The Power of One Page 4
Collins stood up. ‘I’d best be off, let me know when you’ve got anything definite.’
Mac was thoughtful after he’d gone.
‘Penny for them?’
‘I’m thinking about that second man,’ he said. ‘I’ve got all sorts of possibilities running through my mind but they all sound like they’ve come from some second-rate spy film.’ He smiled up at her as she started to pack away the evidence bags. ‘So, I won’t be seeing you tonight.’
‘Fraid not. You’ll survive.’
‘I’ll try.’
She bent and kissed him quickly on the mouth. ‘Now go and catch criminals and let me get some work done.’
EIGHT
Mac had found Edward and Lydia de Freitas in the Big Room at the rear of the house. Lydia stood framed by the massive window and Edward still sat in the winged chair. It was, Mac thought, almost as though they had been frozen in position since he went away, an illusion broken only by the change of clothes. Lydia still wore faded blue jeans, but a soft grey sweater replaced the white shirt of the previous day. Despite the density of the cable knit, she still looked cold.
Behind her the seascape shifted, cloud shadowed and sun lit, and that strange vertiginous quality instilled by the absence of land viewed from the picture window for an instant almost convinced Mac that they were floating.
Mrs Simms brought coffee, setting it down on a low table close by Edward’s chair.
‘Do you need anything else?’ She cast Mac a speculative look, clearly wondering if he had news and if so, was he going to be able to share it.
Lydia shook her head. ‘Thanks, Margaret. We’ll be fine now.’ She sounded tired, Mac thought, and dark circles, not helped by the drab colour of her sweater, underlined the pale-blue eyes.
‘Who benefits from your brother’s death?’ Mac asked when they had settled with their coffee. ‘I’m sorry to ask, but …’
‘You have to look at all angles,’ Edward said. If Lydia looked tired then he seemed to be on the verge of exhaustion.
Lydia shrugged. ‘We don’t have family,’ she said. ‘So unless there’s some mistress or abandoned cat charity we don’t know about, I assume we will.’
She sounded bitter, flippantly angry. Mac wondered what was going through her mind.
‘We didn’t really talk about it,’ Edward said. ‘I can call our solicitor, tell him to co-operate, of course, but so far as I know everything will come back to us.’
Come back to us. An odd turn of phrase in the circumstances. ‘Did he have much to leave?’
‘Well, there’s the boat, of course and he had a flat in Dorchester. Not that he was ever there. Half the time he’d just sleep here when he wasn’t on The Greek Girl.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes, we kept a bedroom for him,’ Edward said, just a touch defensively, Mac thought. ‘The house has five bedrooms. Too much space for the two of us really.’
‘May I see his room?’
‘Of course. Margaret will show you.’ Edward’s coffee sat untouched on the tray. He didn’t seem to have the strength to move.
‘She’ll be in the kitchen,’ Lydia added. ‘Across the hall and down the little corridor. On the right.’ She turned away, seeming unconsciously to dismiss him as she stared out at the shifting scene of sea and sky. Sun streamed in through the window, illuminating and heating the entire room but she hugged herself as though she could still not get warm.
Mac went to find Margaret Simms.
‘This is his room, nice view over the garden and the water. Three of the rooms look out to sea, Mr & Mrs F, they have the big room at the front. Good view of the garden from there and the hills, you know. And that has the biggest en suite so …’ She paused, realising that she was chattering nervously just because he was a policeman. ‘They’re a lovely couple, you know,’ she said. ‘And he was ever such a pleasant man. What on earth was he doing to get himself shot like that?’ She opened the bedroom door and stood back, waiting for Mac to enter. ‘Will you need me to stop with you?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Mac said. ‘If I need to take anything away, I’ll give you a list. I don’t want to disturb the de Freitas’s again.’
She nodded. ‘No news then?’
‘Not yet. Did he stay here regularly?’
‘Once a week, maybe. Sometimes more. He’d bed down here if he was working late and didn’t want the drive home. Or if they’d got an early meeting and sometimes if he and Edward were off to London or wherever. They’d drive up together and Paul kept his good suit here.’
‘His good suit?’ Mac was amused.
‘Oh, he had a couple but that was all. Wasn’t a suit man. Paul wore jeans and old jumpers when he could get away with it. He just dressed up when his brother told him he had to. Paul called it “putting on the uniform”.’ She smiled rather sadly. ‘He knew his brother was the business brains, always did what was best; what Edward told him was for the best.’
‘Would you say they had a close relationship?’
She thought about it and then nodded. ‘They were like chalk and cheese, but yes, they were close. It wasn’t like they wanted to change each other, it was like they both knew they had a different role to play and the business worked best with both sides, if you see what I mean.’
‘And Mrs de Freitas? Did Paul get along with her?’
This time there was an almost imperceptible hesitation before she told him, ‘Oh yes, no doubt about that,’ cutting in just a little too quickly and a little too emphatically. Mac waited but she said nothing more.
‘I’d better go now,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some work to do.’
Mac scanned the room. Comfortably, even immaculately furnished, it was still essentially a guest room. Two small watercolours in broad mounts adorned the wall on either side of the door, but Mac would have put money on the pretty landscapes being Lydia’s choice. Heavy brocade curtains would have been more at home in an upmarket hotel, as would the matching comforter draped across the divan bed.
Mac opened the cupboard of the bedside cabinet and found it empty. The drawer contained a paperback thriller, well thumbed, and a handful of loose change and a pack of painkillers, local supermarket brand. The light-oak wardrobe was empty but for a dark suit, with a blue silk tie wrapped around the hanger and a couple of smart, button-down shirts. Polished shoes on the wardrobe floor, next to a worn pair of deck shoes and a suit bag folded and sitting on the corner. Mac looked underneath and inside but found nothing but a dry-cleaning tag from two months before. Nothing either on the wardrobe shelf. A search through the chest of drawers revealed a couple of pairs of jeans, three T-shirts and an old sweater that matched Mrs Simms’ description.
No photographs, none of the normal debris that gets left behind when someone truly occupies a space for even a brief time. Mac had seen more individuality in an empty hotel room and it was in direct contrast to the normal human clutter he had observed on the boat.
The window, as Mrs Simms had told him, gave a view out across the bay and echoed that of the Big Room which must, Mac judged, be directly below. This window, this room though, was on a more human scale; the view, though of itself still wonderful was somehow predictable and of more manageable proportions.
Back downstairs he remembered that there was one more thing to ask and he’d have to disturb the de Freitas’s after all. He tapped gently on the door of the Big Room.
Lydia was absent but Edward still sat with his now cold coffee.
‘Did you find anything?’ he asked, but seemed disinterested in the response as though expecting the answer to be no.
‘Did Paul say anything about planning a lengthy trip on his boat?’
For a second, Edward looked startled, then the mask of exhaustion returned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He had no plans. We were due to launch a new game next week, Paul was to be involved. We had publicity and press …’ He broke off. ‘I’ll have to do it alone now.’
‘Won’t Mrs de Freitas help out?’
‘And was that what Paul did in the business? He promoted your products?’
Edward shook his head. ‘No, that was just a part of it. Paul designed … Paul’s strengths were on the technical side. He was utterly brilliant, Inspector. A mind that could see solutions where most people didn’t even perceive there was a problem …’ He broke off as Lydia came back into the room, those moments of animation that had restored the sparkle to his eyes and the colour to his face departing as suddenly as they had appeared.
‘Sorry, Inspector. I thought you’d gone.’
‘I’m just about to.’ He asked Lydia about the trip too, but she claimed ignorance. Paul had said nothing.
Mac left, still wondering what it was the pair of them were holding back.
NINE
Dinner at Rina’s was always a pleasant affair if a somewhat chaotic one, given the company. Tim had already left and Mac, though pleased his friend had now gained meaningful employment, found that he missed him sorely. Tim had added a darker, more solid note to the often rather frilly and frivolous tone of the rest of the household – Rina excluded, of course. Rina was the drumbeat that kept the rest of her world in time.
The Montmorencys had taken over in the kitchen as usual, and Mac arrived in time to help Rina lay the table. The first time he had dined with Rina’s family, he had been surprised to find that none of the crockery or glassware matched. Each member of the family had their own preference and Mac now knew them all well enough to have identified their personal belongings even if he hadn’t previously been told.
The Peters sisters had china plates, Shelley, apparently. Chintz pattern, Rina told him. Bethany preferred yellow and Eliza the pink. The Montmorencys liked blue and white and even Mac could recognise the willow pattern on Matthew’s plates.
‘How is Tim getting along?’
‘Oh, very well. The management have given him another night a week and he’s building quite a local reputation. He’s there from Wednesday through to Saturday and from a fifteen-minute slot to three of the same length per night, mostly table to table. They’ve gone for an old-fashioned cabaret feel to the entertainment, you know. A house band and rather glamorous singers and Tim, of course. It’s all rather classy.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘Any progress with the murder?’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing as yet. The coastguard think Paul was preparing for a long trip. That’s what his charts seem to indicate, but his brother-and sister-in-law say they know nothing about that and we’ve nothing yet on our second man. You know, Rina, I can’t get away from the feeling that Edward de Freitas is scared of something. He’s not just knocked sideways by his brother’s death, he seems … I don’t know, completely and utterly floored. He mentioned that his brother was a designer and that he also did a lot to promote the work. Andy reckons they’ve made some of the top-selling RPGs around. They’re …’
‘Role Playing Games. Yes I know. I googled them. I do so love the internet, don’t you. But the R&D department they’ve got set up in that new build behind the Sheds, that’s not games, apparently. The website was a bit vague, but they’re manufacturing specialist chip sets and there, Mac, my knowledge base is distinctly lacking. But as everything you care to look at these days seems to have computer in it, I imagine it’s a pretty lucrative business to be in.’
‘And Paul seems to have been key to that side of things.’ Mac wondered how usual it was for software designers to suddenly begin to design hardware. Or maybe that had been Paul’s speciality all along. ‘They don’t look like games designers,’ he announced.
‘Oh and what do games designers look like?’
‘I don’t know. Younger, I suppose. Less … conventional?’
‘We were all younger once,’ Rina reminded him. ‘De Freitas Productions started Iconograph twenty years ago.’
Mac laughed, and considered himself reprimanded.
‘I did find one thing out though,’ Rina continued. ‘Paul wasn’t in it at the start. He joined the company five years ago. From what little I managed to glean, Paul had a business of his own, but it went under half a dozen years since. I found a couple of newspaper articles online. One suggested that while he might be a brilliant designer, he wasn’t much of a businessman.’
‘So older brother gave him a job.’ That made sense of a lot of the things Mac had heard that day, not least the comment about Paul’s possessions ‘coming back’ to them.
The Peters sisters floated in, announcing that food was ready and the serious conversation came to an end. But Mac was left speculating. Edward had taken his brother on, given him money for his boat and flat, maybe even set up the new arm of his company just to accommodate his brother’s skills. But Edward was the businessman. Paul, the technician and Paul also the face of the company perhaps?
Mac could see how that would work. He wondered again how Lydia fitted into this.
TEN
Andy had waited in the car while Mac visited the solicitor the following morning. They got there just as his offices opened and Mac was relieved to find that Edward had been true to his word and asked for his solicitor’s cooperation.
Mr Geoffrey Bliss was Mac’s vision of a proper solicitor. Dark suit, rimless, half-moon spectacles perched on a hook nose. Despite his appropriate appearance, he was able to tell Mac very little.
‘Everything of significance was left to his brother,’ Mac was told. ‘There are a few small bequests, mostly personal items, books and the like, left to friends, but let’s just say, it’s a very simple will.’
‘Nothing to the sister-in-law?’
‘Yes.’ Geoffrey Bliss laughed. ‘A first edition of A.A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young. It seems like an odd little bequest, but presumably she will understand.’
Presumably she would, Mac thought.
Next stop, Paul’s flat.
Paul de Freitas had sunk just about all his disposable income into his boat. His flat was modest; a top floor of an Edwardian house not far from the local secondary school.
Andy pulled up outside the house. He was staring into the rear-view mirror.
‘Something wrong?’
Andy shook his head. ‘I don’t know. The car that just parked up behind us, it’s been with us since you went to the solicitor’s office.’
Mac glanced over his shoulder; nothing remarkable about the dark-green Rover with the two male passengers. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
Mac got out of the car, Andy trailing after, and headed towards the house. He was somehow unsurprised when the two men followed him. Only slightly less surprised to find that the police seal on Paul de Freitas’ door had been broken and someone was already inside. He could sense Andy’s unease.
The man sitting in Paul de Freitas’ favourite leather, wing-backed chair rose as they entered and held out his hand. ‘You must be Inspector McGregor.’
Mac shook the hand, eyeing its owner carefully. Expensive suit, a plain white button-down shirt that was oddly like those in Paul’s wardrobe. The man was, Mac guessed, in his late fifties. Greying hair, light tan to the skin. Manicured fingernails that made Mac immediately self-conscious of his own. Not that he bit them or anything, but the odd attack of clippers and nail file didn’t exactly do a lot to improve their appearance.
‘And you are?’ He glanced at the two men who had followed up the stairs. ‘You are aware that this is a crime scene?’
‘I am, yes. The late Paul de Freitas did some work for us. You’ll understand that we needed to be sure he hadn’t left anything here that shouldn’t be.’
‘Work for you? And who exactly are you?’
The gr
ey-haired man produced his ID. Mac studied it. ‘And I should believe that?’
He was aware of Andy craning round him trying to see and of the young man saying, ‘Cool,’ as he read the legend MI5.
Grey hair smiled. ‘My name, as you can see, is William Hale. Your superintendent will be in touch once you get back to your HQ, but feel free to call him if you like. He’ll confirm my identity, but in the meantime there are a few things of which you should be aware.’
‘The second victim was one of your people,’ Mac guessed.
‘He was. Yes.’
‘And am I to know why Paul de Freitas needed a minder?’
‘I’m afraid not. No.’
‘And if that information is pertinent to his death? I remind you that I am conducting a murder investigation.’
‘And we are aware of that. Our interests no doubt run parallel, Inspector.’
Mac frowned. ‘Andy.’ He pointed to a door behind William Hale. ‘We’ll start through there, I think. Any objections, Mr Hale?’
‘As you will.’ He stood back, let Mac and Andy go past into what turned out to be Paul’s bedroom.
Mac closed the door.
‘Won’t they have already searched the place?’ Andy whispered.
‘Of course they will, but we may find something they judged unimportant and, besides, I’m not letting some jumped-up pseudo official tell me I can’t investigate my own murder.’
Andy grinned at him. ‘Pseudo official?’
Mac didn’t reply. He knew there was something off here. Hale might well be MI5, might be from another department acting under their auspices. May be something else again but he just hadn’t figured it out yet. He directed Andy towards a low chest of drawers that stood in the bay by the window and Mac took the bedside cabinet.
‘We looking for anything in particular?’
‘Personal papers, anything relating to The Greek Girl. I don’t know, Andy, but we’re not leaving here empty-handed.’
For a while they worked in silence, moving methodically through the room and then going back into the main living room with a handful of papers and photographs in plastic evidence bags, Mac viciously aware that the place had already been ransacked. Oh, not in an untidy way, or so the casual observer or even someone who knew the place reasonably well would notice, but the search had taken place all right and it had been thorough.