Down on Cyprus Avenue

by Paul Charles

  McCusker scratched beneath his left ear with his right hand, merely to find something to stop him voicing his disappointment.

  “As I say, I included this case merely to show what I think is a pattern: Whitlock appears to go out of his way to befriend his clients, particularly his older clients. This all leads me nicely to the next case, which is not as clear-cut as Dan Kidd’s. This next one,” Barr said, exchanging one file for the next, “concerns Miss Maud Stephens. Miss Stephens was a spinster.”

  “Oh please don’t call her that,” O’Carroll interrupted immediately, suffering minor convulsions. “That’s such an offensive word...let’s just say...”

  “Miss Maud Stephens never married,” Barr suggested.

  “Yes, WJ, that’s much better.”

  “Miss Maud Stephens never married, she was an academic, she came from good stock, a wealthy family who provided well for her, but apparently not as well as they would have had she produced heirs. She worked her way around several senior partners in Mason, Burr & Co. She never fell out with any of them, she just always needed new blood, new intellectual stimulation...that was, of course, until she met Wesley Whitlock III.

  “It would appear that the time she met up with the American in 1989 was right around the time that she realised that the funds she’d once felt would be fabulously sufficient for her years, were, in fact, no longer capable of seeing her through ‘til the end of her days. She had, on the surface, a humble lifestyle for one so wealthy; she lived in a beautiful late-Victorian house overlooking Wallace Park in Lisburn and for the winter months she’d relocate to her small rustic cottage near Carcassonne in the south of France, to benefit from the milder climate. She owned both properties outright.”

  “What age would she have been then?” McCusker asked.

  This time Barr knew the answer. “In her file Whitlock describes her as a ‘young seventy-six’.”

  “So she felt she needed to increase her bank balance?” O’Carroll prompted, checking her watch and no doubt thinking they’d still one more case to get through.

  “Yes, indeed,” Barr said, “she and Whitlock enjoyed a weekly dinner, always in her home. Apparently the subject came up several times about how she could increase her financial resources without investing in the property market. Whitlock described a hedge fund he’d created and recommended she speak directly to a couple of people already involved with it. The references checked out sufficiently for Miss Stephens to invest £750,000 in Whitlock’s fund.”

  “Wow...” O’Carroll gasped. “Was that all of her inheritance?”

  “Apparently, according to Whitlock’s notes, it was 30 per cent of her net worth at that point.”

  “How long did she think she was going to live for?” O’Carroll said, to no one in particular. When no one in general replied she added, “I could retire easily on that even today.”

  “In her letters to friends, Maud Stephens wrote that Wesley Whitlock III frequently reported to her that ‘her nest egg was doing well.’ When Miss Stephens died later that year Wesley Whitlock reported to the partners in Mason, Burr & Co. that his hedge fund had suffered badly through overseas investments, including one very big loss on a Hong Kong tower block, which had never even got off the ground. The net result was that Miss Stephen’s estate received a cheque for only £23,763 from Wesley Whitlock III.

  “Whitlock was investigated by the partners. No action was taken, save he was to refrain from any future potential conflicts of interest and no longer involve any of his personal clients in the investment funds that he was directly or indirectly involved in. It should also be noted that by this point he was the second most senior partner in the firm.”

  “Wow,” O’Carroll said.

  “It doesn’t end there,” Barr continued. “Unlike Dan Kidd, Miss Stephens had several friends who were up to speed with her financial situation. None had a vested interest because all of them were aware that she had left her entire estate to set up a charity fund, in her family name, to help secure further education for Lisburn’s under-privileged. Led by the executor of her trust, Mr Joseph Harris, they vigorously went after Mason, Burr & Co. and Wesley Whitlock III, both together and separately, for the full £750,000 plus interest.”

  “And?” McCusker asked impatiently. “Did they win?”

  “Four years later they eventually gave up, resigned to the fact that much of the money meant for the charity’s under-privileged was being spent on legal fees, without any apparent hope of success.”

  “This Joseph Harris...is he still alive?” McCusker asked.

  “I still need to find that out,” Barr admitted.

  “And your third case WJ?” O’Carroll asked, checking her watch once again.

  “Natalie Gilmour, this one is more complicated and a lot sadder than any of the above. Natalie Gilmour was in her early eighties when she met Whitlock. Whitlock was assigned to her husband’s account when he first started working with Mason, Burr & Co. in 1987. Samuel, the husband, had retired from a career in banking a few years previously. He didn’t really have a lot of need for a lawyer but for some reason or other Whitlock struck up a friendship with him and they dined together frequently, if not weekly. Samuel Gilmour had always kept himself in good shape, ate well, never smoked, drank little and so everyone was in total shock when he, quite literally, just dropped dead of a cerebral aneurysm.

  “Natalie never really recovered from the shock of losing her soulmate and within six months she was bed ridden, more from a broken heart than a physical ailment.

  “Again, Whitlock was in attendance and frequently visited the widow – and all above and beyond the call of duty, you understand. He befriended both her nurse, Sally Magill, and her doctor, Jack Rowley, and would regularly check in with them for progress reports.

  “The file shows that on the 16 March 1989 Wesley Whitlock III made yet another of his frequent visits to see the widow Gilmour. The main difference on this visit was that a very weak Natalie Gilmour changed her will, making Whitlock the sole beneficiary. The will was witnessed by both Dr Jack Rowley and Sally Magill, both of whom admitted to being paid for their witnessing services.”

  “How much was her estate worth?” O’Carroll asked.

  “Including the Belfast house and a wee cottage up at Rathmullan in Donegal – and after all death duties – it was worth just over £1.7 million.”

  “Serious change for Whitlock Senior,” McCusker said. “If he’d been drilling for oil he couldn’t have done much better.”

  “If he’d been drilling for oil at least he’d have gotten his hands dirty,” O’Carroll added.

  “But this one doesn’t end there either,” Barr said. “It all looked to have been done and dusted when out of the woodwork stepped a son of Samuel Gilmour’s first marriage who’d emigrated to Canada in the seventies and apparently had been mentioned in Natalie’s first will.”

  “Okay,” O’Carroll said, through a smirk, “now he needs to get his hands dirty.”

  “Well, not really,” Barr continued. “Whitlock Senior made a song and dance about not wanting to deprive anyone of their heritage. At the same time he made it very clear that as Natalie’s estate was her gift to him, he wasn’t going to be disrespectful by not accepting it. So, what he did was dig out the original will and make a grand show of

  generosity by paying Samuel Gilmour’s son what he’d been left in the original will, which was exactly £60,000.”

  “And the son from the first marriage bit his hand off?” McCusker said.

  “Only until he found out later how much Whitlock Senior pocketed,” Barr said. “By which time he’d already accepted the £60,000 as a full and final settlement.”

  “So you think this is a motive for the first son…what’s his name by the way?” O’Carroll asked.

  “Tim Gilmour.”

  “So you think Tim Gilmour had enough of a motive to murder Wesley Whitlock’s son?”

  “Well...there’s not much else,” Barr suggested.r />
  “But ‘there’s not much else’ can never be the reason we accuse someone of murder, Willie John,” McCusker said, reflecting on his slim pickings. “Most certainly, let’s check out Tim Gilmour, but I’m not convinced. Mind you, this is all great work. You’ve shown us a side of Wesley Whitlock we never knew existed.”

  “Aye, a tinker in a gentleman’s suit,” O’Carroll said. “Of course, I’ve also realised for the first time that I’ve been pronouncing his name incorrectly all of this time.”

  “Really?” McCusker asked, not having noticed her doing so.

  “Yes,” O’Carroll started flamboyantly. “From what DS Barr has just told us I now realise his correct name is: Wesley Whitlock the Turd.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  McCusker headed off to thank Kurt Wolf for his kind hospitality and to make one final request. “Could you possibly do me up a list of all of Wesley Whitlock’s holding and investments?”

  “Yes, that’ll be easy,” Herr Wolf claimed. “It’ll all be in the partner’s minutes. Shall I drop it around to the Custom House, perhaps after lunchtime?”

  “Perfect,” McCusker said, and thanked him again.

  “Have you anything you need to be doing?” McCusker asked O’Carroll, after they’d tidied all the files back into their seven boxes, but only once they’d helped Barr to complete his summaries on the eleven files he’d selected for closer examination.

  O’Carroll checked her watch and appeared shocked to discover it was 12.38 p.m.

  “I’m okay for a while,” she announced. “I’m meeting up with our Grace at three and I’ll need an hour’s kip before that, so I can give you a good hour.”

  “What adventure are you off on tonight then?”

  “Well, we’re off the see an amazing Belfast band called The Sea Horses,” she announced proudly.

  “Oh yes – I’ve heard of them,” McCusker replied, visibly surprising her. “I’ve seen their logo all around the city on lampposts and parking bollards.”

  “You eejit – the wee golden sea horse is the city emblem!” O’Carroll laughed and added, “Anyway, what do you have in mind?”

  “I would like to go and interview Julia Whitlock again,” McCusker said.

  “You have a lead?” O’Carroll asked, her interest certainly perking up.

  “No, but I’d like one,” McCusker admitted.

  “I’ll head back to the Custom House, write up my notes on these files and try and track down Tim Gilmour,” Barr volunteered. “If you need anyone after your Miss Whitlock interview I’ll be available.”

  “I might just take you up on that WJ,” McCusker replied.

  The blues (and the agency’s McCusker) came rolling down Royal Avenue, buzzy and building up to its peak of Saturday shoppers.

  McCusker wanted to walk, while O’Carroll wanted to drive, so they compromised: they’d drive over and McCusker could walk himself back home or to the Custom House.

  Spring was around the corner but, still for all of that, it was a glorious day, the sun shining, the sky blue, very blue. “The perfect day for walking,” McCusker reminded O’Carroll.

  “Why do you not want to talk to Wesley Whitlock?” O’Carroll asked, as they entered the Arc, which was an oasis of peace and quiet following the vibrant Royal Avenue.

  “Oh I do,” McCusker replied immediately, “it’s just that I don’t feel I’ve got enough information yet to be able to question him properly.”

  “Do you think there is a chance he knows who murdered his son?”

  McCusker looked at O’Carroll. Her concession to the fact that it was a Saturday was that she had forsaken one of her normal trouser suits for a black maxi skirt, which covered the majority of her brown leather boots. She finished the look with a white polo-neck jumper and a brown, waist-length leather jacket. Normally her dark brown hair was parked up in a complicated arrangement secured with numerous hair clips and clasps and such like, but today she’d allowed it to flow freely and she looked much, much younger with it worn down. Her green eyes were glued to the pavement, but were betraying the fact that she was picking her way through the case more than navigating the vast courtyard of The Arc. He knew she was right there with him in more ways than one.

  “Yeah, you’re right, we’d be fools not to think so,” he conceded. “But if he isn’t aware of the actual person at this juncture, he’ll be aware of whoever it turns out to be.”

  As luck would have it Julia Whitlock was not in her twelfth-floor corner apartment in block twelve of The Arc, or if she was, she wasn’t answering the members of the PSNI ringing her doorbell. As better luck would have it they met Miss Whitlock down at street level on their way out.

  “Ah McCusker!” she exclaimed, appearing pleased to see him. “Are you here to see me?”

  McCusker nodded and smiled, saying, “And this is my colleague Detective Inspector Lily O’Carroll.”

  Julia Whitlock barely gave O’Carroll the time of day, focusing all of her attention on McCusker. “And guess what,” she said, “I’ve just been down to buy some of those Eiffel Towers you were telling me about.”

  “Paris buns, actually,” McCusker offered, now acknowledging for the first time the bakery smells his nostrils had recently been tuning into.

  “Whatever,” Julia replied. “Let’s pop back up to my crib, have some coffee and these delicious fresh buns. We can chat up there while I defrost my fridge.”

  * * *

  The views from her living room were no less spectacular the second time around –even O’Carroll was mightily impressed and they both gravitated towards the big window with the magic view. McCusker had discovered since his last visit that the weird silver building, which would have looked more at home on the film set of a Krypton movie, in the foreground to the side of the lazy Lagan was in fact the six-storey Titanic Centre, part of the new Titanic enterprise. McCusker resisted the obvious thought, but by doing so he’d clearly entertained it.

  Julia Whitlock removed her flimsy and flaccid raincoat-cum-wind-resistor affair, revealing a sleeveless wine-coloured polo neck under a white buttoned-up waistcoat and a pair of thick tights, which left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Her brown wild mane was in full flow and today she was make-up free and, to McCusker’s less than discerning eye, all the better for it.

  She had started to flutter around in the kitchen area, getting cups and plates, knives and spoons out of various discreet cupboards, filling the electric kettle, putting milk in the jug, slicing the two Paris buns into thirds and generally ignoring the detectives.

  Coffee ready, she invited them to join her at the high counter which separated the kitchen from the living room area. O’Carroll chit-chatted away about how amazing the view was and Julia thanked her, but in a tone that implied she was prepared to take full credit for nature’s stoic work.

  McCusker’s two-thirds of the local bun were gone before either of the ladies had time to pick the bits of icing sugar from the pinnacle of their first.

  Julia made it clear that she was upset: her father has gotten over her brother way too quickly by concentrating his energy into trying to track down the murderer. “But it’s most likely his way of getting over Adam – by getting lost in helping to solve the crime,” she offered.

  “We all have our own ways of grieving” O’Carroll offered.

  Julia Whitlock didn’t look like she was suffering from grief so much as existing on it. “So how is the investigation going into the murder of my brother?” she asked, as she went over to the worktop and removed the largest knife from her set, secured safely in a block of wood. She then crossed to her fridge, opened the top freezer section and started to expertly stab away at the overgrowth of ice, in an effort to defrost the freezer.

  She was creating quite a racket, and since McCusker wished to remove the temptation of nicking another third of the buns, he got up to fill the kettle, plugging it in.

  In the meantime O’Carroll was giving her an extended version of the standard
“we’re in the middle of an on-going investigation” line.

  All the time McCusker had been filling the kettle, Julia hadn’t even batted an eyelid in his direction. It was as though they were a lifelong couple going about their much-rehearsed domestic chores.

  “Tell me this Julia: Do you have a hot water bottle?” McCusker asked as the kettle peaked.

  “No…I mean yes, I do…” Julia replied, clearly flummoxed. “But aren’t you meant to romance me a bit first?”

  “Augh these Ulster lads!” O’Carroll said through her giggles. “Believe you me, they don’t let the grass grow under their feet.”

  “Well, I suppose it is our second date after all,” Julia laughed, as she removed a fuzzy Kermit the Frog hot water bottle from a cupboard underneath the sink. All the time she still retained the knife in her hand and was laughing, with a bit of occasional loud baying, at her and O’Carroll’s attempts at humour.

  “Let me show you a wee trick,” McCusker said, taking the laughter at his expense in good humour. He filled the hot water bottle, returned the cap and placed Kermit carefully in the freezer, closing the door after him. “We’ll let Kermit do all the hard graft for you while we have a chat, eh?”

  “Delightful!” the American declared as her laughter subsided and she took a seat alongside them.

  “The last time we spoke,” McCusker started carefully, “you were just about to tell me what you were doing on the night Adam was killed.”

  “Oh yes, of course I was, and then I realised the time you asked me about, midnight on Saturday until 3 a.m. on Sunday was the time poor Adam lost his life and I’m afraid, as you’re well aware, I just lost it.”

  “Yes,” McCusker replied.

  She chose that exact moment to put the entire last third of her bun in her mouth.

  McCusker remained quiet, playing with his empty plate and toying with his coffee. It wasn't great.

  Julia Whitlock enthusiastically washed down the remains of her Paris bun, but she still hadn’t said anything.