Read To The Grave Online

Authors: Steve Robinson

Tags: #Mystery & Crime

To The Grave (24 page)

“Hello.”

He listened to the caller.  Then he nodded and said, “The priest is dead.”

He was silent again.  Listening.  A loud tannoy announcement caused him to cup his hand over the phone.

“The train about to depart from platform six is the ten-fourteen service to...”

He tuned the sound out, still listening.  “Why the change of plan?” he asked. “Why the sudden urgency?”  He nodded and continued to listen for several seconds.  “Jefferson Tayte,” he repeated.  “American.”  He drew a deep breath.  “I’ll take care of it,” he added, ending the call.

Inside the locker was another small case: this one moulded from black, ABS plastic.  The man shuffled the travel case at his feet closer to the locker and unzipped it.  Then he opened the ABS case and inspected the Walther P99 semi-automatic handgun that was nestled inside.  Everything was just as he expected it to be, but he liked to be sure.  He preferred the Walther, although international travel meant that he couldn’t be choosy and the Glock he’d used for the priest had served its purpose.

He closed the gun-case again and took a quick look around.  There were plenty of people about - London never slept - but no one seemed interested in him.  He lifted his travel case up onto his knee and slipped the gun inside, zipped it up again and made for his train.

           

Tayte dunked one of the hotel’s complimentary biscuits into his hot chocolate and opened his notebook to the page where he’d written Danny Danielson’s information.  As he ate the biscuit he woke up his laptop and awkwardly tapped in the details for the US army enlistment records website.  They were available to search in a number of places, but he typically used NARA - the US National Archives and Records Administration.

He went into the AAD - Access to Archival Databases - and was presented with two files: one for reserve corps records, the other for enlistment records.  He clicked on the latter, which covered the period between 1938 and 1946.  The first entry field was for the army serial number.  Into it he typed Danny’s number and then he sat back with his hot chocolate while he waited for the results to come back.

There were almost nine million records in the file, but it only took a couple of seconds to pull out the one Tayte was interested in.  On a single line he was presented with all the information that was pertinent to a US soldier’s enlistment into the army during World War II: name, residence state and county, place and year of enlistment and the year of his birth.

He noted everything down in his notepad and paused over the name.  It was shown as Danielson, E.  Not D for Danny.  He supposed ‘Danny’ must have been a nickname or simply the name he commonly used, thinking that he really had no chance of finding the right man when he’d looked for him before.

His residence state was West Virginia and that put Tayte in mind of the name he’d seen on his client’s original birth certificate.  He thought it made sense that Mena would have chosen the name Virginia for her baby given everything he’d learnt so far.  He underlined the words, wondering whether it was possible that Danny could have come back for Mena and taken her home to West Virginia with him.  The thought made him smile, but it was just a thought.

He went back to the entry on the screen.  The leftmost column had the option to view the record, which he did.  It added the subject’s specific date of enlistment, the term of enlistment, their race and education level, along with several other fields of information that were of less value to Tayte just now.  What he really wanted to know was whether or not Danny had survived the war and what became of him if he did.

He sat back and pinched his eyes.  Maybe it was the screen-work or the hot chocolate or both, but he was beginning to think that the pillow on the bed behind him was about ready to swallow him up as soon as he put his head on it. 

“Just a little more,” he said to himself as he brought up another browser screen, thinking to rule out the obvious possibilities before moving on to the more complicated process of getting to see Danielson’s full army record.

He logged into the ancestry website he used for a large part of his everyday research and brought up the page with the heading, ‘U.S. WWII Military Personnel missing-in-action or Lost at Sea, 1941-1946’.  He already knew the statistics, reminding himself that of the sixteen million Americans who served during World War II, around four hundred thousand had died.  Of those, seventy-nine thousand were unaccounted for and that number had only reduced by six thousand today.

As he typed the details into the search fields, he hoped that Danny wasn’t one of them, but when the results came back he slumped in his chair and sighed.  There he was: Danielson, E.  He read the rank: Staff Sergeant.  Then he confirmed the service number to be sure.  There was no question about it.  According to the information, the ‘Date of Loss’ told him that Danny had been missing-in-action since November 1944.

Unless he went AWOL for Mena
.

He figured it had to be a possibility and missing-in-action didn’t necessarily mean dead.  Maybe Danny had engineered his way out of the war to be with Mena.  As tiredness crept up on him, Tayte thought back to his earlier notion that Danny had taken Mena back to West Virginia.  He thought about her little red suitcase again, considering that if Danny had managed to get back to her before the end of the war, their departure from England might have called for some urgency and that could account for why she had to leave it behind.

He liked that idea, but as he began to drift he knew it couldn’t be that simple.  If it was, why had his client been given up for adoption?  He made himself get up and get back into bed, thinking that he needed to conduct further research into Danny Danielson and as much as he wanted to go on with it now, he knew he couldn’t stay awake any longer.  It would have to wait until morning.

 

  

  

  

Chapter Thirty-Two

  

B
y eleven a.m. the following day, Jefferson Tayte was driving through the English countryside, marvelling at how similar Hampshire looked to Hertfordshire, although it occurred to him that perhaps it wasn’t so odd given their proximity to one another.  It was all on a different scale from back home where driving from the middle of one state to another could take a day or more.  According to the satnav, he was less than ten minutes from his destination: Bramshott House: residence of Edward Buckley.

He’d been awoken by the arrival of his room service breakfast that morning and it was unlike him to sleep so late, but he figured he must have needed it after last night’s research.  When he’d tapped his laptop back to life, ready to continue looking into Danny Danielson, he’d had an e-mail pop up on his screen from Buckley.  It had simply stated that he was free to see Tayte any time in the morning before noon.  No telephone number was given.

The arrival of Buckley’s reply put everything Tayte had planned to do on hold - his Internet research and his breakfast - because an interview with Edward Buckley was something he could not afford to miss.  He hoped Buckley might be able to tell him why he and Mary never married, and he could confirm whether he helped Mena to leave home.  He also thought he might know something about what became of her afterwards and maybe even where she was now.

“At the next junction, turn right,” satnav lady said and Tayte obeyed, turning off the main road.

It was a pleasant morning he thought as he continued to drive deeper into the countryside.  Gone were the clouds that seemed to have followed him since he arrived in England.  Now the sky was suddenly blue, the air crisp and cool and the ground drying after yesterday’s rain.  He looked up through the windscreen and smiled at it, thinking that the new week had begun on a promising note.

“You have reached your destination,” satnav lady said and instinctively, Tayte stopped.

When he couldn’t see anything obvious through the bare hedgerows to either side of him, he drove on again.  The trees soon thickened around him, blocking his view, but after a few hundred metres, he came to a high, red-brick wall and then to a set of open gates that had the name ‘Bramshott House’ spelled out in wrought iron above them.  He turned in and followed the pale gravel drive for a few hundred metres more, between towering, leafless oak trees and evergreen yews, until he came in sight of the house.  He’d thought Joan Cartwright’s home was impressive, but he had to whistle at this when he saw it.

Bramshott House was a 17th century stone manor house, built on three floors with a clay-tiled roof, mullioned bay windows and numerous high chimney stacks rising from every gable.  The grounds appeared neat if not fancy and Tayte thought they had probably seen better days, or perhaps it was just the time of year.  There was no obvious parking allocation, so he drove up to what looked like a disused island fountain with pieces of statuary set in various poses around a larger centrepiece.

Tayte turned around it and stopped by the steps that led up to the main entrance porch.  He got out of the car and climbed them, briefcase in hand, thinking how quiet it was.  Beyond the birds in the distant trees the air was still until he raised the heavy iron knocker and let it fall.  It sent a booming echo through the building as it crashed down onto the oak door and Tayte stepped away and looked around, hands behind his back like he’d just broken something.

He waited several seconds but there was no answer.  At first he thought he’d arrived too late; he couldn’t see any other cars.  Maybe Buckley had gone out earlier than he’d said.  But the gates were open.  Tayte figured if Buckley had gone out then the gates would probably have been closed.  He checked his watch and the glowing red digits told him it was still forty-five minutes before noon.  He knocked again and thought the sound was loud enough to get anyone’s attention no matter how big the house was or even whether the occupants were all asleep.  He imagined that even if Buckley lived by himself, he would have staff to keep the house going.

So why aren’t they answering?

He tried again and he really threw the hammer down this time; so much so that he heard woodpigeons flapping in the distance.  When no answer came again he shook his head and decided to take a look around, thinking that maybe he could get someone’s attention through one of the windows.  He also considered that Buckley was an elderly man now.  Maybe he was deaf and the staff were on their morning off.

Tayte followed the gravel around to the right of the building and came to a block of stable-like garages.  There were no doors.  He could clearly see the cars inside and all the bays were full.  Turning back to the house he began to peer in through the windows.  The rooms were vacant and full of antique furniture and old paintings hanging from the picture rails.  A cold breeze hit him as he arrived at the back of the house where he saw an expanse of winter countryside and there was evidence of what must once have been a fine parterre garden.  Now, the low box hedging that framed and segmented it stood alone and unkempt.

He went up to the next window and then the next, and just as he stepped away this time, movement caught his eye.  He went back to it, dropped his briefcase and cupped his hands over his face to block out the reflection.  It looked like a study.  There was a desk with a computer screen in the middle and the walls were decorated with bookshelves.  He caught the movement he’d seen again and it drew his eye.  Someone was kneeling on the floor by the desk, holding out a clenched fist.  As Tayte’s eyes adjusted to the light inside the room he saw that it was an elderly man and he supposed it was Edward Buckley.  He looked in pain, like he was having a heart attack.

Without thinking, Tayte repeatedly shoved his elbow into the window until the leaded glass shattered and began to break away.  When the jagged hole he’d made was big enough for him to reach through, he unlatched and opened the window then pulled himself up into the frame.

“Mr Buckley!” he called, “It’s Jefferson Tayte.  Hang in there!”

As he fell through the window and picked himself up again he heard Buckley groan.  The man gave a sudden jerk and staggered back into the desk.  He fell as Tayte ran to him, but Tayte was too late to help him.  He knew Buckley was dead the moment he saw his ashen face and the blood that was seeping out across his shirt.  This was no heart attack.  He’d been shot.

Tayte was aware of a door behind him, directly facing Buckley and the desk.  He spun around and saw a woman’s body lying in the half-light beyond.  As he went to it he heard a door slam, followed by the now familiar sound of the heavy iron knocker as it rebounded against the front door.  He leapt over the body at his feet and ran towards the sound, but as he came out into the entrance hallway he stopped.  Another body, a man this time, was lying just inside the front door and Tayte supposed that his killer had shot him dead as soon as he’d answered it.

Tayte went to the door, eyes on the dead body the whole time.  He eased it open and peered outside but there was no one to be seen.  Looking down at the dead man again - at the blood-filled hole in his forehead - he took out his phone and called the police.

 

  

  

  

Chapter Thirty-Three

  

I
t was gone four p.m. by the time Tayte had finished helping the Hampshire Constabulary with their enquiries.  Three hours after that, he was back at his hotel in the Tanners Bar, getting better acquainted with Jack Daniels.  His story about who he was and what he was doing at Bramshott House that morning had checked out easily enough.  Jonathan had been quick to vouch for him when the police had called and Tayte had been able to show Detective Inspector Lundy, who was leading the enquiry, the e-mail exchange he’d had with Edward Buckley, validating his visit.  He wasn’t able to give him any idea as to why Edward Buckley had been murdered, but his questions had given Tayte cause to wonder at the killer’s motive himself.

There had been no robbery.  Buckley’s murder appeared to be pre-meditated and the staff had clearly been in the way of the killer’s objective.  To Tayte, and he imagined to the police, it had looked like a cold-blooded assassination that he just happened to walk in on - albeit too late to prevent it.  But then Tayte knew that he would also be dead now if he’d arrived at Bramshott House any sooner.

Other books

Untraceable by Johannes, S. R.
Complete Abandon by Julia Kent
Fanatics by William Bell
Safe in his Arms by Melody Anne
The Reckoning by Jana DeLeon
All Men Are Liars by Alberto Manguel
A Sister's Forgiveness by Anna Schmidt
Moving Day by Meg Cabot