Gregory's Game (10 page)

‘What's that? What is it? Oh, my God. Kat.'

He stared at Nathan, and Nathan could see the blame in his eyes. ‘What did you just pick up? I saw you take something. What did you just pick up?'

‘It's nothing,' Nathan breathed softly. ‘Ian, I have to go.'

‘No, you'll wait for the police. The police are coming. You can't go.'

He tried to block the door, but Nathan simply moved him aside. This was beyond the police; this was beyond any help the authorities could provide. ‘I'm going to get them back,' he said. ‘Ian, I have to go.'

He ran for the door, keys in his hand, dived into the car and sped away. Ian would never forgive him, Nathan thought, but that didn't matter. If this was his fault, he would never forgive himself.

T
ess paused at the door to speak to the uniformed officer. ‘The next-door neighbour's taken him in,' he said. ‘He's not making any sense, just keeps saying it's all someone called Nathan's fault. He's in bits.'

Tess nodded. Nathan. The younger man who'd been here the other day. She looked through into the hall where two white-clad crime-scene officers moved silently. She glimpsed another in the kitchen. ‘Alright to go through?'

One of the CSI nodded and pointed out the designated path. Tess wondered how they'd decided where to put it. The place was a mess, books and torn papers strewn across the tiled floor, soil from the plant that had stood next to the door had already been tracked through into the living room. She made her way into the kitchen and surveyed the broken crockery and shattered glass.

‘Is the upstairs in the same state?' she asked.

‘It's messy, but not as bad. The kid's room's virtually untouched. I think whoever did this wanted it to have an impact as soon as he came through the door. Or maybe they didn't get time to do much in the bedrooms.'

Tess nodded her thanks.

‘Someone had a smashing time,' Vinod said, entering the kitchen behind her. Tess ignored him, her attention fixed on the table, the top clean of everything except that one photograph. She shifted round so that she could see it clearly. Vinod stood close behind her, leaning over her shoulder. She could feel his breath on her neck, hear the sharp in-breath as he looked at the picture. It had been printed, she guessed, on a laser printer that only did black and white. On what looked like cheap photocopier paper, thin and flimsy, but the image needed no embellishment. A woman, clasping a young child very close and very tight, stared out. Her face was bruised, that was clear even in the greyscale shot, and her hair was untidy, clothes dishevelled and the sleeve of her sweater torn at the elbow. It was a picture designed to shock, Tess thought. The details – bruises, and other small signs of violence – deliberately placed to enhance the sense of outrage, of horror. There was something staged about it, the lighting on the woman's face stark and unkind, the room behind them in deep shadow, but for all the artificiality Tess had no doubt that this was for real. The woman's eyes, the way she held her child, the way she had wrapped herself around the little girl – this was a woman frozen in the depths of terror and it was as if her fear reached out and gripped Tess in the gut.

‘Fucking hell,' Vinod said softly.

N
athan drove. It was perhaps a full ten minutes before he took any notice of where he was driving to. It was with some relief that he realized he'd switched into auto pilot and his route had been directed home. Or what had passed for home for the past weeks.

He pulled into a road at the back of the flat and approached on foot, cautious and fully alert now. He didn't really expect anyone to be waiting for him. The fact that they had gone after his friend meant they didn't know how to get to him.
They
, Nathan thought. Whoever ‘they' were. Nathan had enemies; Nathan's old associates had enemies; the potential list was a long one.

He thought hard. Had he told Ian where he was living? It was unlikely Ian had even asked; it wasn't what Ian did. Even so, it was best to clear out and to do it fast. Not that there was much to take. He headed in through the fire escape at the back of the old house. His neighbours were rarely in during the day and kept to themselves when they were and Nathan often came in the back way. He unlocked the back door and stepped into the kitchen, pausing to listen intently to the house, to his rooms, to the sound of his own breathing. There was little to pack. The computer equipment fitted into a laptop bag, along with the notes he had made on the crime-scene photos, the photos themselves and other bits of paperwork. Clothes and personal possessions went into a backpack. He left everything else where it was, down to the food in the fridge. In minutes, Nathan was gone. He didn't take the time to clean the place down; his fingerprints and DNA were not on record and a place that had been stripped naked of prints and personal signs would be more likely to arouse suspicion than one that looked something like normal in the unlikely event the police should come.

Then he drove again, taking little notice of where until he had left the city behind him and the road climbed up into the hills.

Nathan parked up in a lay-by, in a spot that gave him a view down into a green valley, and only then did he consider his next move.

‘This is bad,' Nathan breathed. ‘This is really bad.' He reached into his pocket and withdrew the slip of paper he had taken from beside the photograph of Kat and little Daisy. On it there were only two words – a name – but it had been enough to let Nathan know that the message was for him. He closed his eyes and thought about the photographs he had been sent, pictures forwarded from the Church Lane cottage. The picture of the woman in red. As he had told Gregory, the last time he had met her, she had been called Nancy Todd, but she'd used other aliases and Nathan could recall a few. One of them was the name written on that slip of paper.

‘Mae Tourino,' Nathan said. ‘Mae.'

One thing was for sure, he had to put this right – whatever this was. He had to get Kat and Daisy back to Ian. He had to keep them safe.

‘S
o what do you know about this Nathan? This friend of yours,' Tess pressed gently. ‘How long have you known him? Where did you meet?'

Professor Marsh shrugged helplessly as though it was too hard to recall. ‘I was working,' he said. ‘On a lecture tour, a summer school. Nathan was assigned to me as interpreter and general factotum. He was still a student.'

‘Studying what?' She asked. She could guess from the search she had done the night before, but was reluctant to show her hand yet.

‘I don't know. I mean, he was studying medicine. I don't remember exactly what year he was in. I suppose he must have been twenty, twenty-one? Something like that. We kept in touch, we became friends, but …'

‘Do you have an address, a phone number?'

Ian shook his head. ‘There was a gas explosion where he used to live, back in the summer. I don't have his new address. His number is in my phone, but it won't work now. He'll have changed it.'

Tess and Vinod exchanged a glance. ‘And why would he have done that?'

Ian Marsh shrugged. ‘Because that's what he does. That's what he'll do.'

Tess frowned. The man was clearly falling apart and yet he was also holding things back. Why would he do that? ‘You say you became friends. He was a student. Is it usual to become friends with your students?'

Ian Marsh looked puzzled. ‘He was never my student,' he said. ‘He was my assistant in Germany and then later, in Africa, Turkey, other places. We worked together a number of times. He … he …'

‘He what?' Tess prompted but Professor Marsh seemed to have lost the capacity to respond. He stared into the distance as though seeing something far away.

Or long ago, she thought.

Vinod tried an alternate tack. ‘Do you have friends in common?' he asked. ‘Someone who may know more than you do about this Nathan?' He frowned ‘What did you say his last name was?'

‘Crow. His name is Nathan Crow and yes,' Ian Marsh sounded suddenly relieved, ‘he's a friend of Annie Raven. Annie Raven the photographer. She's married to that artist, Bob something or other.' He drifted off again and Tess and Vinod exchanged another glance.

‘Nathan Crow,' Vinod said what they were both thinking. ‘It doesn't sound like a real name.

It seemed almost that Professor Marsh smiled slightly. ‘I don't suppose it is,' he agreed. ‘He's a storm crow, a messenger of the Morrigan; pecks away at the dead on the battlefield, stealing their eyes …' He seemed utterly lost then. Tess watched as he buried his face in his hands and began to weep. It was obvious they'd get no more sense out of him, but there was another question she had to ask.

‘Why do you think Nathan was responsible for your wife and child being kidnapped?' she said. ‘Professor Marsh, we need to know. We need any scrap of information you can give us about this man. Do you think he took them?'

Ian Marsh, his face still buried in his hands, shook his head emphatically. ‘No,' he said. He lifted his head and the look of utter despair in his eyes cut Tess to the quick. He's already buried them, she thought. He doesn't think they're coming back alive.

‘Nathan wouldn't do this. He didn't like Kat much, but he put on a good show of trying. But he wouldn't hurt her and he loved Daisy.'

‘Daisy?'

‘He called her Daisy. Not Desi or Desiree. She was always Daisy.'

‘You can't be sure he didn't do this. You gave us the impression he may have been responsible.'

Ian Marsh sighed. ‘Being responsible isn't the same as taking a particular action,' he said, suddenly pedantic. ‘I think they were taken because of something Nathan did or maybe didn't do. And I can't forgive that, not ever. He should have kept clear of my family. He should have kept away from me. I should never have become his friend. I should never have let him into my life. So for that, I hold both of us guilty. Me because I didn't cast him out and Nathan because of what he is.'

His face contorted, pain and hate fighting for space at the corners of his mouth and in the depths of his eyes. Tess watched as he seemed to turn inwards, to shut them out, and she guessed she'd get nothing out of him now.

‘What do you make of that?' Vinod asked after they'd left.

‘I think we should go and speak to Annie Raven. I think he knows more than he's telling. I think he's scared – and not just for his wife and kid. I think our Professor Marsh is a man who has looked into the abyss and seen it looking back.'

I
t hadn't taken long to find an address for the photographer Annie Raven and by two o'clock, they were on their way. Vinod had been uncharacteristically quiet since leaving the professor's house. Tess could guess what was on his mind, but she didn't think brooding in silence would help. Much better to get it out in the open. Wasn't it?'

‘Penny for them?'

‘What? Oh, right. I'm not sure they're worth it.'

‘You're thinking what might be happening to them,' Tess said. ‘The mum and the little girl. You're trying not to think that whoever killed our Mr Palmer might have taken them.'

Vinod shook his head. ‘I'm way past that,' he said. ‘I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? The two things have got to be related. Whoever killed Palmer came looking for the professor—'

‘Or this Nathan Crow.'

‘Or him, for some reason we can't get a handle on yet because said professor isn't telling us anything, so now whoever it is has taken his wife and kid. I mean, if that was any normal person and you thought you knew something that could get them back, you'd be spilling your guts, wouldn't you? Only thing you'd be thinking about was what you could do to help.'

Tess indicated to make the right turn the satnav was nagging about and then glanced over at him. ‘You're thinking about your sister's kids.'

‘Of course I am. Tia's the same age as the Marsh kid. She'd be scared to death.' He shook his head violently. ‘It doesn't bear thinking about.'

‘Then stop thinking about it.'

‘I can't,' he admitted.

‘Look,' Tess told him, ‘this Annie Raven might have something useful to tell us. Then we start digging into our professor's past. The way I see it is, the only reasons you keep your mouth shut in a situation like this are that you don't give a shit what happens – and I don't believe that – or you're too scared about what else might happen if you do spill your guts, as you put it. So we keep pecking away at the professor until he gives in, and while we're doing that, we start rooting around anywhere else that might tell us what he's up to his neck in.'

‘One thing's for sure,' Vin said.

‘What's that?'

‘There are at least two teams involved in the kidnapping. Got to be.'

‘How do you figure? Oh, the photograph. No way could they have snatched Katherine and the kid and taken their photograph and then got it to the prof's house. It must have been sent to the second team … emailed or as an SMS attachment by phone. Then it's been printed and placed at Professor Marsh's house by whoever trashed the place.'

‘I'm betting there's nothing missing,' Vin said. ‘Whoever did it wanted to create a mess, reinforce the threat. I don't think they were after anything.'

‘Well until Prof Marsh is in a fit state to tell us, we'll just have to speculate,' Tess said. But she knew he was probably right. The search had looked like a load of kids had been let loose to run rampage. She'd been to her fair share of break-ins and all looked different, but in a strange way they also looked the same. There was usually some discernible purpose to the mayhem, the breaking, the destruction.