MacAdams wasn’t sure who he’d underestimated the most in this case. Elsie would be going to prison for blackmail, yes. But she never did have the painting. That would be found in Olivia’s house, willingly hidden by the woman Sid trusted more than the rest.
At least MacAdams’ gut response to Alexander Clapham had been redeemed—and as with almost every case, everywhere, it came down to following the money. Even so, he never would have guessed its path or its origin, in Afghanistan, in 2001. Back then, Clapham was a Wing Commander with a wife, a young Cora, and an unexpected newborn son. Times were tight; his wife’s bad health meant the need for extra caregivers. Everything had begun innocently enough; air force parts, comms units, even electrical supplies were scarce between shipments, so you stole from Peter to pay Paul and edited the books. Supply and demand were fickle, however, and some machine parts began to accumulate needlessly, or went obsolete as new models appeared. The same was true of ground transport units, and even of airplane parts. If a few items found their way into the hands of locals for an extra quid, it hurt no one—and it helped out at home. Local demand grew; parts went for higher dollars; higher dollars led to arrangements. Clapham got promoted first to Group Commander, then Air Commodore, and being the generous sort, his top officers got “extras.” Perks of the job, and no one asked, and no one told. Clapham retired in 2010, to lead a more retired life at the well-heeled estate he’d purchased outside Abington. And there, it might have ended.
But it didn’t. “People make mistakes. They do little things—and bigger ones to cover the little things,” Fleet had said, as Jo recounted. The network of goods then expanded; Clapham styled himself a businessman, an entrepreneur. He just needed someone to take over on his behalf—and so came Jarvis Fleet. Having a posh education and reasonably good breeding, Fleet took over the black market trade in air force parts and navigated the escalating demands even better than his predecessor. He was also far more ruthless; rule-bound, tidy, but ruthless. In two years, over five million pounds in military equipment from machine guns to medicine had been sold to buyers in Russia, China, Mexico, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. He didn’t have to get his hands dirty; Fleet targeted soldiers with priors—men with money problems or drug problems. Men like Jack Turner.
Turner was violent but cash motivated. He was also in trouble; despite being a decent pilot, he’d been grounded for infraction and very nearly discharged. Fleet found him capable not only of theft, but of convincing others to follow suit—and of threatening them when necessary. A match made in heaven; Fleet’s rule-bound persona put him above suspicion; Turner’s slow wits and underclass status almost put him below it. They made money fast. They sold to friendlies and enemies alike. And...they drank.
Jack wore his brutality like a badge—Fleet, it seemed, had as much ruthlessness, just tucked up beneath extraordinary discipline and a sharp mind for detail. (It was little wonder to MacAdams that he did so well as a Scotland Yard Detective.) The trouble, of course, was keeping that cruelty in check. Beneath the stiffness, the oddly neutral tone, even the way he turned every corner sharp as a knifepoint, Fleet had a weakness: liquid. He was a nasty drunk with a short fuse, made mistakes, and a senseless fight broke out with Jack one night in Mazar-e-Sharif. No inquiry from MacAdams would ever discover who started it, or even who dealt the final, fatal blow, but a civilian paid the price. It should have been a court martial for both Jack and Fleet. And that’s where Clapham returned to the story.
He was a civilian himself, now, practically landed gentry (and still taking a lion’s share of black market business). Social affairs with elites from as far away as London, a widower known for charity balls and proud of two military kids. It was time to end their dealings. The soldiers were exonerated (quietly) and the entire operation came to a swift halt. Fleet went sober and ended up in police work, helped by his rank, his work ethic, and Clapham’s connections. They settled a sum on Turner, too, but knew better than to trust him. If two can’t keep a secret, three was going to be a problem. Clapham needed a threat that would stick; that’s why he created the document in the first place.
MacAdams didn’t know all the details; they were still in the process of looking for Fleet’s remains, much less discovering all his motives. It might be conjecture, but MacAdams could recognize the sheer bloody-minded tidiness. The “Clapham file” as they were calling the eight-page document of incriminating details behind their operation, had Fleet written all over it. Every drop shipment, every fudged number, even the case in Mazar-e-Sharif had been meticulously recorded. Fleet had amassed a file for the Air Commodore that would put all three of them (and not a few others in service) behind bars—but which also carried the following stinger: Fleet and Turner, in their wide-ranging clientele, weren’t just stealing and dealing. They sold parts to the enemy; they were guilty of treason against the United Kingdom.
MacAdams could imagine that fateful meeting; perhaps it took place at Clapham’s War Room—three men hovering over the details of their crimes, and then signing their names. If one of them squealed, they would all go down together. But Clapham, older, with more friends, money, and clout, would still come out on top. Just desserts, indeed.
We, the undersigned, agree that a copy of these records will be our check and our balance.
We, the undersigned agree never to speak of these matters again, in exchange for a clean record.
The words hung over Fleet like a cloud; no wonder he so obligingly went through Clapham’s papers when he died. The more MacAdams thought about it, the more he wondered just how much Cora knew (or suspected) about her dad’s precipitous rise. But Fleet had come up empty. Probably, the dying man had already destroyed his copy.
Then there was Jack.
He turned his military “training” into a lucrative criminal career. It was hard to know how long he’d run stolen cars before involving Douglas Haw, or when their operation joined with the larger ring out of London. Discovering the betrayal of his mate, Turner decided to kill Douglas and send a message all in one—and didn’t know the Met were already onto him. But lo and behold! Who is it that catches him? His good friend Jarvis Fleet. Get me in the clear. Troublemaker Turner, with no family, kills local man Douglas, of good family, for informing on their sting? A not-guilty plea would have taken a miracle of the sort only Clapham could manage—and he was dead. So, thanks to Fleet, manslaughter was the best they could do. All things considered, the case did do one thing: it reunited Elsie and Jack. The trial went on for months; the papers and BBC carried the story. When she came to the sentencing, it was the first they had seen of each other in twenty years. It was going to be twenty more before Jack breathed free air—and he blamed Fleet for it.
Time for revenge.
Confessing to the authorities might get Jack in far more trouble than the now-Scotland-Yard detective. So instead, he tells his sister. Jack never received visitors, but he did get letters—and phone calls, too. From an ambitious Elsie “Hannah Walker.” It took her a few years to be properly placed to launder money, then the blackmail started.
Elsie claimed it was all Jack’s idea. MacAdams knew this was nonsense; no doubt they hatched the plot together. She’d make bank out of Fleet—five thousand pounds a month, to be precise—and save up money for herself and for Jack on his release.
But she had an even better plan. She’d get Sid to be her patsy, carry all the risk. She would keep the Clapham blackmail letters “somewhere safe” and hang it over Fleet’s head. Sid would do pickup and collect cash from various drop-off spots all over the north of England. Put that money in an account (to which she had access), and off it went to be laundered. In return, Elsie paid his debts, or some of them. Maybe Elsie even allowed the creditors to keep up the pressure, just enough for a short leash on Sid...all the while creating a paper trail that would lead straight to him in the end.
The only thing she hadn’t planned on was Jo Jones turning up—and a cornered Sid rifling her desk to discover the note between Elsie and her brother. Elsie had probably been lying to Sid that she was double-crossing her brother, had stolen the letter from Jack so she and Sid could live comfortably—and then Sid discovered her correspondence with Jack, and where her loyalties really lay. No doubt Sid decided to take matters into his own hands, hide the file with his other treasure back at the estate, and—
“Boss?” Green asked. “Are you with us?”
“Sorry, still thinking about the case.” MacAdams had agreed to pay the first round of celebratory beers at the Red Lion—Ben had just arrived with chips.
“I thought thinking wasn’t allowed after hours,” Rachel said, poking at Green’s shoulder.
“Oh yeah, we never take work outside the office, do we?” Green laughed. Beside her, Andrews swallowed a mouthful of beer.
“I might never stop thinking about this one,” he said. “For one, I still don’t get why Sid was murdered. Fleet didn’t get what he wanted.”
“He was willing to kill Jo, despite not getting what he wanted,” MacAdams said, ordering another beer.
“The man had rage,” Green added. “Sid made the big mistake. You don’t go meeting the guy you’re blackmailing in a quiet, out of the way place.”
“Right, but the man was a cop. I mean, you’d have thought you were safe, right?” Andrews asked.
“Safe enough to do some bragging, I expect,” MacAdams said. “He was smart enough not to name them, but Fleet knew he had an accomplice.”
“And that it was a woman,” Gridley added. “Or else why break in on Jo and Olivia and Lotte?” MacAdams nodded.
“He’d have enjoyed that, I imagine. Telling the detective he’d been bested by Sid and one—or more—of his women.” In fact, almost everything came down to Sid’s psychology in the end. He felt the estate and everything inside it—the painting included—was owed him, not just because it was no doubt valuable, but because it had been valuable to the people who did him wrong. Like the Ardemores, or Aiden, or Jo—or Elsie, for that matter. Sid planned to sell the Clapham file to Fleet, to get back at Elsie and make a buck all at once. Puts the thing inside the painting, hides both together at Ardemore. Jo hadn’t been far off; the estate was a fox cache. When that became endangered, he needed to move his treasures to the next place—or rather, person—he considered absolutely safe.
“From Sid’s perspective, Olivia is the only one who made sense. She never crossed him, never used him, seemed to genuinely love him. Was always there to bail him out,” MacAdams said.
Fleet hadn’t been looking for a painting, then, but a letter. All the same, it had been hidden—and damn well. She’d strapped it to the underside of her mattress. Olivia came clean to Lotte after the break-in that she was keeping the painting for Sid, and they turned it over to Newcastle uniform before a search warrant could even be issued or they might still be looking.
“I guess points to Sid for not ratting her out to Fleet,” Gridley said.
“I’m not sure he had time to,” Green admitted, stirring her drink. “What did Jo call him? Contents under pressure? All that tight-assed exterior just holding down a reckless murderer, I guess.”
“He was a proud and selfish bastard,” MacAdams said. “When he knew Sid didn’t have the document, and that a woman did, he shot him. Fleet couldn’t imagine himself beaten, not by Jack, not by Sid—not by a woman.”
“But he was,” Rachel said, raising a glass.
“I’ll drink to Jo Jones,” Green agreed. “God. Some men will do anything not to be shamed.”
“Right,” Gridley said. “I mean shit, Commodore Clapham? I sure wouldn’t want to be Ma’am Cora right now.”
Cora, to her credit, had already begun the process of recusing herself from the case.
“We see what we expect to see sometimes,” MacAdams said—but the sentiment was cut short by the intrusive ring of his mobile. It was Struthers.
“Happy days, Detective,” he said. “I have good news. And I have strange news.”
MacAdams cupped the receiver.
“Carry on.”
“Well. The good news is we found the bodies.”
“The—bodies? Plural?” MacAdams asked. He could hear Struthers sucking his teeth through the line.
“Yes. That’s the strange news.”