‘Thanks, Pete, I owe you big-time.’
‘Too right you do!’ Pete said, and hung up.
Pulling in to park the car outside the cabin, Blane turned and looked at Anna and gave her a wry smile.
‘What?’ she asked innocently.
‘When you get the bit between your teeth you really go for it, don’t you?’ he remarked.
‘Was I a bit overboard with Pete?’
‘You were asking him to put his job on the line by the sounds of it, and that is an awful lot to ask anyone.’
‘I need the DNA results to solve this case,’ Anna said indignantly.
‘So this Lady Gloria, is she some bigwig back in England?’ he asked, changing tack to keep the peace.
‘Rich, powerful and very influential. She probably has a direct line to the Queen and Prime Minister, she’s that important.’
‘Really, to the Queen and Prime Minister?’ Blane grinned.
‘Figure of speech, but probably true,’ Anna said, and they both laughed.
Chapter Thirty
By the time they sat down to enjoy the barbecued ribs, chicken and side salads, Anna had read the Gardeners’ World article and given Don a run-down of the background and both investigations into Josh Reynolds’ death, and played him the tape of her and Dewar’s interview with Gloria Lynne. They sat at the dining table eating their food as Anna showed him a copy of the suicide note, which he took his time to read.
At last, he turned to look at Anna. ‘I have to say that I agree with Dewar: it doesn’t seem the type of note you’d expect someone who’s about to commit suicide to write.’
‘Question is, who did write it?’ Anna wondered, eager for his thoughts.
‘The note does reveal a possible family connection through knowledge of Esme’s death.’ He pointed to the line that read, ‘I have felt very depressed since my mothers death.’
‘Does Donna refer to her husband as Josh or Joshua?’ he continued.
‘Josh, why?’
‘And he regularly used the name Josh himself?’
‘Yes, all the time.’
Blane pointed to the end of the note and Anna picked up on his thought process.
‘It’s signed “Love Joshua”. I’d say Donna didn’t write it.’
‘Your attention to detail is amazing!’ she exclaimed and kissed him.
‘With the certificates Bill Roberts sent you there is a clear connection between a Gloria Lynne and Samuel Peters,’ Blane observed.
‘Marriage certificates don’t show dates of birth. It’s the same with the parents on a birth certificate – only shows their ages,’ Anna said, with a tinge of frustration.
‘Let’s do a side-by-side comparison of what we have concerning Gloria and Samuel, see what’s recurring,’ he suggested.
‘I love working with you,’ Anna said gratefully.
Blane picked up the Gloria Rediker and Samuel Peters marriage certificate.
‘They married in 1983 when she was eighteen. Samuel is shown as a fisherman aged twenty-four, so age-wise that fits with Samuel’s birth certificate. Gloria’s father is shown as David Rediker deceased, and mother as Mavis Rediker.’
Anna leaned in closer, and pointed out that the witnesses to Gloria and Samuel’s marriage were Esme and Marisha Peters. She picked up the Gloria Peters and Xavier Alleyne marriage certificate. ‘Gloria’s parents are shown as David Rediker and Mavis Rediker, both deceased. It’s got to be the same Gloria that married Samuel Peters, Xavier Alleyne and then Lord Henry Lynne.’
He pointed to the ‘condition’ section of the marriage certificate, which said widow, as Bill Roberts had reported.
‘That’s obviously a lie to enable her to marry this Xavier guy.’
Anna’s laptop pinged: there was an e-mail from Joan with attachments. One was a scanned copy of Josh Reynolds’ birth certificate. In the text, Joan said that this was the only certificate of his she could find and there were no adoption papers. The other attachment, a marriage certificate, showed that Esme and John Reynolds had married in London in December 1985.
Anna read Josh’s birth certificate. It showed Esme Peters as the mother of Joshua Peters, born Jamaica on 5 August 1983, with the father unknown. Blane picked up the copy of Arum Joshua Peters’ birth certificate that Bill Roberts had sent and held it next to the laptop screen. The date and place of registration for the birth were exactly the same for both Arum and Joshua, but the one sent in by Bill Roberts had Arum’s father listed as Samuel Peters, a fisherman, aged twenty-four, and the mother Gloria Peters was shown as eighteen at the time of giving birth, with a maiden name of Rediker.
‘Okay, let me get this straight, Gloria Rediker was eighteen when she married Samuel Peters, then gave birth to Arum six months later,’ he observed.
‘Right, so that means Arum and Joshua have to be the same person. For some reason, Gloria must have given Arum to Samuel’s sister Esme without going through the proper channels,’ Anna said.
Blane followed up on her comment: ‘Then Esme emigrated to England and met John Reynolds, they married and gave Josh his surname.’
‘That means this birth certificate Esme had for Josh is fake,’ Anna realized, resolving to e-mail Joan to get a forensic document examiner to look at it.
‘All this happened thirty years ago. What we don’t know is how it fits with the death of Joshua Reynolds. This is so frustrating,’ Anna said, sitting back in her chair and running her hands through her hair.
Blane suggested they strip the information back to basics, as sometimes when you looked too deep you missed the obvious. ‘Okay, let’s go again. Nineteen eighty-three, Gloria Rediker was pregnant and married Samuel Peters in Port Morant, a small fishing village at the south-eastern tip of the island. A year later, Mavis Rediker dies then Gloria and Samuel are evicted from the house with their son Arum Joshua Peters,’ he said.
Anna looked at her notes. ‘By late eighty-five Esme was in the UK with her son Joshua and married John Reynolds…’ She paused before looking up at him. ‘Gloria must have given Arum to Esme just after the eviction,’ she said.
Blane continued: ‘Nineteen eighty-six, Gloria Peters, née Rediker, is pregnant with Donna and marries Xavier Alleyne, a wealthy banana plantation owner in Montego Bay, which is at the western tip of the island. A couple of years later, Gloria and Xavier have a second daughter, Aisa.’
Anna raised her hand, causing Blane to stop.
‘Hang on, Aisa is mixed race, whereas Donna is white, and she told Dewar and Barolli she was adopted.’
‘Well, if Xavier was mixed race as well, then it is feasible to have one white and one mixed race child.’
‘Yeah, but the only reason she would think she was adopted would be because Gloria told her she was.’
Lack of sleep and the warm room were making Blane feel tired; Anna, however, wasn’t flagging in the slightest.
‘I’d say that Gloria dumps Samuel, then has a bigamous marriage to Xavier, rags to riches and four years later he suddenly dies of a heart attack aged thirty-two!’ she pressed on, not noticing that Blane was beginning to lose interest and yawning.
Standing up, she began to pace around the room. ‘Next, Gloria sells the land to property developers, moves to the UK with the two girls and sets up a florist’s shop in Weybridge. There she meets and marries the billionaire Lord Henry Lynne, aged seventy bloody eight!’
‘And did they both live happily ever after?’ Blane asked with apprehension.
‘He lasted eight years, died on holiday in Egypt, no post mortem, no questions asked.’
‘So technically, her marriage to Lord Lynne must be bigamous as well if the one to Samuel was never annulled,’ he added, stifling another yawn.
‘I know there’s no evidence to show she murdered Xavier or Lord Henry, and I’m treading a dangerous path, but I’m convinced that it’s all linked to Josh Reynolds’ death.’