Dead End

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘What does Marcus live on, now he’s not at college?’

  ‘That’s it exactly, the same as he’s always lived on: Alec. I don’t know the details, but I gather a few years ago, when Marcus was still at school, there was a big scandal that it cost a lot of money to hush up. I don’t know if he’s been in trouble since then, but he’s a constant drain, and he doesn’t live cheaply. I don’t know how he gets through it all, but I do know—’ She hesitated. ‘I overheard a bit of their conversation on Wednesday. I didn’t mean to – I thought they’d finished and picked up the phone to make a call. But I’m afraid when I heard them I carried on listening. Marcus needed money for something – a lot of money – and he was threatening Alec, saying if he didn’t give it to him, he’d just have to turn to theft. Breaking and entering, he said. Alec was horrified. The scandal would finish him, of course. He’d lose all his clients. Marcus knows that, the little swine. That’s how he puts the bite on Alec every time.’

  ‘So what did Alec say to the threat?’

  ‘He said no, no, don’t even think about it. He said to give him time and he’d come up with something.’ She shook her head. ‘I was so angry with Marcus I didn’t listen after that. I put the phone down. Alec sounded so upset I couldn’t bear it, even though – well, I suppose I still love him. I haven’t quite had time to get over it.’

  ‘And then half an hour later he came out and said he was ill and was going home.’

  ‘Yes. He looked it too.’

  ‘Did he go to meet Marcus before he went home?’

  ‘No, not as far as I know. Why do you ask?’ She seemed genuinely surprised.

  ‘I just wondered. So tell me, how do you think he was going to get hold of money for Marcus?’

  ‘Are you asking me in an official capacity, or is this still a friendly chat?’ she asked, suddenly curious.

  ‘I hope it’s still friendly. But you know that Wednesday is a day I have to be particularly interested in.’

  She stared, and he saw her scalp shift back as her eyes widened and her nostrils flared. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘Oh my God, you think Alec killed Sir Stefan!’

  He looked at her with interest. ‘Has it truly never occurred to you before that he might have?’

  ‘No! No, I swear to you! But you’re wrong, you must be wrong! He wouldn’t do a thing like that, not Alec. He may be a swine in some ways, but he would never harm a soul. He’s too soft if anything – that’s why he spoils Marcus—’

  ‘But if Marcus had got into some bad trouble and Alec was desperate for the cash—’

  ‘No! Oh no, I promise you, he just wouldn’t.’ Her voice was stronger, more confident. ‘He just isn’t that kind of man.’

  Slider well knew there was no kind of man, but that was not the discussion he wanted to have with Helena Goodwin. ‘All right, then if you really hadn’t considered that possibility, what was it about him that’s been worrying you so much, that you wanted to tell me about?’

  This was plainly difficult. She chewed her lip, staring at him rather blankly as she tried to make up her mind. ‘If I tell you,’ she said at last, ‘it’s going to make it look worse for him. And I’m positive he hasn’t done – what you think.’

  ‘Then what has he done? Really,’ he added when she still hesitated, ‘you’d much better tell me. We always find out in the end, and the sooner we can check it all out, the sooner we can eliminate him from suspicion, if he really is innocent. Keeping it from me isn’t going to get anyone anywhere.’

  ‘I just don’t want it to be me who betrays him.’

  ‘That suggests there’s something to betray.’

  She was silent a moment longer, and then seemed to decide to take the plunge. ‘All right, look, I don’t know if this is anything to do with it – it may be nothing at all, but it’s been bothering me. Did you know that Alec is trustee for the estate of his godson Henry?’

  ‘Henry Russell?’

  ‘That’s right. It’s a family thing – Henry’s also a sort of second cousin, I think. You know about it, then?’

  ‘Not much more than the name. Is it a large estate?’

  ‘Very. In the millions, I believe. Henry’s father was Russell’s Pies and Sausages.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ Russell’s had always been a rather dignified, old-fashioned firm, whose products sported old-fashioned paper wrappers decorated with dull drawings of the various gold medals won in the days of Empire. They made steak and kidney pies and pork pies of the sort Celia Johnson might have bought at the station buffet while waiting for Trevor Howard (though never, of course, actually eaten). But just lately Russell’s had suffered a belated panic and gone all trendy, with transparent cellophane packaging and a new range of synthetic fillings which McLaren adored: cheese ’n’ potato, chick ’n’ curry and crispy bacon bits. Whatever had happened, Slider wondered in parenthesis, to the word crisp? They were all ruled by nursery language these days. ‘Yes, I know Russell’s Pies,’ he said. ‘How old is Henry?’

  ‘Twenty-three. And a half.’

  ‘How come the money is still in trust, then?’

  ‘Oh, the trust goes on until he’s twenty-five. Apparently Henry’s father was a bit of a wild thing in his youth, and expected Henry to be the same, so he wanted the money tied up until Henry had had a chance to sow his wild oats and grow sensible. But in fact he needn’t have worried: Henry’s never caused a moment’s anxiety to anyone in his life. He’s so sensible he doesn’t even fret about not getting his money for another eighteen months. The only impulsive thing he’s ever done is to get engaged rather suddenly, but the girl’s perfectly unexceptionable. She’s pretty and good, her parents have got a place in Berkshire, and she’s called Camilla. Every mother’s dream, in fact.’

  Slider returned the smile. ‘So what’s bothering you about this trust?’

  ‘It was something that happened a couple of months ago,’ she said slowly. ‘Quite a bit of the trust money is in shares in the family firm, as you’d expect, and about two months ago I happened to see a share transfer document, selling a block of them, on Alec’s desk. I was surprised, because I hadn’t seen it before, and usually I deal with all the routine paperwork. Alec was out of the room at the time, so I had a closer look at it. As trustee, he’s quite entitled to buy or sell shares, of course, but share transfers have to have the signatures of both trustees.’

  ‘Who is the other trustee?’

  ‘David Fowles. He’s another cousin of Henry’s on his mother’s side. The thing is, he’s one of these lone yachtsmen and he’s been sailing round the world for almost the last year. He keeps in touch, of course, but at that time, at that time I saw the transfer document, he was somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific, and had been for weeks. He could be contacted by radio, of course, but there was no way of getting a document to him for signature. But the share transfer had his signature on it all the same.’

  ‘You think it was a forgery?’

  ‘I think Alec forged it,’ she said bravely. ‘I’ve handled lots of documents for the trust, and I know David’s signature. It didn’t look quite right to me. Besides how could it be? And why hadn’t Alec passed it through me in the usual way?’

  ‘Because there was something wrong about it?’

  ‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that he was so desperate for money he sold the shares and took the cash.’

  Slider nodded gravely. Interesting that she didn’t find this hard to suppose, though murder was unimaginable. ‘How much cash?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly, because I don’t know what he sold at, of course, but it wouldn’t have been much under a hundred thousand pounds.’ She looked at Slider like a puppy hoping not to be kicked. ‘And it wasn’t long before that that Marcus smashed Alec’s car. A sixty-thousand-pound Mercedes. Marcus was drunk – or something worse – and climbed out without a scratch on him, but the car was a write-off. He lost his licence, of course, but there was a hefty fine as well, which Alec had to pay for him.
’

  ‘Have you said anything about this to anyone? To Alec?’

  ‘No,’ she said, almost in alarm. ‘I couldn’t be sure – I may have been quite mistaken. Maybe it was a perfectly normal transaction.’

  ‘You didn’t want to suspect him.’

  ‘Of course not. I loved him. But I’ve never been able to put it quite out of my head. I keep – wondering.’

  ‘Where would the money go, if he sold those shares?’

  ‘There’d be a cheque to the trust’s bank account. After that—’ she shrugged uncomfortably – ‘Alec could write a cheque to anyone he wanted. Even himself.’

  ‘And who holds the cheque-book?’

  ‘He does. He keeps it locked in his private filing cabinet in his office, with the other trust documents. Only he has the key to that.’

  ‘Of course, sooner or later he’d have to account for the money,’ Slider said thoughtfully.

  ‘He had another eighteen months before Henry came of age. I’m sure he meant to replace it – only where would he get the money from? He’d have to sell something of his own, I suppose; or play the market. I suppose a hundred thousand isn’t much to recoup in that time, if you play high enough. The big dealers make millions on a single transaction, don’t they?’

  Dream on, thought Slider, but he gave her a comforting nod, and she fell silent. Slider pursued his own thoughts. How did the paintings fit in with this? Had he bought them to make good losses to the trust? Christie’s had said they would realise a good profit in a year; but he had bought them before the car-crash incident, so they couldn’t have been intended to recoup that money. Maybe selling those shares had not been the first time he’d raided the piggy-bank. And if he had borrowed the trust’s money to buy the paintings in the first place, he might well have fought shy of reporting their theft to the police. Rifling the fund, abuse of his powers as a trustee: he wouldn’t want all that coming out. If that were the case, he had a bit more than a hundred thousand to find before Henry Russell came of age. But there was plenty of time – no need to be panicked into killing Radek for his fortune.

  ‘Do you know what I think we ought to do?’ he said at last. She looked up with faint, very faint, hope. ‘I think we should go back to the office and see what we can find out.’ The hope died. ‘You’ll feel better for knowing the truth, one way or the other.’ And so will I, he added silently.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘But I’ve told you, all the trust documents are in his private filing cabinet, and I don’t have the key.’

  ‘With all that’s been going on lately, he might possibly have left it unlocked,’ Slider said. ‘It’s worth a look, anyway.’

  Darkness had fallen while they were in the pub, lamplight had come, and the streets had filled with the evening crowds: theatre-goers, diners-out, and throngs of young people looking for the High Life without any clear idea of what it was going to look like when they bumped into it, except that it would probably be making a lot of noise and have an imported lager in its hand.

  It was a pleasantly mild evening, so everyone was good-tempered, and already there were groups of sitters-out outside restaurants and bars. The biggest difference the last ten years had made to London, Slider thought as he and Mrs Goodwin picked their way through the backstreets, was in how much more people liked to stay out of doors, given half a chance. Being both naturally fond of company and a Libra, Slider liked the whole idea of sitting at a pavement café watching the world go by; and he enjoyed the lighted windows of the shops that stayed open late, and the smells of coffee and garlic and delicatessen produce that wafted out of the various open doors they passed. In his early childhood everything had stopped at night, there being in the fifties little to sell and no-one with money to buy it. He still remembered when the ban on illuminating shops at night had been lifted, and his parents had taken him up to London for a special treat, for the pleasure of walking along Oxford Street and looking in the brightly lit windows. Ah, simple pleasures! And they’d had fish and chips when they got home, bought at the chip shop opposite the station and hotted up when they got back to the cottage. Mum would never countenance eating in the street. Common, she called it.

  Mrs Goodwin was plainly nervous when they reached the door of the office. ‘I’m not sure this is right,’ she said, turning to him appealingly.

  ‘You’re helping the police with their enquiries,’ he said. He followed her upstairs, and she let him into the outer office, switched on the lights, and then unlocked the door to the inner office. The filing cabinets were ranged along one wall, rather prissily sheathed in veneered wood so that the sight of raw metal wouldn’t offend the cultured client.

  ‘This is his private one,’ she said indicating the end cabinet, and reaching out a hand to test the drawer. Slider caught it gently.

  ‘I think it might be an idea if you locked the outer doors, just to be on the safe side,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, of course, I should have thought of that,’ she said, and hastened away. Slider examined the filing cabinet and smiled to himself. Piece of pie. By the time she returned, the top drawer was open.

  ‘Look at this,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’re in luck – he did forget to lock it!’

  She looked at it, and him, opened her mouth, and closed it again.

  ‘Let’s get busy,’ he said.

  Slider had meant to go straight to Joanna’s, but at the last minute he had an attack of nerves, and decided to call in at the station first for a wash and brush-up and a clean pair of socks. He was sorry to see Barrington’s car in the yard, and sorrier still to find a message on his desk summoning him to the presence as soon as he came in.

  It struck him as he went in that Barrington was definitely showing signs of strain. There was something almost ragged about his movements, and though his face was still as inexpressive as tufa, his eyes were no longer steady, but moved and shifted all the time he spoke.

  ‘You wanted to see me, sir? I was just going off.’

  He expected to be asked about the progress of the case, but Barrington had other things of greater import on his mind.

  ‘You’ve just driven into the car park, I assume?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ This was an odd tack. Slider began to fear the worst.

  ‘And did you notice anything?’ Slider was silent. A man does not lime his own twig. ‘Did you see my car there?’

  ‘Yes, I did notice it,’ Slider said cautiously. Should he add a word of praise? Jolly clean it looked too? I always wanted one of those myself?

  ‘And what did you notice about it?’

  Slider lost patience. ‘Would you tell me what all this is about, sir?’

  Barrington turned like a man goaded beyond endurance. ‘What it’s about, Slider, is parking! The cars in the yard are so badly parked that I was unable to get into my own space! I had to park half across the space next to it!’

  Slider was still groping in the dark. The space next to Barrington’s was his. ‘That’s all right, sir. I just put mine on the end. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It most emphatically does matter, Inspector,’ Barrington said in cold rage. ‘What do you think the lines are there for? Do you think they were put there for people to ignore? It only takes one person to park carelessly, and everyone in the yard is affected. Suppose your car had already been there? What would I have done then?’

  Slider declined to answer, looking at Barrington with a stark disbelief he was afraid he was not managing to mask.

  ‘Car parking space in the yard is at a premium. To be allotted a space is a privilege, and I won’t have the men under my command abusing privilege through sheer carelessness, indiscipline and sloppy behaviour!’ He began to walk up and down again. ‘I’ve told you before that carelessness in small things leads to carelessness in larger things. That’s where it all starts! Ignore the little faults, and where do you draw the line? The next thing you know, you have widespread corruption. I’ve seen it happen before. It only takes one rotten apple to
contaminate the whole barrel.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Slider said. ‘I understand.’ Barrington stopped pacing and glared at him, as if waiting for further answer. ‘I’ll have the cars reparked,’ he said soothingly.

  The red seemed to dissipate slowly from Barrington’s stare. He straightened slightly. ‘Nonsense. There’s no need for that,’ he said, quite mildly for him. ‘Just make sure that the men are told to park straight in future. It’s pure inconsiderateness, and there’s no excuse for it.’

  Slider agreed, and escaped. What the hell was going on with the Demon King these days? These furious attacks on trivia were like little bursts of steam escaping from the safety valve of a pressure-cooker; Slider wondered at how many pounds per square foot he would finally blow, and how much of a mess there would be to clear up. He didn’t fancy having Barrington all over the ceiling and down the walls. Maybe he ought to have taken the move to Pinner after all. And he hadn’t even told him about the new developments in the case – though that may have been all to the good. Tomorrow was Sunday; perhaps Barrington would have a nice day out on the golf course and come back refreshed on Monday and ready to cope with the petty annoyances of a murder case.

  Then Slider remembered that he was on his way to see Joanna, and already late, and it concentrated his mind wonderfully.

  CHAPTER TEN

  If you can’t live without me,

  how come you aren’t dead yet?

  Joanna opened the door to him, and she looked so dear and familiar and had been so long longed-for that all he could say was, ‘Aunty Em.’

  ‘This ain’t Kansas,’ she said forbiddingly.

  ‘Oh, don’t say that. I’ve had such a strange dream, and unfortunately you weren’t in it.’ She stepped back to allow him in, and he walked as so often before into her living-room, where the fire had been kindled long enough to have reached a cheerful red glow. The curtains were drawn and there was one lamp on in the corner, so that the shabby furniture gleamed and winked like conspirators out of the friendly gloom. It was all so different from the neat brightness of the Ruislip house. Here there might be dust in the corners, but the baggy chesterfield opened its arms to you like a dear old mum, and the house rule was that it was pleasure that came next to godliness.