The Ardmore Inheritance, Rob Wyllie [best novels for students TXT] 📗

Alison gave her a perplexed look as if struggling to recall the name, then said. 'Susan Priest? Yes of course, Susan McColl, the twins' old nanny. I heard what happened to her. It's all around the village as you can imagine. It was so awful.'

It wasn't the reaction that Maggie was expecting. 'But...' she started, then bit her lip. And then she thought about what Frank had told her, about Ronnie French's visit to Winchester, about the old Ford Focus seen lurking just along the road from where the terrible incident took place. She remembered her last visit to Alison's lochside home, where the path to the porch was blocked by the old car parked on the tiny gravel drive. It seemed impossible to believe, but surely there could only be one reason why Alison Macallan had failed to mention her visit to the Priests not more than three weeks earlier?

Now it was important to act perfectly normally, for Maggie not to betray her suspicions until she could pass them onto the police. She smiled at her,

'Yes, these teenage joy-riders are a plague, aren't they? They get high on drugs and then cause so much devastation to the lives of their innocent victims. I expect the police will catch the perpetrator sooner or later. But anyway, maybe we can get five minutes in the hotel after the wake, get your agreement signed and draw a line under all of this?'

'That would be great,' Alison said. 'But here, it looks like the service might be about to start. I'd better go in, though I'm not looking forward to it. Will you sit with me Maggie?'

'I'm not invited I'm afraid. Friends and close family only.'

Maggie turned to look at the door of the old church, just in time to catch Jimmy and Flora entering.

They were holding hands.

◆◆◆

He supposed you could call it a team meeting, although generally speaking Frank didn't do teams nor meetings either. But now he could sense they were within a whisper of solving the convoluted tangle of linked murders, and he couldn't slot in these final pieces of the jigsaw without the assistance of wee Eleanor Campbell and the annoyingly laid-back Ronnie French. Now it seemed almost certain that it had been Commodore Roderick Macallan who had murdered Morag and Isabelle McKay, but the motive was still a mystery, and was there a connection to Daniel Clarkson? The brief he had given Eleanor was as wide-ranging as it was in fact brief. Find out everything that Daniel Clarkson was up to. She had, as he had expected, initially bridled at the task, because that's what she always did, but eventually, and only after he had threatened to ask another of her Maida Vale colleagues instead, she complied.

In parallel, French had been tasked with piecing together Clarkson's life story, and Frank had to admit, albeit reluctantly, that the lazy slug had done a decent job. Thirty-one years old, raised in Gateshead, joined the navy at eighteen, trained as a communications specialist, served on the nuclear submarines, based out of Ardmore, joined civvy street after ten years' service, set himself up as an IT contractor specialising in cyber security. That made Frank laugh. Talk about poacher turning gamekeeper. But it was the discovery that Clarkson had been at Ardmore base at the exact same time as Lieutenant James McKay, both under the overall command of Commodore Roderick Macallan, that had excited him most. Because there was no way that was just some sort of bizarre coincidence. No way.

And now, a few days later, they were huddled round Eleanor Campbell's desk, waiting for the great diva to deliver her wisdom, and hoping what she had discovered would cause everything to drop neatly into place.

'So how have you got on?' Frank said, trying not to betray the anxiety he felt. If none of this delivered, he feared the investigation might crash and burn before it really got started.

'You said find everything,' she said sourly, 'that's like a lot.'

He winked at French. 'Exactly. That's why we picked you. So, how have you got on?'

She gave him a glum look. 'He was using 128-bit encryption. So, not good.'

'Does that mean we're like buggered then?' Frank said.

She either didn't notice his gently mockery or chose to ignore it. 'No-one can hack 128-bit encryption. Not even Jayden. But I did manage to get some stuff.'

That was the thing about Eleanor, he thought. She liked to tease you with wee snippets of information, forcing you to drag it out of her so that she felt appreciated. So he tried to sound appreciative.

'That's amazing, well done,' Frank said, hoping his insincerity wasn't betrayed by his tone. 'Tell us more, do.'

'So he'd left some things unencrypted on his hard drive,' she began earnestly, 'and also I got into his bank account. He was quite rich. Nearly a hundred and eighty grand in his current account.'

'You hacked his bank account?' Frank said, impressed.

'Not hacked, accessed,' she corrected. 'Jayden lent me an app.'

'Good old Jayden. And do we have any ideas how our boy Geordie came by this pile of dosh?'

'Like, yeah,' she said, giving him a disparaging look. 'That Commodore dude paid him a hundred and twenty thousand.'

'What?' Frank spat out the response.

'Yeah, like four and a half years ago. Maybe an investment in his cyber business or something?'

'Nah,' French said. 'He only started that a couple of years' back when he came out the navy. Four years ago he was serving on HMS Azure, according to what I found out.'

'And are you sure Eleanor?' Frank said, still struggling to process the information. 'It was definitely Roderick Macallan who paid it?'

'Like, yeah,' she repeated, clearly offended that her statement should be challenged. 'Defo.'

'Interesting,' Frank said, his mind racing as he tried to work out what it meant. 'So why would he do that?'

'Services rendered guv,' French said simply. 'That's what it always is, ain't it?'

Frank nodded. 'Aye, you're probably right but it must have been something bloody big for