Chapter 18
Proof of Life
The week-long camping trip had been Aidan’s idea, and Dartmoor in early August repaid them with glorious blue skies and warm weather.
They’d climbed rocky tors, hunted the Hound of the Baskervilles, and swum in the sea.
They’d banned all talk of work and investigations, and enjoyed time together until Aidan’s job had interrupted his break.
He’d be leaving in the morning for a court appearance in the afternoon, and Nico had been quizzing him about how that would work.
“Spare clothes in my chambers, and excellent notes from my associate, which I’ll review on the drive into town.”
Gareth still didn’t know who’d made the first move, or if they thought going camping with Gareth and the boys would help them figure things out. Not that he was going to ask. “You’re letting Alex drive you back?” he teased.
“It wouldn’t be the first time.” Alex joined them by the fire, beers in hand. “And since we’re off the work and investigations embargo, I think Nico’s been wanting to ask a question.”
Nico gasped. “You’re a ninja. How do you always know?”
“Observation and instinct. It also helps when you know someone. You and Daniel do it all the time.”
“But we— Yes, of course.” He grinned. “So can I talk about Mrs McTavish now?”
“How do you even know about that case?” Aidan groaned.
“Jack told me. I want to help him hunt, and he said this would be a good case to learn. I’ve been looking at her online profiles, and the people she interacted with. And then Daniel found her journal.”
“She had a journal?” That bit of news had slipped Gareth’s net.
“An online one. A personal blog,” Daniel said. “It explained why she looks sad in many of the photos Nico found.”
“And why her nephews and nieces are all from her husband’s side of the family.”
“She didn’t get on with her own,” Alex murmured.
“No,” Nico agreed. “She says in her blog that her mother always preferred her twin sister. That she could never please her however much she tried. And that her sister was mean and manipulative.”
He turned to Aidan, then, and Gareth was struck by how much older he appeared. Not that either of the boys had ever been childish, but this was something else, a new maturity. Gareth wished he could bottle the moment to share with Jack.
“After reading this, I’m wondering if the dead lady actually was Mrs McTavish.”
Aidan blinked. “Who else would it have been?”
“The twin sister? All these discrepancies Skylar noted—that the coroner’s description doesn’t tally with the picture of the lady he got from her flat.
That she wasn’t wearing the ring the niece said she never took off.
That clothes were missing from her wardrobe.
What if the woman in the bed wasn’t Mrs McTavish but her twin sister? ”
“Interesting.” Aidan fell silent and studied the fire.
“Didn’t you say the family identified her?” Gareth asked.
“Yes. But they are really her late husband’s family, right? Maybe they didn’t see her often and didn’t know she had a twin.”
“They didn’t expect Aunt Margot not to be Aunt Margot,” Alex chipped in. “Identifying a body isn’t something people are familiar with. When they have to do it, they’re often in shock or grieving. Do they even look properly?”
“I don’t understand why the real Margot McTavish would go to such lengths.” Nico sounded frustrated. “Put her sister in her bed and disappear, I mean. Jack said the dead lady died of a heart attack. Surely…”
“Welcome to the wonderful world of investigation,” Aidan drawled. “Why do people do crackbrained things?”
He was teasing, but Daniel and Nico took the question at face value. “Money. Revenge,” Daniel said.
“Hurt pride. Maybe she wanted a fresh start,” Nico added. “Or perhaps it’s a scam. Something in a will?”
“There’s nothing special in her will,” Aidan said.
“Not in hers,” Nico said. “In someone else’s. You know those clauses you get in wills? When A dies before B, then the money goes to X. When B dies before A, then the money goes to Y.”
“You’re reading far too much mystery fiction,” Aidan drawled, though Gareth saw his mind going a mile a minute. “I wish Horwood was here.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Because I’ve become used to throwing him a random question and getting a detailed answer back a few minutes later.”
“You don’t say.” Gareth struggled to hold back his laughter. Jack had told him only the other day that Conrad was convinced he could perform miracles.
“I do say. In fact, he answers even if you haven’t asked him a question. It’s fucking uncanny.”
“What did he do? He surprised you again, right? What did he do?”
Aidan opened his second beer. He’d make that one last to the end of the evening.
“Did Jack tell you I bumped into him at the Cinnamon Club the other day? I was meeting with officers from a charity. The guy I was with—he’s the CEO of the charity—complained that one of his projects isn’t getting good enough press and he couldn’t work out why.
Jack was fiddling with his phone while we talked—you know, the way he does when he’s not entirely comfortable somewhere and is distracting himself?
—and then he suddenly suggests, cool as you please, that the charity might want to audit the project director’s financials.
Because while the project failed to reach its targets, the director’s daughter went to an eye-wateringly expensive private school, and the man had just bought a brand-new Aston Martin. ”
“And was he right? Jack, was he right?”
“Of course, he was friggin’ right. Big internal investigation, police called, the whole nine yards. All from half a complaint that wasn’t even directed at him.”
“It’s fascinating to hear him explain how he reaches his conclusions,” Alex said.
“You mean he knows? I always thought it’s intuition,” Gareth said.
“Intuition is just your brain processing too fast for your conscious mind to follow. You give Jack a problem, he gives you a solution, and it seems instantaneous. But if you ask him later, he can unravel the whole pattern for you, tell you all the steps that took him to the solution.” Alex sounded wistful, as if Jack’s absence deprived her of a treat.
Aidan saw it, too, and offered what comfort he could. “Wish I hadn’t sent him.”
“But he’s happy you did,” Nico threw in. “He likes Japan.”
“He didn’t like meeting that Max guy again,” Daniel said, and Alex’s eyebrows went up.
“Max? As in Max Young?”
Daniel shrugged. “Dunno. But he sounded as if he’d rather be elsewhere when he said the name.”
“That wouldn’t be the guy who left Jack stuck on a roof without backup, would it?” Gareth asked.
Alex sighed. “That’s the one.”
“No wonder he wanted me to duct tape Conrad’s nuts to the fridge.”
“I knew nothing about that,” Aidan sputtered.
Gareth switched his empty beer bottle for a fresh one. “I’m sure you will once he gets home.”
The floorboards gleamed red in the light of the early morning sun, their colour vibrant against a backdrop of moss-covered tree trunks, grey stone, and pale, raked gravel.
Jack’s measured breaths and the shuffle and slap of his bare feet on the boards joined birdsong and the rhythmic clacking of a bamboo fountain.
The storm that had torn across the country—almost a typhoon according to Min—had blown itself out overnight, with the calm that followed feeling like a welcome respite.
Jack had been awake for forty hours. Gritty eyelids told that tale, as did his stiff shoulders and the feeling his head was too far from his feet. Yet he was still a long way from sleep.
Storms in Japan were nothing like the storms in England.
There’d been high winds, yes. But also the most spectacular lightning, and more water pouring down on him than he’d ever felt outside of a shower.
Flooded roads, collapsed verges, fallen trees, and broken telephone poles had turned their escape into an obstacle course and he’d have relished the challenge of driving through it all if he hadn’t had to dodge the gunmen on their tail.
He could have done without a wounded, feverish Max Young in the car, too.
And without a rock star throwing a tantrum in the backseat.
The tantrum had been on Max’s behalf, and Ryu had apologised the moment he’d realised he was in a snit. Still…the brief outburst had been spectacular, given the range of Tempest’s voice and the decibels his well-trained lungs could produce.
Jack shifted, breathed, raised the bokken over his head and brought it down in a diagonal slash. Frowned at the position he found himself in at the end of the move. Took a step back and started over.
He didn’t care whether it took him fifty repetitions, or a hundred. Practising kata never failed to calm him. Some days, it just took longer.
The sun had moved from lighting the dojo floor to warming the roof tiles when Min Park appeared in the open sliding door. Jack lowered the bokken. “Trouble?”
“No. Apologies for interrupting. I didn’t know you were a kendoka.”
“Max and Ryu?”
Min took the change of topic without a blink. “I just let the doctor out. Max is awake. Ryu is asleep. Finally.”
“Worries too much.”
Min shrugged. “It’s Max. People worry about him.”
“Yeah. Need me?”
“No. We’re good here. Safe. You can sleep.”
“You were up all night, too.”
“I’ll switch off with Theo when the others get here. Akane called. She’d like your help later.”
“Tea first,” Jack decided. “Then I’ll sleep. Ask Akane to give me a couple of hours?”
“It’d be longer than that.”
“That’s fine then. Wake me when she’s ready.”
He watched Max’s second walk away, noted the slump to his shoulders, and made a mental note to check with Theo that Min was getting some rest, too.