardian, but some friends of mine in the Force wrote very nice character references. Eventually Social Services agreed and here you are.’
‘I’m sorry you got landed with me,’ Laura said, a little put out by his description of her as a ‘shock but not an unpleasant one’. ‘I can go back to Sylvan Meadows if it’ll make your life easier.’
Even as the words left her mouth, she regretted them. Now that she knew the truth about her uncle, she wanted to be with him even more. She got no further.
‘Don’t even think about it. You’re not going anywhere. Not unless you want to, anyway. Jacqueline aside, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m going to try hard to be around more and be a better uncle to you.’
Touched, Laura said, ‘You’re already pretty cool, you know. Look, I’m sorry I was in your study. I — ’
‘Goodness, Laura, it’s nearly eight o’clock,’ interrupted Calvin Redfern. ‘You must be starving. I know I am.’ And then, as if it had only just dawned on him, ‘Why is the kitchen such a mess? The laundry’s not been done either. Did Mrs Webb not come in today?’
Laura shook her head. ‘Maybe she’s ill.’ It was on the tip of her tongue to add: ‘She probably caught pneumonia while she was out spying on you in the freezing rain and wind,’ but she thought better of it. She didn’t want to ruin the mood by revealing that she, too, had been following him.
‘Well, I hope she recovers soon. I’m not much of a cook. How would you feel about a takeaway pizza?’
It was while he was placing the order that Laura suddenly remembered Mrs Crabtree’s news.
‘Tariq!’ she cried, as her uncle put down the phone. ‘He’s disappeared.’
‘You mean, he’s run away?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. He did run off this morning because Mrs Mukhtar shouted at him, but Mrs Crabtree is sure that he was with her and Mr Mukhtar when their removal van drove out of town this afternoon. Mrs Crabtree’s friend, Sue, says that they boarded up their shop without any warning and left St Ives for ever.’
Calvin Redfern rolled his eyes. ‘Laura, I’m not paying any attention to the idle gossip of Mrs Crabtree or her friend. Mrs Crabtree has a good heart but a fertile imagination. Matt Walker wouldn’t listen to such nonsense.’
‘Matt Walker says it’s worth paying attention to people like Mrs Crabtree because they’re the eyes and ears of a village and they often spot details the police wouldn’t notice if they were advertised in neon lights,’ Laura retorted.
He grinned. ‘Very true. But in this case, I think Mrs Crabtree has allowed her imagination to get the better of her. The Mukhtars have a business in St Ives. They won’t have gone far. They’re probably visiting relatives or taking a short holiday.’
He and Laura were drinking coffee and listening out for the delivery scooter when a howl erupted in the hallway. Lottie bounded up barking and Calvin Redfern went rushing out of the kitchen. Laura followed more slowly.
Skye was at the front door, hackles raised. He threw his head back as he howled to the unseen moon. The wolfhound rushed to join him, barking fiercely.
‘Lottie and Skye, that’s quite enough noise,’ Calvin Redfern commanded. ‘Any more and we’ll have the neighbours threatening to evict us.’
‘He was doing that earlier,’ Laura told him. ‘He’s been acting strangely all evening.’
Her uncle put the key in the lock. ‘It’ll be the pizza arriving, I’m sure.’ He moved the dogs out of the way. The door opened with its customary groan. A gust of sea air blew in. Laura gripped Skye’s collar. He snarled at some unseen threat in the darkness.
Calvin Redfern peered out. ‘Nobody there. I hope he’s not in the habit of baying at the moon whenever the fancy takes him. Mrs Crabtree will have apoplexy.’
He was in the midst of closing the door when he stopped dead. Without taking his eyes off whatever it was that had transfixed him, he said in a low voice: ‘Laura, would you be good enough to go into my study and look in the top right-hand drawer of my desk. In it you will find a box of surgical gloves. Please bring me a pair.’
Laura rushed to do his bidding. When she returned, her uncle was in the sa
me position, his face hard. She handed him the soft, thin gloves. He stretched them over his fingers like a second skin and opened the door wide.
Lying on the top step and protected from the wind by a rock, was the patterned blue back of a playing card. Her uncle picked it up carefully and put it in the clear plastic bag he’d produced from his pocket. It was a Joker. The figure on the card had ruddy, dimpled cheeks and a sparkling hat. When Calvin Redfern held it up to the light, the joker winked malevolently at them.
‘How weird,’ said Laura. ‘Why would anyone leave a playing card on our doorstep?’
Her uncle slammed the door and leaned against it. ‘It’s a message for me from Mr A.’
Laura felt like a participant in some strange, unfolding nightmare. ‘The godfather of the Straight A gang has tracked you down and sent you a message? You’re kidding. What does it mean?’