‘I really can’t talk about that. I’ve only been on the board, what, two hours and it’s fair to say that I don’t have the trust of the entire family, I never have had. So if I was to start leaking details of confidential board discussions on the very first day I was party to them, that would not be looked upon very favourably.’
‘I can easily get a warrant, if I’m convinced that it has anything to do with Mrs Roy’s murder.’
‘I’m sure you can. But I think in the first instance you should speak to our chairman who, also being the company lawyer, will know the finer points of our rights and responsibilities as directors.’
Gillard nodded. ‘When I spoke to you previously, you said you had no ambitions for wealth or power.’
‘So what is this now, a careers chat?’
‘You may not be surprised to know that certain members of the family think you are connected to the killing of their mother.’
‘Prisha, obviously.’ Morag looked at him. ‘When it comes to her I can do no right. I do hope you are rational enough to give it no credence.’
‘I’m not here to satisfy the suspicions of individual members of the family, but I am here to follow where the evidence leads.’
Morag’s mouth hung open. ‘What evidence do you have against me? I adored Mrs Roy, she taught me almost everything I know about business. I admired her as a woman who fought incredible odds to make it in a man’s world. She encouraged me and nurtured me.’
‘Until you began a relationship with her son.’
Morag folded her arms and eyed Gillard suspiciously. ‘Look, I’m quite happy to tell you the story of my relationship with Harry, if it’s at all relevant.’
‘It might help if you did.’
Morag settled herself into the sofa. ‘I met Harry more than fifteen years ago on my first day at Essex University. He was a year above me, and of course already had a fair amount of cash to throw about, courtesy of his parents. He was studying chartered accountancy, I was reading business and management. We met at one of those departmental parties in which freshers get plied with enormous amounts of alcohol and end up with a thick head in the room of somebody they don’t know.’
‘So you ended up in Harry’s room?’
‘Yes, but it’s not like it sounds. We were in the same hall of residence. I had a crush on his roommate, a tall blond Dutchman, Adriaan, who never noticed me. I was never one of the glamour girls, far too pale and spotty, but in those early days I trailed around behind Ad hoping he would spot me. Inevitably, I found myself spending a lot of mealtimes sitting with Harry and his friends, hoping to get closer to my crush. I got incorporated into their circle, which I found comforting given my failure to make any inroads on Ad. Harry often ended up in my room because Ad had got some glamorous girl or other in there. We became firm friends first, and then something more. Harry was always a very happy-go-lucky and cheerful individual, and of course a lot of his friends weren’t truly admirers but enjoyed the fact he always picked up the tab.’
Gillard was willing her to fast forward a little bit more to relevant times, but had to concede that her fondness for Harry Roy seemed entirely genuine.
‘That first summer, Harry managed to get me a job in the packing hall of Empire of Spice, where I was one of the very few non-Indian staff. The pay wasn’t great, it was as hot as hell, but I needed the money. Harry’s mother came and sought me out one time after a few weeks, and give be one of those shrewd almost forensic one-minute interviews about my ambitions and background. She seemed rather impressed that my father had been a coal miner and my mother a home help. It’s not a reaction I had experienced before.
‘She then said something to me that stuck with me for many years, something it was almost shocking to hear. “Morag, when the gods made mankind they discovered some pathetic little wrinkled bits left over, and weren’t sure what to do with them. Eventually they decided to allocate testicles to men, and look how they have wasted them, leading them astray in the search for pleasure. If they had given balls to women, just imagine the courage, the leadership and the determination the world would now have. Morag, make sure you have balls. You will get nowhere without them.”’
Gillard chuckled.
‘During the next vacation I was switched to a different and more challenging line, and after a few weeks was promoted to shift supervisor.’
‘Did Harry ever work on the line?’
Morag laughed. ‘Of course not. He’s a boy! More than 90 per cent of those in the packing hall were middle-aged women, with just a sprinkling of students. Not many stuck it for long. I did pick up some Hindi and Gujarati though, and I can also lip-read.’
‘So you and Harry were boyfriend and girlfriend throughout university?’
She equivocated slightly. ‘We were, but we also slept with other people. It was very relaxed and loving and trusting. When he qualified, with an upper second, he went straight into the company in middle management as preordained. He always knew it would happen. His father was already dropping hints about finding a good Gujarati girl. I pleaded with Harry to expand his horizons, to come travelling, to extricate himself from the dead hand of the family.’
‘Did he ignore you?’
‘Well, not entirely. We did travel together through the Indian subcontinent, and did some trekking in the Himalayas. He got altitude sickness, then amoebic dysentery, so that was the end of that. He came back to Slough, and I went off to Italy to get an MBA. I fell in love, then out of love, nearly got married, then came to my senses at the last minute, then got pregnant by someone else and gave birth. I remained working in Milan and doing well. Then my father died. Harry and I had lost touch, but amazingly he turned up completely unannounced at my father’s funeral in 2011. In Longannet, Fife he stood out like a lamb dhansak in a fish and chip shop. I was there with my own son, James, who was three. Harry told me that his father had already set him up twice for arranged marriages. Being the eldest son he had much more leeway to extricate himself than daughters would, but there was still this relentless drip-drip pressure for him to produce a son to carry on the business.’
‘Did he not want children?’
‘Of course! He adores children, but he just wanted to choose his own wife, and probably one who was anglicised. He wasn’t into the big Gujarati macho male thing. Deep down he is a west London boy, and a bit of a party animal. Harry’s father had a stroke in 2008, and after that the marriage pressure mounted enormously. Still, what he’d seen of arranged marriages wasn’t encouraging. Prisha wed Deepak in 2000 – that was arranged – and had produced a daughter, Indigo, but no son, and very little happiness. Kiara had fought her own way out of an arranged marriage in 2005, and was basically just completely bolshie, though of course I admire her for that.
‘So when he came to me in Longannet in 2011 I eventually realised that it wasn’t just about rekindling our lost friendship. He wanted to marry me, and become stepdad to James.’
‘But the family wouldn’t accept it?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t accept it, for a start. That family is a snake pit. It was abundantly clear that his love for me was regarded by the family as simply an obstacle to be overcome, like a limp or a squinty eye. He was torn because he didn’t want to disappoint his mother, whom he adored, but he was afraid of his father who, since the stroke, felt his own time slipping away. Harry just wanted a quiet life, but he was already being groomed to be finance director by this time. He thought that if I agreed to bring up my child as a Hindu, that that might be enough. I wasn’t convinced.
‘Harry couldn’t speak to his father, who was implacable and obtuse, so he tried to work on his mother, to get her to drop her opposition to him marrying me. If they would welcome me, he thought he might be able to change my mind. And for a while it seemed like it might work. I was offered a job on the operations side at Slough, which Harry could not have pushed through without his mother’s acquiescence. Mrs Roy was very pragmatic, however, because she encouraged me in my w
ork at Empire of Spice, even though she made it clear that her husband had vetoed any relationship I might want with their son.
‘During that time Harry dated a couple of Indian women that had been more informally introduced to him. They were both quite spiky, anglicised and liberated career women, which at least showed that his mother had taken on board who her son actually was. However after a few months in each case, he was dumped. I gather from Kiara, who was friends with one of them, that it was because they distrusted my friendship with Harry, and suspected me of carrying on with him.
‘Finally, in 2017, Dr Roy died. I did wonder whether that would change anything or everything, but as it later turned out the creation of the trust did a good job of letting him rule from beyond the grave. However, he died without ever seeing the birth of a male to carry forward Empire of Spice. It must’ve been a bitter disappointment to him.’
‘We’ve seen some video surveillance footage by private detectives of Harry’s house from last year,’ Gillard said. ‘Were you aware at the time that the Roy family was spying on you and Harry?’
Morag shook her head. ‘Not until later. You can see why I didn’t want to marry into this lot, can’t you? Yes, Prisha commissioned it I believe, but I became aware of it when Harry was told. The point was that Harry and I had been spending some time together, even though he told his mother that our relationship was over, and he was getting ready to marry this latest bride that Zayan had found for him in Mumbai.’
‘Sounds like you’re well out of it,’ Gillard said. ‘Still I don’t really understand why Prisha should be worried about you, because of this trust stipulation—’
‘Ah, so you found out about that? Yes, I suspect that half of Prisha’s venom towards me is because she thinks we are in a race to produce a Hindu son.’
‘But you are not even married to Harry. The wording—’
‘Ah, no. As long as the child is born in wedlock, that’s the wording. It’s all academic anyway. Harry and I aren’t sleeping together.’
Gillard closed his notebook and thanked Morag for her time. ‘Do have a think about who has had access to your car,’ he added. He watched her leave the room, closing the door behind her. There was a huge amount to mull over, evidence of many rifts within the family, but no obvious reason why anyone should kill Mrs Roy. He needed much more before being able to narrow down a suspect, someone who could be arrested to allow Jason Waddington to be freed.
In the meantime, the future of the Roy’s family company seemed to hang in the balance.
Gillard snapped out of his reverie. There was one urgent task to be accomplished. He rang Mount Browne and was put right through to DC Carl Hoskins.
‘Carl, I’ve got something very important on the Tanvi Roy murder case.’ He read out the registration number of the Toyota Avensis estate that Morag Fairburn owned. ‘Look through the ANPR records right across the county, including the M25.’
‘Okay, sir I’ll get right on to it.’
‘Message me back with the details as soon as you have them. I want to know everywhere that car has been, particularly on the morning of Mrs Roy’s murder, but two days either side. This car may be the only firm connection between the murder scene and the Roy family. If we can work out who was driving it that morning, we may have our murderer.’
* * *
By the time Gillard emerged from the music room, Vikram Vaj and Harry Roy had disappeared, their vehicles gone. Gillard could hear laughter in the kitchen, and made his way quietly through to see Kiara and Prisha in animated conversation. Kiara looked up, alarmed, a hand to her chest when she saw Gillard.
‘Oh, I thought you’d gone. Can I offer you a coffee, and some snacks?’ She indicated several plates full of samosas and other triangular pastries. ‘These ones are particularly delicious, moong dal with spicy prawn and coconut,’ she said, taking a bite.
Gillard agreed, and a plate of the still-warm delicacies was handed to him by Prisha. ‘I was wondering if you could summarise for me what is going to happen with your family company?’ he said, before biting into one of the delicious crispy pastries.
Kiara looked to Prisha, who said: ‘It is still up in the air actually. We’ve had a takeover offer, from Mr Lam’s company, which is well short of what we thought the company was worth. We were both perplexed because my mother and Harry have in the past rejected much higher offers than this. It was only when Harry admitted that we owe the banks £108 million that it became clear why he was recommending acceptance.’
Kiara looked up to her sister: ‘Vikram won’t be very happy about you spilling the beans to the police, Prish.’
‘He can go to hell. Let’s face it, there’s been too much secrecy. You and I have been kept in the dark for years, not to mention short-changed.’
‘We have until Thursday at noon to accept the bid or it will be withdrawn,’ Kiara said. ‘Harry seems to think that we might run out of cash to pay suppliers in a week or two. So he is recommending that we accept.’
Prisha took over. ‘Kiki and I voted against, on principle. But we’ve only got one per cent between us. Harry and the trust basically do what they want because they’ve got an inbuilt majority.’
‘Who do you blame for this?’ Gillard said, knowing it was an inflammatory question.
‘Deepak,’ they chorused.
‘I’ve always known my ex-husband was greedy,’ Prisha said ‘But I didn’t think he was stupid. If I get my hands on him, I’ll kill him.’
‘She means metaphorically speaking,’ Kiara added hurriedly.
Gillard looked at the expressions exchanged between the two sisters, and decided there was nothing metaphorical about it. Prisha Roy was molten.
The detective realised that some criminal offences had almost certainly taken place within the management of Empire of Spice, but his priority still lay with investigating the murder. That didn’t mean to say he shouldn’t hand out some advice. ‘I would advise you at this time to do the right thing by your staff, customers and suppliers in case you are called to account.’
‘You had better save that for the directors,’ Prisha said. ‘We’re the victims in this, remember? Shareholders, especially small ones with no board representation, are the first to get wiped out when a company goes belly up. Look, I’ve got to go,’ She looked at her watch, slung her handbag over her shoulder and said goodbye to her sister. With a small smile at Gillard, she stalked out. They both watched her go.
‘She is still very angry,’ Kiara said. ‘She has a burning sense of injustice, because she’s much harder working and probably more talented than Harry, and throughout her life it was just never recognised.’ She leaned towards Gillard conspiratorially. ‘She’s probably too proud to tell you, but when Harry was born, Prisha felt like she had suddenly ceased to exist. She told me this, in sisterly solidarity, when I was having my own bad times. She was fed by the housekeeper, while Mummy fed Harry on her knee, and had his cot in her room. If he cried, she would gather him into her bed. She never did that with her.’ She shook her head in exasperation. ‘The exquisite irony is that Indian mothers are still foot soldiers in the patriarchy.’
‘So that is why Prisha went off to form her own business?’
‘Yes, in the end. Particularly when she married Deepak. She was trampled in the rush as he was welcomed into the bosom of the family, and treated immediately as the talented entrepreneur he never was. The fact that he was always an utter shit, both to her and everyone else, seemed to count for nothing.’
‘Will the next generation set it right?’ Gillard asked.
‘I sincerely hope so.’
* * *
DC Hoskins came through with the number plate data pretty quickly.
‘I think it is the same car, sir. It tripped the nearest camera to Ashtead at 7.57 a.m. on the morning of her death. That is six miles away, then went on to trip a whole series of cameras on the A244 northbound between Oxshott and Esher at the roadworks from around eight o’clock to quarter past.
We’ve got no other cameras triggered that day.’
‘Morag Fairburn lives at Esher, Carl.’
The junior detective scratched his head. ‘But Kirsty Mockett’s description said it was a man she saw on the bike. And from the camera at Ashtead Station, even the enhanced image shows there is no passenger in the front seat of the car.’
Gillard nodded. ‘I can’t see Morag Fairburn wielding the weapon. But there’s something there, something I can’t quite get my head around. Everything she says is completely reasonable. In fact to me she seems by far the most balanced person around the family, except perhaps Kiara. But something doesn’t sit right. And I don’t know what it is.’
Chapter 16
Gillard was just turning into the close where he lived when he saw a black Porsche Cayenne turn right out of the street, heading towards central London. He glanced at the registration number and did a double take. What on earth was Prisha Roy doing snooping around his street?
He got home to find Sam disconsolately pushing the vacuum cleaner around. ‘Just had a viewing, at short notice. An appalling woman, seemed to sneer at everything. She even said the place was grubby and smelt of cats. The estate agent apologised to me afterwards.’
‘Was she by any chance of Asian ethnicity, in a posh black Porsche?’
‘Oh, did you see her leaving then?’
‘I did. And it’s completely out of order! She was Prisha bloody Roy!’
‘Her? She gave her name as Mrs Tripathi. That bitch. How dare she?’
He could see her anger mounting rapidly. ‘I’m sorry…’
‘She belittled me, Craig. That woman made me feel this small.’ Sam held up finger and thumb close to her husband’s face. ‘And fat.’
‘She made you feel small and fat?’
‘And fucking inadequate.’ She began to cry, her face crinkling. The next words were harder to discern, but punched hard and low. ‘Craig, you never told me she was beautiful.’
The Body in the Snow Page 21
