Ralph had known that his wife was easy, the reason he had been attracted to her in the first place. He had never wanted the perennial wallflower, the stay-at-home wife, the meal on the table at dinnertime sort of woman. He had wanted someone wild and free, the same as him.
Both Ralph and Yolanda looked across the table one night, as the young Michael sat in his chair eating his meal.
‘We’re not cut out for this,’ Ralph said. It was the first time in several months that he had said something that his wife could agree with, the arguments, the separate beds, having become the norm.
‘He’s still our son,’ Yolanda said.
‘What do you suggest?’
‘When he reaches seven we can send him to a boarding school. In his holidays, he can come and stay with either of us.’
And that was that, so much so that in the years from his seventh birthday up until he was eighteen, father and son had not seen each other more than a handful of times. And even then it had always been for short periods, and neither felt comfortable in each other’s presence. Not that Yolanda, the mother, had been any better: always off here and there with one wealthy lover or another. Very soon the periods away from boarding school became a succession of brief contacts for the young Lawrence with his parents, intersected with activities such as hiking in Scotland or learning to surf in Hawaii, or whatever else the wealthy did with their children until they grew up.
The drugs came about after a weekend with the son of a banker at his house in the north of England. Two friends who had boarded together for the last five years, each looking out for the other. Michael Lawrence, extrovert and charming, his friend Billy, shy and introvert. It was the former who secured the two women, both eighteen and attractive, working class. With an empty house, the two friends seduced the women, not difficult given the amount of alcohol in the house, and it was them who introduced Michael and Billy to heroin.
Neither had been able to resist the descent into hell. Billy had died at the age of twenty-three, alone and destitute, after his father, desperate to protect his reputation, had thrown him and Michael out of the house after coming home early and finding the two of them cavorting with the women in the indoor swimming pool.
And now Ralph Lawrence found himself in the same room as his son. Each looked at the other, and then out of the window at the rehabilitation centre. Outside the weather was frosty and overcast, reflective of the mood in the room.
‘It has been a long time,’ Ralph said.
‘Time moves on,’ Michael said. He stood calmly, sedated or whatever the centre did to a person; Ralph didn’t know, didn’t want to either. He had spent a lifetime drinking, never once succumbing to anything more harmful than cocaine, the occasional joint of marijuana, and as for injecting into a vein, that wasn’t for him. He had seen it, who hadn’t in the circles he had moved in, but a fear of needles and an aversion to the sight of blood had served him well.
‘You’re looking well,’ Ralph said.
Both men struggled to come to terms with the current situation, and neither was enamoured of the other. Even when Michael had been growing up, and on the rare occasions that they had met, it had been difficult. A few hours away from the school at the weekend, a meal at a restaurant, a brief chat about school and what the other was up to, and then back to the school, both of them breathing a sigh of relief.
And now the two of them together, one older and supposedly wiser, the other in his thirties. It was the only time in nearly twenty years that both had been sober or detoxed. An uneasy stillness filled the room. Eventually, Michael took the initiative and approached his father, his right hand held out. Both men shook before Ralph put his arms around his son and embraced him. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We’ve both stuffed up, but now’s our chance to put it right.’
The two men left the room and walked down the corridor outside. Both of them felt a little embarrassed about their momentary show of emotion. Ralph had to admit to feeling good for the embrace, Michael was not so sure. To him, this was the man who had deserted him, had thrown his mother away. Whatever Yolanda Lawrence may have been, Michael, through the years at boarding school, had maintained a vision of his mother as someone of loveliness, someone who would come and rescue him. But she had never come, and Michael could only blame the man at his side.
‘It wasn’t wise, you coming here,’ Michael said as the two men sat down next to a coffee machine in the centre’s dining room. Ralph took two coffees and gave one to his son.
‘I wasn’t sure if I should, but Caroline said it was important. How is the treatment?’
‘The need remains.’
‘Unpleasant?’
‘It has been, but there is a greater cause.’
‘My father’s fortune,’ Ralph said.
‘I cannot wait a year.’
‘The drugs will return?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not used to feeling normal. Is this what it’s like?’
‘If you mean boring and uneventful, then yes,’ Ralph said. ‘Normality is that. I miss my previous life, but then I’m older.’
‘My mother?’
‘We’ll find her. The last I heard she was in the Caribbean, but that’s a few years ago.’
‘Why are you here, father? To gloat?’
Ralph shifted uncomfortably on his seat. The man he was talking to was a stranger, although the resemblance between the two men was noticeable. ‘You went to Caroline and then to Dundas, why?’
‘There were two police officers.’
‘DCI Cook?’
‘He was one of them. They told me about the one million pounds if I straightened myself out.’
‘The money would not have convinced you to change.’
‘It didn’t, but Giles Helmsley encouraged me.’
‘I know him, did you know?’
‘He never mentioned it.’
‘No doubt he wouldn’t. I was told that he was an anarchist.’
‘He is. He understands what needs to happen, and the cause needs money.’
‘Giles Helmsley needs money. Is he still the same malignant worm?’
‘He is a great man.’
Ralph realised that even without drugs, his son had fallen under the influence of Helmsley, a man who had few redeeming features.
‘Then we must disagree as to what you want, but it is still possible for us to work together for our mutual benefit, would you agree?’ Ralph said. As much as his son was alien to him, he had to admit that he liked the man, even if his attachment to Helmsley was of great concern.
‘For our benefit, then yes. But you, father, must do your part. If I am to work with you and my aunt, then you must agree to mend your ways.’
‘I’ll not get a job in an office, but let’s see. I can still sell, maybe there are opportunities for me in this country.’
‘And no hustling, breaking the law. We must be beyond reproach.’
‘We will be. It is strange, Michael. I almost feel excited at the prospect.’
‘I do not. It will be hard for me, but with you and Giles, I will persevere. I also want to see my mother one more time.’
‘Why only one?’ Ralph said.
‘Neither of us was put on this earth to live to a ripe old age, and neither of us has a woman who is devoted to us, we to them.’
Ralph said nothing, only thought to himself that Yolanda, wherever she was and whoever she was with, would look good dead and in bed. His son had reopened wounds that had been closed for too long.
Chapter 15
The atmosphere in Homicide was tense. It had been six weeks, and not one person had been put forward as the possible murderer of Gilbert Lawrence. The question of Dorothy Lawrence was still unresolved, and her remains had not been released for burial.
‘Update,’ Isaac Cook said. His mood had worsened in the last week, understandable given the current situation. In the past, the DCI’s temperament had remained constant even when the pressure was on, but now he could see unresolved que
stions begging for an answer.
Larry Hill was standing, his usual pose, Bridget grasped a file of papers in her hand, and Wendy Gladstone nursed her left leg, not wanting to show that her arthritis was giving her trouble, not fully conscious that rubbing the sore area only made her pain more noticeable to the others.
‘Ralph Lawrence is visible,’ Wendy said.
‘Doing what?’ Larry asked.
‘He’s moved out of the hotel and into a small flat in Bayswater.’
‘Not his style, is it?’
‘Not at all, but the man’s inheritance is conditional on him and his son sorting themselves out.’
‘That was for one year,’ Isaac said. ‘Neither of them is going to last that long. The son’s a hopeless junkie.’
‘He’s still in rehabilitation and doing well by all accounts,’ Bridget said.
‘How do you know?’
‘I phoned them up.’
‘They may have just given you the standard response,’ Larry said.
‘They may have, but you can check, can’t you?’
‘We can.’
Wendy was unsure what to do. In the past, she would have been involved looking for someone who was missing, but now all the main players were visible. Leonard Dundas and his daughter were most days at their office, Caroline Dickson and her husband, Desmond, were to be found at Desmond’s place of business or at home, and Ralph Lawrence was either at his flat or out at the son’s rehabilitation centre. And Molly Dempster could be found at her small house most days of the week.
‘Bridget, the papers you’re holding?’ Isaac said.
‘I’ve checked with the psychoanalysts in Australia and America. They’ve applied similar tests to Kingsley Wilde, and I’ve checked on the internet to see if there have been similar cases to this that would set a precedent.’
‘Have there been any?’
‘Not with a dead wife upstairs. Disputed wills can take years to resolve and a great deal of money. There was one case in the United States where so much money was spent to secure the inheritance that the legal costs were more than the money the complainant ultimately received.’
‘Has a case been registered yet by any of Lawrence’s family?’ Isaac said.
‘Not yet. They have twelve years to dispute the will, indefinite if fraud is proven.’
‘Ralph Lawrence has to stay out of trouble for a year, the same as the son. Neither of them is capable. Is Giles Helmsley still around?’
‘He’s visited Michael on a couple of occasions. On the third, he was ejected after making a scene about his right to see his friend whenever he wanted without visiting hours.’
‘Quoting the anarchist bible?’
‘According to the person I spoke to,’ Bridget said, ‘he made a fool of himself, spoke about the upcoming revolution when he and his people would take over, and he would remember those who had removed him from the building.’
‘If he took Wilde’s tests, what do you reckon?’ Isaac said.
‘He’d pass.’
***
Leonard Dundas, almost as old as Gilbert Lawrence, knew that his days as a solicitor were numbered, even his days on earth. Not a spiritual man, he could only reflect on what he had achieved. The son of a minor civil servant, a man who punched the time clock at work every morning, a newspaper under his arm. And then at the end of the day, he punched out and took the bus to his council house in a nondescript suburb, with a non-descript wife, only to sit by the radio of an evening smoking his pipe.
Dundas remembered it only too well: the sheer drudgery, the infinite boredom of a father who every year took his two-week holiday and booked into the same boarding house in the same seaside resort. And there would be the man with his wife and children, strolling up and down the promenade, sitting on the beach in rented deck chairs, and then, for a treat, fish and chips.
The one positive, Leonard Dundas realised as he sat at his desk, that his father had been a disciplined man, a trait inherited by the son. His father was a creature of circumstance, the son was as well, but he had had the benefit of an education and the chance to see some of the world. His mind was not closed to the opportunities, and a chance encounter with a young man about town by the name of Gilbert Lawrence had been opportune for both of them. To Dundas, Gilbert was a friend, as was his wife, but the children, Caroline and Ralph, were of little consequence.
He judged Caroline to be competent, although financially not astute. Ralph had been the bane of Gilbert’s life, and neither father nor son had much in common apart from a mutual disdain for each other, not like his daughter, Jill. To Leonard, his daughter was a person of great worth, even to Gilbert who had expressed his admiration for her. And now, Leonard knew, as he sat calmly in an attempt to slow the shaking of his hand, to ease the aching in his back and the throbbing in his chest, he had complete confidence that Jill would maintain Gilbert’s legacy, and his as well.
‘What is it, Father?’ Jill said as she came into his office. She had seen the glazed look in the man’s eyes, and him sitting motionless, almost like a statue. She also knew that he had pushed himself too hard in the last month securing Gilbert Lawrence’s fortune, making sure that the loose ends were tied up, and that his daughter had signing rights to all the accounts around the world, and that her name had been given on any proxies needed.
‘I’ve done what I can,’ Dundas said. And with that, his head fell forward. Ten minutes later, Leonard Dundas was in the back of an ambulance and on the way to the hospital, a mere formality, as he had been declared dead by the medic who had arrived with the ambulance.
The first that Homicide heard was a phone call from Caroline Dickson. ‘Leonard Dundas has suffered a heart attack. He’s dead,’ she said. It had been just five minutes after he had left for the hospital that she had arrived at his office for another of the scheduled meetings.
Bridget contacted the hospital to confirm it and then informed Pathology that they had another body to check.
***
With Leonard Dundas dead, the scheduled meeting at his office was cancelled indefinitely. Not that either the man’s death or deferring the meeting concerned Caroline. To her, he had been the devil incarnate, the man who had engineered himself into her father’s confidence and then stolen everything he could lay his hands on. She knew how Dundas and his daughter lived, very well in fact. A house in town, better than hers, and a place in the country.
With the senior Dundas out of the way, Caroline met with Ralph and Desmond to discuss the way forward. Desmond had to admit that his brother-in-law had changed. No more the flamboyance, the endless patter of the ‘what I can do for you’ and ‘to our mutual benefit’ jargon that he was usually only too keen to roll out.
‘It’s Michael,’ Ralph said. ‘He’s getting out in a few days.’
‘A problem?’ Desmond said.
‘You know it is. He needs somewhere to stay, and I don’t think that he and I should share, do you?’
‘Not here, if that’s what you are suggesting.’
‘We need Michael the way he is now. I went and saw him a couple of days ago. He’s straightened himself out, and he’s sure got my gift of the gab. He was charming one of the young nurses. I wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them haven’t got a thing going on when the lights are low.’
‘I thought there were rules about fraternising with the patients,’ Caroline said.
‘It’s not a hospital. More like a hotel with rules, that’s all. Good luck to him if he is. She was a cracker to look at.’
‘Has he said that he wants to stay with you?’
‘It’s either me or he’ll be back with Helmsley. He was back out there again, and this time they let him in.’
‘Why?’
‘He played their game, apologised for his previous outburst. Even gave them some cock and bull story about him suffering from an addiction.’
‘And they believed it?’
‘No reason not to. The man’s an oddball, and h
e can talk. No doubt they weren’t checking too hard either. There was another celebrity checking in, one of those holier-than-thou types. Outside there were some reporters and cameras. The centre was under pressure, and Helmsley took the opportunity.’
‘Any damage?’
‘To the centre?’
‘To your son?’
‘Michael started on about the cause again. I don’t know why, as he was a smart enough lad when he was young, and then there’s the nurse. If he could stay on the straight and narrow, she would do him a world of good, but there you are.’
‘Like father, like son,’ Caroline said. ‘You had it made with Ralph’s mother, but you blew it.’
‘There was more to it than that. You only saw one side. She used to play around, did you know?’
‘So did a lot of people back then, especially the crowd you hung around with.’
‘Maybe, but she left us high and dry. Michael wants to see her.’
‘What have you done about it?’
‘I found her. I don’t know why, but I thought she may have calmed down, not that I want to see her, but I had spoken to Michael’s doctor out at Waverley Hills Centre. He agreed, even spoke to her on the phone. She’s arriving in the country in two days’ time.’
‘Where’s she staying? Not with you, I hope.’
‘She’s booked herself into a hotel. Apparently, she’s got money, although not much else. She sounded upbeat, but it was a pretence.’
‘Is she pleased to be seeing her son?’
‘With Yolanda, it’s hard to tell. Maybe she regrets what happened.’
‘And maybe she realises that you’re on the cusp of a financial windfall,’ Caroline said.
‘Am I?’
‘Dundas is dead, his daughter’s in charge. We can deal with her.’
‘How? She’s been schooled by her father, and she’s no pushover.’
‘We’ll find out. The next meeting, you’re coming as my adviser.’
‘And Michael?’
‘One week at the same hotel as his mother. We have the funds to do that. After that, we’ll meet with him, as well as Yolanda if necessary. Leonard Dundas’s death couldn’t have come at a better time.’
DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 2 Page 32
