Every Secret Thing (16 page)

Guy said, ‘Look, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. We’re just working with a theory, and we may be wrong. I mean, if Whitehall were involved, why would they send that guy in London to her hotel, saying he was Metcalf, when he wasn’t? Why not send the real Metcalf to talk to her?’

Nobody knew.

They didn’t know, either, why Grandma’s death hadn’t been made to look random, like Deacon’s and Cavender’s. To Guy it suggested a lack of conspiracy. Tony saw something more sinister. ‘They’ve changed locations. They may have changed killers. Who knows how many people may be in on this.’

Which wasn’t reassuring, but he hadn’t meant to reassure. He said things straight, and that was why, although he had a link to Scotland Yard, and logic told me there was no one I could trust, my instinct told me, on the other hand, that Tony wasn’t someone I should fear.

And I had never had to trust my instinct more.

It was like being on assignment in a strange and foreign landscape, with no contacts, no direction. Out of my element; over my head. There were too many questions, and not enough answers. Unless…

I tried focusing, as I’d have done in the field.

Follow the facts, I thought. Follow the story. I needed to know what was in that report.

Guy was right. We were just trading theories, without any proof, and the only way to find out who was doing this – if anyone, in fact, was doing anything – would be to find out who might have a stake in keeping Deacon silent. And to do
that
, I would have to find out what it was he’d meant to say.

I interrupted Guy and Tony, who were talking about something that I’d long since ceased to follow. ‘Tony?’

‘Yes, love?’

‘There is one thing you could do for me.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Name it.’

‘I need access to the Internet,’ I told him. ‘And a telephone.’

The vicar of St Stephen’s Church, in Elderwel, was too polite to say so, but I knew he must have thought that I was odd. A normal person, after all, wouldn’t have reacted as emotionally to the death of a virtual stranger as I had done two days ago, when I’d learnt of the murder of James Cavender. I tried to cover for my curious behaviour this time round, with an apology, and told him just how sorry I had been to hear the news. ‘I thought he was such a nice man.’

‘Yes, he was,’ said the vicar. ‘He was. I knew him rather well, he’s been a lay reader here for a number of years, so it’s been difficult this week. I’m James’s executor, you see,’ he said, ‘and indirectly, I suppose, his beneficiary. He had no family, so he’s left everything to our church.’

My mind leapt on the point, before I stopped to think how callous it might sound. ‘Does that include his uncle’s papers?’

‘Andrew’s papers? Yes, although—’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I know you have a lot of other things to think about just now. It’s only that Mr Cavender wanted to send me a copy of something his uncle had written, and he was going to look for it after he got home, last Sunday, but…’ I doubted that he’d had the chance to even start his search, that night, before he had been killed. ‘It may still be there, at the house. And I wondered…I mean, if it isn’t too much trouble, could you maybe have a look for it yourself?’

‘I could try. I’m not sure how much luck I’ll have finding anything, after what happened. It was—’ he began, and then cut himself short, as though trying to spare me the details. ‘Well, it was a shambles, as I said. It still is. I’m going to have quite a job on my hands, clearing Andrew’s house out for the auction. But if you’ll tell me what it is I should be looking for, I’ll see what I can do.’

I had to confess that I wasn’t entirely sure. ‘It’s a report, I don’t know how thick it would be, but he wrote it just recently, sometime this past summer. I don’t know the subject for certain, but Mr Cavender thought it would be about Lisbon; the time that his uncle spent working in Portugal, during the war.’

‘Did Andrew work there? I wasn’t aware of that. I knew he had travelled a good deal, but I didn’t realise he actually lived abroad.’

‘He worked for Ivan Reynolds.’

‘Did
he?’

‘In fact,’ I told him, ‘anything you find that has to do with Ivan Reynolds, or with Lisbon, I would really like to see it.’

‘Oh, of course. Of course. I don’t hold out much hope, mind, but I’ll do my best.’ His voice changed as though he were shifting the receiver on his shoulder, freeing his hands. ‘Just let me have your number, and I’ll give you a ring if I come across anything.’

I hesitated. For all the vicar knew, I was still in London, and it made sense to let him go on thinking that. Safer for me not to let people know where I was. ‘Actually, I think it would be easier if I called you. Would the weekend be too early?’

He paused, and then, as though he had heard something in my voice I hadn’t meant for him to hear, he asked, ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘Not a thing,’ I said, striving for lightness.

‘You’re sure?’

I assured him I was, but he waited a moment before he said, finally, ‘All right, then, I’ll wait for your call at the weekend.’

Which didn’t give him that much time to look for Deacon’s papers, but I couldn’t help the rush. I didn’t have the luxury of time. Someone had tried to kill me once this week – they might be out there, right now, getting set to try again.

I didn’t know how wide they’d cast their web. I’d tried again to get in touch with Margot, and with Patrick, but I’d had no luck. Which only made me worry more about their safety; made my mission feel more urgent.

I knew that, realistically, the odds were pretty long against the vicar finding anything at Deacon’s house – the people who’d killed Cavender had probably been searching for that same report, and any papers that they might have found they would have taken, or destroyed. It was quite possible the only papers left were those that Cavender had brought to me in London: Deacon’s letters to his sister, that he’d written while in Portugal. I didn’t have them with me. They were still at Grandma’s house, tucked safely in the zippered inside pocket of the briefcase that I lugged my laptop round in. I had left that briefcase sitting in the front hall, with my suitcase; hadn’t thought to take it when I’d left the house. I hadn’t thought of much then, I had been so deep in shock, and at the time I hadn’t realised I would not be going home after the hospital.

But hindsight could be punishingly clear, and I’d have given quite a lot to have those letters with me now. I’d read them all in London, on my last day there. I’d read them again, on the plane, but I couldn’t remember more than a few first names of people he had talked about, and one or two descriptive bits he’d written to his sister – his arrival in the city, a reception at the Embassy, that sort of thing. At the time, nothing had struck me as being of any significance. He hadn’t really talked about his work, or Ivan Reynolds, or the intrigues that I knew must have been going on in Lisbon at that time. He’d written mostly of his meals, and of the house where he was living, and how much he missed his wife.

Of course I knew now that he hadn’t had a wife, he had been speaking of my grandmother, which made me keen to read those bits again, because the emotion in them had, upon first reading, seemed so genuine.

In fact, I wanted badly to read all the letters over, in the hope of finding some small telling detail I had overlooked. If nothing else, as Cavender had pointed out to me that night in London, Deacon mentioned several people whom he worked with, and if any of them could be found, if they were still alive, they might prove helpful. Without any access to Deacon’s report, I would have to try piecing together his story myself, and that meant I would have to rely on the memory of those who had known him, in hopes they’d be able to help me uncover this murder he’d wanted to tell me about.

I remembered, in his letters, he had talked about a secretary. What had been her name? Regina something. Frowning, I half closed my eyes and tried to think…but no, the name was gone.

‘Hey,’ said Tony’s voice, from the hall behind me.

I turned in my chair. ‘Hi. Do you want to get on your computer?’

‘No, no, you just stay there as long as you like, Kate. No, I’ve got Guy on the cell phone, here, wanting to talk to you. Is this a good time?’

Thanking him, I took the phone and held it to my ear. ‘Guy?’

‘Hi, Kate, I just thought—’

‘You’re psychic,’ I told him. ‘I need you to do something for me.’

Guy turned up that evening to find me still stubbornly trawling the Internet.

‘Sorry,’ he said, as he slumped in the chair at my side. ‘I couldn’t get anything out of your briefcase. I couldn’t get into the house. They’ve got the whole place wrapped in yellow tape, you can’t get through.’

‘I thought you had an “in” with the police.’

‘Yeah, well, I didn’t know any of the guys who were on duty today. I can try again tomorrow for you. Maybe I’ll have better luck. I did get these, though, like you asked.’ He thumped two thick library books down beside my computer. ‘They had half a shelf on Reynolds, but these are the only two books that deal with his company in the time frame you’re after.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You finding anything online?’

I shook my head. ‘Not really.’ I had found a few articles about Ivan Reynolds himself – two short biographies, and his obituary in the
New York Times
– but they had told me little other than that he had died of cancer on the 6
^th
of April, 1944, and that he’d left the bulk of his estate to a foundation he’d created in his name, for the enjoyment of the public.

There was apparently a newsreel of his funeral in the British Pathe News Archives, but I hadn’t been able to access it, and most of the Internet references dealing with Reynolds in Lisbon were, predictably enough, in Portuguese.

‘I need a translator,’ I said to Guy.

He leant in closer, looking at the screen, and shrugged. ‘I dated a Portuguese girl once. She writes for a paper in Lisbon. I still have her number. You want me to call her and see if she’d help?’

I didn’t doubt she would, for him. Guy’s ex-girlfriends were thick on the ground, in Toronto, and the ones I’d met had nothing but good words to say about him. It was his particular gift – likeability.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘That would be great.’

‘All right. I’ll let you know.’ He stood, and smiled, and left me to it.

She said yes, of course. But by the time Guy got back to me on Friday, I had something more specific for his Portuguese ex-girlfriend to look into. In one of the library books he had brought me, I’d found a useful photograph that somebody had taken over Christmas, 1943, in Reynolds’ Lisbon offices. It showed two secretaries sitting smiling at their typewriters in what appeared to be a very elegant, wood-panelled room, and underneath, the caption read:
Employees Jenny Saunders and Regina Sousa.

There, I thought, was my Regina. Now I’d seen the last name, I remembered it from Deacon’s letters.
Sousa
. She had been his secretary for the first few months, until she had left to get married.

Both the women in the picture looked quite young – the odds were good that one of them, at least, was still alive.

‘This Regina, she married a Portuguese man. Deacon went to their wedding,’ I told Guy. ‘It was early on in 1944…I think in February, maybe. Could your friend – what’s her name again?’

‘Anabela.’

‘Could Anabela search the local papers for that time and try to find the wedding announcement? Because if I can find Regina’s married name, I might be able to find
her
, ask her some questions.’

‘Do you still want all the Reynolds stuff?’

‘Yes, please. And one more thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Death notices. Obituaries. Anything and everything from late November ’43 – that’s when Deacon got there – through the spring of ’44. I’m especially interested in people whose deaths weren’t from natural causes.’

‘In Lisbon?’ said Guy, with his dark eyebrows lifting. ‘In wartime? There shouldn’t be more than a couple of thousand of those.’

He was right, I knew. As James Cavender had pointed out, wartime Lisbon, much like Casablanca, had been a dangerous place, filled with spies, double agents, and treachery; whispers in alleys and knives in the back. There would likely have been any number of deaths that might be termed suspicious.

But Guy sent my requests to Anabela, regardless, and she set to work at her end while I carried on digging at mine.

I was glad of the work, to be honest. The research gave me something I could cling to, pass the time with, in a week that was, without a doubt, the worst one that I’d ever spent. No fault of Tony’s, or his wife’s – they both did their best to make me feel at home, to cheer me, to treat me as part of the family. But I was achingly aware that I no longer had a family. I had no one. Grandma Murray had been my last surviving relative, and now, at twenty-six, I was alone.

Oh, I had friends, but that wasn’t the same thing come Christmas and holidays, special days, days when you wanted the comfort of people around you who’d watched you grow up from a baby, who knew your shortcomings and loved you in spite of them; wouldn’t stop loving you, no matter what.

I missed Grandma. Missed her with a pain that, in the darkness of the night, became unbearable. I only got through it by focusing hard on the hands of the clock at my bedside and counting the minutes, till sleep, at long last, surged to claim me again like a merciful tide.

My initial state of shock and disbelief had given way to a slow-burning anger, turned inwards, at first – at myself, for still being alive, and for being the reason that someone had shot at my grandmother’s house to begin with. And then my anger spread, took aim at other targets – Scotland Yard, and Whitehall, and whoever else might be involved in what was going on. And there was Deacon. If it hadn’t been for him, I thought, I wouldn’t have a problem. If he hadn’t come to speak to me… There were moments I thought he must surely have known that he’d put me in danger; other moments when I felt equally certain he must
not
have known…when I recalled the way he’d acted on the morning that we’d met, not nervous; stepping off the sidewalk without looking, not expecting any trouble…when I thought about James Cavender, and Grandma, and I knew that Deacon wouldn’t have done anything to bring them harm. I knew that. But it didn’t stop me cursing him from time to time, the way a man who learns he’s caught a terrible disease might curse the thoughtless person who infected him.

I kept thinking of the funeral, Grandma’s funeral. Guy had tried to reassure me with the promise that it wouldn’t be immediate.

‘They’ll have to do an autopsy. They always do, for murder,’ he had told me, ‘so there won’t be any funeral for a while yet.’

The lawyer, I knew, would arrange things. Grandma had made him joint executor. Not because she didn’t trust me, but because she hadn’t wanted me to deal alone with her estate, with all the hassles and the headaches and the tax returns. Besides, I travelled so much, I might not have been here when it happened. There had to be somebody else. So the lawyer would do it. He had all the details: what church to use, what readings, and what hymns. She’d left that all in writing. Still, it bothered me beyond expression that I couldn’t do this one last thing for her. I couldn’t even give her that.

And going to the funeral would be out of the question as well. The police were bound to be there, looking for me. And even if it wasn’t the police I had to fear, I knew whoever 
was
behind this would be there, as well. Unless, I thought, I managed in the meantime to uncover them. Expose them.

So I pushed on, reading every reference I could find to Ivan Reynolds’ company, and Lisbon in the war years, and the British Secret Service, for whom Deacon had been working, all the while keeping my fingers tightly crossed that the Reverend Beckett would have good news for me when I phoned the vicarage that weekend.