Fabrice had insisted that Alastair had had to die, and Madeleine felt that she owed Fabrice her help and protection for killing her husband. When she had learned from Stephen that Nathan had really killed Sophie, she had felt it her duty to get in touch with all Sophie’s children: Rupert, Beatrice and Fabrice. Beatrice and Rupert had not wanted to know, but Jerry, as he now was, had flown to Phoenix from LA immediately.
They had met in secret at a hotel in Scottsdale. She wasn’t sure whose idea it was to kill Nathan; they both seemed to think of it at the same time. Jerry had already killed once before. Madeleine had been involved wittingly or unwittingly in the cover up of at least two deaths.
Nathan had had to die, and Jerry had run him down in a hit-and-run, using precise information from Madeleine about where and when Nathan went for his evening strolls at their house in Scottsdale.
But Alastair, rather than just shutting up, had kept asking questions, to the point where he had guessed or discovered what Fabrice had done, and was threatening to make it public. Although Alastair hadn’t made the connection between Fabrice Trickett-Smith and Jerry Ranger, the police would once they started looking through their databases. Madeleine had felt duty-bound to tell Jerry, and having aided in his actions, didn’t feel she had the right to stop him from protecting himself, even if that meant killing Alastair.
And, of course, once Jerry had killed Alastair, he would need to lie low. Probably get a new identity. All with Madeleine’s help.
And so it would go on. And on. Who knew who else might end up dead in the future? Not Clémence, please not Clémence.
Actually, now Nathan was dead, Madeleine wanted to finish it all. Tell the truth, all of it. And face the consequences.
She bit into her shortbread.
‘Mrs Giannelli?’
She looked up to see a polite young man in a suit holding out a warrant card. Two uniformed airport policemen armed with machine guns stood behind him. The other inhabitants of the first-class lounge were silent, staring.
‘Yes?’
‘My name is Detective Constable Ford. Will you accompany me to the police station? We have some questions to ask you in connection with the murder of your husband.’
Madeleine closed her eyes. Opened them. Smiled. It was over.
‘With pleasure.’
28
Thursday 22 April 1999, St Andrews
Clémence slipped out of her French New Wave film studies lecture and hurried down the Scores to the hotel. She saw the old man alone at a table in a corner of the dining room, examining the menu.
‘Alastair!’ she shouted and rushed over to him. He scrambled to his feet and accepted her hug with a grin. ‘It’s so nice to see you!’ she gabbled. ‘Thanks for coming all this way to take me to lunch. You look very well.’
‘Not at all,’ said the old man. ‘I feel very well.’
Clémence sat opposite him. The world-weary confusion had been replaced by sprightliness. His brown eyes twinkled. He was still thin, and very old, but there was steel in the way that he sat, in his jaw, in the way he held his menu. Steel that glinted.
Clémence was almost overwhelmed by a surge of emotion, which it took her a moment to identify as happiness. She was just so pleased to see him alive and well and eager to see her. It was too much of a stretch to say that he was the only family that she had, yet with her mother entwined with her banker boyfriend in Hong Kong, her father in a Vietnamese school and her fairy great-aunt in jail, that’s what it felt like.
‘Nice smile,’ said the old man.
For some reason, Clémence felt her face reddening.
‘And nice blush.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ she said. She pulled a thick hardback book from her bag and dropped it with a thud on the table. ‘The Oxford English Dictionary,’ she said.
The old man glanced at her under his bushy eyebrows. ‘I know. I’ve looked it up.’
‘Read it out loud to me,’ Clémence ordered.
The old man flicked to the relevant page. He cleared his throat. ‘“Atelier. Noun. A workshop or studio. Origin seventeenth century, from French.”’
‘I think that’s pretty clear, don’t you?’ said Clémence, in triumph. She replaced the dictionary in her bag. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Train. I drove myself to the station. I’m driving now. I own an old Rover, you know. The MacInneses were looking after it.’
Clémence raised her eyebrows.
‘I’m perfectly safe.’
‘Is Sheila looking after you as well as your car?’
‘She keeps an eye on me. But I can do everything myself now. I even went down to London last week to buy Stephen those two pints I owed him.’
‘How was that?’
‘He only drank one of them,’ said the old man. ‘He is a miserable old git. But we’re going to stay in touch.’
They ordered. With only a moment’s hesitation, Clémence opted for the steak and chips. As an experienced student, she knew meals out were opportunities not to be missed. The old man joined her, and they each ordered a glass of red wine.
‘How’s your memory?’
‘It’s improving,’ the old man said. ‘Jigsaw pieces keep on turning up and I slot them into place. I’ve remembered a lot about Australia, and some of living in Yorkshire after the war. Oddly, still very little about the last year since I decided to come back to Britain.’
‘Will the rest come back?’
‘They don’t know. It may.’
‘You certainly look a lot better.’
‘I feel a lot better. I can feel that a burden that has been weighing on me for most of my life has been lifted. It’s strange, I couldn’t remember or identify exactly what that burden was, but that didn’t make it any less heavy. And it’s gone now.’
‘What are you going to do now?’ Clémence asked. ‘Will they let you stay on at Culzie?’
‘Until September.’
‘And after that?’
‘I’ve been talking to people in Australia. Turns out I have friends there. And an accountant and a lawyer. I didn’t sell my house in Mundaring, I rented it out, but the tenants are moving out in August. It sounds as if I was a pretty good doctor. People seem to have liked me. Still like me.’
‘That’s wonderful!’ said Clémence. ‘So are you going back there?’
‘Yes,’ said the old man. ‘In September. It’s like starting up a new life.’ He frowned. ‘Unfortunately, the one neighbour I do remember as a good friend, Mike, died last year. The eagle man. But that’s what happens when you get to my age.’
‘I’ll miss you,’ Clémence said.
The old man smiled. ‘Perth isn’t that far from Hong Kong, is it?’
‘It’s thousands of miles,’ said Clémence.
‘I’m sure it’s on the way to Scotland. You should drop by. You’re a student. You’ve got a backpack.’
Clémence laughed. ‘Yes, of course it is. I’d like that.’
Their steaks came, and Clémence tucked into hers with gusto.
‘How’s Callum?’ the old man asked.
‘He’s fine,’ she said. She felt herself blushing again, but this time the old man didn’t say anything. ‘He says hello.’
‘I thought of giving him my toaster. You know, if he needs a weapon to protect his house. You don’t need a licence for it.’
‘I’ll tell him. He’ll be thrilled.’
‘Have you heard anything more from the police?’
The legal situation had turned out to be very complicated. The police in Arizona naturally wanted Fabrice and Madeleine extradited, but the Scots wanted to charge Fabrice with attempted murder, or some other legal definition which encompassed running around the Highlands with a gun trying to shoot people. There was also the question of the death penalty. Fabrice had a prior conviction for murder, which made Nathan’s homicide a capital crime in Arizona. But it also made extradition from Scotland much more difficult.