by Frank Smith
‘It’s probably only a matter of time,’ Claire told him. ‘He came to see me yesterday. He was looking for some background on the people who were at the party last Saturday.’
David frowned. ‘Background?’ he said. ‘What sort of background? And why would he come to you? What was he after?’
‘Nothing that would incriminate anyone, if that’s what you mean,’ Claire said lightly. ‘And I assume he came to me because I’ve been involved from the beginning, and I was the one who let it slip that the police were going to search the house. As he said, to him they were just names on a piece of paper, and all he wanted from me was a sort of thumbnail sketch of who they were and how they came to be at the party.’
‘Isn’t that rather odd? I mean what did you tell him about me, for example?’
‘Just that you were there along with everyone else.’ Puzzled, Claire withdrew her hand. ‘Why? Is there something I shouldn’t have told him, David? I don’t understand. I’ve said nothing detrimental about you or anyone else, and yet I get the uncomfortable feeling that you think I shouldn’t be talking to the police at all. I know it’s a long time after the fact, and it won’t bring your father back, but I thought you would be pleased to know that they are trying to find the people who killed him.’
Claire sat back in her chair and eyed him quizzically. ‘Why are you so nervous about the police talking to me?’ she asked quietly. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me, and I’d like to know what it is, because you’ve been worried about it ever since I came to the flat the other night. Why do I have the feeling that you think I’ve done something wrong?’
David Taylor sighed heavily. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong, Claire,’ he said. ‘It’s me. My own guilty conscience about how things were back then. You never knew my father, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t. Unfortunately, the one clear memory I do have of him is when he shouted at me and told me to get my sticky little fingers off the glass display case. I think I was about five or six at the time, and he scared the daylights out of me.’
‘Scared the daylights out of me a good many times as well when I was growing up,’ David confessed. ‘He could be very sharp, even with his customers. He was a hard worker and a good man in many ways, but everything – and I do mean everything – had to be done his way. He had our lives mapped out right from the time Kevin and I were born, and as kids we accepted that. But as we grew older, and developed a few opinions of our own, things became more difficult, especially for me, because I wasn’t prepared to follow the plan.’
‘The plan . . .?’
‘That Kevin and I should have the education he never had, and go on to university with the ultimate goal of going into one of the professions: doctor, dentist, lawyer, whatever, it didn’t matter as long as it was a recognized profession, and an arts degree just didn’t cut it. He tried everything he could think of to dissuade me. He would remind me that he and my mother had gone without a lot of things so my brother and I could have a good education, and by rejecting what was good for me, I was throwing it back in their faces. There was money in the bank for our education, but it was not going to be frittered away on some fanciful idea that I could earn a living by painting. In short, he did his best to make me feel guilty about the path I’d chosen.’
David took a sip of wine and set the glass down again. ‘And he succeeded,’ he said quietly. ‘Believe me, Claire, I tried to get him to see it would be a sheer waste of time and money for me to follow Kevin, because I had no interest in any of those things, but he wouldn’t listen. I just wanted to let the matter drop, but Dad wouldn’t let it go. He kept sniping at me every chance he got, and he was doing it again on the morning he died. He was upset to begin with, because something had gone wrong with the first batch of loaves that morning, and we were running behind, so he took it out on me.
‘He kept going on about how hard they’d saved to make sure that Kevin and I would make something of our lives, and how ungrateful I was . . .’ David looked away as he said, ‘I just lost it, Claire. I told him I didn’t want his money, and I was quite capable of making it on my own, and I had no intention of spending my life living his dream.’
David picked up his glass and emptied it. ‘And that’s the last thing I said to him before leaving to do the morning deliveries,’ he said. He set the glass down. ‘I know I can’t change things, but I can’t help wishing I hadn’t said some of the things I did that day.’ He flicked an apologetic glance at Claire. ‘So when you told me the other night that the investigation was on again, everything came rushing back, and I’m afraid I overreacted. So between that and Barry’s suicide, I . . .’
Claire frowned. ‘Barry’s suicide?’ she said. ‘What did that have to do with it?’
But David brushed the question aside. ‘Nothing,’ he said tersely. ‘Just that it happened so soon after, that’s all.’
He drew a deep breath. ‘But that’s enough of that!’ he said lightly. ‘I’m becoming positively maudlin, and we came out to celebrate. You should have stopped me, Claire.’ He picked up the bottle. ‘Can’t let this go to waste. More wine? Let’s have your glass.’
‘No need to apologize,’ Claire said, allowing him to top up her glass. ‘I’m glad you told me because . . . well, I did wonder. I’m just sorry I was the one to stir up old memories. Funny how you and Kevin are so different. Did he ever take sides?’
David laughed. ‘As a matter of fact Kevin benefited from my scraps with Dad, because it kept Dad’s attention off him and his relationship with Steph.’
Clair looked puzzled. ‘Why? What was wrong with that?’ she asked. ‘I would have thought he would be pleased that Kevin was going to be marrying the daughter of the head of a law firm.’
David made a face. ‘He would have been,’ he said, ‘if it hadn’t been for the infamous Cornish pasty case, when Dad was sued by a customer who became ill after eating one of our Cornish pasties.
‘You see, Dad and Ed Bradshaw used to be friends. Not close friends, but they’d known each other for a long time. So when he found out that Ed was acting for the customer who was suing Dad over some tainted Cornish pasties that had come from our ovens, he was furious with Ed, and from that time on it was not a good idea to mention Ed Bradshaw’s name around our house.
‘So, when Dad found out that Kevin was dating Stephanie Bradshaw, that really set him off. He told Kevin he could forget any support, financial or otherwise, from him if he continued to see Steph, and told him flat out to drop her.
‘Well, you know Kevin; he’s nothing if not a realist, and tuition fees, especially for someone reading Law, were pretty steep even back then, so Kevin told Dad he’d dropped her. He hadn’t, of course, in fact the two of them were living together on campus, but they had to be very careful whenever they came home between semesters. It was tricky at times, especially after Kevin went to work for Ed Bradshaw, and . . .’
David sucked in his breath and stopped speaking. ‘But that is another story,’ he said, ‘and I’ve bored you enough for one evening, Claire. Care to go clubbing when we leave here?’
‘Thank you, but no,’ Claire said. ‘Pleasant as this has been, I don’t want to be late home tonight, because I have a lot of catching up to do. And don’t change the subject. What were you about to say about Kevin going to work for Ed Bradshaw?’
But David refused to be drawn, and when they parted company later that evening, her question still remained un-answered. As did the question David had brushed aside when she’d asked why he had mentioned the suicide of Barry Grant in the same breath as his problems with his father.
FIFTEEN
Thursday, July 16th
It wasn’t the sort of venue Molly Forsythe would have chosen for an interview, but Peter Anderson had insisted on it. ‘It is the only time I have free, today,’ he’d told her on the phone. ‘I leave tonight for a conference in Stockholm, so it is either there this morning or you’ll have to wait until after I come back a week from t
oday.’
‘There’ was the cafeteria on the first floor of Marks and Spencer’s in Fish Street. It was across the street from Anderson’s office and, as he explained to Molly when they sat down to face each other across the small table, he had been coming here almost every morning for years for hot chocolate and a teacake. ‘Best hot chocolate in town,’ he told her as he spooned the whipped cream topping into his mouth.
Molly had her coffee black. She didn’t really like it, but she’d decided she was using too much sugar, so she was trying to get used to going without.
She glanced around. Mid-morning, and the place was filled with shoppers, mostly grey-haired couples and women with babies and small children. The only available table was outside the baby-change room, and a steady stream of young mothers paraded past their table. The noise level was high, and Molly had to listen hard to hear what the man was saying.
Peter Anderson looked as if he’d been carved from rock. Solid body, square face, deeply chiselled features, hair clipped short and already turning grey, and pale eyes that never seemed to blink. A self-important man, Molly decided, because, despite his insistence that he didn’t have much time to spare, it was becoming clearer by the minute that he was trying to impress her.
‘I am presenting a paper in Stockholm,’ he said proudly. ‘Representatives from all over the world will be there. My sphere of interest is in metal fatigue; the stresses and strains on metals found in everything from the materials used in large buildings and bridges to such things as hinges and handles on saucepans and kitchen utensils.’
He paused to sip his hot chocolate, and Molly seized the opportunity to take control of the conversation. She asked the standard questions and received the standard answers. Yes, he had known Barry Grant, and didn’t think much of him. Why? Because he was stupid. He had brains, he could have been almost anything he wanted, in Anderson’s opinion, but he spent all of his time trying to impress people by doing silly stunts.
‘What sort of stunts?’ Molly wanted to know.
Anderson shrugged. ‘Like playing truant, then sitting outside the school gates with some older kids in a stolen Porsche or BMW, or whatever, to impress the girls as they came out of class. Absolutely idiotic, of course, because the police would have him before the end of the day. But he never learned. He would do something equally stupid the following week.’
‘Are you talking about when he was at Westonleigh?’
‘Good God, no! If he’d done that at Westonleigh, he would have been out on his ear, and he knew it. No, this was while he was still at Gordon Street. He would only be about ten or eleven at the time. Police were powerless because of his age, of course, but then that’s what happens when we live in a country where no one is responsible for anything any more.’
‘But he did do well enough at Westonleigh to go on to university,’ Molly pointed out.
‘Means to an end,’ Anderson said through a mouthful of teacake. ‘That’s all it was. Means to an end.’
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
Anderson stuck a straw into his drink and sucked deeply before sitting back to fix Molly with his pallid eyes. ‘Social climbing,’ he said. ‘That’s what Grant was all about. That’s all he ever thought about; getting in with the right crowd. Being accepted. But all he succeeded in doing was making a nuisance of himself.’
‘Were you in that crowd, Mr Anderson?’
Anderson considered the question. ‘I suppose I was,’ he conceded. ‘I come from, what I suppose Grant would consider to be a wealthy family, although my father worked his way up from an ordinary bricklayer to become the owner of a construction company. As for me, while I was given encouragement at home, I got where I am today through my own merits and hard work. Barry Grant wasn’t prepared to do that.’
‘You were there last Saturday when Miss Hammond was talking about searching the Grant house, were you not, Mr Anderson?’
The man nodded, popped another piece of teacake in his mouth, and said, ‘Yes, and I’m told that someone tried to burn it down on the weekend.’ He raised a warning finger. ‘I hope you are not suggesting that I had anything to do with that?’
Molly held the man’s gaze. ‘Did you?’ she asked.
‘Don’t be absurd! Of course not.’
‘Where were you from say midnight to three o’clock on Monday morning, Mr Anderson?’
Anderson wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. ‘I was asleep in my bed,’ he said, ‘but I have no wife, no sleeping partner, so you will just have to take my word for it, Miss Forsythe.’
Molly tried another tack. ‘Did Barry have a girlfriend when he was in university?’
Another shrug. ‘If he did, I don’t know who it was. Why would I? I wasn’t interested in what he was doing or who his friends were, male or female. In fact I made it a point to avoid him whenever possible.’ Anderson looked pointedly at his watch, then pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. ‘I’m afraid I have no more time,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, but as I said, Grant was no friend of mine, either in school or university.’ With a curt nod, Anderson turned and worked his way through the tables to the top of the escalator and disappeared from view.
Molly pushed her mug of cold coffee aside and left her seat to join the queue at the counter, where she ordered a blueberry muffin and a hot chocolate. ‘Whipped cream, love?’ the woman behind the counter asked.
Molly hesitated. The sugarless coffee had left a foul taste in her mouth. She needed something . . . ‘Why not?’ she said, and watched as a swirl of cream was added to the foamy chocolate. She had almost an hour to kill before her next appointment, and watching Anderson enjoying his teacake and chocolate had made her hungry.
Paget was in Alcott’s office when Ormside rang to tell him that a woman by the name of Irene Sinclair had come in to enquire about Roger Corbett.
‘She’s with me now,’ he said. ‘She says Corbett is a friend of hers, and he was in quite a state when he phoned her last Tuesday afternoon and said he had to talk to her. She asked him what it was about, but he wouldn’t say. He told her he’d explain when he got there, but he had to talk to someone else first. But he never showed up. He isn’t answering his mobile, and nobody seems to have seen him since. He hasn’t been to work and he hasn’t been home.’
Paget had his notebook out. Ah yes, the woman Corbett said he was sleeping with on Sunday night. ‘Have someone take her to an interview room,’ he told the Sergeant. ‘And find Tregalles and tell him to meet me there in ten minutes.’
Molly Forsythe was surprised when Stephanie Taylor answered the door herself. Looking at the house and grounds as she drove up the drive, Molly had half expected to be greeted by at least a maid if not a butler. But Stephanie must have seen her coming, because she opened the door before Molly had a chance to touch the bell.
‘Detective Constable Forsythe, I presume,’ she said, thrusting out a hand. ‘I’m Stephanie Taylor. Do come through. I thought we’d be more comfortable on the terrace. It’s shaded and quite lovely out there at this time of day. She turned and led Molly through the house, her bare feet slapping softly against the tiles on the floor of a kitchen that was more than half the size of Molly’s flat, and out to a paved terrace overlooking a generous expanse of lawn dotted with shade trees. A meandering path led to a summer house on the far side of the property against a backdrop of colourful Japanese maples and a single sturdy oak that looked as if it had been there for a hundred years or more. Molly breathed in deeply; it was a park in miniature.
‘I think I could get used to this,’ she said softly. ‘It’s so quiet and peaceful. You must love it here.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Stephanie said perfunctorily. ‘Would you like some iced tea? It’s green tea. A special blend. It’s very good for you.’
Molly wasn’t too sure, but since Stephanie was waiting with jug poised, she said, ‘Thank you, I’d like that very much.’ She waited until Stephanie filled a glass and handed it to her befor
e settling into what proved to be a very comfortable chair.
Stephanie was taller than Molly by an inch or two, and yet she seemed to fold herself into a neat little package as she sat down and tucked her legs under her. In fact, everything about Stephanie Taylor was neat, thought Molly. From the short blonde hair to the striped shirt and dazzling white shorts, neither of which seemed to be capable of holding anything as untidy as a crease.
She tasted the tea. Ice tinkled softly against the glass. Not bad at all, she decided. In fact much better than she’d expected.
‘So, I suppose you want to ask me the same things as the others?’ Stephanie said. ‘Not,’ she added almost as an afterthought, ‘that I can add much to what you must know already, but we’ll have to see, won’t we?’
She flicked a quick glance at the watch on her wrist, perhaps as a gentle reminder to Molly that, while she was prepared to help if she could, she had better things to do.
It was becoming something of a litany by now, but Molly pressed on with the standard questions and, as she had with Anderson, received similar responses until they started to talk about Leeds.
‘I always felt rather sorry for Barry,’ Stephanie said. ‘I suppose I was vaguely aware of him at Westonleigh, but he was a couple of years behind me, and two years between teenagers is a huge gap, so I didn’t really come into contact with him until later during his first, and last, year at university. Has anyone told you he had a crush on me?’
‘A crush . . .?’ Molly said cautiously.
Stephanie laughed, but sobered quickly and became serious. ‘I shouldn’t laugh,’ she said. ‘Not after the way he ended his life. I know everyone was down on him, but I thought Barry was rather sweet – at least I did at first.’
Stephanie smiled at Molly’s reaction. ‘You might well look surprised,’ she said. ‘In fact I think I surprised myself at the time. Normally I wouldn’t have looked at a boy two years younger than myself, and I was already dating Kevin, but Barry was so cheeky. And he was fun at first. He had such an outrageous line you couldn’t help but want to find out how far he would go with it.’
