Henderson felt his stomach heave and thought, at first, that it was a message from the grave. Victor Swann had been the only person to know about The Valiant and the role he’d played in its devastation so many years ago. He must have told someone, Henderson thought frantically, or somebody had worked it out the same way Victor had.
Either way, he needed to find out what they knew and negotiate terms to his satisfaction.
He could still hear the screams, even now.
They sounded inhuman, like pigs being slaughtered or foxes mating in the night. The sound of the fire drowned them out eventually but he imagined he still heard them, softer now, as they choked on the smoke fumes that billowed up in black clouds to fill the sky above the river.
He remembered hearing wood splinter as the long ladders leading down into the half-built ship succumbed to the flames and the crackle of metal as it bent against the heat.
Hundreds ran down to the shipyard to watch The Valiant go up in flames, to stand by and stare mutely as husbands and fathers died before their eyes, and it seemed as if the world paused. Sounds were drowned out and it was as if he were swimming underwater, cushioned by his own disbelief. The screams of his neighbours grew closer and closer until everything came back into sharp focus.
The lucky ones stumbled out of the shipyard to catch their breath, coughing and spluttering, unable to fight the blaze that continued to burn its way through the ship from the bottom up.
Beside him, a woman turned to clutch his arm, her eyes wild with grief.
“You should be glad you’re one of the lucky ones,” she told him.
He wanted to shake her off, to thrust her away so he didn’t have to see the devastation on her face or hear it in her voice. But then she sat down, right there on the cobblestones at his feet and hugged her arms around her knees. He wanted to shout at her to stand up.
Instead, he ran.
She called after him but he kept on running, his skinny legs pumping faster and faster so he didn’t have to see it. If he didn’t have to see it, maybe he could convince himself it never happened.
But he could still hear the screams.
CHAPTER 26
Wednesday 17th August
The dawn broke over the hills and glades of Northumberland in one seamless fusion of colour, casting out the darkness to bring forth a new day. It could not come a moment too soon for the people who lived and worked in the small community of Cragside, whose equilibrium had been rudely shattered in the wake of a double tragedy. Theirs had been a charmed existence, filled with beauty and culture, funded by an old couple who had created a living museum to the past. Now, it was beginning to feel more like a mausoleum.
Fully dressed and polishing off his second coffee, Ryan watched the morning awaken and thought philosophically of the human condition. There were two types of people in the world: those who controlled their base urges and those who didn’t. Everyone had those urges, to one degree or another, but their visibility varied from one person to the next. He had only to look to his own life experiences to illustrate the point: four months ago, it had been within his power to kill a murderer with his own bare hands. Many would have forgiven him and called it self-defence or public service. Controlling the primal instinct had almost cost Ryan his own life but in taking that decision he had retained a part of himself he held very dear: the part which had a fundamental respect for all human life.
There were other types of urges, ones that could be more easily disguised day-to-day but, when unleashed, could be the most destructive of all. He thought of Martin Henderson as he swilled the last of his coffee, then downed it in one gulp. There was a man who had spent sixty-two years trying to prove himself the alpha in any given scenario, like a rutting stag whose antlers had never fully grown. The thought of it was almost laughable but Ryan didn’t break a smile. Henderson’s desire to acquire more prestige had already led to the deaths of two people. Ryan had frequently observed that, once a person took a life, they found it considerably easier to take a second or a third, especially where emotion did not come into it.
He was very much afraid that, if they did not act quickly, Henderson would not hesitate to kill a third time, should the occasion arise.
The day beckoned.
*
Phillips and MacKenzie arrived at the cottage at eight o’clock sharp to brief their senior investigating officer. Lowerson and Yates had been given the morning off, in recognition of their late night spent in surveillance, but would join them after lunch. Anna had already bidden them farewell and taken herself off to Durham for a day spent inside the university library, which he understood to be code for telling him she missed the old place and was looking forward to the start of a new term when they returned from honeymoon in September. Until then, there was the small business of murder to attend to.
“Mornin’ boss,” Phillips said as he made himself comfortable in the kitchen and began to make a pot of tea.
“Help yourself, why don’t you?”
“Aye, I will, ta very much.”
Ryan and MacKenzie settled themselves at the kitchen table, where they were joined by Phillips a moment later. He set three steaming mugs of milky tea in front of them and, while he went in search of sugar, they decided to make a start.
“Alright, let’s recap what we know so far.” Ryan leaned his forearms on the table and linked his fingers together.
“Got any biscuits?” Phillips called out, his head concealed by a cupboard door.
“Jar next to the toaster,” Ryan told him, then continued as if there had been no interruption. “Beginning with Victor Swann, Lowerson tells me that he spoke to the compliance officer at the telecoms company on the dot of seven this morning. They’ve started to send through the text messages they store remotely from Victor’s account, although there’s still no sign of the phone itself. I’ve had a quick glance at the texts recorded from the week before he died and they make for interesting reading.”
He handed Phillips and MacKenzie a sheet of paper containing copies of the most pertinent text messages.
“TR at 6,” he read aloud, giving the date of the message. “TR at 10.”
Ryan looked up.
“I’ve already checked the dates of these messages against the dates of cash deposits into Victor’s current account and they match very closely. Depending on the time of day, cash was deposited into the account on the same day before closing time or the very next morning.”
“What a coincidence,” MacKenzie observed. “And were there any matching cash withdrawals from Martin Henderson’s account on the same day, or possibly the day before?”
“Funnily enough, there were,” Ryan smiled wolfishly.
“What does ‘TR’ stand for?” Phillips queried.
“I’ve been trying to figure that out and it’s no easy task, since there are endless meeting places on the estate. It’s also possible they made their exchanges somewhere else altogether.”