The Power of One (3 page)

Edward closed his eyes. ‘When can I see him?'

‘Not yet,' Mac said gently. ‘Not for a little while.'

Half an hour later, Rina left with Mac and Andy Nevins, having been promised a lift home. The de Freitas's had declined the use of a family liaison officer, but had gratefully accepted Mac's assurance that he would arrange to have someone keep the inevitable press presence under control. The property was screened from the road by a low wall, topped by a wrought-iron fence and sealed with a pair of electric gates, but it would be easy enough to take the cliff path and gain access via the hedge to the rear. This had been cut low enough so as not to obstruct the view but it also made access to the rear of the property pretty straightforward. Mac guessed that only the locals would realise that and they wouldn't be about to share their knowledge with incomers. That might buy the de Freitas's a little extension on their peace, but it wouldn't be long before a double murder brought media interest back to Frantham and Mac had suggested they might go away for a few days. So far, they seemed reluctant even to give that a thought.

‘I want to be on hand,' Edward de Freitas said. ‘To be close by, in case I'm needed, you know.'

Mac had left it at that, nothing more he could do.

Rina settled herself in the rear seat and Andy drove. Waiting for the electric gates to open, Mac turned round to look at her. ‘So,' he said, ‘what aren't they telling me?'

‘Whatever it is, they didn't tell me either,'

She sounded slightly miffed about that, Mac thought. ‘The fact that he wasn't alone, I felt that shook them both. Especially Mrs de Freitas.'

‘Maybe she fancied him,' Andy suggested, driving through the now half-open gates. ‘Maybe she was ticked off because
she
didn't get an invite on to her brother-in-law's yacht.'

‘Oh, you do have an elegant turn of phrase, Andy,' Rina told him. ‘But he might have a point, Mac. She did react oddly.'

Mac nodded. ‘I thought so too. But I really don't think either of them had a clue about the identity of our mystery man. I wonder how close they actually were as a family. And if Mrs de Freitas was involved with Paul, how well she
didn't
really know him in spite of that?' He sighed. ‘Something tells me this is going to get messy. How come you know them, Rina?'

‘Mrs Martin knows everyone,' Andy said.

‘True,' Mac laughed, ‘but aside from that.'

‘Oh, I went to a meeting they had when they first bought the airfield. They wanted to get a steering committee together, local people mainly. Edward wants to reopen the airfield to light commercial traffic, but he wants to employ as many locals as he can, there and in that new factory they've been building behind the tin sheds. And he wanted to know what else he could involve the community in. Open days, that sort of thing. It's going to make a big difference to the job market in Frantham.'

‘And you volunteered for this committee?'

‘I did, yes. And we became friendly after that.'

‘Friendly, but not friends?'

Rina laughed at him. ‘There is a difference, you know. I think in time,' she mused, ‘that friendly might turn into friendship but it's a little early in our acquaintance to be sure of that.'

Mac smiled, grateful that it had taken almost no time at all for Rina and her eccentric household to decide that he was definitely ‘friend' material.

‘But I didn't know Paul even
that
well,' she added. ‘I liked what I'd seen of him, but he was a quiet man, rather private, I'd have said.'

Mac thought about the new build the de Freitas's had constructed behind what the locals called the Tin Sheds, an odd amalgam of old buildings left over from a wartime airbase, and an additional concretion of Portakabins and small units which housed a surprising variety of small business ventures. Car repairs, a tiny and very specialised tool-maker, a man and his son who restored boats and did repairs down at the marina. Mac wasn't sure what else was there.

‘What do they do?' he asked.

‘Computers,' Andy said. ‘Games mostly.'

‘Software development,' Rina said grandly. ‘And I think they design special chips or something, there's a small R&D department. Paul ran that, I think.'

Mac nodded but did not pursue the enquiry, guessing he'd get more from Andy later than he could glean from Rina. She was an internet addict, but had little interest in anything else in the world of IT. Andy, on the other hand, was an avid player of all things fantasy.

‘Why base it here? Frantham isn't exactly the English equivalent of silicon valley.'

‘Oh, sentiment, I think,' Rina said. ‘Apparently the de Freitas' father or grandfather or something lived here. I don't know more than that. Edward mentioned spending childhood holidays close by. And I suppose it makes a kind of economic sense, having the airfield and, I think, buying everything relatively cheaply. Who knows?'

She was irritated, Mac thought, that she hadn't probed further into de Freitas family history. He guessed it was an absence of information she'd soon be filling in.

They pulled up in front of Peverill Lodge. ‘Well,' Rina said, as Mac helped her out of the car. ‘I dare say I'll see you soon. Give Miriam my love, won't you?'

‘Will do,' Mac said. He watched her go inside then ducked his head into the car. ‘Go and park up, Andy. I'll walk back via the coffee shop.'

Andy greeted the idea with a grin of approval. The police station was at the far end of the promenade, a strictly pedestrian zone, so the parking of the police vehicles – and Mac's car, involved a bit of a loop round by the back roads. Since Mac had taken over the reins of power from his predecessor, DCI Eden, now retired, police patronage of the little Italian coffee shop on the promenade had risen dramatically. In Eden's time, the coffee at the station came dangerously strong and frequently adulterated with single malt. It was not a tradition Mac had continued, preferring vanilla or almond in his. He had converted Andy and was working on the wearing down of Sergeant Baker's resolve.

‘
Tonino's
' was also an excellent place to take the temperature of community feeling and collect the local gossip. Whatever was being speculated upon with regard to the de Freitas murder, Mac would have collated by the time he arrived back at the police station.

L
ydia de Freitas was practically incendiary. ‘You should have told him. Everything, Edward. Paul's dead. Are you going to wait for one of us to be next?'

Edward shook his head. He poured whisky into a tumbler with a hand that shook so much the ice rattled when he lifted it. ‘You don't know this was related, Lydia. We don't know anything, that's the trouble. Paul didn't exactly confide in me.'

‘Well he certainly didn't confide in
me
, if that's what you're suggesting.'

‘I'm not a fool, Lydia.'

She came over, cupped her hand around his, holding the glass steady. ‘That's just it,' she said softly. ‘You are a major, massive, big-time fool. I loved Paul, yes. Once upon a time; but I married you and, Edward,
I've
never regretted that. You're the one with the doubts, not me. Not Paul.'

She laid her head against his shoulder and, almost absently, he stroked the soft blonde hair, and inhaled her fragrance. Edward closed his eyes. ‘I'm scared,' he admitted. ‘I don't know what to do to be right, Lydia.'

‘You should have told him. That policeman.'

Edward pulled away impatiently. ‘Look, I don't doubt the man's good intentions, but he's a country bobby, probably never encountered anything more major than a stolen boat. He couldn't handle this.'

‘Then we need someone who can,' Lydia told him. ‘And fast, Edward. They killed Paul, just like they threatened. They aren't going to stop.'

Mrs Simms padded quietly across the hall of the de Freitas' house. At least they weren't shouting any more, she thought, and this last month they'd seemed to do nothing but. What she'd taken for a happy marriage when she'd accepted the job was proving to be anything but if all the arguments were anything to go by. So different from when they'd first come. She wondered if it was the countryside that wasn't suiting them. After all, townies didn't always settle, did they, but today topped everything. A murder!

She paused before knocking on the door to the Big Room as she always called it. Stuck her head around the door. ‘I'll be off then?'

‘Oh, God, is it that time already?' Edward and Lydia stood so close together as to almost be touching but Margaret Simms could feel the gulf breeze blowing between them even from across the room. She opened the door wider and stepped inside, genuinely sorry for her employers.

‘I'm really sorry to hear … you know. I mean, if there's anything I can do? Folk round here tend to rally round in a crisis.'

Lydia managed a smile. Edward looked as though he was about to choke.

‘Thanks, Margaret. We really appreciate that, but we don't know what's going on at the moment. We just know that Paul is …' She looked away, unable to continue.

‘Dead,' her husband said. ‘Paul is dead.' He sounded so utterly desolate that Margaret Simms felt her own throat tighten and her eyes prick with tears.

Quietly, she closed the door on their grief and let herself out, crossing the rear lawn and taking the cliff path home as she did on fine days when the walk was nice. Once out of sight of the house, she dug in her bag and found her mobile phone. Her sister, Chrissie, was on speed dial. ‘You'll never guess,' she began. ‘Oh, you've heard? No, I had it switched off at the house, didn't seem right, gossiping about it when I was there. Shot, they said. Blood everywhere. Yes, a shoot-out, on
his
boat in our little bay. Oh, in bits they are.' She glanced back towards the house and paused, frowning, certain just for a moment that she'd seen someone, a tall man, standing close to the rear gate, then, when she looked again, the man was gone.

‘Oh, you're back. Everybody, Rina's back.' Bethany greeted Rina with such effusiveness she might have been away for weeks and not just a few hours.

‘Matthew's cooking lamb for dinner.'

‘Smell's good,' Rina approved. ‘What do you have there, Tim?'

The dark-haired man looked up from the papers and miscellaneous pieces of wood and glass spread across the kitchen table.

‘It's a new illusion,' Bethany announced, clasping her hands joyfully together. ‘It arrived by special delivery about an hour ago.'

Rina glanced at the title on the typewritten sheet. ‘Pepper's Ghost. Oh, if I remember right, that's quite an old illusion, isn't it, Tim?'

‘First performed by Mr J. H. Pepper on Christmas Eve in 1862. I got dad to make up a model so I could demonstrate the effect to Blake. They're keen to make it happen, but I don't think Blake and Lilly quite get how it works.'

Rina examined the little model. Tim's father was an artist and set designer and the model was based on measurements and photographs Tim had sent him of the newly restored art deco stage at the Palisades Hotel. Tim, magician and mentalist extraordinaire, worked there four nights a week and the new owners, Blake and Lilly, were keen to spread the reputation of the recently reopened hotel. Their clientele was rather more upmarket than was typically catered for in Rina's street.

‘Isn't it lovely,' Bethany cooed. ‘Eliza and I think we should find a permanent display for it when Tim's done. We thought we could put it on the piano, so we can see it and enjoy it whenever we play.'

‘Good idea,' Rina approved. ‘Tim, your father did a wonderful job.'

‘He did, didn't he, and the stage at the Palisades is just crying out to be used like this.' Tim was grinning from ear to ear in his enthusiasm. Sometimes, Rina reflected, he was more like a boy than a man who would not see thirty again, though that impression was, perhaps, enhanced by the fact that everyone else in her household was at least twice his age.

Rina smiled affectionately. Tim and his father were anomalies in a family that, to a man – and woman – had made their careers in the military. Army, air force, even the odd sailor. Most had then sidestepped on retirement into something equally official, like Tim's uncle who had joined the Diplomatic Protection Group or his other uncle who'd become some sort of Home Office advisor.

Tim's father, on the other hand, had gone to art school and Tim made a rather precarious living as a performer.

‘Matthew, Stephen, is there anything you need me to do?'

Matthew was bending to remove a tray from the oven, from which rose a wonderful scent of roast lamb and rosemary.

‘It's all under control, Rina dear. Stephen is just about to see to the gravy and I'll let the meat rest while he's doing that. Then I think we're there, if the ladies would like to lay the table?'

Eliza and Bethany skittered off to do his bidding and Rina took two large glass pitchers from the wall cupboard and filled them with water, setting them on the kitchen table beside the assorted glassware that displayed the varied preferences held by the members of her disparate household.

She watched as Matthew lifted the meat on to the serving plate, and then stepped aside to allow Stephen access to the stove. Apart from breakfast, which Rina always took care of, most of the meals at Peverill Lodge were taken care of by the Montmorency twins; Matthew, tall and elegant and hound-like with his mane of silver hair swept back from a thin face and Stephen, short and a little rotund about the waist. Getting very thin on top – though only a very foolish or thoughtless soul would draw attention to the fact.

The Montmorencys had performed as a double act since both were children and Rina supposed that, once upon a time, their physical differences would have been a source of humour. Over the years though, they had seemed to forget that they were not even blood relatives, never mind being twins. Twindom had become reality for them and Rina had to brief new acquaintances very carefully to ensure the tacit illusion was maintained.