A parting gift, p.28
A Parting Gift, page 28
McKay wanted to keep her talking. Mostly, this was because he wanted to buy himself time, have a chance to work out how to deal with this, how to extricate Chrissie, Isla and the others without risking any harm to them. But part of him simply wanted to understand Jewell, to comprehend what she had done and why she’d done it. ‘And where do the Dawsons and the Gillans fit into this?’
He could see the grim amusement in her eyes. ‘Small fry, really. I’ve been mopping up the dregs of Donaldson’s former empire. Some of it your colleagues dealt with – it was entertaining to watch them confiscate his assets – but there was a lot they’d missed or just didn’t bother with. It was a fraction of what he’d once had, but there was a sizeable amount still trickling through. Some of his former clients were content to continue to filter their money through his associates. He’d always been smart about that. He had a large network with apparently disconnected individuals dealing with relatively small amounts each. Small enough that they generally didn’t come on to the radar of the Revenue or your colleagues, but the totality added up. Donaldson creamed off his share, and the remainder made its way home in cleaned up form. He’d intended it to be his pension once he finally emerged from prison, but I’d been working my way through the network, gradually finding ways of closing it down.’
‘Were there other victims?’
‘That’s for you to find out. This was a national network. I used various methods to achieve my goals.’
‘So why Dawson and the Gillans?’
‘When I heard about Donaldson’s condition, I thought it would be a nice touch to bring it back home. To his own territory. The Gillans had been close associates of his at one stage. Craig Gillan had been a farmer, and he’d made good use of the enforced labour Donaldson was able to provide. They’d sold up the farm some years back and moved into the hire stuff for an easier life, but they kept up the contacts with Donaldson and became part of the network.’
‘And Dawson?’
‘He was nothing, really. He’d worked for Donaldson years ago. He was notionally an HR manager in one of Donaldson’s businesses but he developed a specific expertise in immigration issues. Which, given the nature of Donaldson’s businesses, meant an expertise in where to procure fake documentation, work permits, that sort of stuff. That was the real service he provided, but it was all off the books, cash in hand. Donaldson had seen him as a potential protégé, someone he might have brought into a more senior role in the business. That was all kiboshed when Donaldson went down, but I thought it would be amusing to make him one of my final victims.’
‘Are you saying you killed him and the Gillans?’
‘In a manner of speaking. But you didn’t miss anything. They killed themselves.’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. But it’s one of my gifts, if you can call it that. I know how to destroy lives. I’d been working on Andrea Gillan for a while. I managed to get myself a summer job there – well, you met Morag, didn’t you? Then I gradually worked on her. Drip by drip. Some of it straightforwardly psychological. Undermining her confidence and her self-esteem. She wouldn’t even have realised I was doing it. But then she began to get anonymous communications that indicated that their criminal activities were being exposed and would soon be revealed to the authorities. Poor Andrea couldn’t even confide in her husband because he was betraying her himself. She discovered he was having an affair and was preparing to set her, Andrea, as the scapegoat for their various dodgy dealings.’ She laughed. ‘She might have felt differently if she’d ever discovered who he was having the affair with.’
‘You’re saying you drove her to kill both of them? You couldn’t have relied on that working.’ It was a statement not a question, but McKay realised he wasn’t sure he believed it.
‘Probably not. It was just the most entertaining way of doing it. If it hadn’t worked, I’d have found another way to deal with them.’
McKay found himself chilled by her dispassionate tone. ‘What about Paul Dawson? You’re not saying…’
‘Oh, yes. That was an even longer game. I’d booked myself on to one of his residential programmes months before. Again, I lured him into having – well, first a one-night stand, then an affair. I worked on him gradually. He tried to end it, and I became an unstable, neurotic bunny boiler, threatening to break up his marriage and quite possibly harm his wife and children. I sent him pictures of us in the post – sometimes the two of us in compromising positions, sometimes with threatening messages, sometimes just pictures. He threatened to go to the police, but I let him know I’d learnt about his business dealings and said I’d expose him. I tightened and tightened the screw. Amusingly, he came up here on holiday partly to get away from me, buy himself some time. He didn’t know I’d also started working on Andrea Gillan. The precise timing was accidental, but it worked out perfectly to muddy the waters. Dear old Andrea had actually sent me a suicide note explaining what she was about to do and where and when she was intending to do it. She saw me as a confidante, even though – or maybe because – I was the one who’d given her the means to do it.’
‘I’m not sure I understand,’ McKay said.
‘I don’t know what your smart pathologists will be able to do with their burnt-out bodies, but I’m sure they’ll eventually find the traces of diamorphine. That was how Andrea killed Craig and herself. They were dead more than twenty-four hours before the car crash. We set up the crash with the two of them strapped up in the front, and then torched the car. I don’t doubt your experts will be able to confirm that in due course, but I’d hoped that the fire damage would be enough at least to confuse the issue.’ She seemed almost gleeful as she recounted the story. ‘Andrea had wanted me to be the one to find the bodies, so she’d given me a set of house keys. We’d driven over there in the small hours of the Thursday night and moved the bodies into the boot of the BMW. Then I drove it to the Gillans’ house on the Friday afternoon because Andrea had once told me she had a nosy neighbour who watched their every move. It just confused the timing on the Gillans’ death.
‘Finally, I drove up to see the Dawsons, turning up on their doorstep as the visitor from hell. Paul tried to pass me off as a business contact but it was obvious his wife wasn’t fooled, and I said enough to both of them – about me, about Paul, about their marriage, about Paul’s business dealings – to provoke the mother of all arguments after I’d left. I knew Paul was on the edge, but, to be honest, I hadn’t expected it to work as well as it did.’
McKay felt a chill finger down his spine. ‘As well as it did?’
‘Pity about the wife and kids. But, you know, collateral damage.’
‘Collateral damage?’
‘It happens. It happened to the woman I thought of as my partner.’ Jewell’s partner in crime – and perhaps in other ways – had been killed in the grounds of this building while trying to attack Archie Donaldson two years before. It struck McKay that, for the first time since he’d met her, he could see genuine emotion in Jewell’s expression. ‘She died, and none of you bastards were able to prevent it. It probably never even occurred to you that I really cared about her. But I did. I’ve missed her every day since.’
There was nothing McKay could say. As far as he was concerned, the woman had simply been a psychopath who’d carried out Jewell’s dirty work. He hadn’t mourned her death at the time, and he’d find it hard to dredge up any sense of loss now. But he supposed that, for Jewell, that wasn’t how it worked.
‘That’s why I organised this today,’ Jewell went on. ‘In part, I’m just tidying up the loose ends alongside my own farewell. But I also wanted you all to suffer. To suffer physically, but also to suffer emotionally. To see your own loved ones in danger and put you in a position where you have to choose. Your own life or those of the ones you love. With the risk that it might be both. I think it’s a suitable punishment.’
‘I don’t understand. Punishment for what?’
‘None of us is innocent. You know that. You and your wife here, for example, you killed your daughter.’
McKay forced himself not to react, not to allow Jewell the satisfaction of knowing how much she was twisting the knife. He glanced at Chrissie, but it was impossible to read her expression in the gloom. ‘You’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Then DS Horton behind you. Allowing her stepfather to die without trying to rebuild a relationship with him.’
This is nonsense, McKay thought. A deliberate rewriting of the past to fit some deluded notion of morality that existed only in Jewell’s head.
‘And her partner, Isla Bennett here, rejecting her own brother, poisoning their parents against him, systematically denying him the inheritance that was rightfully his.’
McKay had expected some reaction from Isla to these words. But in fact it was the young man on the bed who jerked angrily at his binding, grunting muffled abuse at Jewell. It suddenly occurred to McKay that the young man must be Isla’s brother. ‘So why is he here too?’
‘I can tell you that,’ Helena Grant said from behind him. ‘If that’s Isla’s brother, he was the man working with Jewell last year. He’s the man I met as Bill Emsworth’s supposed son. The one who left me to die with Emsworth.’
Jewell was smiling. ‘He’s just another loose end to be tidied up. Tristram had his own parental axes to grind and we’ve worked well together. He was another one who’d been well and truly screwed over by my father. I came across references to him when I was working in the office there. There was a lot of bad blood and it wasn’t difficult to persuade him to help me.’
‘Doing your dirty work, the same way your previous partner did?’
‘Trist never really had the stomach for it, but broadly yes.’
‘So why aren’t the two of you skipping off into the sunset?’
‘Like I say, just tidying up loose ends.’
McKay was still trying to work out where this was leading. If he kept Jewell talking, it wouldn’t be long till Everly called in the backup. As it was, there were three of them blocking Jewell’s escape. There was nowhere she could go. When the moment came, they’d simply arrest her.
Except that Jewell wasn’t a fool and would be well aware of all that.
‘And what about Brian Nightingale? Why’s he here?’
‘Every pack needs a joker,’ she said. ‘Brian was another one on my father’s payroll. Still is, as far as I’m aware, which just proves Brian’s happy to work for peanuts. The thing is, when Archie heard about the Gillans’ and Dawsons’ deaths, he twigged this was directed at him. He’s already lost so much he didn’t want to risk losing any more, and the last thing he wanted was for the authorities to start digging around in his affairs again. He made a few phone calls and arranged for Brian to take over the investigation. Apparently, Brian’s seen as a valuable resource by some in the police – a man guaranteed to screw up any inquiry through his unique blend of ineptitude, laziness and drunkenness. He was brought up here to do precisely that.’
‘But he didn’t just turn up,’ Helena Grant said. ‘It must have all gone through official channels.’
Jewell nodded. ‘Ah, yes. You’re beginning to see now. And that would be official channels controlled by…?’
McKay turned momentarily and caught Grant’s eye. She’d obviously realised at the same moment he had. ‘Mike Everly,’ he said.
That’s right. The same Mike Everly you’ve left downstairs to call the cavalry on your behalf. I wasn’t quite sure how that was going to play out, but I knew you wouldn’t want to risk storming in here in numbers. And how long did you give him? Fifteen minutes? I’d say that’s just about up.’
As she spoke, there was a deafening roar from the stairwell behind them, followed by a blast of hot air that buffeted them from behind.
‘Perfect,’ Ruby Jewell said. ‘I’d say you have, at any optimistic scenario, perhaps three or four minutes before the stairs become utterly impassable. You need to make some decisions.’
Chapter Fifty-One
McKay knew that, despite Ruby Jewell’s tauntings, there was no time to make any kind of rational decision. He could already taste the acrid smoke in the air. There was no time for thought, only action.
He didn’t even pause to tell Grant or Horton to save themselves. Whatever he said would make no difference to what they chose to do, and neither would rush to save themselves at the expense of others.
McKay fumbled in his pocket and found the Swiss Army knife he now always carried with him. He opened the knife blade as he ran across to Chrissie’s bed and sliced through her ties. She stumbled awkwardly to her feet and McKay shouted, ‘Just run. Head for the stairs. It’s the only chance you’ve got.’
To his left, Jewell applauded mockingly, a game-show host congratulating a successful contestant. Ignoring her, he turned to Isla’s bed and cut through her ties. Ginny Horton was on the far side of the bed, and she helped Isla to her feet. ‘Go. Both of you. Now!’
He could see Ginny hesitate, but it was clear she understood the significance of McKay’s words, and she turned and pulled Isla with her. McKay moved further along the room and cut the ties holding Tristram. Tristram jumped to his feet, and without hesitation made for the stairs. McKay could see a haze of smoke rising from the stairwell.
Finally, McKay turned to Nightingale and again cut the ties holding him to the bed. Nightingale looked scarcely capable of standing up. McKay took him by the arm and, half dragging and half supporting the other man, led him to the stairs. The air below was thick with smoke. At the head of the stairs, McKay turned back to Jewell, who had remained unmoving at the far end of the room. ‘Come on. There’s still a chance.’
‘I don’t want a chance. Not anymore. I’m done.’
McKay knew he had no choice. If he tried to take Jewell against her will, he’d risk losing the few precious seconds he had. As Jewell had said, he’d already made his decision. Or she’d made it for him.
He followed Nightingale down the stairs. The smoke was thickening. McKay pulled off his coat and held it over his nose and mouth. There’d been no time to remove the gags from those who’d been held prisoner, and McKay had no idea whether that would be a help or a hindrance in the circumstances. He reached the foot of the upper flight of stairs without incident, Nightingale just ahead of him.
The lower flight of stairs down to the ground floor turned at the middle landing, and McKay couldn’t see what was happening on the ground floor. But a flickering orange light suggested fire was taking hold down there. There were five silhouetted figures on the stairs below – Chrissie, Ginny, Isla, Helena and Tristram, all making good progress. Nightingale still looked unsteady on his feet, and McKay wrapped his arm around him, trying to provide support as he dragged him further down the stairs.
As he turned the corner on the middle landing, McKay saw that the fire was already raging at the rear of the entrance lobby, behind the reception desk. Even so, there seemed to be a clear run to the doors, still standing open to the rainy night. Below him, McKay saw first Chrissie then the others stumble across the room to the doors and out into the darkness.
Despite the relief sweeping through him, McKay forced himself to concentrate. Still supporting Nightingale, he made his way, more slowly and laboriously than he would have liked, across the room to the open doors. Behind him, the old reception desk exploded into flames, a line of fire running rapidly across the floor. There had been something in there, he thought, some accelerant.
It didn’t matter. They’d all made it outside. Everyone, apart from Jewell herself, had escaped. The pouring rain and chill winds had never felt so welcome. McKay dragged Nightingale across to join Chrissie and the others standing at a safe distance from the burning hotel.
‘Brian, pal,’ McKay murmured as he finally released Nightingale to slump groggily against the car, ‘when you’re going through disciplinary hell in the coming months, I hope you’ll spare a thought for the old bastard who made it possible for you to be there.’
Chapter Fifty-Two
Helena Grant stood a little way from the others, watching the scene impassively. Chrissie had thrown herself into McKay’s arms as soon as he’d let go of Nightingale. Grant had expected all of them to show some visible signs of emotion, whether laughter or tears, but Chrissie had simply buried her head against her husband’s shoulder and was holding him in silence. Isla and Ginny were clutching each other in a similar manner, as if seeking each other’s reassurance that they’d made it out alive.
They were all in shock, Grant thought, none of them able to grasp what had just happened. Isla’s brother was sitting on the grass, oblivious to the sodden ground, his eyes fixed on the flickering orange visible through the windows of the building. Nightingale was still slumped against the car, breathing heavily.
As she looked around, it occurred to her that Mike Everly was missing. She’d wondered, when Jewell had revealed Everly’s role in protecting Donaldson, whether Everly might have been tempted to leave them to their fate, but he’d clearly called for backup as they’d agreed. The night was filling with sirens, pulsing with approaching blue lights. The first marked cars were drawing up on the roadside, and in the distance she could hear a fire engine.
She finally spotted Everly standing much closer to the now burning building than seemed sensible. He’d been out in the rain for much of the time they’d been inside, and he looked wet and cold.
‘Mike,’ she called. ‘Come away from the building. It can’t be safe there.’
He turned to her. ‘She didn’t come out. You left her in there. Young Maggie.’
‘Maggie? You mean Ruby Jewell?’
