6.The Alcatraz Rose (28 page)

Kingston nodded. “I would like to hear it,” he said, eyes back on the road.

“I knew all along about Brian,” she said. “I knew about his friendship with Ronnie Butler, the robbery, and eventually what Allen Hillier’s role was. I’ll get to him in a moment, though.” She paused to run her tongue over her lips.

“I didn’t hear from Brian until three years after the robbery. He was hiding in the Welsh mountains. He told me that his new name was Reginald Payne and he was enjoying life on his ‘little farm,’ as he called it. He wanted me to track down Hillier for him. Later, when I went to visit him, he told me that Allen had converted half of his share of the stolen money and all of Butler’s into diamonds.”

“Diamonds?” Kingston barely stopped himself from slamming on the brakes. Grace’s words brought Darrell Kaminski’s story flooding back: the plot that Kaminski had overheard at Alcatraz.

“Yes, diamonds. That’s what Allen did in those days—a lot of shady stuff. Brian knew Butler’s plan was to hide the diamonds in a graveyard somewhere in the England but not where. Butler’s plan was to go to the U.S. and start a new life under a new name and come back later, when the robbery was long forgotten, to retrieve the jewels. Hillier had supplied all the necessary papers, a U.S. passport, and passage on a freighter.”

She waited while a Harley-Davidson in a hurry roared past them, too close for comfort.
Pay attention, Kingston chided himself—to the driving, as well as the story
.

She continued. “All that stuff about Brian being well-off, his successful business ventures, the house in the Chalfonts—it was all fiction. I visited Brian in Wales once and a couple of times later at Beechwood—both from Canada, by the way. I really did live there for the last twenty-five years. Anyway, on what would be my last visit, I became concerned about his well-being. He was drinking a lot and I suspected drugs. Then I didn’t hear from him for several years. In what turned out be our last phone conversation, he told me that he was not only in poor health but bad shape financially as well. He was planning to salvage what little he could from the sale of Beechwood—it was heavily mortgaged by then—and move to a state-run care home. I was in no position to help, not that I would’ve, anyway. Before we hung up, he threw me another curve—what he called ‘the final atonement.’ He said that if he died under suspicious circumstances, or was killed, I should immediately tell the authorities to investigate Allen Jay Hillier, the only person living who would want him silenced. When I asked why, what it was between him and Hillier that would provoke such an extreme statement, he clammed up.”

Kingston glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, at the same time noting the
AMERSHAM
2
KM
sign ahead. At last it was all falling into place. The problem he faced now was that they were going to run out of time before he could get the whole story from Grace.

“What was your guess at the time?” he asked. “What was it between your brother and Hillier that would make him say that?”

She paused for a moment. “I didn’t need to guess. I just knew, in my bones, that Brian had been blackmailing Hillier—and back there the son of a bitch confirmed it. You heard him.”

Kingston nodded.

“Hillier.” She shook her head. “The biggest mistake of my entire life. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for him.”

“You knew him a long time, though.”

She sighed. “I did. I was seventeen when I first met him—before the robbery. It was at a nightclub in Soho. As he was leaving, he spotted Brian, who was at our table. To me Allen was Prince Charming. But Brian thought he was fawning over me and cautioned me to steer clear of him. I soon forgot all about it. Then I met him again, by chance, quite
a few years later. At the time he owned a house in Kew and law offices on Kingsway. We dated for a while, and I learned how his empire had expanded in those several years. Eventually I moved in with him. By that time, he owned several businesses, was a director of others, and was well connected politically. I suspected that he also had connections with London’s organized crime syndicates. It turned out that I was right.”

In the rearview mirror, Kingston noticed that a blue-and-yellow striped police patrol car had slipped in behind them, maintaining its distance. That more or less ended his hope of buying a little more time in the police station parking lot.

Grace continued. “He was a complex man—charismatic, sophisticated, fiendishly clever one moment, callous and ruthless to anyone who crossed him or got in his way the next. Remember, he was a lawyer and knew how to evade the law and use it to his advantage. He never did his own dirty work. He had plenty of other people to do that. He was always squeaky clean.” She looked away for the moment. “Going back to the blackmailing, it was obvious to me, knowing what I did, that Brian’s threatening to divulge Hillier’s role in the robbery would in itself be more than sufficient reason for extortion, and he knew he could count on Hillier paying up because he had far more to lose if it came to a showdown. A simple phone call to the police is all it would have taken to blow the lid off their secrets and put them both behind bars for a long time. Brian knew that his life was coming to an end, anyway. For Hillier, murder was the only answer. It wouldn’t be the first time, either.”

“He’d murdered someone else?”

This time she looked at him. “He arranged it. An American man.”

Kingston frowned. “How did you learn that?”

“From a man I once knew. Hillier had hired him to do it.”

Kingston was getting confused. It was all coming too fast.

“Surely he didn’t admit to that,” he said.

He didn’t need to. He’d told me more than enough already—it was as plain as the nose on your face. A few days later it was in all the papers. The body was found in the Thames.”

“You knew then that Hillier was responsible?”

“I was certain. But he didn’t admit it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Can you tell me more about it? You’d better be quick, though,” he said, seeing the
AMERSHAM TOWN CENTRE
sign on the roadside.

“It’s complicated, but I’ll try.” She paused, thinking for a moment.

“It happened about a year after I moved in with Hillier. By accident, I overheard a conversation between him and another person, who I later learned was an American named Mark Slater. I could only get snatches of what they were saying, but it concerned some kind of deal. From what little I could gather, it involved a lot of money. A few days later, a man I hadn’t seen in years showed up at the house. His name was Mike Dempsey. He was a creepy sort who kept pestering me to date him back then. It turned out to be a surprise in more ways than one.”

“What did he want with Hillier—or you?”

Her answer was drowned out by two staccato siren blasts from the police car, now on their bumper. “Pull into the next entry on right,” the crackling loudspeaker commanded.

“Looks like time’s up,” Grace said, pursing her lips. “We’ll have to finish another time—if there is another time,” she added, mustering a wan smile. She unbuckled her seat belt, took the gun from under the seat, and handed it to Kingston. “Here,” was all she said.

They got out of the car. Kingston handed the gun to one of the policemen who were waiting. “You’d better have this,” he said.

They walked together, followed by the policemen, who directed them toward a side door. “Thanks again, Lawrence,” she said. “If nothing else, I hope you’ll understand a little better now and won’t be too harsh on me.”

Kingston placed a hand on her shoulder and opened the door for her.

“Thanks,” she replied, with another halfhearted smile.

“I’ve no idea what they might charge me with,” he said, “but regardless of what happens from now on, I’ll come and visit you as soon as they’ll permit it. That’s a promise.”

“I’d appreciate it,” she said.

He wished her good luck and gave her one last look, as they were escorted down separate corridors to make their statements and for whatever might follow. Although Kingston had many of the answers he needed, there were still many more questions to be asked.

31

K
INGSTON GLANCED AT
his watch: almost eleven
P
.
M
. He and Andrew had been at the Kings Arms Hotel in Old Amersham for the last two and a half hours. They had finished dinner and were sitting in comfortable, overstuffed chairs, with snifters of cognac, next to a brick and stone inglenook fireplace devoid of logs, in the six-hundred-year-old coaching inn’s oak-beamed lounge.

At the police station, Kingston and Andrew had not met up until after Kingston was through with his interview. In the meantime, Andrew had taken it upon himself to make a dinner reservation and book two overnight rooms at the hotel, anticipating—correctly, as it turned out—that it could take a long time for Kingston to go through the rigmarole of making a formal statement. Not only that, checking his phone, he learned that a storm front was moving in over the Home Counties with forecasts of heavy rains and flooding. Added to that was the probability that Kingston would be knackered and surely starving after such a harrowing day and sleepless night. Kingston had needed no persuasion and was grateful for Andrew’s thoughtful foresight and resourcefulness.

Kingston was tired. After a pint of bitters on arrival, a shared bottle of Pommard at dinner, and now the cognac, he could hardly keep his eyes open. All he could think about now was going upstairs, flopping down on the bed, closing his leaden eyes, and getting an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

During the evening he’d given Andrew a blow-by-blow accounting of the events of the last eighteen hours. Fully expecting Andrew to lapse into his familiar I-told-you-so attitude, Kingston was surprised
and thankful that Andrew showed more concern for his return to safety, his well-being, and what appeared to be a genuinely solicitous interest in what had occurred at Greyshill. Was this the beginning of a new Andrew? he wondered.

Grace Williams would be spending the night in Amersham, too—only she’d be under lock and key. At the station, after cooling his heels for a half hour, he’d been informed by the detective sergeant interviewing him that no formal charges had yet been filed against him and all that was required was his recorded statement describing the events of the afternoon as he remembered them. An hour and a half later, when he’d completed his statement and been told that he could leave, he inquired about Grace Williams. He was told that a verbal complaint had already been filed against her by Allen Jay Hillier, and that, because the incident had involved the use of a firearm, it was considered a “serious arrestable offense” and she would be held for twenty-four hours, longer if authorized by the chief superintendent. The Land Rover would also be impounded for now.

Kingston had wondered why Hillier hadn’t included him in his charges, but after thinking on it he realized that Hillier would know that if he did, Kingston would countercharge with perhaps far more serious accusations: kidnapping with the use of deadly force, aggravated assault and false imprisonment, for starters. This Kingston planned to do, anyway, when the dust settled.

He had also called Emma to bring her up to date with the extraordinary events of the day. Contrary to expectations, she was remarkably sanguine, considering the gravity of the circumstances.

At last in bed, feeling the soporific effect of the beer, wine, and spirits, sleep didn’t come as readily as expected. This was one night when the adage “fatigue is the best pillow” was the wrong prescription. Since closing his eyes, Kingston could not get Grace Williams out of his restive mind. Back in the library at Greyshill, and in the car, she had pulled back the curtains wide enough to reveal events and names of people in her past that started to explain some of the uncertainty and questions that had been plaguing and eluding him and Emma all these weeks.

Her explanation in the car had supplied him with a critical missing piece of the puzzle. Knowing now that Hillier had converted the stolen money into diamonds, that Butler and Jennings were close, and that Butler had, in all probability, fled to the U.S.—all that lent much more credence to Kingston’s contention that Butler could have been the person who was instrumental in arranging for the acquisition of the Belmaris rose, that, somehow, he had ended up as an inmate in Alcatraz. But so much of what had happened was still unclear . . . He cracked open his eyes and glanced at the luminous dial of his watch on the nightstand: one thirty.
Enough
.

He turned over, hoping that sleeping on his other side might help. At least he wouldn’t have to listen to his heartbeat.

And yet a few seconds later, the questions started to trickle back. What charges would be pressed against Grace Williams? What were the legal proceedings from now on? How long could she be detained before being granted bail? For that matter, would she be granted bail? That would depend entirely on the charges filed against her, he supposed—and what could those be? For a moment, he pulled the top sheet over his eyes in a futile attempt to will himself to sleep. He thought he’d succeeded, felt himself drifting away, when one last question flashed across his numb and jumbled mind, perhaps the most frustrating question of all, where this whole business had begun: What had happened to Letty’s mother, Fiona McGuire?