Classic Cashes In

by Amy Myers

  ‘Not yet.’

  I did know but it was classified. Brandon was treating it as murder. I could see Timothy waiting for us outside a hut, and his body language suggested he was equally depressed for all he’d been so keen to come. It was hardly surprising given the circumstances and the reason we were here, but it wasn’t helped by the fact that the sky was overcast and the general venue uninviting. In such conditions beaches such as Highchurch Sands can look weirdly beautiful to those of an artistic bent, but for most people it takes sun to make them attractive.

  Timothy barely stopped to nod in welcome as we reached him. Wearing a heavy raincoat over a suit, he of all of us looked the best equipped for inclement weather, but he certainly didn’t want to prolong the greetings. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ he grunted.

  That suited me, and Sam too from the look of him. Back in the village there would be life. Here there was only a bleak reminder that both Wendy and Philip Moxton were now dead, and that their murderer – or perhaps two murderers – remained at large.

  The beach was still desolate with not even a dog walker in sight, and one look inside the hut as Sam unlocked the door and pulled it open made me as eager as Timothy to get away as soon as possible. My earlier euphoria at being able to drive again had evaporated, and I thought longingly of Frogs Hill, of the Pits where Len and Zoe would be happily working away and of the evening ahead with Louise.

  The hut was as dismal as the beach inside. No mod cons here. A couple of deckchairs, a small cupboard surmounted by cups and plates, a few paperbacks, a portable table, and – more hopefully – a large plastic storage box. Sam busied himself with the Thermos flask and cups, while Timothy without a word made a beeline for the box. I remained in the doorway as between them my two companions took up most of the room available, so I watched while Timothy rooted through piles of magazines and from what I could see not much else.

  ‘Nothing here,’ he said in disgust.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sam looked even more worried. ‘I agree with Jack. It does seem the obvious place, if Geoffrey didn’t keep the Game Book at home.’

  I agreed. To say this was a let-down was understating my gloom. ‘Are you certain neither Wendy nor Philip mentioned it to either of you?’ I asked. I’d been crazy to pin my hopes on this – and yet it had seemed an obvious way forward. Timothy just shook his head.

  ‘Have some coffee,’ was Sam’s answer, as he handed us each a cup.

  Perhaps he hadn’t heard me. I repeated the question.

  ‘No book,’ he replied this time.

  ‘And you’re positive you never saw it, Timothy?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ he barked at me. ‘Nor did I ever hear Philip or Gavin talk of it.’

  The coffee didn’t seem to taste of anything, or was it my mouth that was suddenly sour? Timothy was lying unless … Sometimes situations turn upside down quicker than logic can follow. This one did so now—

  I saw Timothy’s sudden look of wariness, I saw Sam’s fanatical expression.

  ‘There isn’t a Game Book,’ Sam said tranquilly. ‘As far as I know, that is.’

  ‘Then what—’ Timothy broke off. He had realized as I had that there was something very wrong here.

  ‘It’s your fault, Jack,’ Sam accused me. ‘And the police’s. You were all taking too long to sort it out. I had to step in for Wendy’s sake, but I was too late so Timothy has to answer for it, don’t you, Timothy? I hope you realize that, Jack.’

  The scene registered itself on my mind like a camera shot. Image retained, recorded for ever. The normality of the scene. The cups of coffee, the beach hut, the scattered magazines, the waves breaking on the shingle. I could smell the sea air.

  But the gun in Sam’s hand wasn’t normal, nor the look of disbelief on Timothy’s face as Sam shot him and the face disappeared in a mass of blood and matter.

  Sam’s expression didn’t change at all, not even as the blood spattered on the walls, the floor and on Sam himself mingling horrifically with the spilt coffee. The blood even reached me in the doorway where I stood paralysed with shock, my ears echoing and numb with the explosion.

  Then blessedly my mind went into overdrive. Turn and run along the beach? No way. I’d have a bullet in my back in seconds. Make a dash for the rear of the hut and the sea wall? Same result. Throw the coffee at him? Same result. He’d be ready for that one. In front of me was a man past desperation, past caring, past reason.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jack.’ Sam chuckled, a chilling noise in this nightmare scene. ‘I had to do it. You must understand that.’

  I struggled to school my voice to ‘normal’. ‘Shall I call the police?’

  He considered this, with the gun still in his hand. ‘Not yet, Jack. I need to explain why you have to die as well. It was your fault, the whole thing. Wendy was a nice woman and I liked her. But she was a blackmailer. There was no Game Book, although she told me there was. It was a weapon for her.’

  ‘Who did she blackmail?’ I tried to sound normal but I was staring at that gun. Was this my voice speaking? Was that gun going to bring my death any moment now?

  ‘Shall we sit down and I’ll tell you about it?’ he offered. ‘It will be more comfortable that way.’

  Comfort? With Timothy’s body right there in front of us? With the walls and our clothes covered in blood.

  ‘Let’s take the chairs on to the beach,’ I said brightly. Someone must come along at some point.

  ‘No. It’s much better here. I can concentrate and we won’t be disturbed. Pull that door closed though.’

  For a moment I considered making a run for it with all its risks. I decided against it. He was very conscious of that gun and ready for any move from me. He wanted his pound of flesh and watched me closely as I pulled the door shut. My last look at the world?

  ‘Tell me all about it then,’ I told him, as I carefully took my place where indicated in one of the chairs and watched him take the other. ‘Then one of us can ring the police,’ I added, to keep the idea in his mind. Some hopes.

  He really did want to talk, it seemed. ‘She blackmailed Timothy and Geoffrey. Poor Geoffrey. He was in such a state about it. She wanted him to change his will.’

  Codswallop. Immediate questions sprang to mind, but I nodded benignly. Knowing the true answers would be no use if the information died with me.

  ‘Just Timothy and Geoffrey? Anyone else?’

  ‘Oh yes. Barney. I think that’s his name. She talked about the barbecue you took her to. She was so pleased about that. That’s where she dreamed up the idea of the Game Book. She liked that, she said it made her feel part of the game.’

  ‘But why did Timothy kill her? He wasn’t part of the game.’

  Sam looked puzzled. ‘I suppose it was because Timothy had killed Geoffrey Green and Wendy blackmailed him over that. I didn’t know. I thought it was that madman John Carson. I met him once in Wendy’s café. Not a nice man. He was asking questions about Geoffrey. She’d seen him at Staveley House too.’

  ‘But why did Timothy kill Geoffrey? And how?’ I persisted. I didn’t dare look at the ghastly sight at my side. It was getting harder and harder to think of anything other than my own security system which was whirling away inside me.

  These questions displeased Sam. ‘You’re playing for time, Jack. You know very well why and how he did it. Timothy and Philip came down on the train together from London that night and drove to Geoffrey’s house in his Volkswagen. They left the car on the drive, so Timothy took it to drive away to his own home after he’d killed him. As for why, it was for his career over that merger. You know that.’

  Sam was looking at me like a pleased puppy. I couldn’t work out his game plan. All that was important was he believed I was swallowing this fantasy.

  I knew now that it hadn’t been Wendy or Timothy who drove Philip Moxton home that last evening. Wendy had indeed been out when he called and Timothy had not been with him. It had been Sam who had returned to Monksford from Ashford and
found Geoffrey stranded after the Volkswagen had been stolen. No doubt a bit of private enterprise by Richie Carson’s ex-chum Mike Parker. So Sam had given Geoffrey a lift home and they had talked afterwards. Whatever they discussed had led to Sam killing him. Then he left in his own car, which would not have been tested for forensic evidence because he was never a suspect. He’d no motive – or none that I could think of right now – and only, I had thought, a slight acquaintance with Geoffrey Green.

  Could Wendy have been a blackmailer? I didn’t care. Let it be, let it rest. I had to get out of this place if I was ever to see Louise again. Which was highly improbable. Sam had not forgotten that gun in his hand. I had one slim chance.

  So I chattered on, thanking my lucky stars that I had brought my Blackberry today with its button keyboard, and not a touch screen. Sam was so busy talking, listening, and keeping an eye on my nearest hand – the left one – that my right was able to creep further into my side pocket and touch that wonderful Blackberry, button by button. Slowly, slowly I found my way to the right keys to press those all important digits. Then I left the line open and slowly, slowly withdrew my hand, praying that whoever answered would keep on listening. Meanwhile, talk, talk, talk loudly. Talk about how Geoffrey and Wendy must have loved this beach hut, beach hut, beach hut, painted pink. Mention Highchurch not being that far to drive from Monksford … Then panic threatened to overwhelm me. The nearest Blackberry cell might not be precise enough in location to bring help in time, and I could tell Sam was growing bored with my chat. I had to calm myself and get back to what interested him.

  ‘Why was Wendy’s death my fault, Sam?’

  Again I displeased him. ‘I told you. You were taking too long.’

  ‘Too long for what? Did you want the police to find out that you were Geoffrey’s killer?’

  I thought I’d gone too far – much too far – but he did reply. ‘Perhaps I did, Jack. Perhaps it was time.’

  A gamble but it might, just might work. ‘So shall we call the police now?’ Keep my voice loud.

  ‘If you like, but by the time they get here you’ll be dead. We both will.’

  I fought panic again, little by little, breath by breath. Keep calm and carry on. Carry on …

  ‘Why kill me though? That’s not fair, Sam.’

  ‘It is. If it wasn’t for you Wendy would still be alive. I didn’t want to kill Wendy, but she was talking too much to you. She actually suspected me so I had to explain to her that Timothy was the killer of Philip Moxton and then kill her that evening, very gently though. You do understand?’

  I hadn’t understood enough. Wendy’s ‘I suspect …’ and that unanswered question had not been directed at the Herricks, but at Sam. ‘Did she blackmail you?’

  ‘No. I don’t think she blackmailed anyone. But she wouldn’t have liked it if she’d known I killed Geoffrey.’

  I was getting desperate, and had to force myself on. ‘Why did you kill Timothy though?’

  ‘That’s easy. He was a banker, as bad as Donald Moxton. He and some journalist friend of yours had been doing some investigation into the past and he had no right to do that. So that was your fault too. He told me you began it.’

  Steer clear of my involvement. ‘Is that why you killed Geoffrey? You’d found out he was a banker and his real name was Philip Moxton?’ This might be a rich vein to keep him talking. And talk I had to. Even though it was next to a dead body that might shortly be joined by mine. ‘Why kill him though? There are plenty of banks and bankers.’

  ‘Not like the Moxtons.’ Sam leaned back in his chair as though we were just relaxing over another coffee, but the pistol remained in his hand. ‘Philip Moxton ruined my life.’

  ‘How?’ I tried to sound eager to know.

  ‘He ruined my career.’

  I scrabbled in my mind to remember what he’d told me. ‘You were in banking just for a year or two in the sixties. Philip Moxton could only have been a child then or a teenager at most.’

  ‘Did I say Philip? I meant Donald. Same thing. I was a deputy manager at a bank and doing well until he bought it. 1963 that was. He sacked us all, just like that. A week’s wages. Closed the branch and took the business to the next village. There were no million pound pay offs in those days, no redundancy payments at all and so he could sack people just as he liked. I didn’t even get a reference as a deputy manager. It was a tough time.’

  ‘But a long time ago. Donald died in 1994.’

  ‘In the late seventies Philip Moxton came into the picture.’

  ‘You worked for him?’

  ‘My wife Alice did. She was Donald’s private secretary for over fifteen years and went on working for him when he had officially retired. He still ran an office at Moxtons’ headquarters. Then when he died in 1994 Philip took her over for a year or two but then told her flatly she wasn’t smart enough and was too old to adapt to modern technology, so he sacked her.’

  ‘I’m very sorry.’

  He ignored this. ‘People like the Moxtons never realize we have feelings. They don’t care. It was a large part of my wife’s life and he took it away from her. It broke her heart and that broke mine. She died only a few years after he sacked her. We moved here because I thought the garden might take her mind off it, but it didn’t, so I knew that if ever I had the chance I’d pay the Moxtons back. I knew Donald by sight, but not Philip – Moxtons Bank doesn’t go in for socializing with their so-called inferiors. So I didn’t recognize Geoffrey Green. When Wendy told me who he was I realized my chance had come. So I took it. I’m sorry Wendy had to die though. I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for you. That means I now have to kill you and then myself.’

  There’s always a tendency to grin when staring at tragedy, perhaps in a vain effort to counterbalance it and I found myself oddly light-hearted. ‘Why not the other way round?’ I joked.

  I’d meant it as a silent thought, but I must have spoken aloud, as I struggled to keep myself alive as the seconds ticked by.

  ‘That’s funny,’ Sam said eventually. ‘I liked you, Jack – at first, anyway. So I’m very sorry to have to do this.’ The pistol was raised and quivered.

  Reflex action.

  I threw myself from my chair straight at the door which hadn’t completely closed, bending as low as I could for extra impact. The door burst open, I half stumbled, half fell horizontally through it as the gun went off. My ear drums reverberated, everything went blank and then the gun went off again.

  I opened my eyes. I wasn’t in heaven, I wasn’t in hell. I lay sprawled full length on the pebbles, there was blood around me and I was staring at a pair of black shoes.

  ‘Louise?’ I choked. That was how I’d first met her, sprawled at her feet. Was she here already? Was this heaven after all?

  The boots crunched, someone squatted down at my side and cautiously turned me over. It wasn’t Louise. It was Brandon.

  ‘Been in another punch-up?’ enquired the orderly as I was wheeled into A and E. ‘Not long since we got rid of you last time.’

  They must have given me something to put me out because in due course I was aware of being wheeled out again and deposited into an ambulance with Louise at my side. So that was all right, provided she didn’t turn into Brandon again. The blood, she explained gently when we reached Frogs Hill, was from a superficial wound. Other than that, I only had – guess what? – severe bruising.

  When I woke up with a comparatively clear head the next day, the curtains were blowing in the breeze, the autumn sun beamed at me and the smell of toast floated up from below. The only problem was that it wasn’t Louise at my side. Unless I was still dozy from the knockout, it was Liz Potter, my former lover and now friend. I was petrified.

  ‘Louise?’ I croaked.

  My friend glared at me. ‘Thanks, Jack. I’m Liz, remember?’

  ‘But Louise is all right?’

  She was immediately contrite. ‘Yes, she is. She asked me to sit by your side as she couldn’t. Sorry, J
ack, but I’ve all you’ve got for the next hour or two. Colin loved the idea of my babysitting you.’

  I’d have laughed if I’d felt up to it. Her nerdish husband dislikes me intensely (and with little reason).

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ I said.

  The next thing I knew Richie Carson was sitting there and Liz had vanished. I promptly closed my eyes. It must be a hallucination. It wasn’t. He leaned forward and peered at me.

  ‘Sorry, Jack. Got on the wrong track. Thought you were after my dad.’

  I gazed at him. ‘What for?’

  ‘Murder one,’ he said, obviously surprised I had to ask. ‘Dad gave me what for when he found out about your mishap that evening.’ He then proceeded to bend down and inspect the underside of my bed.

  ‘Thought you might have a bug under there,’ he explained, when he re-emerged. I wondered vaguely what kind of bug he had in mind, before I focused on the fact he wanted an off-record chat. ‘Dad got curious about where this Moxton bloke was living when he wasn’t at Staveley House and so was his boss, Miss Moxton. So he followed him back one day, and thereafter used to keep a bit of a check on him like. Who he was seeing and that. I got the idea you were pinning Moxton’s murder on him, so I had to show you the error of your ways before you went too far. The boys duffed you up a little, and then I put the Golf back there to show it wasn’t Dad who nicked it at the house. Actually it wasn’t down to me in the first place. One of my boys thought he’d go in for a spot of freelance work on his own account. Took me a while to sort that out and get the Golf back for you. Knew you’d be grateful.’

  ‘Oh, I was, once I’d got over the duffing up.’

  ‘I made up for it, didn’t I? Took the car back. Station seemed to be the best place for it, where it was pinched from. A hint to you, Jack. See?’ He put his face close to mine to show his sincerity.

  ‘Yes,’ I murmured shutting my eyes again.

  ‘Good to know you, Jack.’

  ‘Likewise,’ I murmured.

  When I cautiously opened my eyes again, Liz was back and all was well. As well as could be expected, that is. Late in the afternoon, Brandon paid me a call. I was downstairs by that time, which made interviews rather more dignified. ‘Feel like talking?’ he asked.