D.C.I Gregg stood in the reception area of the Beeches Care Home thinking what a waste of his time all this was. He’d travelled there against his better judgment and all because of a hunch. The classic detective’s hunch. This one hadn’t paid off.
Something had been off about Timothy Burleigh and he needed to know what it was. It would niggle at him otherwise. He wasn’t the only detective working on the Lisa Kirke case but he was the only one who thought Burleigh hadn’t done it. The rest of the team was working on the assumption that the old man had killed her, for reasons they had yet to work out, then rung the police deliberately to throw them off the scent.
Gregg wasn’t so sure. Ever since he’d begun his training, he had followed his instincts. They hadn’t let him down yet. He had searched the house and found the letters, had found a link to this Martha Coleman. She was next on his list of visits. No one else was interested in her yet. They were all digging into Timothy’s background.
He wanted to know what link the old man had to this place. His background said he used to fund this place, that was his link to Lisa and to Martha. But no one he’d spoken to remembered him. Nobody even knew his name. He’d seen the paperwork that showed the site had been sold after the fire that had killed three of the girls and an employee, the man who became known as the Gamesman.
He intended to look at the details of the deaths when he got back. First he wanted a feel for the place. He’d found nothing. There was no remains of the old building. What had been left after the fire had been pulled down and a replacement built shortly afterwards.
The new owner, a Mr Lancet, had told him as much, backing up the paperwork. “I took over in 2008, he said during the interview. “I’m sorry I can’t be more help. Apparently, Mr Burleigh hadn’t been on site since the fire and had basically switched off from what he should have been doing.”
“And what should he have been doing?” Gregg asked, sitting in Lancet’s office.
“More hands on. Not leave it all to the site manager. You can’t just invest and expect a return on this kind of place. It’s a home for children who have lost everything. All I ever saw Mr Burleigh do was potter about in the garden.”
“Did he ever talk to you about Samuel Lyons?”
It was the only time the light faded in Lancet’s eyes. “That was a tragic case but you must understand things were different back then. Background checks weren’t carried out as thoroughly as they are now. If they had been, he would never have been employed here.”
“Was Mr Burleigh responsible for hiring him?”
“No, that was the manager at the time.”
“And that was?”
“Adrian Ferns.”
“Do you have his details handy at all?”
“I’m afraid he died not long after the fire.”
“Did he? Do you know what from?”
Lancet lowered his voice. “Suicide. He felt responsible for what had happened.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.”
“You couldn’t be expected to know. And that’s all in the past now. We’re a very different place D.C.I Gregg.”
“I’m sure you are.”
The interview had gone on for most of the morning but it had been almost a total bust. All he had found out was that Burleigh was hands off, leaving Ferns to make all the decisions, and to take the blame for what Samuel Lyons did.
It was when he was leaving the building that he finally got a decent lead. He had said goodbye to Lancet. He had stood in reception, thinking this had been a waste of his time. Then he had walked out of the front door and as he did so, a caretaker had beckoned him over to the corner of the building.
“You’ve been asking about the Gamesman?” the caretaker said in a quiet voice, cigarette sticking from the corner of his mouth.
Gregg nodded. “You know something?”
“I know that there was a man here at the time who was off the books.”
“Who?”
The caretaker held his right hand up and rubbed his fingers together. “You don’t get paid much in a job like this.”
Gregg sighed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a twenty. He’d been in this situation before. He could make it formal, take the man in to question. But then he’d clam up and he’d get nothing out of him.
“We called him Tony. He was one of them slow people, you know, an idiot.”
“Mentally deficient?”
“That’s it. That. He hung around the place and helped out a bit.”
“And what happened to Tony? Where is he now?”
“That’s the funny thing. He vanished the day before the fire. No one ever saw him again.”
“Wasn’t he reported missing?”
“Burleigh didn’t know about him. Only Lancet did and he liked him, saved paying for another member of staff.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“I think Samuel Lyons was the cleverest man I ever met and if someone that clever got stuck in a room with no escape when it was on fire, I’d be a Dutchman.”
“Go on.”
“Well, what if your suspect wanted everyone to think he was dead? What would he do?”
Gregg shrugged, letting the man talk, just as he’d been trained to do.
“He might take someone no one would miss. He might deal with him and then have his body near the chemicals in the storeroom so the heat would be too much to identify him from his teeth. Then when the police start knocking around, they find a man’s body and think all’s well and good. What do you think?”
“I think you’ve got a very vivid imagination, Mr…?”
“Frank. Call me Frank.”
“You got a surname, Frank?”
“Donaldson. What do you reckon, detective?”
“Why are you telling me all this, Frank? Why didn’t you say so at the time?”
“Don’t you think I did? I tried to tell ‘em. No one would listen. Told me to keep my mouth shut and keep out of it. I knew it’d come back around someday though. As for Burleigh, I never saw a man so torn up. He was obsessed with them girls, never wanted them out of his sight after that.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You ever save anyone’s life?”
“Once or twice.”
“You ever run into a burning room and drag two girls out and see three dead ones next to ‘em? Leave your arms scarred to hell by the blaze?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Well he did, and he never stopped talking about them. He talked about the girls long before the fire, used to stand and chat about how pretty they all were.”
“And were they?”
Frank shrugged. “Can’t say I noticed that much? But Burleigh, he’d have had paintings done of them if he had his way.”
Gregg sat in his car five minutes later, running through what he’d learned. There were two options as far as he could tell. One was that Timothy Burleigh was right. Samuel Lyons hadn’t died in the fire and was still out there. He had killed Lisa Kirke and was at that moment travelling to kill Martha Coleman. He’d get the locals to look her up, check she was all right. That would do for now.
Not everything Frank had told him had the ring of truth to it. There was a bitterness to his voice. What seemed much more likely than the mysterious Tony being the body in the fire was that Frank had been hard done by when Burleigh was in charge. There was a suggestion of score settling to the things he said.
But he had to follow the line of investigation where it would take him. Burleigh could have been obsessed with the girls. Burleigh could have started the fire himself. It wasn’t impossible. He could have found out about Samuel’s history and known he would be blamed for their deaths.
He could have kept tabs on Lisa and Martha afterwards, make sure they stayed quiet about what he’d done. Then when Lisa threatened to talk, he paid her a visit. Then what would he do? He’d pay Martha a visit too. Perhaps tie up the last loose end of the whole thing?
The biggest problem with noble man rescuing girls from inferno was that people weren’t that noble. He’d learned that from the years of work on some of the cases that would give the public nightmares to hear about. The balance of probability said that Samuel was dead and that Burleigh was the killer. But did that fit the facts as they stood?
He decided he needed to talk to Timothy Burleigh again. Interview him properly. He had let him go because he felt certain he needed to, needed to see what he would do, where he would go.
Martha sat on a bench at the edge of the castle site, Ben sitting next to her. Behind them was a tall hedge, blocking out the worst of the wind. Behind that was a row of holiday cottages, Martha could just hear a radio playing back there, every now and then a hint of music would make it through the hedge before dying away again. The only other sound was the rustling hedge. Ben was silent, looking deep in thought.
She’d found him sat there when she’d done her sweep of the site, preparing for the guided tour she was about to give. She always liked to check there was no litter dotted about, knowing what a poor impression that would give to those who’d paid handsomely for a personalised tour of the castle and its surroundings.
The tour group was due to arrive in half an hour, giving her time to see why Ben looked so serious. She was surprised by how happy she was to see him sitting there. She’d already told herself not to get excited about him being here, about there being a man around her age to talk to. He wasn’t going to be there for long. He would be back in Scotland soon, according to Jenny.
But at least she could see what was wrong with him. He’d said little when she sat down, before suddenly asking her what she thought about families. Just out of nowhere. “What do you think of families?”
“What about them?”
“Is there a normal one, do you think? One where everyone gets on well and they have conversations and meals around the table and days out and things like that?”
“I don’t know. What makes you ask a question like that?”
He glanced across at her. “I was looking at that guy in with his granddaughter earlier. They looked happy, didn’t they?”
“I suppose so.”
“Were you happy with your family?”
Martha didn’t answer straight away. She’d had several occasions like this, where she had to choose between lying or telling the truth. Lies meant fewer questions. The truth meant very long conversations that she didn’t often like having. “I guess,” she said, hoping that was a reasonable compromise. The truth but not all the truth. “Were you?”
He sighed, stretching his legs out on the grass in front of the bench. “I remember being happy when I was little.”
“What was your Dad like? It’s hard to imagine Peter being a parent, or you being little.”
“The castle looked bigger, I remember that.”
“Is that it?”
“He was always busy. There was always something that needed doing. I remember having to play with my sister a lot.”
“You have a sister?”
“Had. She died.”
“Oh, Ben, I’m so sorry.”
“You weren’t to know.”
He lapsed into silence. Martha looked at him and then out at the site. “I lost someone I loved to,” she said at last. She waited for him to answer but he continued looking down at the ground so she carried on. “I had some friends, very close friends. They died in a fire.”
Ben looked up at her and she caught his eye before looking away, afraid she might cry if she had to look at that compassionate gaze any longer. “I know what it feels like is what I mean to say.”
He nodded slowly. “I miss her.”
“I understand.”
“Martha!” a voice called.
Martha looked up to find Joanne panting for breath as she ran over to her, stopping front of the bench. “Your group’s here early,” she said, wheezing loudly. “They want to get started.”
“I’m on my way,” Martha said, standing up before turning to Ben. “Are you going to be all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Go do your thing.”
She tapped the top of his hand, squeezing it gently, feeling the warmth of his skin for a brief moment before turning and following Jenny back to the visitor centre.
The group were all lined up outside, looking like there was an enormous queue to get in. Martha found the group leader, a woman in a business suit with a clipboard in her arms. “This is not a good start,” she said in a strong German accent.
Martha resisted telling her she wasn’t due for another twenty minutes, managing a smile as she said, “If you’d like to bring your group through, we’ll get started now.”
At the back of the group, someone had joined the queue, unnoticed by the others. As they filed through the visitor centre, he went with them, passing by Martha so close he could smell her. He breathed deep of her scent, his heart racing. Then he passed through into the grounds and waited for her to come out.