ANGELA APPROACHED the group and introduced herself. Harold tried to get his story in first.
“You can’t charge Simon with anything. He’s mentally ill, demonstrably so, it’s care and protection he needs, not this, not a squad of policemen bullying him into lies. And don’t think I won’t be pressing charges for this…”
It was Vinny who stepped toward Harold and shut him up. “You’re going to let the boy speak and you’re not going to say a word.”
Nerves were rising. The flood of relief at finding Freya and now the determination to stop whoever was responsible. The heat from the house and the shouting of the firemen, the roar of the fire, made every word jangle with nerves. Behind them more blue lights as a police car from the local station turned into the drive and found itself confronted with more people and vehicles than it knew what to do with. Behind it an ambulance joined the throng.
Angela introduced herself to the new arrivals and one of them said, “So who are we arresting?”
Vinny pointed at Harold and said, “That one.”
The uniformed officers hesitated. One of them said, “But what for?”
Darian said, “He set the fire. We got here and the gate was locked, no cars around, but when I went over the railings he was inside, on his own. He slipped in, locked the gate behind him and set the fire.”
Harold was laughing again and shaking his head but Phil said, “I saw your car round the corner on King Robert Street.”
Another family betrayal. Harold looked with horror at Phil and Simon, but the two uniformed officers stepped in and led him away to the car. There would be many more charges to follow.
Angela turned to Simon and said, “You’re the one who knows what’s going on here. Why don’t you share it?”
Simon nodded. “Okay, I’ll tell you. It was Will who told me about it. Uncle Harold had always been, I don’t know what you would call it, a ladies’ man. But he only liked to have short-term relationships. He didn’t let Will see the truth until he was sure that he could trust him. Then he could have Will drive other men’s wives to one of his flats around the city for the night. He started sending Will to bars to pick up girls for him. He was getting more forceful about it, too. Then he had Will drive him around on weekends, late at night, and would offer drunk girls a lift in his luxury, chauffeur-driven car. When they had gotten into the back he would try his luck. Will said sometimes Uncle Harold got aggressive, and other times the girls were too drunk to know what was happening. Then one night they picked up Ruby-Mae Short. Will dropped them at the flat in Bakers Moor, on Normandy Road, he said, and left. When he was called back she was dead and Uncle Harold told him where to take her, like he’d planned it, told him how to get to the tracks without being seen. Will was convinced they’d get caught but it never happened, the police didn’t come after them. He told me everything. Uncle Harold had put the bra in my house, I think as a warning to Will. I should have called the police then but Uncle Harold has looked after me since my mother died and I knew what it would do to the bank. Then there was a while when everything seemed to calm back down to normal, like he had been sated by what he’d done, and then the crash happened. Uncle Harold started sending you gifts after that, and Will found out because he had to go and collect them when you refused them. We had already planned what we would do if we thought it was definitely going to happen again, so we put it into practice. Will was convinced that he would get years in The Ganntair for what happened to Miss Short, and I don’t think he believed he could survive that long. I think that must be why he didn’t step out of the way of the train. I thought when all this happened Uncle Harold would speak to me, tell me he wouldn’t do it again and everything would be okay. I honestly never imagined that he would try to kill me, too.”
He had spoken quietly throughout, face still smudged by smoke, the group around him straining to hear his voice over the fire and the people fighting it.
Angela said, “Thank you, Simon, that’s helpful. You’ll have to tell that again on tape, and you might have to go to court.”
“Oh, yes, I know.”
Phil said, “He’s doing all he can to help and he’ll continue to. I’ll contact the chairman of the bank, have him send out a legal representative for Simon.”
It was an attempt to negotiate complete honesty in exchange for favorable treatment, no charge of withholding information and, if he could sweet-talk Freya, which seemed unlikely, no charge of kidnap. Phil had spent years steering clear of the upper branches of his family tree and here he was promising to call the patriarch personally. The very mention of the most powerful man in Challaid subdued the aggression Vinny had shown and promised a prosecution-defying defensive wall was about to be built around Simon. Phil was sacrificing a little of his normal life to protect his cousin, who had no one else to look after him now.
Angela said, “I’ll have people head out to the house on Eilean Seud and try to work out what other property in the city he owns, which is probably a lot. The very least we can be certain of convicting him on is setting fire to the house, but I think we have enough to get a whole lot more. We’ve been trying to get justice for Ruby-Mae for a while, and we will now. I’m going to the station to prepare for the interview. Simon, we’ll want to talk to you right away.”
As more police cars pulled up Phil said, “I’m coming with him. Freya, it’s good to see you safe, and Darian, Sholto, well done on everything tonight, you saved Simon and stopped a killer. Thank you.”
There had been a stiffness in Phil’s delivery that made it sound obligated and not heartfelt, and he led Simon to a waiting police car. Angela said to Darian, “They’ll take him to Piper Station first, this is their patch. It could be a while before we get to question him. We’ll need to talk to you all as well.”
Darian nodded. “Of course.”
Angela brushed his hand and, before she walked down the driveway, said, “I’ll call you.”
There were four of them left now, Darian, Sholto, Vinny and Freya, and they all breathed a sigh of relief.
Darian looked at Freya and said, “How are you feeling?”
“Relieved. Tired. A bit hungry. Annoyed it happened. Glad it’s over.”
Vinny said, “All because one bloody Sutherland didn’t want to call the cops on another bloody Sutherland.”
Sholto said, “No matter how good his legal team are and how much your partner wants to help him, Simon Sutherland is looking at a conviction here.”
“He is, but we all know how these things work around here. He’s rich and his family will pull strings, he’ll go to court and say he was scared of his uncle and that he has mental health issues so if he does get convicted there’s almost no chance he’ll spend a single night in a cell. They’ll send him back to his rebuilt mansion to hide from humanity forever more.”
Darian said, “Aye, well, the more I see of humanity the more I think he might be onto something.”
It was at that point that Vinny smiled and said, “Okay, hands up, who among you had me pegged as the most likely suspect?”
Sholto slightly raised his hand and then pulled it down again in case Vinny wasn’t making a joke of this, and then said, “DS MacNeith did for sure.”
“I know she did, and she was right to. It’s usually the ex.”
Freya looked askance. “You? They thought you would be able to kidnap me? They thought you had killed me?”
“I know, I could never win a bloody argument with you, let alone get away with bumping you off.”
“The only thing you ever made a half-decent job of was Finn, and now I want you to take me to him.”
“Yeah, let’s go. I can smoke out the window of the car. Been desperate for a San Jose for the last hour but I don’t want to light up in front of firemen and paramedics. I feel like I’d be on the end of a double-barrelled lecture. Let’s go see the boy.”
Vinny and Freya said goodbye to Darian and Sholto and left, knowing Freya should have stayed to talk more to the police but feeling this was more important. Vinny would take her to the station later, but for now they were heading to his flat in Whisper Hill to see their young son. That, Darian felt, was the most gratifying moment of the whole thing, watching them going to give a young kid the surprise he had been praying for. That happened far too rarely. There would be children in the city, other family members, too, desperately hoping that a lost parent or child or sibling would return. Most would be disappointed.
Darian and Sholto walked slowly out to the car, both tired and sore, and Sholto made a three-course meal of making a three-point turn to get them out of Geug Place.
On the way south through Barton, Sholto said, “A Sutherland will never call the cops on another Sutherland, that’s what Vinny said.”
“We knew that, didn’t we?”
“I suppose. I just wonder if it applies to his partner, too. He’s a Sutherland. How early did he know about his beloved uncle? How early did he know about Ruby-Mae?”
“You think he knew and said nothing, even when Freya was missing? That’s a hell of an accusation.”
“I know, that’s why I only put it to you in the car instead of in front of the rest of them in the garden. I won’t repeat it either, because I’ll never be able to prove it, but it’s always worth remembering that even people you think are good folk have their own moral code. Everyone does. You think someone is decent because they have most of the same standards as you, but then you spot a difference and it shocks you, but it shouldn’t. Nothing would surprise me about the moral code of another person, even if it meant believing Phil could have put a stop to this earlier.”
Darian mumbled agreement but didn’t dive into dirty detail. One of the very first pearls of wisdom Sholto had rolled his way was that no case was perfect, and most would leave behind a selection of unconquered question marks, even after the main point of the investigation was solved and the file closed. Nothing as complicated as a Challaid criminal could give you an easy answer.
As they stopped outside Darian’s flat, the sun making its lazy way into the sky, Sholto said, “Go and get some proper sleep. I don’t want you in the office before lunchtime. We’ve got a big report to write and no one to read it, and you’ll have to give more statements to the police. If you’re lucky it might be to DC Vicario, and you’ll want your beauty sleep before you see her again. Go on, get out of my sight.”
“Thanks, Sholto.”
Darian walked slowly up the stairs and took the key from his pocket. He opened the front door and went into his small flat. There were times, sitting at his desk in the office looking down at Cage Street, when he felt jealous of big operators like Raven, and when he resented his father for robbing him of the chance to follow his dream of becoming a real detective. Nights like this one changed it all.