A Ghost at the Door

  She didn’t ask herself whether Harry was responsible. Part of her wouldn’t accept the notion, even as another part of her acknowledged it was entirely possible. Harry had form when it came to corpses. But whatever had taken place inside the church, Harry was going to need help – and right now she was the only one who could supply it. She had to find him. Yet even as she stepped out of the car she saw him, stumbling from the shadows, his body strangely twisted, in pain, clutching his shoulder as he walked straight into the arms of a waiting policeman.

  ‘Central Command, this is DCI Edwards from Charing Cross. Require assistance in Walbrook in the City. We have a suspicious death in the street,’ Edwards barked into his radio.

  ‘What assistance do you need, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘The whole bloody army, love,’ he said. ‘You can get those layabouts from Snow Hill to put down their snooker cues and sarnies for a minute and get over here like it’s open day at the brewery. We’ve got quite a little crowd gathering. Oh, and did I tell you? I’ve already got the blighter who did it.’

  Don’t panic, don’t you dare panic, Jemma whispered to herself. Think!

  She sat in the shadows of the street, away from the mêlée that was growing around where the body lay. More police had arrived in a collection of cars and vans, their flashing cobalt-blue lights and the gathering press of onlookers turning the scene into an evening at a fairground, and turning her mind to mush. Think, Jemma! Think!

  Everything she knew, or thought she knew, had been thrown into confusion, like a kaleidoscope that had been kicked down the street and landed in the gutter with all the pieces in a new, confusing order. The photograph was crucial but it hadn’t been telling the whole story, and she’d only begun to realize that as she had driven past the cavorting tourists. A piece was missing: the identity of whoever took the bloody snap.

  She watched in misery as Harry was being led away. The police reinforcements were pushing back the crowd. An ambulance joined the fray, edging forward to stand beside that terrible spot where two forensics officers in white suits and hoods were bent over their work. Think, woman! But she couldn’t, her mind and emotions in too much turmoil. Yet as tears of frustration gathered and demanded that she give in to them she became aware of a man who could, someone who might be able to understand the images in this darkened mirror and make sense of the way in which the pieces had fallen.

  Once more she reached for her phone, pressed buttons, waited for an answer. When she got it, and had spoken briefly, she restarted the engine of the trusty Volvo, slipped it gratefully into gear and left the pandemonium of Walbrook behind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  No one could have been more surprised, or equally more delighted to the point of ecstasy, than Hughie Edwards when he saw Harry stumbling directly into his arms only feet away from where the body on the pavement was still leaking. More blood was trickling from gashes on Harry’s forearm and the manner in which he was buckled like Quasimodo said he’d clearly been in a fight. Edwards was chapel, didn’t go in much for miracles, but right now he was changing his mind.

  ‘Hello, Harry.’

  Weary, pain-stricken eyes were lifted, then spent some time hovering over the body before Harry once more returned his attention to the chief inspector. ‘Randall Wickham,’ Harry muttered. ‘Used to be Bishop of Burton. Before you ask, I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘And, before you say another word, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder,’ the Welshman began, his lilting voice almost singing in enthusiasm. ‘You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence . . .’

  Once again Harry was forced to listen to words that had become all too deeply embedded in his life and that were sucking hope from him. A police photographer was dancing around the body, bending, searching for a better image. Wickham’s ornate crucifix lay by his side, the strands of the silver rosary snaking their way from his lifeless fingers. Poking out from beneath the purple cassock was the wristwatch. Smashed to fragments. Covered in the bishop’s blood. Another nail in Harry’s coffin.

  ‘Put the cuffs on him, Staunton,’ Edwards instructed the sergeant. ‘I don’t want this bugger slipping away, again.’

  The sergeant reached for Harry’s arm; Harry cried out in pain, dropping to his knees. ‘I think I may have busted something else.’

  ‘No matter. Cuff him all the same,’ Edwards insisted.

  Yet regardless of the pain it proved impossible to secure Harry’s wrists behind him because of the cast, so they had to compromise, bind his wrists in front. They couldn’t doubt that Harry had taken a beating: his face was like ash from a cold fire. The sergeant guided Harry’s head beneath the roof of the car as he put him in the rear seat, climbing into the driver’s seat to keep an eye on him even though the locks were on the rear doors, while Edwards finished giving instructions over the body.

  Slumped in the back seat of the car, Harry tried to focus his thoughts but found it impossible. His shoulder was still screaming in outrage but at least he could move it – perhaps nothing was broken after all. Through the windscreen he could see Edwards holding up a plastic evidence bag. It contained his wristwatch. Edwards was smiling. As Harry closed his eyes in resignation he became aware of the phone vibrating in his pocket once more, and suddenly he remembered Jemma. He needed her, more than ever. Slowly, gritting his teeth against the hurt, he twisted to allow the fingers of his left hand to close around the phone.

  ‘No you bloody don’t,’ the sergeant growled, snatching the phone from Harry’s grasp. ‘Not having you messing with any evidence.’ Yet even as he claimed his prize the screen lit up, trying to deliver its text message once again, and his nose twitched in curiosity. ‘Nothing for you to worry about, anyway.’

  Harry could see the message was from Jemma. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Who took the bloody photo? What does that mean?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Any chance I can give her a call?’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘You’re all heart.’

  ‘And you, Mr Jones, are in very, very deep trouble. About as deep as it gets.’

  Harry sighed, exhausted, trying to clear his mind, to concentrate what energy remained on doing battle with his pain, but his thoughts kept snagging on things, wouldn’t let him rest, tripping over the bishop, and Jemma, and Johnnie, and over what Hughie Edwards was about to do to him. And the photograph. Now they were all dead, every one of those faces, and that included the unknown woman with the nervous eyes, had to. Once again, he went round the faces, one by one. Then he sat up so sharply he couldn’t hold back the cry of pain. ‘Get Edwards,’ he gasped. ‘We need to talk!’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be wanting to talk to you, all right, and all night, too, I’ve no doubt, as soon as we get back to the station.’

  ‘No, now!’ Harry raised his voice, grabbed the handle of the rear door, tried to open it but the child lock refused to budge. ‘Now!’ He began kicking the front seat in frustration.

  ‘And what the bloody hell’s going on here?’ Edwards demanded as suddenly he appeared, climbing into the front passenger seat, ripping off his latex gloves and dropping them into the footwell.

  ‘Hughie, listen to me!’

  ‘It’s Chief Inspector Edwards so far as you’re concerned.’

  ‘I know you reckon I’m the greatest mass murderer since Caligula . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘But you’ve got it all wrong. That photo I showed you, it holds all the clues to what really happened.’

  ‘I think you may have a point there. Know what I’m thinking? That your old man was involved in some dodgy dealings, you see, and when he fell off his perch with that heart attack of his, I think he was cheated by his old chums, and you’ve been getting even with them ever since. Something like that. Shall we run that one up the flagpole and see how many jurors salute?’

  ‘Hughie, you’ve got bollocks for brains.’

  ‘Nice start to the game, Harry. Fifteen??
?love to me.’

  Harry bit his tongue in pain, in remorse. He’d have to handle things better than this. ‘Look, my fiancée, Jemma.’

  ‘Attractive girl, that. Seen the photos. I wonder if she’ll wait for you, Harry. By the time you get out she’ll be – what? Fifty? Sixty, maybe?’

  ‘She’s waiting down the road in my car. You need to speak to her.’

  ‘My next stop. We need that car as evidence and it’s parked just along the way, I’m thinking.’ But, as he consulted the screen of his mobile phone once again, he swore softly. ‘What the hell’s going on here, Harry?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Forty minutes ago your car was parked at the bottom of Walbrook. Now it’s halfway to the bloody seaside.’

  ‘Where?’

  Edwards tossed the question around for a second. What did it matter if he let Harry know? He might even learn something. ‘The A12 heading out into Essex. And going at a rate of knots by the look of things.’

  ‘But . . .’ For a moment the pain was buried beneath a surge of anxiety. ‘She doesn’t know anyone in Essex, not anyone she’d go to right now.’

  ‘Maybe she’s decided not to wait for you after all.’

  ‘Stop her.’

  ‘Whatever she’s up to you can tell us all about it when you get back to where you belong, boyo, in my nick.’

  ‘Hughie, no . . . No, no, no, no!’ His eyes were dancing, seeing too many things. ‘Oh, you idiot, Jones! You, too, Hughie. Why didn’t we see it?’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘The bloody photograph! Seven. There were seven people.’

  ‘That’s right,’ the chief inspector groaned in boredom.

  ‘But who the hell has seven for dinner? There was an eighth person, of course there was. A gap at the table. A missing face.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Whoever was taking the photo. Jemma worked that out. Sent me the text.’

  ‘What flaming text?’ Edwards demanded, no longer bored.

  The sergeant fished out the phone, showed it to his boss. Another curse, less soft.

  ‘Hughie, you’ve got to stop her,’ Harry pleaded.

  ‘You think I’m going to close down the entire A12 just for your girlfriend?’

  ‘I don’t know where she’s going but it’s got to be connected with all this. That puts her life on the line.’

  ‘Not a flaming chance. Closing down half of Essex is chief constable territory and there’s no way I’m going to—’

  Suddenly his words were cut off. Harry had stretched his arms around the front seat so that his handcuffs were under the chief inspector’s chin and he was pulling back on them, hard. Edwards couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, he was choking. All three men knew that one severe jerk on the manacles could kill him. Harry was gasping with pain but he kept the pressure up on the policeman’s neck. The sergeant, in the driver’s seat, was frozen, unsure what he should or even could do.

  ‘Hughie, you’d better hope I’m not that murdering psychopath you’re after. You understand?’

  Edwards was making desperate gurgling sounds. He managed to nod his head.

  ‘So I’m going to let up. Just a bit. Your sergeant’s going to sit there as quiet as if he’s got scorpions crawling up his leg. And you’re going to listen to me. Are we clear on that?’

  More choking. Another stiff nod. And slowly Harry released the pressure, just a little. Edwards started coughing, breathing once more, and almost immediately cursing profoundly. Harry ignored it.

  ‘Someone else at the table, Hughie. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Could do.’ The policeman’s voice was hoarse.

  ‘If you don’t stop her, if something happens to her just because you’re too busy gloating over me, they won’t give you time to pack a cardboard box before they kick your sorry Welsh arse out the force.’

  Edwards took his first full breath. Damn, but this had been going so well, his superintendent’s badge already warming a spot deep in his trouser pocket, but what Harry had to say had begun to sow doubts. He couldn’t afford to ignore them. He wasn’t a bad copper, certainly not a bent one, but he’d always been in a hurry, which meant he cut a few corners. Results, old boy, results. And maybe he’d hit the kerb a little too hard on this one.

  ‘I’m not going to stop her, Harry. If she’s involved she might be leading us to the proof we need to sort this. I can’t ignore that possibility. What I can do is follow her, see where she’s going. Keep her company.’ His words still came as though sifted through gravel.

  ‘A helicopter?’ Harry moved the handcuffs back against his throat but the policeman refused to be bowed.

  ‘Not a chance. If this is all down to you, Harry, as I still think it probably is, then I’m not going to make a complete bloody fool of myself by calling out the cavalry. This is down to just you and me.’

  ‘But she’s got almost an hour’s head start.’

  ‘Then we’d better pull our bloody fingers out, hadn’t we?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The journey out of London had been smooth this late in the evening. Jemma didn’t push the old estate car to its limit: it had enough miles under its cambelt to feel the potholes. In any case, she wanted time to think. She had never wanted to be involved, yet now she was being dragged in deeper than she could ever have feared. She couldn’t avoid it: she owed Harry, for Steve, for doubting him. So she had called the only man she knew who might help cast a little light into the dark corners of the croquet club.

  She was off the main carriageway now, into the depths of the flat Essex countryside, following the instructions he had given her. The beams of her headlights picked out deserted roads, nothing but trees and hedgerows to see her on her way. A final village, which seemed to consist of no more than a dozen homes, doors firmly closed against the outside world, then she saw the driveway opening up to her left, guarded by red-brick pillars and towering ash trees, and places where elms would have stood before the blight got them. Up ahead, silhouetted against a pale half-formed moon in a cirrus sky, she saw the outline of chimney-stacks with their Tudor crenellations that grew from the roof of the gabled house. A light shone from a downstairs window, another from above the weather-stained timbers of the oak door. As her tyres came scrunching to a halt in the gravel, the door opened. He stood on his step, waiting for her.

  ‘Jemma, welcome. I’m so glad you called me.’

  ‘Give it some welly, man,’ Edwards growled at his sergeant. They were already well above the speed limit, the lights flashing through the night, the siren blaring in warning. With every moment the chief inspector had grown more impatient, glancing at the icon on his tracker screen. Jemma was still many miles ahead but now she appeared to have stopped.

  In the back seat Harry made little sound apart from an occasional groan as he drifted through intermittent bouts of pain and dark dreams.

  Edwards picked up his radio. ‘Central Command, Chief Inspector Edwards.’

  ‘Go ahead, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘I’ve got a location I want you to check. I want to know what it is, who lives there, anything you can tell me about it. And I need it all about five minutes ago.’

  They had left the A12, their pursuit slowed by roadworks and roundabouts. Staunton skimmed one a little too closely, throwing the car around, rousing Harry. He moaned, struggled to sit upright, to focus his thoughts.

  ‘It’s the snake shit, don’t you see, Hughie?’

  ‘Don’t I see what?’

  ‘The synthetic cobra stuff. He’s a biochemist.’

  ‘What are you prattling on about, Harry?’

  ‘The man behind the camera. The missing diner. The man who murdered Delicious and who probably killed Finn Francis and, I guess, Susannah Ranelagh. The others, too.’ He caught his breath as the car hit another pothole at speed and played havoc with his senses. ‘He told me. Done all sorts of cutting-edge research. In biochemistry. He was a young research fellow, a lecturer. At Bras
enose.’

  ‘And where’s that when it’s at home?’ Edwards asked, perplexed.

  ‘Piss out of the front door of Christ Church and you hit it.’ He gasped once more. ‘It’s Alexander McQuarrel.’

  ‘And he is?’

  ‘One of my father’s best friends.’

  Harry cried out yet again, more sharply, in a deeper state of torment. ‘He killed them all. He’ll kill Jemma, too, Hughie. Please. Please hurry.’

  Jemma couldn’t contain her surprise as she walked across the threshold and into the house. The darkness had hidden the size of this manor house, and much more. The old red-brick porch that protected the main door gave way to a hallway of extraordinary, almost palatial proportions. The flagstones were softly worn, the dark oaken central staircase with its elaborately carved newels was wide enough for a man to lie across at full length, while every wall was covered with portraits, escutcheons and other evidence of McQuarrel’s Scottish roots. Against the wall on one side of the hallway was a broad stone fireplace; against the wall on the other was an elegant coffer covered in framed photographs.

  ‘I never expected anything like this,’ she said, breathless with wonder.

  ‘My family came down from Scotland with King James four hundred years ago,’ he explained, an unmistakable tinge of pride in his voice.

  ‘It is beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you, Jemma.’

  She continued to gaze around in awe. A piano, a baby grand of considerable age, stood in a place of honour near a mullioned window. ‘You play?’ she asked.

  ‘No, that was my wife. And that,’ he said, indicating the piano, ‘is a Broadwood. When she played it her music floated to every corner of the house. But come, you said you have news of Harry. Let’s go through to the library.’

  He led the way but Jemma hovered by the mirror above the coffer, seemingly distracted by the need to tug at her hair. McQuarrel thought it an unnecessary expression of vanity. ‘You said the news was urgent.’