Paying the Ferryman Read online

  Gregory shrugged. ‘My neighbour thought so. The cat and I were never convinced.’

  They had reached the hotel and Nathan stepped gratefully over the threshold and into the warm bright welcome of the bar. He knew that they had attracted a great deal of curiosity – two men, of different ages and not obviously related – and with Gregory determined to be at his most taciturn, it had been left to Nathan to deflect the inquisitiveness of the locals. The little hotel was not fully open this early in the year, but the owner’s wife had provided some fine meals and, as Nathan had observed earlier, there was always a fire lit in the bar and they were welcome to sit even when the pub wasn’t open. In the evening many of the locals crowded into the warmth, and twice now there had been music. Nathan had enjoyed it. Gregory, while he hadn’t passed comment, had appeared to enjoy it too.

  At any rate, he hadn’t walked out.

  He’d seemed content to sit in the corner, nursing his beer and watching – though Nathan was not convinced that what he watched was in the same room or even the same time as the musicians playing by the bar. He wondered how Alec and Naomi were doing, and Patrick and his father, Harry. When he’d been shot, they’d helped to shelter and protect him, hiding him from the storm breaking over his life, and he’d come to know Alec and Harry a little. Harry was Naomi’s oldest friend; she had known him since childhood, when he’d been the big brother to her best friend. Harry was divorced and had raised Patrick alone; he’d done a good job, Nathan thought. Patrick was a gentle soul, but he’d proved his courage more than once – helping to protect Gregory, and also saving the life of a little girl. Gregory was very fond of the boy, Nathan realized. Patrick intrigued him.

  ‘He’s like me,’ Gregory had once said. Nathan had laughed at that too.

  ‘No he’s not. You’d be hard pressed to find two people more different.’

  Gregory had let it pass; dropped the conversation, and for that Nathan had been sorry. Gregory rarely committed himself in words but when he did it was because what he had to say mattered, and Nathan was sorry now that he hadn’t asked more about why Gregory had come to that strange conclusion. Patrick, eighteen years old, gentle, artistic, a little lost when it came to social interactions, seemed so different from Gregory, twice his age and with an entire lifetime of violence left in his wake. But Nathan had wondered about it afterwards and thought he now understood. There was, about both of them, a sense of otherness, of dislocation. Of watchfulness.

  ‘Had a good walk?’ Mrs Gornal, the landlady, asked them. ‘It’s a bit brisk out.’

  ‘It’s freezing,’ Nathan said.

  ‘The winds come straight off the Arctic Circle,’ she said. ‘Nothing in the way to stop them. Lunch is about ready. You want to eat it in the bar? The fire’s just been banked up, but she’ll be blazing again in a minute or so.’

  ‘That sounds wonderful,’ Nathan said fervently. He went through and dropped into what had become his favourite chair beside the fire, aware only after he’d shed his coat and scarf that Gregory had not followed him. Leaning forward in his seat he saw that the older man was still standing in the entrance hall, coat still on, peering at his mobile phone. Something in his look and stance alerted Nathan. Trouble, he thought, and the newly healed wounds in his side and back stabbed at him in anticipation. The truth was, Nathan had endured his fill of trouble; he wasn’t ready for more.

  Gregory mooched over, a slight frown creasing between his eyes. Nathan looked at him expectantly.

  ‘From Patrick,’ Gregory said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Sent me a link to a news website. Naomi and Alec are off chasing a murder, or so Patrick says. According to the news, it’s a double shooting. Patrick says it’s linked to an old case they worked on.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ Nathan said cautiously. ‘And he sent you the link because?’

  Gregory shrugged. Nathan watched as he fiddled with his smartphone, called up the website and read. Nathan leaned across so he could see too. Patrick and Gregory communicated most days, he knew. Random things mostly; on Gregory’s part, since they had been up here, it had often been photographs of scenery he thought the boy might like to use as references for his artwork. Patrick’s communications had been brief observations on his day, maybe things he had learnt from Bob Taylor, the artist he worked for, or expressions of disgust at what his latest uni assignment entailed. Nathan knew that Patrick was only really sticking with his course because that had been the deal he had made with his mentor, Bob, and Patrick’s father, Harry. Harry badly wanted his son to have some proper qualifications, though privately Nathan had to agree with Patrick and Gregory that Bob Taylor could probably teach him more that was actually relevant to his own process than his professors ever could.

  ‘Seems there’s a bit of a mystery about who the dead couple were,’ Gregory observed.

  ‘So how do Alec and Naomi know they were linked to their investigation?’

  ‘Don’t know. Patrick didn’t say. Presumably the local force made the connection and contacted them.’

  Nathan nodded. He could see Gregory was itching for more intel and wondered why.

  Gregory handed the phone to him so he could read the article for himself and follow the links to other reports. None of it told him much more. This was still breaking news and most reports rehashed what was probably an early press bulletin. ‘Poor sods,’ Nathan said. ‘I hope the kid makes it through.’

  Gregory considered and then nodded. ‘On balance I agree,’ he said. ‘She’s still young enough to recover, I suppose.’

  Nathan had many such experiences on his CV and had learnt to live with the impact. But then, he’d been practising such skills since he’d been fourteen years old. The same age as they said the girl who had been shot was. There was speculation about another child. A baby. Reading between the lines, Nathan concluded that one was already dead.

  It was different for him. Wasn’t it?

  ‘That was a long text.’ Nathan smiled.

  ‘Short text, telling me to check my email. Long email.’

  Lunch arrived, steaming plates unloaded from large trays.

  Nathan realized how hungry he was. ‘I’m going to miss the food,’ he said, ‘when we leave here. We could catch the morning ferry.’

  Gregory, fork raised, frowned. ‘I’m that easy to read?’

  ‘Of course you are. Look, we leave tomorrow. Drop me off in Edinburgh; I’ll get in touch with Jackie and set up a bit of a control post for you. Manage the intel side. We’ve still got friends and resources we can tap into so I can provide backup. Go, see if you can help out with whatever they’re doing. Discreetly, mind.’

  ‘I’m always discreet.’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh. It’ll be like old times, but hopefully with less of the shooting.’

  Gregory nodded and dug into his pie. Nathan watched him for a moment. Good, he thought. It didn’t really matter if this all came to nothing and it turned out that Naomi and Alec had only gone off to answer a few questions about a previous case. Gregory had something to think about again and, Nathan thought, they could finally get away from that bloody wind.

  TEN

  Douggie had installed Alec and Naomi in a tiny room that he referred to as ‘the snug’, tucked at the side of the bar. He brought them tea and coffee and sandwiches and then left them in peace with instructions to ring the bell if they needed anything else.

  ‘He’s a good sort,’ Willis said. ‘Ex boxer, so’s his head barman. You don’t get much trouble in the Dog.’

  ‘You live round here?’ Alec asked.

  ‘Two villages down. I bought a place with my partner last year. Property’s cheap round here, comparatively speaking. It’s isolated and there’s no way you can commute to anywhere. And it’s bloody cold in the winter.’

  ‘What does your partner do?’

  ‘She’s a GP and yes, we did raise a few eyebrows. We became the only gays in the village. I also became the only black person in the village.
But we’ve settled and become as much a part of the community as you can be when you’ve not lived here for at least three generations.’

  Alec laughed. ‘Do you think the Griffins had the same problem? Not being local?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Ferrymouth gets its share of tourists and there’s even a few holiday cottages up by the creek and a little caravan site. Most of the local pubs have a room or two they let out in the holiday season and so it’s opened up a bit. The kids get bused across the Kingsmere when they turn eleven. Ferrymouth is almost what passes for cosmopolitan in these parts.’

  Naomi had noted the fondness in the woman’s voice. ‘You really like it round here, don’t you?’

  ‘Apart from the cold, yes I do. I like the sense of community, I like the flat land and all the birds and I like the quiet. The job, too. It’s too easy to get lost in the job in a big city. Out here you actually get to know people, you’ve at least got the illusion that you make a difference.’

  ‘Illusion?’

  ‘Ignore that. I’m feeling particularly jaundiced today. A triple murder is not the norm for Ferrymouth; for anywhere round here. It feels like … I don’t know, like an invasion. Like the outside world suddenly came visiting.’

  Naomi sipped her coffee and nibbled at a sandwich. ‘So, what can we tell you?’ Alec asked.

  ‘Well, you can start with family. There’s no reference to anyone at the house and our colleagues in London can’t tell us anything about family we might actually want to bring here. Terry Baldwin’s lot seem to be out and out trouble and no one has any record for the mother. Lisanne Griffin – Thea Baldwin as she was, of course – married Terry when she was twenty, and no one knows about parents or siblings. Terry Baldwin’s lot, of course, are mostly either banged up or trouble. And we don’t have a clue about Victor Griffin so far.’

  Naomi nodded. ‘We got involved with the Baldwins when Terry moved north here about a year before his arrest. He was suspected of having taken part in an armed robbery in Luton. Two people died and another was badly injured. Terry was supposed to have been the brains behind the operation and several other similar robberies across the Home Counties.’

  ‘I remember it vaguely,’ Sophie Willis said. ‘So he went north to get out of the way?’

  ‘His father thought it would be a good thing to get Terry out for a while. Not just because of the bank jobs. Terry Baldwin had a short fuse, and he’d got into a fight with the son of another local hard man, Ray Tobias. Terry had beaten seven shades out of him in some really stupid argument over a round of drinks. He spent three weeks in a coma, nearly didn’t make it and, from what I’ve heard, never made a full recovery. Of course, no one admitted to seeing a damn thing, even though the pub was full that night. The two had supposedly been close friends prior to that. Ray Tobias was also suspected of being involved in the bank job.’

  ‘So Terry was sent away—’

  ‘Because Tobias senior threatened a more permanent departure if he wasn’t. Terry was furious that his old man hadn’t stood his ground but if he had there’d have been a full-scale turf war. Traditionally the Tobiases and the Baldwins rubbed along together most of the time, alibied one another on occasion. Don’t get me wrong, they were never major players, either of them, but the families had danced attendance on the major gangs in London for so long they were accepted as part of the bigger scene. Both families could be counted on to provide extra bodies for the bigger players when necessary and they acted as managers, shall we say, for drugs, prostitutes and some of the street crime.’

  ‘And an extra level of security for the big players.’ Willis nodded. ‘So how did Terry Baldwin and Thea hook up?’

  ‘She said they met in the West Country somewhere. Terry was on holiday, she was living down there, they met at a hotel she was working at and the holiday romance turned into something more permanent. He brought her back to London, she got pregnant, they got married. Terry’s dad was oddly proper in some ways. Sarah was born and Thea found herself well and truly trapped.’

  ‘Terry Baldwin was mixed race?’

  ‘Um, yes. Baldwin senior had a wife but he also had other women on the side and Terry’s mum was one of them. The women came and went, but the wife was a fixture and, oddly, so were the kids. He made certain that they were raised as Baldwins. Most followed him into the family business.’

  ‘And was he a violent man too?’

  ‘I don’t know; there were never official complaints. Terry’s father, old man Baldwin, he died just after Terry moved up north. Terry was always convinced someone helped him on his way but the official line is that he suffered a heart attack. Terry’s elder brother took the reins and Terry was told he could go back for the funeral, that there was an amnesty for that, but that he’d better get himself lost again afterwards.’

  ‘He can’t have liked that.’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t. Took it out, as always, on his wife and kid, and that’s when we were first involved. Local police called out to a domestic. It was only when he was put into the system that he was flagged up as being a person of interest. We contacted the Met.’

  Sophie smiled, grimly. ‘The joy of integrated computer systems, eh?’

  ‘When they work,’ Naomi agreed. ‘So we contacted our colleagues in the Met and paid a bit more attention than a simple domestic would usually warrant.’

  ‘Isn’t that the truth? Unfortunately. You know I read a report once that reckoned up to seventy per cent of call outs were essentially domestic incidents.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be surprised. Anyway, the Met also told us that this wasn’t the first time he’d taken his frustrations out on his family. There was history. They’d also not known where he’d disappeared to, so we began to cooperate. At that time I was back and forth to London on secondment anyway. I’d been thinking about what next – you know, looking at the future. I was offered an opportunity to shadow a DI in the organized crime unit and that led on to other things and, well, I used the contacts I’d made down there.’

  ‘Ambitious,’ Willis commented.

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ Alec said. ‘Naomi was headed for the top. She’d got far more fire in her belly than I ever had. Me, I was comfortable at Pinsent. Big fish in a fairly small pond, but that suited me just fine.’

  ‘And yet you left?’

  ‘And yet I left. Let’s just say that while I was busy trying to avoid the world, the world was busy trying not to avoid me.’

  Sophie cast him a curious glance but didn’t ask for more. ‘So, you started to cooperate,’ she said. ‘And—’

  ‘And I decided that Thea Baldwin was my best lever. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about her – though actually, I’m not certain that I really did care about her at first. But as I got to know her and Sarah I did start to care. I got drawn in. I wanted her to flip on her husband. I was sure she knew enough about his activities to turn informant – and I was right, and eventually she did. But I did feel sorry for her in the end and I did try to help. I put her in touch with someone who gave her an escape route and in return she gave me the information we needed to put her husband away.’

  ‘So she was pivotal.’

  Naomi nodded. ‘I think the Met would have put a case together eventually. They’d have applied other pressure, elsewhere. Once Terry’s father had died and his son Roddy took over there was some considerable amount of scrabbling about in the lower ranks for whatever crumbs might have been dropped. There’s a good chance someone would have squealed on Terry eventually, but this way was quicker, cleaner and seemed like it solved the problem of Thea too. She got away. Or so I thought.’

  ‘Seems she thought so too.’

  Alec poured them all more drinks. ‘Wasn’t there an aunt?’ he asked. ‘Married out, cut herself off from the family and went to live in … Kent? Ipswich? Somewhere like that.’

  ‘Like Kent and Ipswich are next door to one another,’ Naomi laughed. ‘Ipswich, I think. Her name was … Madeleine. Madelein
e Jeffries, or something like that. She married a teacher. All I really know about her is that when she married she didn’t invite any of her family. Terry sent a card apparently threatening what he’d do to her and her husband should they ever come anywhere near the rest of the family. It was in the file.’

  ‘And was that it?’ Sophie asked. ‘He doesn’t sound like the type to stop at a casual threat.’

  Naomi shook her head. ‘Truthfully, I have no idea. It was a side issue. We got Thea and Sarah away, charged Terry and brought him to trial, and the trial had just begun when I had my accident. That was it.’

  ‘So, we should maybe try and track down this Madeleine Jeffries. Just on the off chance she might still be interested in her niece. Also on the off chance that someone is settling scores and she’s also on the list.’

  Naomi nodded. ‘I thought afterwards that the one really good thing that came out of the case was that a woman and child were safe. That they’d been given a second chance. Now I find out that was wrong.’

  Sophie looked at Alec and then at Naomi, not sure what she should say. ‘This must be hard for you,’ she said.

  ‘Not hard. Sad. And strange. I’ve given them no thought in years. I did the job, and when I came out of hospital I gave evidence. I made sure that word was sent to Thea that she was safe. Free to make her new life for herself and her daughter.’

  ‘You kept in touch with her?’

  ‘No, I managed to persuade the contact I had to pass the message along. I had no idea where they’d gone, what name they were using, anything. That was the way it was done and that was what happened. I just … I don’t know. She’d put so much trust in me in the end, I didn’t want to let her down. I wanted her to know that I hadn’t let her down, you know?’

  Sophie Willis nodded and then remembered Naomi couldn’t see. ‘Well, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’re here and we’re grateful you could come. The boss will want to have a chat later.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Alec said. He took Naomi’s hand and squeezed gently, sensing her renewed feeling of loss.