Authors: Roy Lewis
It was a wild scheme, but it could work, Eric concluded. And even if the police had doubts, how would they be able to link Fraser to all this? He himself was still in a daze as to Fraser’s motivations. Slowly, he said, ‘Why are you doing all this? You wanted to find Conroy, you came to seek my help at the time. What is this all about? Just to write those damned articles in the press? Is that all that’s behind this madness?’
Fraser laughed. ‘Well, you must accept the articles have been well received, and yes, I hope to write a book eventually, getting inside the head of a murderer. And who will be able to gainsay my theories? Not Conroy. And not you or Sharon. You’ll have nothing to say to add to the facts from your grave.’
‘I can’t believe you’ve killed two people, and are thinking of killing me and Sharon,’ Eric exploded, ‘merely to be able to write a series of articles, or a book about Conroy!’
‘It will give me credit,’ Fraser replied calmly. ‘I’ve been struggling at the bottom of the heap all these years. I know I’ve got talent, but it’s been unrecognized. Now it will be seen, accepted … oh, yes, I expect to make money out of this. And gain satisfaction, the respect I believe I deserve, after dragging myself up by the bootstraps all these years.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ Eric said slowly. While he kept Fraser talking, he thought, there might come a moment when the man’s guard would relax, when the tables could be turned. ‘I can’t believe that on such flimsy excuses….’
Fraser raised the gun menacingly. ‘Not so flimsy, Ward! You don’t know what I’ve been through, seeing other people wealthy, successful….’ There was a snarl in his tone as he took a step forward into the room. Then he seemed to take a grip on his emotions and his voice softened, became more reasonable. ‘But, you’re right. I should admit it to you: I’ve
always seen, since the trial of Raymond Conroy, that this could be the route for me, leading to success in journalism. It became part of my design, my design for revenge and murder. It’s why I came to see you at your office. You turned me away, but I saw Conroy arriving to meet you at the Quayside. I followed him, kept an eye on him until the police attentions became too irritating. Then I approached him, made the proposition. I told him I’d find a safe house for him – under an assumed name – in return for his life story. He never intended telling me the truth, of course, nor did I expect him to do so, but it brought him here, to Rowland’s Farm. And I got some material for my writing.’ He paused, his voice hardening. ‘But you’re right, the writing, it’s not the only reason. In fact, it was never the main reason. No, the main reason is rooted way back in the past.’ He gestured towards Sharon, still lying unconscious on the bed. ‘You must know what these two women had in common: Miss Owen and Coleen Chivers.’
Eric hesitated. ‘They were cousins.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Fraser agreed, ‘but something else too. They were living a good life, wealthy, successful … and I was not. Do you know why that was the case, Ward?’
‘The exigencies of life,’ Eric replied through gritted teeth.
‘Ah,
exigencies
, a good word. I must work it into my next article on the madman who was Conroy. But what did those exigencies involve? The two women, they had privileged backgrounds. They were brought up in middle-class homes; they had money behind them; they were able to become successful in their own right, as individuals, because they had had a good start, had money behind them. Money, privilege, secure childhoods …
background
. Things that were always denied me.’
‘That happens,’ Eric replied coldly. ‘Backgrounds differ.’
Fraser waved the gun and grunted in contempt. ‘Ah, no doubt you’re about to tell me you came from an underprivileged background yourself, that you made your own way in life, that you succeeded against overwhelming odds. But don’t waste what breath is left to you, Ward. You don’t understand what I mean. Sharon Owen, and Coleen Chivers, they had the advantage of money and background; I did not. Never have. But I
should
have had at least some of what they had!’
‘And why should …’
‘Why should I expect it?’ Fraser laughed harshly. ‘Why? Because these women and I did share something, if not the money.’ He paused, and the gun muzzle wavered slightly as he took a deep, dissatisfied breath. ‘Because we all three shared the same blood! But while they gained by it, I did not!’
The farmhouse was an old one in a decayed condition. There would always be creaks and groans from the woodwork, the storm-battered roof, the worm-eaten walls. Perhaps the wind had risen in the valley: there had been storm clouds building above the Cheviot hills. But Eric thought he had caught a slight sound from the yard outside. Fraser seemed not to have noticed, as he talked about himself and his anger rose. But Eric’s mind flitted away from the thoughts of sounds outside as the statement Fraser had uttered ground its way into his consciousness. It was several seconds before he could get out the words.
‘You and Sharon are related? You, Coleen and Sharon are …
cousins
?’
Fraser seemed irritated. ‘No, no, you’re not listening! Sharon and Coleen were cousins, of course. But you’re a generation adrift. My relations were Peter and Anne Chivers. They shared a father with me, if not a mother. I was their half-brother. The one they all refused to recognize.’ He bared his teeth mirthlessly. ‘I’m merely the wicked
uncle
to the two young ladies.’
Eric was silent, his mind spinning.
‘Oh yes, the forgotten, unknown and now utterly wicked uncle.’ Fraser took a deep, satisfied breath. ‘That’s what this was all about, really, not the
journalism
, for God’s sake. That was only a satisfactory by-product. No, it was all about revenge, putting right an old wrong from years ago.’
Eric was puzzled for a moment, then his thoughts slipped back to conversations, with Strudmore, Sharon herself and the civil servant Linwood Forster. Quietly, he said, ‘George Chivers.’
Fraser’s head came up, as though he was surprised. ‘So you know my father’s name! Old George, the licentious, devious, lying bastard. Ah, yes, of course, you would have been involved with administration of the Chivers Trust, perhaps?’ He nodded. ‘Yes, that would be it … The
fons et origo
of all the Chivers wealth, old George. At least, as far as the selected few of his family were concerned.’
Eric stayed very still. The pistol in Fraser’s hand still menaced him. His mouth was dry. ‘You say George Chivers fathered you as well as Peter and Anne, but I’ve seen the papers for the Chivers Trust. Your name hasn’t appeared—’
‘That’s the whole point, surely! Wrong side of the blanket,’ Fraser muttered viciously. ‘You clearly don’t know the whole story. But then, why should you? Coleen and Sharon didn’t know either. Love, lust, betrayal….’
Eric’s mind was beginning to function clearly again.
‘Scotland. This is about what happened in Scotland in the seventies, nearly forty years ago.’
‘Precisely.’ Fraser was silent for a little while as the house still creaked and groaned about them. ‘It all seems so pointless now, but there was the Cold War and international tensions. There was a lot of trouble about in those days. The siting of the nuclear submarines, the Polaris, the bloody government kow-towing to the Americans. And they placed the missiles near a city, for God’s sake. There were outraged demonstrations. My mother was one of the protesters. Sally Chalmers, twenty-two years of age. Naïve. A political innocent. An idealist. Out to save the world from nuclear destruction! What a gullible, misled fool! And what an idiot to be taken in by George Chivers! He was thirty years older than she was, but he got involved, got to know her, infiltrated her Marxist group, passed information back to his masters in London, played the big hero, and she was stupid enough to fall in love with him. He crawled into her bed to tease out group secrets, and when he got the information he needed, he turned her and the rest of the cell over to MI5. She served a prison sentence, not least because she was unrepentant, shouting her head off in court with the others about the iniquities of government policies. But at the time she didn’t know it was he who had betrayed her – and she was carrying his child.’ Fraser’s breathing rasped in the stale air of the bedroom. ‘His child.
Me
.’
Eric moved slowly, put one hand against the wall. The gun muzzle came up again, almost casually.
‘She never really recovered from her time in prison,’ Fraser continued. ‘She was released early, because she was pregnant, and because she was ill. In fact, my only vague memories of her are about how ill she always was. I was born and we lived in a tiny tenement room in Glasgow. It
was damp, she had no money, and old George was long gone from the area. My mother had finally come around to the truth, of course, but at first her pride wouldn’t allow her to seek him out, even though we had no money. Until she heard her former lover had died. Even then, I don’t think she would have done anything about it, except for me, the conditions in which we were living, her illness. So finally, she wrote to George’s widow. The doughty Flora. The old bitch!’
Eric could guess what would have happened. The letter remaining in the file gave the clue to the sad end of the whole business. Flora Chivers refusing to accept the stigma of her husband’s behaviour, drawing a line under the whole matter. Denying the fact of her husband’s relationship with Sally Chalmers. Denying the existence of a child fathered out of wedlock by her husband. Threatening a lawsuit if Sally Chalmers persisted.
Denying everything.
There was a harsh bitterness in Fraser’s tone now. ‘She threatened to put the police on us. She refused to do anything for us. So we lived on in that bloody tenement, and within a year my mother was dead. Pneumonia, they said. I wouldn’t know. Because by then I’d been taken into care. And after that there was the so familiar, dreary history that seems to have happened so often in those days. Local authority institutions, uncaring foster parents, physical, verbal and even sexual abuse, running wild in the back streets, a bit of shoplifting. You must be aware, a lawyer like you, aware of the spiralling downwards that can occur.’ Fraser’s voice shook slightly, still scarred with the memories. ‘But it was during the three-year stretch that I did in prison that I finally saw sense. There were educational programmes. I decided I was going to change, pull myself
out of the mud, find work as a journalist … and one day, get revenge.’
He laughed bitterly; the sound echoed into the passageway, bouncing off the damp stone walls of the farmhouse. ‘But you know, even then I was naïve. I tried for various jobs but they were all leading to a dead end. Until I ended up doing part-time work here in the north-east, still getting nowhere, just scraping by. But I did the research in the archives, did the genealogical bit, learned my
half-siblings
were both dead, found out about my two nieces. And I saw how Coleen Chivers was lording it around with money supplied by her father and grandfather, making a success of her life, living well, wealthy … and Sharon here, well, it was clear that she too was making her way in the world. A career at the bar. Something maybe I could have done if I’d had their background, if I’d had what was due to me; as I could have done if George had only recognized me, accepted me as his son, looked after my mother! As I could have done if that old bitch Flora hadn’t turned her stiff, hateful back on what her husband had been responsible for!’ The words came out in a vicious hiss. ‘Revenge, that’s what I decided upon. Revenge … and in addition, a great story to tell, maybe. Raymond Conroy. Inside the mind of a serial killer!’
Eric knew the man had almost talked himself out. Fraser had felt the need to explain, gloat over the successful achievement of his aims. ‘You’ll never get away with this, Fraser,’ he said quietly.
The man with the gun snickered. ‘Well, you won’t be around to know one way or the other!’
There had been a slight noise in the passageway. Eric knew it a moment before Fraser also caught the faint sound. The man was turning his head, the gun raised in his hand
just as the bedroom door exploded inward, striking him on the shoulder, sending him staggering to one side. There was a snapping sound, an echoing roar from the pistol, but Eric was hurling himself at Fraser and the bullet was buried somewhere above them in the ceiling. Everything was suddenly a noisy, confused whirling blur, bodies tumbling to the dingy carpet, arms and legs twisting, a sharp pain in Eric’s forehead as an elbow struck him on the temple, a dizzying, wavering line of sight, until he felt himself pushed aside, lying on his back, dizzy, struggling hazily to get up.
He became aware of Fraser, features contorted with fury and panic, lying on his back, arms spread-eagled. Perched above him, knees bearing down upon the man’s biceps, Eric made out the hunched, familiar outline. The panting figure of Jackie Parton. The ex-jockey’s face was bloodied, dark streaks running from his mouth and nose, but he was grinning.
‘Always did enjoy a rough-house,’ he grunted happily, ‘ever since the time I got done over at Newcastle Races that day, after the fourth race.’
Then he looked down at the twisted features of the man underneath him, raised his right arm and smashed his closed fist into Tony Fraser’s face. The sound of the crunching of cartilage and the spray of blood brought a surge of bile to Eric Ward’s throat.
Jackie Parton was grinning. He was in his element.
‘When you bugger things up, you really do it in style, don’t you, Spate?’
Detective Chief Inspector Charlie Spate said nothing.
The afternoon sun sent a narrow beam of light across the patterned carpet of the ACC’s office. Charlie kept his eye fixed on that streak of light. He knew ACC Charteris was scowling at him, and Charlie had the impression there would be not just anger but a certain malicious pleasure lighting up the man’s eyes. ‘So,’ Charteris went on, ‘I’ve read your report and if I put it together with what we already had, things would seem to have proceeded something like this. Raymond Conroy got off his murder charge but didn’t like the heat we were putting on him so accepted an offer from this character Tony Fraser, the deal being Fraser would find him somewhere to hole up, and in return Conroy would give him his so-called life story, for Fraser to publish. Denying the murders, of course.’