The Power of One Page 2

  ‘Whoever he was, he’s a big bugger,’ the coastguard said. ‘You’ll have your work cut out getting him back up on deck.’

  Mac left them discussing the most effective way of extrication and took the designated route back on to the deck. He thanked the doctor and then started back on to the shore. He could see Andy was upset about something, practically jumping up and down in his agitation. Of Rina, there was no sign.

  ‘OK. Where’s she gone?’

  ‘She said she knew who the boat belonged to,’ Andy explained. ‘I’m sorry, boss, I looked away for just a second, like, and she was gone. Going to see the de Freitas’s she said. She reckons it’s their boat.’ He looked anxiously at Mac, wondering if he’d get the blame for Rina’s sudden departure.

  Mac sighed. ‘Well you’d better drive me over there, then,’ he said. ‘I sometimes think it might just be easier for me to retire and let Rina get on and do my job.’

  FOUR

  The house owned by the brother and sister-in-law of Paul de Freitas was about a mile outside of Frantham and set back between the coast road and the cliff top. The views were magnificent, Mac thought, as they pulled into the drive and took in the scene of Frantham Bay and, just beyond the headland, a glimpse of the larger and more impressive Lyme Bay. Mature trees provided a windbreak for a large and well-planted garden that wrapped right around the house. The trees were older than the house, Mac noted. Vaguely, he remembered Rina telling him that the original had burned down and been replaced with this very seventies, very angular, picture-windowed block of pale brick and dark slate.

  It was not, Mac thought, the most attractive place in the world, but as the anxious-looking woman in the dark-green dress, who introduced herself as Mrs Simms, the housekeeper, led them through into the massive rear lounge, Mac conceded that even seventies architecture could have its moments. The rear of the house was given over to the largest windows Mac had ever seen outside of a department store. A half-dozen steps led down into the room.

  ‘Wow,’ Andy Nevins whispered, far too loudly as he followed him in.

  Wow indeed, Mac thought. The room dropped down some two or three feet from the level of the hall and the architect had devised the windows so that, somehow, from that lower point, you lost all sight of the lawned garden. The view through the massive windows was of sea, blending today into the bluest of sky. Sea and sky and nothing but sea and sky.

  The effect was giddying, oddly disorientating, but Mac would have bought this ugly, angular house for that view alone. He guessed this was what had swung things for the de Freitas’s.

  ‘Inspector, what has happened to my brother?’

  Mac turned to face the man. He knew Paul de Freitas by sight and would have taken this man for close kin even had he not known him to be. The same rather ascetic good looks, deep-brown eyes, dark curls, though Edward’s were cut closely to his head as though he tried to tame the unruly mop his brother had possessed.

  His face was grey beneath its light tan and the hair looked, to Mac, to be the only thing over which he currently had any control.

  Edward de Freitas shook himself. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, extending a trembling hand and coming over to greet his visitors properly. ‘I’m forgetting my manners. I’m forgetting everything. Rina here arrived just after we’d had a phone call from the marina, something about The Greek Girl being towed into the marina and police swarming all over. I was just about to go and see for myself when Rina arrived. She says …’

  ‘She says Paul is dead?’ The woman standing by the picture window sounded disbelieving.

  Mac turned his attention to her. Tall, slim, blonde, dressed in faded jeans and an expensive-looking white shirt that was cut to emphasise a very slim waist and a surprising degree of curve for a figure so slender. ‘I’m sorry … Mrs de Freitas? We don’t have all the facts yet, but your … brother-in-law?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m afraid you were told right. He’s dead. I’m truly sorry for your loss.’

  He glanced over at Rina, seated in a large armchair set close by the window and nursing a china cup and saucer. ‘I’m also sorry that other people got to you before I did,’ he said quietly. ‘You really should have been properly informed.’

  ‘Oh, rubbish,’ Edward told him briskly. ‘I’m so glad Rina did come to see us. I could have gone down there, not knowing anything, been completely out of my depth. No, no, I don’t blame you, Inspector, of course I don’t, but I’ve already learnt that news travels faster round here by word of mouth than it does by the average internet connection. But what happened? Was there an accident? Rina seemed to think …’

  Edward de Freitas sat down and his wife came over to him. She stood behind the easy chair with her hands tightly clasping the back, fingers digging in to the upholstery and the knuckles white with tension.

  ‘Rina seems to think that someone killed him,’ she said. ‘Is that what happened?’

  She was daring him to confirm it. Waiting for him to tell her that there’d been a mistake and it was either not her brother-in-law or that at the very worst, he’d had an accident, died of natural causes, anything but …

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Mac said again. ‘But he was shot and so was his friend. We know nothing more at present, but the CSI are there and in an hour or so, I may be able to tell you more.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Edward whispered.

  ‘Shot?’ Lydia de Freitas stared at him. ‘Shot by whom? He was on board his bloody boat! How could anyone have shot him?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Mac said. ‘I’m so sorry not to be able to tell you any more.’

  ‘You said there was someone with him?’ Edward seemed only just to have registered that fact. ‘Who? Could this other man have shot Paul?’

  Mac shook his head. Both men had been shot from behind. Murder followed by suicide seemed, on the face of it, very unlikely. ‘It was someone else,’ Mac said. ‘A third person.’

  ‘But who was with him?’ Lydia was clearly baffled. ‘Paul hardly ever took anyone on board. He liked to be alone out there. That was why he bought the bloody boat. He liked to think things through, to work on his designs without anyone bothering him. Why would he have taken someone out there with him?’

  She seemed, Mac thought, almost more upset by the fact that he’d let someone into his private space than she was at his death. He logged the thought for later analysis. ‘We don’t know who the second man was,’ Mac said. ‘When I left the marina they’d found nothing on the boat that identified him. Nothing on the … nothing on the body. He’s a big man, six two, six three. Very broad?’ He paused, hoping for a moment of revelation from the de Freitas’s.

  Lydia shrugged, her face blank. ‘That’s all you can tell us?’

  ‘I’m sorry, yes.’

  ‘Hair? Eye colour? What did he look like?’ Lydia de Freitas hadn’t quite got it yet; just why Mac could give so little description.

  Her husband was quicker. ‘You couldn’t tell those things,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t see. He was shot in the head?’

  ‘From behind, yes,’ Mac confirmed. From behind, at close range and, Mac and the coastguard had speculated, from a slight angle, as though his killer had been above him on the steps. There was now a large and messy exit wound where most of his features had once been. Mac guessed that even dental records would be problematic.

  Lydia found a straw to grasp and held on to it like it was a life preserver. ‘So, how do you know it’s Paul, then? If you can’t tell much about the other man, how come you’re so sure about Paul?’

  ‘Because the coastguard knew him,’ Mac said. ‘Well enough to be sure. Paul was shot … differently.’ It was still possible to see his face. The track of the bullet seemed to have been from the base of the skull and upwards, so far as Mac could tell from the swift look he had taken. He preferred not to speculate further, especially in the current context. The top of Paul de Freitas’ head had been missing, but his face was still there, more or less. Enough
to identify.

  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.

  FIVE

  Lydia 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.