Jo watched the water run in swirling eddies around the retired Mill wheel. It had been a weird two days. Even for Jo, whose days never seemed to be normal. But reflecting on the last eleven hours was an exercise in mild embarrassment. You weren’t supposed to sleep too soundly after a head injury, and someone needed to make sure. MacAdams argued about this and lost, then proposed sitting in the lobby. Its horrible foam sofas would keep anyone awake. Which wasn’t true; Jo could sleep anyplace, so she ensured wakefulness by making free with the EZ pod coffee maker in the corner . . . and then eating all the peanut M&Ms from the vending machine. That’s when she launched into the history of automats. Did MacAdams know that by the 1920s, some three hundred thousand people had office jobs in Manhattan? (He didn’t.) They needed cheap places to eat in a hurry and fast-food chains had yet to really catch on. Germany had the answer: they developed coin-operated diners to dispense with waiters and menus. You could see the offerings behind glass, pay your dime and pull out the food. There were hundreds of them in Manhattan, but the last one closed in 1991, so Jo never had the pleasure. (She had, of course, edited a history about them.)
“Vending machines were invented in Germany?” Macadams had asked.
No, they weren’t, Jo explained. Vending machines were designed by Percival Everitt in 1883 for London train stations. Vending machines weren’t even related to the German automats—they just associated together in Jo’s head. And that’s pretty much how things went until MacAdams was permitted a lie-down. She still had to wake him again every hour to ask his name and address, that sort of thing. But she herself had been too full of coffee and chocolate for slumber.
She would have liked to doze on the way back to Abington, but of course, MacAdams wasn’t yet permitted to drive. Some sort of sting operation had happened that morning regarding the butty van—or so she gathered from the one-sided conversations he’d had with Green. She was concentrating on the driving part, especially as this was not her car. “What’s happening?” had been met with “I’ll let you know when it’s over.”
So she’d dropped him off, eaten a cold cheese sandwich from Teresa’s coffee cart and spent the rest of her time sitting cross-legged in front of the Mill stream. Waiting. But he hadn’t contacted her yet, and it was well after lunch. MacAdams was fine, she figured, or someone would have told her.
Jo rolled over on her stomach, leaning on her arms against bent grass. Was she worried? Technically, he’d worried about her first. He’d sat on the floor with her and talked about carpet stripes. She couldn’t even be sorry he’d seen her like that, because his kindness was a gift and that would be refusing it. Then, two hours later, he’d been attacked. Seeing MacAdams covered in blood had jolted her clean out of herself. (Noted: adrenaline made a better emotion-hangover cure than pizza.)
MacAdams was fine. A&E confirmed he was fine. Again. Obviously, everything was fine. But would it kill him to send a text?
She was being irrational. Jo hated being irrational. Go home, she told herself. Get some sleep, which also helpfully killed time. She was meeting Gwilym at the Indian restaurant for dinner, and he promised to have all sorts of news about Augustus John. Jo stood, stretched and suppressed a yawn. It was a two-mile trek back to her cottage, but at least the walk was a pleasant one.
Jo followed the river until she passed the cemetery, then began the slow climb up the double lane that led to Jekyll Gardens and the estate. The wind had shifted and the air turned warm and close—and promised rain again. It also brought a sudden crushing exhaustion, as if crossing into home territory kicked away whatever support had kept her upright for the last twenty-four hours. Her overnight bag felt heavy. Her Doc Martens, too. She could hear her heart rushing in her ears and a dull headache promising.
Just close your eyes a minute, she told herself.
It was a mistake. The world did a flat spin, as if she’d been drinking. When had she last eaten? Jo touched grass, literally, and blinked away the cloudiness. From her crouched position, she could just look up over the knoll—the tall grasses that bordered the field and fens. And she saw a yellow raincoat.
Jo bolted to standing, which caused a secondary blood rush, followed by red-green splotches in her vision. When her world came to rights again, she dropped her pack in the lane and ran toward the knoll. Up through scratchy furze she went, waist deep in herbaceous borders. But the field waved beyond, empty.
Dammit. No one on the path above, no one below and no one had passed her by. Jo felt the trickle of adrenaline wick away. A trick of the light, maybe. The brain filling in gaps with what it wanted to see rather than strict reality.
That, or the mysterious vanishing hiker had been hill-walking their way into town not far from the trail she’d seen her on before.
Sleep. Jo needed sleep. That was all.
* * *
Tula Byrne had lived in Abington for ages, owned the Red Lion well before MacAdams and Annie got married. Not a native, she’d had won her way into the center of things with good feeling, excellent business sense and damn fine cooking. Dark complected, despite being Irish, with curly black locks streaked in gray, she presided over the pub—and over Ben—like a good witch, benevolent, vaguely mysterious, not to be trifled with. Usually, he found that amusing. Today, it reminded him that he knew next to nothing about her.
“I thought you didn’t go in for marriage,” Green said—an expression of shock, not even a question.
“Well, not after the last one,” Tula agreed. “Catastrophe, that.” MacAdams got more to the point.
“You said you didn’t know Ronan Foley, Tula. You lied,” he said, intending to follow up with how this obstructed an ongoing investigation among other things—but she didn’t give him the chance.
“I did no such thing. I didna know any Foley. Because that ain’t the man’s name.” She pulled something out of her pocket: a wedding photograph, bent in the center to put the subjects on either side. “Only kept it in case I could identify the bastard someday.”
MacAdams took it in hand and Green leaned. Unfolded, it presented a stunningly beautiful Tula Byrne—tresses down to her waist—and a man with Foley’s jawline and deep-set eyes.
“That there is Rhyan Flannery. I see he kept the R and F, but Ronan Foley? Wholly made-up name, probably got a fixer to do an ID for him.” Tula shook her head. “Damn sot. I married him in 1980, three days after my nineteenth birthday. Regretted it ever after.”
MacAdams was trying to take notes and simultaneously thumb-dial Gridley to change their search criteria. He’d certainly had his doubts about Foley’s credentials when they failed to find a birth certificate, but had put it down to attempts at assimilation.
“Why didn’t you tell us before, Tula?” he demanded.
Tula blinked long lashes and looked at him over imaginary glasses.
“Because I weren’t ready, James MacAdams. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since 1982—been as dead to me as Charlemagne.”
“But you are—were—still married to the man?” MacAdams clarified.
“Hard to divorce a bloke you cannae find, James,” Tula said. “Listen, now. I had a hint of it all when you showed me that photo; couldn’t be sure, though. Time ain’t been especially kind to him.”
“You were sure enough to drop a glass,” MacAdams muttered, mostly to himself. He should have known that the woman who carried eleven pints without spilling a drop wouldn’t smash a glass for no reason.
“Then I see the obit. No family, you say.” Tula’s voice stayed light, even jovial. But MacAdams watched the cord in her neck contract like a pulley system. “And then—thieving. Well, of course. Had to be him.”
“Hold up, hold up,” Green said, waving her hands. “What are you talking about?”
“The artifacts in York. Of course, it was all petty theft, fencing goods and minor cannabis dealing back then. We’d not been married a full year yet before I discovered the loose floorboard where he’d been hiding his loot. Gave him hell about it.”
“But you didn’t go to police, I take it. Didn’t you think that might be trouble?” MacAdams asked. Tula laughed at him, but it wasn’t the usual musical sound. Harsh notes.
“Let’s see—me da was in the IRA, me brother locked up for making pipe bombs. What kind of trouble ought I to have been looking out for, James MacAdams?” Tula twined one finger into her locks. “I should have known, though. It wasn’t gonna stop with stealing watches and old trinkets. He started house-breaking with a couple of his boys. They got in with a gang, and soon it was every weekend. Right up till he knocked over a petrol station and was caught on film.”
“Ah,” said Green.
Tula gave her a wink. “Greedy fool,” she agreed. “That’s when I last caught him taking our emergency money from the tin.” Tula slid off the stool and took up the paper from the bar. “Police were looking for him. And more dangerous sorts, too. Not to worry, he’d be back for me.”
Tula cast the paper down.
“But he never planned to come back. Didn’t even warn me I might be in danger myself, but I figured that out pretty quick. Crime bosses aren’t exactly a forgiving sort.” She gave MacAdams and Green a wry smile. “Lotta bad things about having a thug for a da, but some good. I got out, clean.”
“You’re saying he left you there to get killed?” Green asked. She looked at MacAdams. “How’s this the charming guy who wins over lady colleagues?”
MacAdams didn’t have an answer and didn’t need one. Tula had hers ready.
“He was just like that. Had a way of listening to you, made you feel he hung on every word. With women, anyway. Was a right bastard with other men.” She leaned on the bar and cast her eyes over the pub room, as though seeing something else. “If he hadn’t got in trouble, I imagine we’d have run off together somewhere, the three of us. Maybe even made a go of things. At least till the next time he got himself in trouble and needed to bug out.”
MacAdams had been writing it all down, which is probably why he caught the slip.
“Three of you,” he said. For a moment, Tula said nothing at all, her face as hard and bright as jasper.
“There might have been three of us. But I was on my own, all of a sudden, and no father coming back. So.” Her face relaxed again. “Plenty of water under that bridge; I choose not to regret it. Anyhow, I’ve all I wanted and more in life. And Rhyan—or Ronan or whate’er he called himself—is right where he was headed all along.”
MacAdams managed to break the tip of his pencil, embedding lead in the page.
“To a ditch?” he asked.
Tula leaned over, full lips parted and eyes half-closed.
“I’ve a motive now, I expect,” she said.
She did, and it gave Ben a motive, too, for that matter. Did he think they were suspects? No. Did he need to know their movements the night of the murder? Hell yes.
“Statement. Both of you. And you know what I’ll need—”
“To eliminate us from your enquiries,” Tula finished for him. “You’ll have ’em. But just remember, James, I needn’t have told you. And without me, you’d never know.” She gave him a wink after that, a touch triumphant because utterly true.
Green let out a long, low whistle. “Fuck me,” she said.
“Quite.”
“What are we to do with all that?”
“Find previous on Rhyan Flannery,” MacAdams said, reaching for his buzzing phone. “And see if our man Foley was preparing to cut and run again. MacAdams here.”
He was in for a shock.
“It’s the Abington Arms,” said the voice on the line. “Your mystery woman just turned up . . . and then disappeared just as quickly.”
“Right, Green, call in Uniform; Foley’s woman has turned up—” He’d headed back toward the car but Arianna’s voice cut into the phone line.
“That’s not all,” she said. “She came here to pick something up.”
* * *
Arianna was waiting for them, arms crossed over her green blazer. As it turned out, the Abington Arms provided lockers to their esteemed returning guests. The idea, said Arianna, was to provide regulars with “convenience.” It was hard for MacAdams not to see the potential implications for less-legal activity. Like storing stolen art.
“Why didn’t you say this before?” Green asked, despite promising to mostly stay mum. Arianna chose to answer MacAdams instead.
“I didn’t know she’d left anything. I’m not the coat check.” She led the way to a large room in the back, possibly a sort of livery service at some point. The tall units were large enough to hang several large coats—even a small wardrobe.
“How many of your guests get this sort of special treatment?” MacAdams asked.
“It’s technically available to everyone, if they ask,” Arianna told him.
Green stepped ever so slightly between them. “That wasn’t the question, though, was it?”
“Five,” Arianna barked. “You can see that for yourself.” She swept a long arm toward the lockers, five of which had been bolted shut. Then she continued to address MacAdams exclusively. “I was at the desk when she arrived.”
“Tell me everything she said from beginning to end,” MacAdams said.
“Not difficult; she didn’t say anything. Just presented me with a ticket for number twelve.” Arianna held up the key. “I asked her name. She wouldn’t speak. So I told her to wait and came to call you. When I returned, she’d gone. I sent the bell hop running out after, and the security guard, too.”
“But she didn’t get what she wanted?” MacAdams said, nodding. “Well done. She might be back.”
“Not if all the hotel staff are chasing around town for her, and us here in marked cars,” Green suggested. And it was a fair point. He drummed his fingers against the locker.
“All right. Arianna, let’s see what’s inside.”
“It’s a private client’s locker.”
“Yes, and you called the police because you know it’s a murder investigation—do you want us to wait for a search warrant?” MacAdams asked.
Beside him, Green smiled toothily. “We’ll be sure to search the whole hotel,” she said. “Your boss Evans should like that.”
Arianna narrowed her eyes. “Look. I have to resist or I wouldn’t be doing my job—and I like my job. But yes, you can have the bloody key. I don’t even know what’s in there.”
MacAdams took it from her. A twist in the lock and the door sprung open.
Inside was a pale pink gown of silk, a fitted jacket in white and a dappled scarf of pink and red and blue.
“And . . . shoes again,” Green said. She pulled a glove from one pocket and used it to pick up a pair of wedge heels. “I’m no expert. Are these as fancy as Foley’s?”
“Those are J’Adior pumps from DIOR,” Arianna said.
“Expensive?” MacAdams asked.
“Oh yes,” she said. “What’s that?” Arianna pointed to a white envelope near the bottom. MacAdams borrowed Green’s glove and lifted it out. That, it turned out, was fifteen hundred pounds in cash . . . and a necklace.
“Well, well, boss. I think I know what the earrings were for,” Green said, indicating the chain. The pendant displayed the same open design, like a little golden basket of delicate filigree. MacAdams watched its half-moon shape, studded with rubies, glint in the light. Then he turned back to Arianna.
“In fact, we will get a search warrant. I want to see inside each of these. And I want the names of who uses them,” he said.
Arianna pointed a painted nail at the bills poking out from the envelope.
“It’s not the first client we’ve had who likes to keep cash,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Perhaps not. But this is a Syrian artifact,” MacAdams said of the pendant. “And I want to know who else keeps antiquities in their lockups.”
“What are you talking about?” Arianna demanded, but MacAdams wasn’t finished.
“You saw this woman, on more than one occasion. Today, you have seen her up close. I’m calling in a sketch artist and I want you to give them every detail. Understood?” Perhaps it was his tone, or the urgency with which he ordered the sketch artist over the phone, but Arianna seemed to be having a crisis of faith.
“Is she dangerous? Is she the murderer?” She flashed a look at Green. “I thought you left Newcastle to get away from this sort of mess.”
Green’s face remained impassable. “Is that why you left?” she asked.
Arianna dropped her gaze. “I left for a promotion in hospitality—”
“In Abington. How convenient.”
“I went where there was work,” Arianna snapped back.
Green tilted her head, as if to recapture direct eye contact.
“I guess that makes two of us,” she said, voice flat, placid, yet also white-hot.
MacAdams cleared his throat. “Lock it back up until forensics gets here. They’ll bag it for the station. And you have my number if the woman returns.” He put one hand very loosely against Green’s clavicle and steered her toward the door. She went without remonstrance, but the tension didn’t lift until they were back outside.
“Before you say anything, she and I were never, ever an item,” she said.
“I wouldn’t dare suggest it.”
“Good.” She seethed a moment, then took a long breath. “What do we do next?”
“Repeat the procedure,” MacAdams said. “Foley’s image turned up Tula. We’ll get a composite image and post it here and in Newcastle. Did you notice anything about what’s in the locker?”
“Bit fancy for Abington.”
“Fancy like Foley’s last outfit. Minus the bespoke shoes.” MacAdams headed to the car, already rearranging the incident board in his head.
* * *
Gridley had already opened all the available windows, but the room remained hot and humid, with rain misting through the open panes.
“I think we’ve a desk fan someplace,” she said, poking through the read cupboard. MacAdams was already performing his zoo-tiger stride at the front of the room, divested of coat, jacket, tie, and in his shirtsleeves. The middle of the board had been cleared, and he just waited for the others to take their places.
“Gridley, Andrews, spill the details.”
“Yes sir,” Andrews said, waving his coffee mug. “First, phone records. We went after all the numbers we could find, and every one of them’s a burner. End to end it doesn’t help us much, or wouldn’t have, until we picked up Benny. One of the burners was his.”
“Right,” Gridley said, sitting on the edge of his desk. “Official proof he’s connected to Her Majesty’s Young Offenders. These phones were being activated and deactivated over a few days. Kids got their directions off ’em, marching orders, and sometimes warnings.”
“As far as the numbers Foley called that weren’t burners: the hotel, the offices at Hammersmith—”
“Presumably coworker Trisha Simmons?” Gridley interrupted.
“And Burnhope. But get this, he wasn’t calling Burnhope’s mobile. He called his house,” Andrews finished. “An honest to God landline.”
MacAdams turned to face Green.
He knew what they were both thinking. Clandestine phone calls with Ms. Ava?
Green sucked her teeth. “It’s damn well starting to look like an affair, isn’t it? Especially since Burnhope claimed he never let business and home intersect.”
“Hang on to the Ava-and-Ronan idea for a minute and let us give you the authentic Rhyan Flannery,” Gridley said, going back to her own desk and swiveling her chair to face the monitor. “Ronan Foley appears after 1998, no form—but old Rhyan had plenty. As a lad, he was caught housebreaking. Brought up on charges for pickpocketing, too. There’s a hint that he may have been questioned about a series of robberies later tied to a gang called the Belfast Seven. Then he’s clean for a few years, no convictions.”
“But not because he wasn’t doing dirty work,” Andrews said. “North-Irish police had been tracking him, figured he might lead them to bigger fish.”
“Which he did. Sort of,” Gridley said. “There had been a spate of art thefts, the whole Russborough House art robbery thing.”
“Foley was tied to Martin Cahill?” MacAdams demanded. “That was a thirty-million-dollar heist!”
“God no. But he was linked to a group trying to fence stolen goods—that clashed with Cahill’s gang.”
“In fact, some of his set got mysteriously murdered,” Andrews added, now sitting on the edge of Gridley’s desk. MacAdams wondered if he should suggest they pick a single speaker next time.
“Too right, they did. Police put out a warrant for Flannery/Foley, but chances are good he was wanted by the rival gang members, too.”
“He was in trouble every place with everyone. And that’s when he split—”
“Rhyan Flannery dies, Ronan Foley–slash–Nathanial Connolly is born,” Gridley confirmed.
“That’s a lot of identities, isn’t it?” Green asked. “It can’t be that easy to change your name.”
“Ah! But Foley’s little art-fencing troupe had a side business in forgery!” Andrews said, waving his hands. “It’s the ’80s, too. Not exactly the cutting edge of technology for spotting a fake.”
MacAdams had been born in the ’80s. And tried not to take it personally.
“Okay, makes sense. But then how does he end up in commercial real estate? I’m not sure if I should be surprised or not.”
“Not,” Andrews said with a grin. “Get this. Flannery’s father was an architect.”
MacAdams had anticipated most of this, but that was news. He’d built a picture of Foley’s youth along the same lines of Tula’s: struggle, poverty, politics. Andrews pulled up an old newsprint on his machine.
“Flannery Sr. ultimately takes a job teaching architecture, and we found some documentation for his son as enrolled in engineering. If he’d kept his nose clear, he might have ended up in the same career.”
“Instead, he knows just enough to work in real estate development as a bulldog job boss,” MacAdams said, turning back to the board. “Burnhope made the man sound like uncultured muscle. Instead, he’s got a whole back history in art theft, meaning he knows art well enough to value it. He’s got some sort of background in architecture, too, and enough brains to keep several identities popping.”
“That doesn’t necessarily make him cultured,” Green said.
“No, but—but . . .” Gridley interjected. “He’s a bad boy with brains who knows how to turn on charm when he wants, especially with women.” Perhaps the exception being, MacAdams thought, Jo Jones; she hadn’t seemed to describe him that way at all. But nonetheless.
“All right, let’s say Ava found him intriguing,” Green said. “Ava wasn’t the woman who just turned up at the Abington Arms.” She had a point. But MacAdams had an idea.
“Tula gave us reason to believe he was ready to do a runner again.” MacAdams dropped Foley’s picture down to the cleared space on the board. “Everything changed six months ago. So let’s start there: six months ago. Foley sells his house. That’s approximately, by Struthers’s estimate, when he stopped drinking and smoking. It’s also when Foley starts coming here to Abington, according to his hotel records.”
MacAdams moved a photo of the now-seized butty van next to Foley.
“Why here?” MacAdams next drew down a photo of the posh hotel. “Abington Arms has been known for its . . . privacy, let’s say. We need to take a long look at the regular guests, especially those that overlap with his stay.”
“You think it’s related to the art deal?” Gridley chewed the end of her pen. “I mean, it’s a good place to hide a love affair, but it meant he could hide his real identity from her, too. By Foley’s admission, they’re going to have a baby. You think he means to cut and run?”
“A hotel willing to protect your privacy is good for all sorts,” MacAdams said, somewhat grimly. “But I don’t think Foley planned to abandon this new lover like he did Tula Byrne.”
MacAdams had started to sweat, despite the fan’s feeble attempts to circulate air. He hadn’t had time to print new photos, so he drew a picture of a locker, and one of a shoe in dry erase marker.
“At Foley’s flat, everything was disposable.”
“Boring, even,” Green added.
“Just so. Everything except the clothes he was wearing—or, I suspect, planning to wear. And over at the Abington Arms, the locker held a different suit of clothes, fancy attire for a woman and fifteen hundred in cash.” MacAdams rubbed the marker between his hands as though trying to start a fire. “They each had a fine set of clothes waiting for them, almost like a bug-out bag. Where were they going?”
“Vacation?” Andrews asked.
“A cruise?” suggested Gridley—but MacAdams shook his head.
“Honeymoon,” he said. “Very possibly as Mr. and Mrs. Connolly.”
“But Ava is already married,” Green said. “Oh. Shit, he’s leaving Ava for someone else.”
MacAdams tapped his nose. “He knows he’s in trouble, right? So he invents not one identity but two. Both of them were going to flee. But something didn’t go as planned.”
“Yeah, he got murdered,” Andrews said.
“Yes, but before that. The mystery woman never picked up her gown from the locker; he didn’t get his shoes or suit from his flat.” MacAdams closed his eyes hard enough to restart the distant pounding from his head injury. The plan had been put in motion. Foley had packed in a desperate rush, toppling shaving cream, grabbing only his shirt. He had come to Abington, perhaps to pick up his girlfriend, but she didn’t arrive. In fact, she only now came looking for her locker. Why wait? Unless you were afraid.
“We need to find Foley’s girlfriend,” MacAdams said. “Because I think whoever was targeting Foley means to target her next.”
Green had been following along, but with increasingly stiff posture.
“You haven’t said this out loud yet, but you’re going to. If Ava is the jilted lover . . . then she might have murdered Foley before he could leave her.”
MacAdams thought about Ava; above the fray somehow, protected by wealth and position, seemingly beyond mortal emotions. But he also thought of her fierce protection of her maid, and that ever-cool self-possession.
“It’s not our job to guess,” he said. “It’s our job to suspect, and to follow through. Right now, Foley’s lover is our priority. Because I suspect she might be in danger.”
He meant the mystery woman; of course he did. But without meaning to, he was also thinking about Jo Jones.