Cause of Death (25 page)

He found himself another vehicle and drove along the coast road to the little seaside town, wasted even more time looking for a particular house, the street or the number of which he didn't know, only that Haines had referred to it once as something Lodge. He knew it was Victorian, but so was half the town. In the end persistence paid off and he found himself in Newell Street facing Peverill Lodge and was sure then he had heard that name before. This was where Stan Holden was holed up.

It was late and the lights were out, but he knocked on the door anyway, glancing side to side along the deserted street.

Someone open the bloody door
!

Slow footsteps told him someone had heard and the light went on in the hall. The door opened a crack and Jerry pushed it all the way, knocking Stan almost off his feet.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?'

‘You look a bloody mess.'

‘Thanks to you and frigging Santos.' Stan looked past him suspiciously, as though Santos might be waiting outside.

Wearily, Jerry shoved the door closed. ‘I don't want trouble. I just need your help.'

‘And why the hell should I help you?'

From the landing Rina listened to the angry voices coming from the hall. Stan sounded pained and distressed and the other voice was not a familiar one.

Oh, Stan, don't you know about putting the chain on the door? That's what it's there for.

She tightened the belt of her dressing gown and crept softly down the stairs on slippered feet, her husband's old cricket bat clasped tightly in her hand. The voices had moved from hall to dining room now and the stranger's voice sounded all the more insistent and strained. Who was he?

Rina crept across the hall, careful to keep out of sight of the door, moving forward soft and fast. Stan stood a little way into the room and the stranger just inside the doorway, his back to her. Rina didn't hesitate: the bat came down across his shoulders and head and Jerry Mason was felled.

‘Rina! What the hell are you doing?' Stan bent over the injured man.

‘I thought you were in trouble. Who on earth is he?'

‘His name is Jerry Mason. He came here looking for help.'

‘Oh.' Rina parked the bat against the door and helped Stan lift her dazed victim to his feet and then into a chair. ‘You're the undercover policeman,' she said. ‘Oh, don't fuss, Stan, I didn't hit him that hard. I wasn't really trying.'

Jerry held his head in his hands and then tried to look at Rina. ‘They'll be going after Louise,' he said. ‘Haines will have sent them by now, and she won't answer her phone.'

‘You'd best call Mac,' Stan said. ‘Tell him to get over here. We can't handle this one on our own.'

‘W
e've got an address for the ex-wife,' Mac said. ‘I've got Jerry Mason here and he's sure Haines will have sent men after her by now. He can't raise her by phone so it's possible she's away.'

He dictated the address to Kendall. ‘Get the locals involved, but tell them they'll need an armed response unit.'

‘Jerry Mason's with you? Where the hell are you anyway?'

Mac told him. ‘And you'd best send an ambulance while you're at it. Rina crowned him with a cricket bat. He's a little concussed.'

‘I apologized,' Rina said. ‘Mac, will it be all right now? There shouldn't be more bloodshed.'

‘Kendall will take care of it,' he said. He sat down wearily at Rina's kitchen table. Eliza's first aid skills had been called into play once again, but Jerry still looked sick and Mac felt he should be somewhere with a proper medic.

‘I should be there,' Jerry objected.

‘You can drive that fast? Jerry, even without a concussion it would take the best part of three hours. Time to let someone else take responsibility. She'll be OK. Kendall will ring me as soon as there's anything to tell.'

A few miles distant, events had been set in motion on several fronts. Didcott had taken control and somehow everything was moving that bit faster because of that. Warrants had been issued for Haines and Vashinsky and the coastguard had been mobilized to aid in the arrests on
The Spirit of Unity
.

Local police were called upon to find Louise Mason and an armed response unit would be in position within the hour.

Didcott rubbed his hands in satisfaction. He now wanted to speak with Jerry Mason.

‘He doesn't want to speak with you,' Kendall told him. ‘He said that explicitly. Not until he knows Louise is safe. Besides, he's on his way to the local hospital. It seems Rina Martin mistook him for the enemy and wrapped a cricket bat round his ear.'

‘Sir?' one of the sergeants called to Kendall. ‘It's DI Barnes, he wants a word.'

Kendall nodded and went off to liaise with the armed response unit heading for Louise Mason's home.

After that it was pretty much a waiting game. Local officers were dispatched to protect Jerry Mason at the hospital, and Mac went to join the teams being organized by Didcott. Rina hoped he would be there to view Haines's arrest and, as she sat drinking tea with Stan and the other members of her little family, she could not help but feel a sense of anti-climax and regret that she could do no more.

L
ouise Mason worked shifts at a local garage and convenience store. Technically, she was currently working the two 'til ten, but, as always, the place was short-staffed and she'd agreed to a couple of hours' overtime, so it was midnight before she could even consider getting away. At half past midnight, her manager finally arrived to relieve her. She had to find another bloody job, Louise thought. It was beyond a joke.

She was about to get into her car when a police patrol pulled on to the forecourt and someone got out and called her name.

‘Mrs Mason?'

‘Yes?'

‘Mrs Mason, my name is DI Barnes. I need to have a word.'

Tomas James and Santos had arrived at Louise Mason's house just after ten and parked a few hundred yards down the road. They had gone around the back of the little house, a two up two down at the end of a row. A light was on in the kitchen, but it was soon evident there was no one home. Satisfied that they could return without being observed by nosy neighbours, they went back to their car and prepared to wait.

‘You reckon Jerry will show?'

Santos shrugged. ‘He'll show. He's still soft on her and he knows how the boss deals with disloyalty.' Santos laughed. ‘I bloody hope he'll show. He makes us go looking for him and I'll not be best pleased.'

‘I don't understand.' Louise shook her head vehemently. ‘I've not seen my ex-husband for three years. This has nothing to do with me.'

Patiently, DI Barnes explained again that it did not matter. This was not a matter of logic. The threat was real.

‘I told him it was the job or me,' Louise said. ‘He chose . . . and now you're telling me . . .'

‘Suspect car about a hundred yards down from your position. Can we get the neighbours out?'

‘Next door have been evacuated. The neighbours in the next one down are on holiday. Do you have a visual on the car?'

‘Two occupants matching the descriptions.'

A car drove slowly down past Santos and Tomas and parked outside Louise's house.

‘They've spotted you. Get yourself inside and we'll move in.'

A female got out of Louise's car and walked up to the front door. Went inside.

‘Wait until they start to move. Then on my mark . . .'

It took ten minutes before the two men in the car made their move. Then Santos got out, followed by Tomas, and the signal was given to move in.

‘
Armed Police! Get down on the floor! Get down on the floor! Hands where I can see them, get down on the floor!
'

Officers surrounded them. Tomas James knelt beside the car. For a moment Santos stood, uncertain, then he lowered his hands, smiled at Tomas and went for his gun. Moments later he lay dead in the road, blood pooling, slick around his head.

‘It's over,' Mac said. ‘She's fine. And the coastguard are preparing to board Haines's boat. Didcott wants to see you now. Can I tell him yes?'

Jerry turned his face away, trying to regain some semblance of control. ‘I'll talk to him,' he said. ‘I'll see him now.'

T
ed was not surprised when Andy knocked on his door the next afternoon. He stood aside and let him come in and then led the way to the kitchen. Andy sat down at the table and Ted filled the kettle.

‘Ted, I—'

Ted Eebry waved him into silence. ‘Don't apologize. I knew this day would come, I suppose. I just wanted to see the girls grown up and settled. I couldn't bear . . . couldn't bear to think of them being dumped somewhere they weren't wanted. Missing me as well as their mam. Maybe even being separated. So I hid what had happened. I said I didn't know where Kath had gone.'

‘Ted, I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be doing this.'

‘Well I'm glad it's you. Really I am. It's better to see a friendly face.'

‘Stacey and Gail will hate me.' It was such a selfish thing to say, but he couldn't help himself.

‘Not if I tell them not to. It's not your fault. Really it's not.'

‘What happened, Ted? What happened to Kath?'

Ted Eebry filled the teapot and brought it to the table. He seemed very calm now. Andy was anything but.

‘It was in the garden,' he said. ‘May twelfth, sixteen years ago. She'd been out there with me helping in the allotment and that was something she never did. She wasn't a gardener, our Kath, but I knew she had something on her mind and she needed time to get it straight in her head before she could tell me. I spent the day thinking all manner of stuff, Andy, working myself up into a sweat over what might be nothing. And then, just as we were packing up for the day she told me. She'd had a bit of a fling with a man she'd met at work. It was nothing, over in a few weeks, and she felt badly about it, but she said she'd found it exciting and she said the excitement seemed to have gone out of our marriage lately. She had finished with him and I said it was alright. I forgave her. It didn't matter.'

‘Didn't it, Ted? Didn't it really matter?'

He shrugged. ‘Andy, I don't know. Yes it would have done, yes it might have been something that festered, but we'll never know, will we, because of what I did.'

‘And what did you do, Ted?'

‘The wrong thing. I said the wrong thing, didn't I? Kath didn't want to be forgiven, she wanted me to notice her, to feel angry and jealous and be . . . exciting, I suppose, the way that man at work had been. Andy, something I've understood since is that people want their moment. They see anger as cleansing, somehow, as what it takes to really make amends. If you don't get mad, it means you don't care. It wasn't that I didn't care, it was that I cared so much she could have done just about anything and I'd have forgiven and still loved her.'

‘Would you?'

Ted shrugged. ‘I don't know. What does anybody know?'

‘So what happened, Ted?'

Ted Eebry poured their tea and offered Andy the milk.

‘She flew at me, all fists and fury and words she knew would hurt because she wanted to be hurt herself. Wanted me to be angry so she could be forgiven properly. At least, that's what I think she wanted.'

He paused for a moment and looked at Andy as though trying to work out what
he
wanted to hear.

‘So what did you do?' Andy felt oddly calm now.

‘I pushed her away. I pushed her away and she fell. Hit her head on the edge of the spade we'd just left half stuck into the ground. She fell back and she hit her head on the corner of the blade and then she just lay still and that was it. My Kath was dead, and all I could think was that the kids would be home soon and they mustn't see her lying there like that.'

Andy wasn't sure how to proceed. ‘Are you sure she was dead?' he asked gently. ‘Are you certain?'

‘I checked for a pulse. I tried to wake her up. I was so scared, Andy, I could only think that the kids mustn't see her.'

‘You could have called the police. Called an ambulance. Ted, what did you do?'

‘I buried her. In the garden. I took the top off the old compost heap and dug down inside as far as I could go, and once I'd got a hollow place underneath it I put her in, then I shovelled the muck back and I covered her over and I put the top layer back like it had been before, and then I came in and got things ready for the kids' teas.'

‘Just like that?'

‘Just like that.'

Andy stared at Ted, his brain whirring. ‘And you left her there? We all played there. We all climbed and jumped and . . .' Andy felt sick.

‘I didn't know what else to do. I took the kids out of school and we went off for the summer. The school was sympathetic, everyone was. I knew by the time we got back she'd be . . . Well, the worst of any smell would be gone, you know. I'd dug down deep before I put her under and things rot down fast in a big heap like that and we were gone from May right through to September.'

‘This was your wife, Ted.'

‘And they were my kids. I had to do it for them.'

Andy no longer knew what to think. ‘Ted, why did you move the body?'

Ted sighed. ‘It was a false alarm about five years ago,' he said. ‘The water company said it was going to run a new main across behind the crescent and it looked on the plans like they'd be coming through the hedge, like. Through the heap. So I waited till the kids were away for the day, staying with friends. Not that Stacey was a kid by then of course, already a young woman, and she looked so much like my Kath. And I dug up what was left of her and I put the bones in an old tin box I'd got in the shed and I left her there. I left her in the box.'