The large Georgian manor house lay beneath Marvik as he emerged from the small copse on the hill. Arranged over three storeys the white-stone building, with two elegant bays at either end, sat in splendid isolation in the valley. A high wall surrounded it, punctuated by a pair of wrought-iron gates, probably electronic. They were closed. The western flank gave on to a hilly wooded area, which Marvik knew was part of the army range, as was the land to the immediate south of the house. The gently rising fields led to the cliff edge and the jagged bay where he had stood two days ago in among the ruined buildings. The magnificent coastline spread out before him, dipping into bays and rising in grass-covered cliffs. The red flag was flying which signalled that the army were on manoeuvres, and he heard the sound of gunfire above the bleating sheep in the fields around him.
He extracted a pair of powerful binoculars from his rucksack and focused them first on the gated entrance. Above the gates were two video cameras at either end of the stone pillars. There were also cameras on the boundary walls. Shale obviously liked his privacy. Nothing wrong with that. There was an intercom system to the right of the gates. He could ask to see Cedric Shale but if he was as reclusive as Irene claimed then Marvik doubted he’d be permitted entry. And saying he wanted to talk about the late Sir Ambrose Shale wouldn’t grant him an audience either.
He trained the glasses on the house. The ground-floor windows were shuttered, so too were those on the middle floor, but he paused to study the triple bay window on the left-hand side of the house. The window was open at the bottom on the right and one of the curtains was half draped across it. Beneath the window was a narrow ledge and to the right a drainpipe that led from the top of the bay to the ground. In the sloping roof above was a small window and another was above the centre of the house, with the pattern of the left-hand bay repeated on the right-hand side of the house. There were cameras above both drainpipes facing out across the front grounds. The paintwork on the windows was flaking and the plaster work in disrepair.
He swung the binoculars over the grounds. Weeds were growing around the porticoed entrance and in the long, sweeping gravel drive. The grass hadn’t been cut in a long time and the shrubs had spread. Shale had locked himself inside and didn’t seem to be worried that the place was falling down around him. Marvik wondered how many staff he employed. A cook and housekeeper, probably, but not a gardener by the look of things and probably not a driver if the man never left the house. But someone must operate the electronic gates and be linked up to the surveillance cameras. Was it the estate manager, Greg Audley, whom Irene Templeton had mentioned?
He swivelled the glasses to see a van approaching the house along the private road. It bore the name of a national supermarket chain. Stuffing the glasses into his rucksack, Marvik broke cover of the woods and ran down the hilly slope, keeping low. He didn’t want to be seen and ejected before he got the chance to meet Cedric Shale. As the van pulled up in front of the electronic gates Marvik darted behind it, still keeping low and out of sight of the driver and of the security cameras. He was counting on them and the boundary ones pointing outwards.
The driver leaned out, pressed the intercom, announced himself and was permitted entry. Marvik jogged behind the van as it slowly travelled up the driveway and headed left along the western flank of the house towards the rear. In a glance, Marvik registered the stretch of grass to his right in front of the weed-strewn path bordering the ivy-clad walls. There were two long sash windows that reached to the ground and a set of French doors. There was no sign of any security cameras. Breaking cover from the rear of the van, again keeping low, he ran to the windows, noting with satisfaction that the framework was crumbling. Retrieving his keys from his pocket, he extracted a thin strip of metal and inserted it under the catch. The window slid open with a screech that he thought could have been heard a mile away. He froze, expecting an alarm to sound, but if it did it was a silent one. No one came running.
He climbed in and surveyed the room with surprise. It was empty. He noted the faded patches on the walls where once pictures had hung. The mantelpiece was devoid of ornaments and the built-in bookshelves bare of books. It looked as though it had once been used as a study. There was no carpet on the wooden floor and no infrared sensors.
He crossed to the door and eased it open. It gave on to a wide black-and-white tiled hall; on the right was a sweeping staircase. Again there was no furniture in the hall. Cobwebs hung from the two chandeliers and from the corners of the ceiling but the floor was swept and clean. Marvik stood and listened. He could hear voices from the rear of the house to his left but the two doors that led to it were both closed. Again he noted the absence of sensors and cameras.
From his perusal of the house earlier there was, he suspected, only one place to find the elderly Cedric Shale. Taking the stairs two at a time he noted that the carpet was grubby, the brass stair rods pitted and stained and the banister unpolished. Again, there were faded patches on the walls where pictures had once hung. Only two remained – one of a steamship circa the twenties and the other of a man in scarlet robes and gold chains of office. The pitted brass plaque beneath it claimed it was Sir Ambrose Shale, a narrow-faced fair man with a solemn expression. Maybe he didn’t like having his picture painted, Marvik thought, coming out on to the landing.
It might only be a matter of minutes or seconds before he was noticed and intercepted. He had little time to spare. But there were no alarms or cameras in the corridor, and still no one came to apprehend him. As he made his way to the bay-windowed room he’d seen from the binoculars he threw open the doors to a couple of rooms on his way. Both were empty. The corridor, too, was bare and grubby and the whole floor smelt of dust, decay and disinfectant, the latter of which emanated from the room which was his destination.
The door opened silently to his touch and Marvik found himself in a large room decorated in pale blue faded wallpaper. It was clean but even the disinfectant couldn’t disguise the smell of sickness and urine. Sitting in the window in a wheelchair was a lean figure half bent over. At first Marvik thought the man must be asleep but as he approached he lifted his head. Wild, frightened eyes greeted Marvik from behind a gaunt, lined face. Marvik started with surprise but held out his hands in an open, friendly gesture. It made no difference. The man shouted: ‘Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.’ He put his hands to his ears and threw his scrawny body from side to side, screaming and shouting.
Marvik cursed. Surely this would summon whoever he’d heard talking in the kitchen.
‘I won’t harm you,’ he said quickly and gently while moving forward. But the elderly man wasn’t going to be convinced.
‘The devil. The devil!’ he screeched, putting his hands over his ears and thrashing his body about wildly in the wheelchair.
There was nothing for it. Marvik could hear a door slamming and running footsteps. Time to leave. He raced to the open sash window, thrust it open wider and climbed out on to the thin ledge, pushing the window down as much as he could behind him. Reaching for the drainpipe, his fingers gripped it and nimbly he scaled down it, expecting to see security officers below him and one above him leaning out of the window. But dropping on to the gravel and looking up there was no one peering out of the window and no one rushed to detain him. The screaming continued, rising hysterically, yet still no one came for him.
Keeping close to the wall, he retraced his steps to the side of the house and once again entered through the sash windows. Stealing to the door that led into the hall, he opened it a fraction and waited. He could hear voices from above, a man and a woman’s. He crept out into the hall and up the stairs, his pulse beating fast. As he came on to the landing he could hear the voices more clearly. The door to the old man’s room was open slightly and Marvik drew closer to it, peering through the crack. Inside were a man and a woman in their fifties. Both were standing over the bed where Cedric Shale was now lying, slipping into sleep.
‘Will he be OK?’ the man asked somewhat anxiously.
‘He’ll be fine now. Stop worrying, Greg. I’ve just upped the dose a little.’
‘Not too much, I hope.’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ she snapped.
‘What set him off?’
‘Who knows? Anything can, you know that. Hallucinations are part of the dementia he has, poor soul. He’s convinced that he’s going to be killed. And you know how deluded he is, thinking we’re all out to kill him, when it’s quite the opposite. He can’t help it.’
‘Should we tell the boss?’
‘Tell him what?’ she scoffed. ‘There was no one here. He didn’t see anyone. Do you want to get us the sack?’
‘No.’
‘Then keep your mouth shut.’
She turned away from the bed. Marvik stepped back and pushed open the door to one of the empty bedrooms he’d checked earlier. He saw them exit. Both were stoutly built. The man, Greg, had grey hair and a rumpled, ruddy countenance; the woman had short brown hair and a squashed, round, lined face.
Marvik heard their voices on the floor below fade into the back of the house. He was now convinced they were the only occupants. There had to be a servants’ staircase in this house, probably at the far end of the corridor. As he headed along it he checked the doors to the bedrooms and bathrooms – all of them were empty with the exception of the last room facing the front with the matching bay window. It was lavishly and comfortably furnished in gold and blue, with clean drapes at the window, a king-sized bed which was made up and modern bedroom furniture. It opened up into another room which had been made into a shower room. Everything was clean. The fabrics and bed linen were of a high quality. There were no female toiletries or clothes but there were men’s toiletries and some casual expensive designer clothes in the wardrobe. Studying them, Marvik noted they fitted a slim man of about six foot.
He tried the door opposite, knowing that it would lead to the servants’ staircase, and it did. As he descended the grubby wooden stairs to the ground floor he could again hear the couple talking. The door was ajar and Marvik could see that they were in a modern, large kitchen. Greg Audley was sitting at the island in the middle, while the woman, probably his wife, was at a coffee machine. Marvik stealthily headed past the door and into the hall where he turned into the room he’d entered by and made for the window.
Once outside he ran across the grass to the western edge of the boundary wall towards the woods and the army range. The cameras must have picked him up, but Audley was in the kitchen and he was all the security this place had except for an alarm which was obviously switched off during the day. There was a chance the cameras were hooked up to someone’s computer or phone and he was being observed but Marvik was no longer worried about that.
He reached the wall and within seconds had found a place where he could easily scale it. Soon he was in the cover of the trees and heading south, his mind spinning with what he’d just seen. A sick, elderly, deranged man, Cedric Shale, living in fear and alone, except for the paid help. His possessions all but gone. What had become of his wealth? He must have made considerable money from the sale of his business empire and his farms. Had someone blackmailed him over the years because of something his father had done and when the money had run out Shale, through his carers, had been forced to sell his possessions? His money couldn’t have been spent on his care because all he had was two people looking after him and the house hadn’t been heated, only the rooms that were being used, such as Shale’s bedroom, which had been warm. The radiators had been switched off in the other rooms. Had the Audleys exploited Shale? But the woman had mentioned the ‘boss’. So who was the ‘boss’? Could it be Donald Brampton? But why would he be fleecing Shale? The answer could be connected with the cargo that Ambrose Shale had brought back to Britain from Malaya via the navy and Marvik wondered if that cargo had been on the navy vessel unofficially. Perhaps Captain Ethelton had been doing his old friend a favour. The two army guys who had shown up in Portsmouth dockyard to transport it to London could have been phoney with fake papers, and instead the cargo had been transported to Sir Ambrose Shale’s home here and he’d sold the looted cargo over the years. Brampton had discovered this via Jack Darrow and the package he’d got from Pulford.
Brampton had been benefiting from the sale of Cedric Shale’s belongings. And he was keeping him alive because he wasn’t going to kill the fatted calf? Once everything had been sold and every penny Shale owned had been transferred to the ‘boss’s’ coffers, then there would no longer be any reason for Shale to live. The devil indeed would come to kill him. And Brampton might not be in this alone because if Marvik could believe what Melody had told him he had phoned someone and demanded their help. He recalled what she claimed to have overheard: He’s sniffing around, wants to know what happened during that strike. For Christ’s sake, get him off my back. You owe me, remember. Neither of us can afford this coming out. Then she said she’d heard him say something about dirty secrets.
Marvik looked up at the heavy, dark grey cloud building from the west and out to sea, heralding the approach of rain. Getting wet was the least of his preoccupations. He wanted to know who was keeping Shale imprisoned and alive.
He negotiated his way around the ruined buildings towards the cliff edge, listening to the sound of the gunfire and knowing it was too far away to trouble him. Once again, as he’d done on Thursday, he stared out at the grey, choppy sea. There was a yacht with its sails down making for port before the weather worsened and a fishing boat heading east in the same direction. Not the Killbecks’, though. He gazed down on the bay. It was difficult to enter given the rocks on either side but not impossible. Both he and Strathen had done so not only in daylight but at night. Something stirred at the back of his mind but, try as he might, he couldn’t retrieve it.
He rang Strathen, hoping he’d get a signal. He did. He asked if he could talk. Strathen said he could. Bryony was in her cabin and he was on the pontoon well away from the boat. She would have to pass him if she wanted to get off.
‘How is she?’
‘Restless and anxious.’
Marvik relayed what he had discovered at Kingston House, his thoughts about the cargo on board the navy vessel and on Donald Brampton.
‘Ralph Warnford was right,’ Strathen said. ‘Sir Ambrose Shale owned mines and plantations in Malaya and he was a very influential businessman with contacts in all the right places. He used to entertain politicians at Kingston House in the fifties and early sixties including the then Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, so it’s certainly possible he could have used the navy to bring out rare fossils, amber and artefacts he’d managed to purloin while operating there. As to Cedric Shale, I’ve been searching the financial news archives. There are no pictures of him. He kept a very low profile in the business community earning the nickname of the “shy tycoon” but he expanded the business very successfully until it was sold to Pentland in 2000 for millions. The acquisition was referred to the Competition Commission but it got through all right.’
‘Now I wonder who did the economic reports and the representation,’ Marvik said cynically.
‘I won’t give you three guesses because you’ll get it in one. Front Line Economics. So we have another connection. Shale succeeded his father in 1965 and according to the financial press the company ran through a number of general managers who oversaw the business operations over the years. I’ve run their details through my databases and four of them are dead.’
‘Sounds like a high-risk business!’
‘Maybe working for Shale gave them all early heart attacks. The fifth general manager was James Deacon. I’ve spoken to him on the telephone. He was quite happy to talk about Shale when I said I was writing a book on the Shale family, although he claimed he didn’t have much to tell. But when I prodded him he said that Cedric Shale was so changeable that he was almost impossible to work with. He’d agree to one thing and then the next moment claim he hadn’t. It was often difficult to get hold of him and when they had meetings he’d conduct them as though on autopilot. He said he often used to leave the meetings wondering what the hell they had agreed. I said that despite that the corporation was highly profitable and successful. He had to admit that it was, and that Shale could be ruthless when required. If a division wasn’t performing then either the management would be sacked or the division sold off. He claimed that Shale had a nervous kind of energy, like a man always on tenterhooks – restless, as though his mind was constantly jumping about but he had a knack of seeing into the future. He shed some businesses and acquired others at the right time. He said, and I quote, “He had nil people skills and always seemed vague and weak, as though he didn’t have a clue what he was doing, but underneath he must have been clever and astute – one of those boffin types. Boffins don’t always make good business leaders but this one did, though God knows how.” His secretaries came and went – none of them stayed longer than a couple of years and he often used temps. It’s an unusual profile for a corporate executive. Deacon said that Shale hated photographs and would never have one taken. There was never any talk about romantic entanglements of any kind. He once told Deacon in a rare moment of confidence that he’d much preferred to have been a painter but it hadn’t been an option. Makes you wonder why he didn’t just sell it all when he inherited it.’
‘Well, it’s all gone now,’ Marvik said. ‘Someone’s selling it and it’s not the Audleys.’
So what next? Did he return to Kingston House and confront the Audleys? Did he travel back to London, gain access to Brampton’s apartment and see if he could find out where he had gone? Or should he confront Freynsham again and ask him what was in that package that Darrow had given them? But they didn’t even know there was a package, he thought with exasperation. It was all theory.
He rang off after Strathen said he’d continue probing as best he could with Bryony on board, but at present she seemed remarkably disinterested in what he was doing and hadn’t even complained that she was stuck on a boat.
‘Did she ask where I was?’ Marvik had said.
‘Yes. I told her you were making enquiries. She looked annoyed at the fob off but she didn’t press me.’
Marvik gazed out to sea, feeling frustrated and, if he admitted it, a little defeated. What were they missing? He tried to pull together the various strands of what he’d seen, heard and learned over the last few days but it still didn’t add up. The yacht had gone from his sight but the fishing boat was still heading east. It focused his thoughts back on the Killbecks and from them to the Pulford who had shown up in Swanage in 1989. Why had the phoney Pulford, possibly Oscar Redburn, latched on to the Killbecks? There had to be a reason and maybe that was the critical point – not why he had taken off but why he had picked on them when he could have returned anywhere along this coast and latched on to another boatowner. And why a boat?
His eyes dropped to the bay then out to sea at the fishing boat as his brain teemed. The thought that eluded him a moment ago took shape. Was it possible? Had Pulford approached the Killbecks in 1989 because he had known or seen them in 1979, not at any strike but on the coast? And perhaps he’d had a hold over them, which was why Leonard Killbeck had let Pulford live with him and why Leonard and Matthew had given Pulford a job. Had Pulford witnessed them doing something illegal? Had the Killbecks been smuggling? And perhaps in 1990, Matthew, with the aid of his brother, Leonard, his son, Adam, and even Joshua Nunton had killed Pulford, or rather Oscar Redburn, as Marvik was convinced he really was, and had dumped his body in the Solent. If so, then the body washed up on the beach on the Isle of Wight in January was someone else, possibly Joshua Nunton, who had taken off after the murder unable to live with what he had done. It still didn’t explain everything – far from it – but if he worked on that basis then there was a great deal more that Matthew Killbeck could tell him, and this time Marvik was not going to be fobbed off.