I occurred to me to wonder for the first time if he sold any of Sam and Ronnie’s jewellery on eBay. I’d never thought about it before, so I asked him now. He scowled. “I always used to keep a small stock of their top-selling items here on site, and they sold pretty well. But Ronnie and Sam do the majority of their mailings from London.” He gave me a wry smile. “That way they don’t have to pay me a commission.”
“But there’s a problem?”
“Yeah, Nick wants to change everything. His idea is to consolidate their delivery operations and outsource them to a fulfilment house. He thinks that splitting the stock is diluting their proposition – that was how he put it.”
“I thought he was supposed to be a hands-off shareholder?”
He grimaced. “So did I.”
“What does Ronnie think of this?”
“She doesn’t think their business is big enough to justify it. She’s worried that the fulfilment people will take too much of a cut, and she and Sam will end up worse off.”
“Huh.”
“Oh, and get this. After the robbery Nick told me to reduce the price of the items that I still had here in the barn. They were from the old catalogue, you see: end of range. I reckoned we should raise the prices because of the rarity value, but Nick knows best.”
Norah greeted us in the kitchen, and the three of us sat round the big oak kitchen table. The session soon seemed to turn into a council of war.
“That robbery,” Des said. “Confidentially, I could have got Sam back on her feet without any interference from Nick. Ronnie thinks I didn’t have the money to help them out, but that’s ridiculous.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I told Sam they should work out exactly what they’d lost and what it would cost to get the two of them back on their feet, and then I would see what I could do to help. My big mistake was that I suggested a notional figure – just to give her something to work round.”
“What went wrong?”
“Well, Nick was hanging out with them a lot in east London at the time, so he was on the spot and I wasn’t. He leapt in with a much bigger offer, plus all sorts of ideas for building up the business.” He sat back. “Look, I know it sounds unkind, but Sammy just wasn’t thinking straight. She was taken with the idea that he would be their knight in shining armour. The way she saw it, I was equivocating – holding back and demanding facts and figures – whereas the new man in her life was offering money on the table, no questions asked. And much more of it than I’d proposed.”
“In exchange for a share in their business.”
He sighed. “Ah, yes, somehow they managed to put that aspect out of their minds. Nick told them he wouldn’t interfere with the way they ran things.” He scowled. “You can see how much truth there was in that.”
Des and Norah broke off to prepare a meal. I stayed at the table and chatted to them. There was a beguiling homeliness about the environment.
Once we’d all sat down to eat, Des said, “You’re probably wondering why we asked you over. Frankly I think you’re the best person to talk some sense into Sam.” He waved away my unspoken objection. “I know about your circumstances, but Sam is very fond of you – you know that.”
“By talking some sense into her, I assume you mean prising her away from Nick?”
“That’s a rather blunt way of putting it, but in a nutshell, yes. Oh, he’s a personable enough character, and for months we gave him the benefit of the doubt.”
Norah leaned forward. “He’s a manipulative, ingratiating little shit, and it beats the life out of me why she doesn’t see it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Well don’t hold back, will you?”
Des gave me a grim smile. “Norah doesn’t have my patience, but I’m beginning to side with her on this. I can’t bring myself to like the man.”
“What does Sam have to say about this?”
Des said, “To begin with there was no talking to her. The sun shone out of that man’s backside. If either of us said anything negative about him, she would jump to his defence. We had to walk on eggshells.”
“This can’t be the Sam I know. You’re talking about her as if she was twelve years old.”
Des gave a baffled shake of the head. “She’s always had her head screwed on. She just seemed to fall under this guy’s spell, and that was that. It was impossible to get through to her any more. Nick is clever and charismatic, and he knows how to pull the right levers. Never underestimate him.”
“I get the impression that you think things are changing.”
They exchanged glances. “We reckon she’s started to see the error of her ways. You must have noticed it yourself, haven’t you?”
I nodded. “I’ve had the feeling she’s been waiting for me to tell her she’s made a mistake.”
Norah said, “In that case, why haven’t you?”
They were both staring intently at me. Carefully I said, “How could I sound convincing when she knows my own situation?”
She gave me a reproachful glance. “If you’ll forgive me, Mike, that’s a pretty self-centred view. This isn’t about you, it’s about Sam – and Nick.”
“I thought you would have liked me to get together with her.”
“That’s a separate issue.” Her searching look didn’t waver.
Des said, “The point is, you’re probably in the best position to do something about this. We’ve talked to Sam’s friends – Jessica, for instance – but they’ve tried and failed to get through to her. Now the door is slightly open, and you seem to be the right person to push it further.”
I looked from Des to Norah and back. Suddenly I had the sense that there was something they weren’t telling me. I said, “What else do you know? What’s this really about?”
Des said, “We were getting round to that.”
Chapter 36
Des said, “Do you remember I once told you about my cousin – the one who worked in an estate agency in the village down the road?”
I nodded. “He found out that Alan Treadwell had cheated over the price he originally paid for this farm. It gave you leverage against him when he tried to evict you.”
“That’s the man, yes. He was a widower, and a couple of years ago he married a woman working at another estate agency in the village. That’s how they got to know each other. And guess what company she worked for.”
“Hathaway & Simms?”
“Got it in one. They’ve had a branch in the village ever since I can remember. Anyway, last week we had the two of them round to dinner, and Irene had some very interesting things to say about Nick Hathaway.”
I waited.
“Apparently Nick once worked in that branch for about nine months. This was years ago, back when he was learning the ropes. According to Irene, he pulled every trick in the book to be the top salesman while he was there.”
“Such as?”
“Well, some of it was just opportunism. He would muscle in on some other salesman’s deals, maybe if the guy was off sick or something. He would claim sales for himself even though it was the other guy who had put in the hard hours.”
“I didn’t know estate agents were so competitive.”
“I don’t think they all work like that, but evidently Hathaways do. And Nick played the system to his own advantage.”
“OK, I’m with you so far.”
Des leaned forward. “There’s more. Irene reckons that sometimes Nick would deliberately fail to tell a seller about a good offer on a property. He would persuade the seller to accept a lower bid from someone else just to clinch a quick sale.”
“So he lost commission for the company as a whole, but built up his own sales figures?”
“Precisely. And that’s not the end of it. Apparently he tried the trick of stealing the other salesmen’s commissions once too often, and one of them complained to the branch manager.” Des straightened his back to emphasise his point. “Basically Nick got him fired.”
“Huh.”<
br />
Des leaned forward on the table. “You haven’t heard the worst yet. In the end, it seems Nick decided that pinching commissions wasn’t enough for him. There were bigger bucks to be made. On his last couple of sales he developed a proper scam.”
“And you know the details?”
“Some of them.” He drew a deep breath. “OK, suppose there’s a nice property on sale – a big converted farmhouse, for instance, with land attached: something worth at least a couple of million. There’s lots of interest, plenty of offers on the table. So Nick picks an offer that’s fair but isn’t the highest, and tells the bidders that if they can go half-way towards matching the best offer, they’ll get the property. But the extra money doesn’t go to the vendor, it goes into his pocket.”
“Is that actually possible?”
“Well, only if all the conditions are right – and only if you’re the managing director’s son.” Des shrugged. “Both parties would have to agree to some rather unorthodox payment arrangements, and Nick probably had someone helping him at the conveyancing firm, maybe for a cut. Oh, and he had to suppress the top offer – to persuade the people who made it that it had been rejected.”
I said, “The potential for things to go wrong must have been enormous.”
“If it was easy, it would probably be happening more often. But Nick is persuasive and opportunistic – we already know that. And he’s obviously clever as well. And in the earlier days of the internet, there was less transparency in property sales. It wouldn’t work now, because too much of the information would be public knowledge. But apparently Nick swung the scam at least twice.”
I sensed that a qualification was looming. I said, “Is there any proof of any of this?”
“Sadly not.”
“And Sam doesn’t know anything about it?”
Des gave me an awkward glance. “Not yet.”
Norah’s usually benign features folded into a frown, and she tapped the table impatiently with clasped hands. Her bracelets made a knocking sound on the bare oak. She said, “I just can’t stand seeing that man pulling the wool over Sam’s eyes. Des agrees with me, don’t you Des?” She glanced at him for affirmation.
I said, “I understand that you both want to make a difference, but if Sam does find out about this, she might just interpret Nick’s actions as youthful zeal.” I looked from one of them to the other. “It’s not very nice being browbeaten with facts.”
Des said, “You’re right, Mike. We just thought you should know about this. If you do get to talk frankly to Sam, this might help.”
I said, “But there’s no evidence. If she confronted Nick over it, he would just deny it.”
Des said, “Irene might be able to convince you.” He glanced at his watch. “She’s due round for tea any minute. She can tell you about this herself.”
* * *
Irene was a solid-looking woman in her late fifties with relentlessly straight, greying reddish-brown hair that just brushed her shoulders. Under her severely-cropped fringe she wore black-rimmed spectacles with one of those cords attached to each end, so that if you took them off they would hang round your neck. Perhaps unfairly, I felt it made her look older than her years, and her somewhat conservative turtle-neck jumper and beige slacks did nothing to dispel that impression.
She confirmed more or less all that Des had told me. When she’d finished I said, “I don’t mean to sound critical, but if you knew about all this, why didn’t you say something to someone about it sooner?”
She gave me a guilty look. “I had my suspicions at the time, but I didn’t actually know anything for sure. And when I saw how easily Nick got that salesman fired, well, I wasn’t going to put myself next in line. The branch manager was coming up for retirement, and he wouldn’t have supported me. I would have been on my own.”
“So what has made you bring it up now?”
She shrugged. “I never thought I would see Nick Hathaway again. The last thing I dreamt of was that he would end up engaged to Samantha. When I heard about it, I felt Des should know the kind of person he is.”
“But there isn’t any evidence of this?”
She shook her head. “It all happened a long time ago.” Then she added, “I did ask my friend Dot to have a look in the files. She still works at Hathaways. But she couldn’t find anything. Nick was far to smart to leave incriminating evidence lying around.”
I nodded. “It’s hardly surprising.”
A new thought occurred to me. I said, “Do you think Nick actually met Sam while he was working here in this district?”
She shook her head. “It’s unlikely. Samantha would have been away at college at the time, and Nick didn’t mix with the locals much. He used to go home to Banbury every night, and he was doing a part-time course somewhere over in his own neck of the woods, so he wasn’t here every day.”
She seemed to have reached the end of her narrative, but then she threw in a nugget of information I wasn’t expecting. “According to my friend at Hathaways,” she said, “they’re taking a stake in a commercial property agency in Banbury. There was a time when the agency tried to take over Hathaways, so now Nick is getting his own back. That man is certainly ambitious.”
I was intrigued. I said, “What’s the name of the agency?”
“It’s called Cavenham Risby.”
Chapter 37
“Graham has been arrested.”
I could feel the indignation in Sam’s voice. She’d phoned me a couple of days after my trip to see her father. I wondered fleetingly if she knew about it.
“You mean for the murder of Rob Openshaw?”
“Of course.” There was an unfamiliar edge to her voice. “Apparently they’re much more confident of getting a conviction than they were with you.”
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
“We asked Bernard Croft to look into it. Graham has a solicitor of his own, so Bernard’s services weren’t required, but he told us what he was able to find out.”
“Does he know what makes the police so sure Graham did it?”
“No, they’re not saying anything at the moment.”
“What do you think?”
“If you mean do I think my cousin Graham could be a murderer, then the answer is not a chance. Graham wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“But in the heat of the moment … ”
“Bollocks to that. I don’t believe Graham was even there at this man’s house. The police have got their wires twisted, that’s all.”
“They must have found some new information that they didn’t have when they originally interviewed him.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
Sam’s hostile tone hadn’t softened. I wondered why she was even phoning me. I said, “Have I done something to offend you?”
“Of course not.” But the answer was too abrupt, too defensive.
“So …?”
Now she was hesitant. “Your policeman friend – Dave. He got you out of custody, didn’t he?”
“Well, he helped.”
Again she spoke warily. “I wondered if he could maybe find out what’s going on, and suggest what we could do from our side?”
This was something new. I’d sometimes stretched Dave’s good will to breaking point, but it had always been to help me directly. How would he feel if I asked a favour on behalf of someone else?
I said, “I could put the question to him, but I have to say I’m probably running out of credit as far as he’s concerned.”
“But it wouldn’t hurt to run it past him, would it? The worst he could do would be to say no.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“Well then.”
There was a long silence, then I had a sudden flash of intuition. I said, “You heard that I went to see your dad, didn’t you?”
“The news might have leaked out, yes.”
“And you don’t approve?”
“It’s a free world. You can go and see my dad any time yo
u choose. He likes you.” She paused. “But you were picking over my life when I wasn’t there. I don’t like that. You should both know better – and so should Norah.”
“What makes you think that’s what happened?”
“Don’t dig yourself into a hole, Mike. Norah told me about your little chat.”
Did that include the details of Nick’s misdeeds? I wasn’t sure how to ask, so I said nothing.
“Not that this is any of Norah’s business.”
I simply said, “I understand.”
She breathed a deep sigh. “Norah means well, I know that, but she gets carried away. You and Dad shouldn’t allow yourselves to be dragged along with her.”
“I’m sorry you’re upset. They’re just concerned for you.”
“How would you feel if people started treating you like a child – trying to tell you who to get involved with, and why you’re making a mistake? If I can’t trust my own family and friends, who can I trust?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
There was a long silence. I was wondering if I should end the call when Sam began again in a different tone. She said, “You’re underestimating Nick, and you’re underestimating me.”
“How do you mean?”
She considered this. “Nick is good-hearted, but he’s insecure. He puts on a show of confidence, but he’s had to work all his life to give that impression. It’s been really hard for him to step out of the shadow of his successful father and make his own impact on the world. Back in his young days he must have felt he had a lot to prove.”
I couldn’t help feeling that her rather charitable summation omitted many of his less than admirable qualities. Rather than antagonise her further, I said, “In what way am I underestimating you?”
“This engagement.” She made a tetching sound. “You’re as bad as my father on the subject. You all think I rushed into it with my eyes shut like a swooning teenager. You ought to credit me with more sense.”
The Concrete Ceiling Page 15
