“Quick off the mark.”
“We’re looking at the bloke’s paperwork now,” Phillips continued. “He’s got some company listed as his former employer but, funnily enough, I don’t see anything listed on Companies House. The contact details he’s given don’t match up either.”
“You think he’s fudged the details on his CV to get the job?”
“Aye, that’s what I reckon. Schmoozed his way into it because they’re a rich old couple and he wants to get his sticky fingers on some of their dosh. I wonder what he’s been fiddling, while their backs have been turned.”
Ryan weighed their options as he stared out the windscreen at the ornamental gardens.
“We’ll give it a few more hours to see if anything else comes through from Faulkner or the bank but, first thing tomorrow morning, we’re bringing him in.”
Phillips gave a satisfied grunt.
“I’ll be up with the larks.”
“In the meantime, I want eyes on him throughout the night. I saw him tearing out of the estate driveway less than fifteen minutes ago and I don’t trust him not to rabbit off the estate and hole himself up on the Costa del Sol.”
“Consider it done.”
CHAPTER 24
Martin Henderson swerved his car to the side of the road, drawing an angry peal of abuse and a loud honk from the unfortunate driver behind. Ignoring them, he craned his neck to see if Ryan was following him but the road was empty.
He turned back to the wheel and closed his eyes.
It was not supposed to be like this.
When he’d taken the job at Cragside, it had been with only one goal in mind and that was to make money. He didn’t care how he did it, although he preferred fast jobs rather than the cons that took months or years. He wasn’t a spring chicken and he had plans to retire after one last big flurry.
Henderson was long past feeling guilty about his profession; if you grew up poor enough, hungry enough, you started to feel like you were entitled to the kind of wealth other people had at their fingertips.
Money makes money, his school teacher had said. Work hard and you’ll get there in the end.
Henderson sneered at the memory.
Spend his life scrimping and saving, begging for chances, working his fingers to the bone? There had to be an easier way.
Eventually, he’d found it.
Or, perhaps, it had found him.
Either way, he’d taken to crime like a duck to water. In the early days, he’d worked alone but he had since learned to appreciate the benefits of having a business partner.
Conscious that he was keeping them waiting, Henderson looked at the clock on the dashboard and checked the rear-view mirror one last time.
Time to plan his exit strategy.
*
Dusk was falling as Ryan made his way through the trees to pay his last visit of the evening. His shoes crunched lightly against the pathway while he listened to nightjars churring in the trees and foxes rustling somewhere in the shadows. As the iron bridge came into view, he could see the police boundary line had been removed and he knew that Faulkner’s team had completed their work. He paused for a moment to look down into the burn below, imagining how Alice Chapman must have felt in the moments before she was thrown.
Terrified.
Ryan’s knuckles gleamed white against the iron railing as he imagined gripping Henderson’s scrawny neck and he thrust away from the edge with a sharp sound of annoyance. In the morning, he would squeeze the estate manager, metaphorically speaking of course, and it was a cheerful thought.
Ryan turned away and carried on toward the main house, looking up at its high walls with a kind of reverence.
What mysteries did those walls conceal?
Cragside had spent over a hundred years hidden among the trees like a mythical elven castle and now it was a living museum for an unconventional old couple with more money than they could spend in one lifetime. At first, he’d wondered why—why live in the past, when the world was striding forward?
During the last four months spent living on the estate, he’d come to appreciate that there was a comforting nostalgia to life at Cragside. Those who lived inside its otherworldly bubble could pretend the horrors and afflictions of modern life did not affect them.
But they were wrong.
A killer walked among them now, bursting the protective bubble and dragging them all brutishly back to reality. He walked among them without conscience and Ryan recognised the type because he had seen it many times before. It was cold-blooded, motivated only by self-interest and not by any of the animalistic urges or psychosexual disorders that had defined a man like The Hacker.
For Martin Henderson, it was purely business.
As Ryan reached up to tug the old brass bell beside the front door, he had to wonder which was worse: a person who killed violently because their victim represented something important to them; or a person who killed coldly and dispassionately because their victim represented nothing at all except a means to an end.
*
When Cassandra Gilbert opened the door, it looked as if she had aged ten years since he had first met her at the party on Saturday night. Her eyes were tired and, although she had been unwell, he suspected that her insomnia had nothing to do with a flu virus. “Mrs Gilbert, I’m sorry to disturb you but I wonder if I might have a word in private?”
Ryan had been trained to observe body language. Right now, with her shoulders hunched in defeat and her eyes downcast, he knew immediately that Cassandra understood why he had come.
“Do we—do we have to talk about it?”
“Yes, I’m afraid we do.”
As he stepped inside the hallway, he made a discreet survey.
“Is your husband at home this evening?”
“Lionel is reading in the library,” she told him. “We could sit in one of the other rooms?”
She raised hopeful eyes.
“Yes, that would be fine.”
He followed her through to a smaller morning room and waited as she turned on a couple of side lamps, bathing the room in a sepia light.
“Would you like some tea?”
She stood beside the door, fiddling with her wedding ring.
“No, thank you. I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”
She nodded and closed the door with a soft click.
Ryan waited until she had seated herself in one of the chintzy armchairs and then took one opposite, noticing for the first time how much of an anachronism she looked amid the Victorian décor when dressed in her normal clothing. Today, she wore classy beige linen slacks and a cream silk shirt over comfortable-looking sandals, rather than a heavy taffeta dress and bustle.
There was a short pause during which the mantel clock chimed seven-thirty.
“What did you want to speak to me about?”
Ryan prepared to bite the bullet.