by Sally Rigby
‘Before I leave, I’ll come in to say hello to Elsa,’ she said following him to the front door.
‘She’ll be happy to see you.’
Seb unlocked the door and they headed towards the kitchen where they were greeted by a very excited Elsa.
‘Hello, girl,’ she said, rubbing behind the ears, the spot which she knew the dog loved. Elsa pressed into her legs and stared up at her, her brown eyes excited and happy.
‘She’s such a poppet. I’ll look after her any time you need someone,’ she said to Seb, who’d gone back into the hall and was staring at his face in the mirror. ‘Would you like me to top up your make-up?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Phone me as soon as you’re back here and fill me in on what Yates tells you. Remember, if there’s any sign of trouble call me. We can have a word or sentence, that tells me you’re in trouble.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How about make sure you’re early.’ He arched an eyebrow, and stared at her, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
‘You’re so funny. But if that’s what you want to use then those words it is.’
Chapter 31
18 May
Seb arrived at the Fox and Hounds ten minutes before he was due for his meeting with Tony Yates. The pub wasn’t busy. An elderly man was sitting on a bar stool talking to the bartender and a young couple sat close to the door. He scanned the room and noticed Yates had already arrived and was sitting at a table close to the fireplace. Seb ordered himself a half pint of beer and wandered over.
Yates was sitting ramrod straight with his arms resting on the table, his fists clenched. What appeared to be a whisky with ice was on the table in front of him.
‘I’m not happy about this,’ Yates said, not even giving a greeting.
‘I realise that, and I’m sorry to be dragging everything up again, but it’s done out of necessity. I take it there are things you’ve been keeping from your wife.’ He got straight to the point, there was no need for niceties.
He nodded. ‘I don’t want what we discuss getting back to her. Everything I’m about to tell you is off the record.’
‘I will endeavour to keep our conversation confidential but, as you know, we’re investigating Donald’s suicide and if it transpires that the verdict was incorrect, then I’ll be discussing with the police all the evidence I have relating to him. Do you understand?’ He waited for Yates’s acknowledgement before continuing, but the man was silent. ‘Tony?’
The man thumped the table, and his drink shook. ‘Yes, I understand. Not that I have a choice. You know too much already. Just ask your questions and let’s get this over and done with.’
‘As I mentioned earlier, Donald had been blackmailing another person, and I suspect he might have been blackmailing you, too, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked to meet me. Am I correct?’
Yates picked up his whisky and downed it in one, the ice cubes rattling in the empty glass when he banged it down on the table. ‘What do you think?’ His eyes were glassy.
‘You know my answer to that,’ Seb said, keeping his tone calm.
‘Yes, Donald did blackmail me into investing with him. Okay. Now you know.’ He bowed his head and sighed.
‘Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?’
Yates picked up his glass and stared inside, twirling the ice cubes.
‘Would you like another?’ Seb offered.
‘As much as I’d dearly love to say yes, I’ll have to refuse. I’m driving and already had one before you arrived.’
At least he was being responsible.
‘Please continue.’
‘Donald came to me desperate for money and while we were talking, he suggested that I should invest with him, to give him a helping hand. I refused, saying I hadn’t got any spare cash. Then he told me I should borrow it. He wanted two hundred grand. I laughed, thinking he was joking. I mean, who has that sort of money hanging around?’
‘Then what happened?’
‘He repeated his request, only this time there was an edge to his voice. It was then that I realised he meant it. I was stunned. When I told him no, he said refusing wasn’t an option.’ He paused, a faraway expression in his eyes.
‘And then?’ Seb pushed.
‘I asked him what he meant, and he said if I didn’t comply, he’d make sure everyone knew. It was then that I understood exactly what he meant. He was blackmailing me.’
‘What did he have on you?’
Yates leant back in his chair, breathing in and out several times, seeming to be plucking up the courage to admit to what he’d done.
‘It was something that happened when we were at university over thirty years ago.’
It must have been bad if the man had been carrying it with him for that long. He waited a few seconds for him to continue, but he’d clammed up.
‘Had Donald ever tried to blackmail you over this issue before then?’ Seb asked, leading him.
‘No, never. We made a pact to never bring it up again, and we both stuck to it. It’s what bound us together. We might not have remained friends if it hadn’t been for this. In fact, I’m sure of it.’
‘Can you tell me what it is?’ Seb asked, encouraging him to continue.
Yates nodded. ‘When I was at university, I used to drink quite heavily. We all did. We were binge drinkers, as it’s called nowadays. My parents had given me a car and I would often drive us when we went out, not caring if I was over the limit which I often was. In fact, most weekends I wouldn’t have passed a breath test. One time I got done for drinking under the influence and lost my licence for twelve months.’ Yates ran his finger around the top of his empty glass. ‘Look, I’m not proud of this, but … even though I’d lost my licence I still drove. I know it’s bad and I regret it. It’s not something I’d ever contemplate doing now.’
‘You were young and didn’t think through the consequences of your actions. We all did things at that age that we later regretted. Is that what Donald blackmailed you over?’
Seb sucked in a breath. Extracting the information was proving much harder than he’d thought it was going to be. He was having to go through it one piece at a time.
Yates shook his head. ‘If only. It’s much worse than that. Much, much, worse. We were out one night, just me and Donald, and had both been drinking. I was tipsy, not totally out of it, but had drunk enough not to be fully in control. We were on our way home from the pub when I hit something. Initially, we thought it was a cat, so I stopped the car further up the road and we went back to look.’ Tears formed in his eyes, and he blinked them away. ‘It wasn’t an animal at all. It was a person. A young woman. She was still alive. We could hear her moaning. It was dark, though, as it was a country road with no lighting, and she couldn’t see us.’ Yates leant forward and rested his head in his hand. ‘I panicked. I’d just hit a person and could’ve killed her. I was way over the limit and couldn’t afford to be caught because I’d go to prison. Drunk, knocking someone over, and driving without a licence. They’d throw the book at me. We ran back to the car and drove off, stopping at a phone box a mile down the road and phoning for an ambulance.’
Nausea pooled in the pit of Seb’s stomach. How on earth did the man manage to live with himself after doing that?
‘Do you know what happened to the woman you hit?’ he asked, forcing his voice to sound calm and non-judgemental.
‘Yes. She was a student, and news of what had happened to her was all over campus. She ended up in a wheelchair and came back to uni the following year to continue with her degree.’
‘You should have gone to the police,’ Seb said, his voice flat.
‘It’s easy for me to admit that now, as a responsible adult, but I didn’t and although they interviewed lots of students at the time, they didn’t ever question me or Donald.’
‘There was hardly any CCTV back then, or smartphones which could be tracked. You wouldn�
�t have got away with it now. You were lucky,’ Seb said.
‘If you can call it that. I’ve lived with what I’d done my entire life. I can still hear her moaning in pain as if it happened yesterday.’ He gave an empty laugh. ‘It’s actually cathartic to tell somebody about it now. I ruined that poor girl’s life and I’ll never forget it. But at the time, I was young and all I could think of was what would happen to me. What my parents would say if I ended up in prison. How my life would be over. At the time, it seemed like I had no choice.’
‘This type of crime might well have been tried in a magistrates’ court, and not the Crown Court, which means the statute of limitations on the crime would most likely have expired and Donald couldn’t have done anything to you, if he tried.’
Yates’s eyes widened. ‘But even if I couldn’t be prosecuted, just bringing it out into the open would have damaged my work. I’d have lost clients. My marriage might have ended. My kids would never have spoken to me again. Everything I’d worked for over the years would have been destroyed. I had to do as Donald asked and lend him the money, but you’ve got to believe me, I had nothing to do with his death. I promise you.’
Seb was inclined to believe him. It would have been hard to fake the reactions he was having.
‘After you paid Donald this first amount, did he come to you for more?’
‘No. He knew it would have been impossible for me to get it. He realised I couldn’t just give him a never-ending supply of money as it had to come from somewhere, and I wouldn’t have been able to get another loan from the bank for that amount. My business is doing well, but not that well. I assume that’s why he started blackmailing other people. I asked when I’d receive dividend payments on the money I’d invested, and he made up some excuses as to why I wasn’t going to get any. I didn’t bother to pursue it. There was no point.’
The man had visibly relaxed in his chair. He’d been holding this inside for decades, and now it was out. But Seb couldn’t feel sorry for him. What had happened was inexcusable at whatever age the man had been.
‘Did you discuss why he used the money to invest, giving you documentation and dividends, rather than just taking it for himself?’
‘Oh, yes. Donald was very clever about it. He said that by doing it that way it meant he could claim it was a legitimate investment, should I threaten to go to the police about him. Then it would have been his word against mine.’
‘Although if you had reported him, the police might have looked closely at Donald’s business and the whole Ponzi scheme would have been discovered sooner rather than after his death.’
‘I wasn’t to know that. Donald must have done it as a scare tactic. And it worked.’ He hung his head.
‘Why did you tell Pauline that you only gave Donald a hundred thousand pounds?’
‘I hadn’t planned on telling her at all, and it was only after his death that I admitted it, in case it came out that we were creditors. Telling her I’d lent him a hundred grand was bad enough. If I’d told her the truth, she’d have made my life hell. It was bad enough anyway.’
‘Couldn’t she find out from the bank statements how much you were paying back to the bank each month and put two and two together?’
‘I made sure she didn’t see the loan documents.’
‘Did she ask what Donald wanted the money for? Did she think that you were part of the Ponzi scheme he was operating?’
‘I told her I knew nothing of his illegal activities, and I was helping him out because he was desperate. She believed me, even though she was angry about it.’
‘Did she ask where you got the money from to lend him?’
‘I told her I’d taken out a loan, but said I’d offset it against taxes for the company, so it wouldn’t cost us much.’
The whole thing was complicated and didn’t quite ring true. But Seb couldn’t put his finger on it.
‘Didn’t your accountant have something to say about the loan you took out?’
‘No, because he didn’t know.’
‘How can you take out a business loan without him knowing?’
‘It was a personal loan.’
‘But you said it was a business loan.’
‘That’s what I told Pauline.’
‘In case she saw the business bank statements. But they would be on personal bank statements, not business ones.’
‘I opened a separate bank account which she knows nothing about, and I get online statements only, so she won’t get to find out.’
Talk about burying his head in the sand. Was he being deliberately obtuse, or did he genuinely believe that it would all remain hidden?
‘Tony, you need to think this through carefully. There’s a possibility that everything that happened between you and Donald will come out in the not-too-distant future. I advise you to speak to Pauline and tell her about the blackmail and the reason for it. At least then she’d be forewarned of any bad publicity and will be able to come to terms with the situation.’
‘It’s easy for you to say, you don’t live with the woman. I’d much prefer to say nothing. It’s not like I had anything to do with Donald’s death.’
‘That will be for the police to decide, if it turns out they become involved.’
‘What are you going to do now?’ He stared anxiously at Seb.
‘I’ll go back and discuss it with my colleague, and it will inform the rest of our investigation.’
‘But she’s a police officer. Even if she is helping you on the side, it doesn’t mean that she won’t go back to her superiors and report what I’ve done.’
‘I’ve already told you the statute of limitations would most likely have passed. Our interest is in learning what, if anything, happened to Donald.’
‘I promise you, I had nothing to do with his death.’
‘It’s up to you whether you discuss it with Pauline, you know what I’ll be doing with the information you’ve given me.’
Tony slumped in his chair, and a twinge of pity coursed through Seb’s veins. Until he remembered what the man had done.
Chapter 32
18 May
Seb left the pub and returned to his car, immediately phoning Birdie because he knew she’d be anxious to find out what Yates had told him.
‘Well?’ she said the moment she answered.
‘I’ve just come from my meeting with Tony Yates. He opened up and told me everything. He, too, was being blackmailed by Donald, as we suspected.’
‘So, if he’s blackmailed two people there’s every chance that he’s blackmailed more. I think that now confirms his death was suspicious. He’s blackmailed someone who wanted to get their own back. But was it Edgar or Yates? Or someone else?’
‘In theory, perhaps. But the nagging question is, why was he murdered so long after the blackmail? Also, if they wanted their money back, then murdering Donald wouldn’t help them. The money they gave him was treated like an investment with all the paperwork and promised dividends.’
‘Why did he do that?’
‘According to Yates, as a precaution in case he decided to go to the police, so it didn’t appear to be blackmail. Also, it then would seem legitimate to his accountant and the tax man.’
‘Maybe Witherspoon went back to someone demanding more money and it was the last straw, so instead they killed him.’
‘Neither Edgar nor Tony had the funds to pay him any more money, and Donald was fully aware of that. According to Yates, Donald didn’t ask for more.’
‘He would say that if he killed Donald.’
‘True. That’s assuming Donald was murdered. We still don’t have any concrete evidence.’
‘Why do you keep saying that? We have the suicide note, which Sarah claims is suspect. We also have your attack, and the fact he was blackmailing at least two people, to our knowledge. That, to me, is evidence enough.’
Why was he resisting going with the obvious? Was it because of Sarah? How would she cope with being, yet again, the centre
of what would inevitably be a barrage of media interest? The family would continue to desert her, and the boys would find being at university a nightmare.
‘I want to be sure before doing anything rash.’
‘What about Andrea Wood? Do you think she might have been blackmailed, too? She’s another who made a large investment at the time when Donald was struggling. And if he was blackmailing her, he could have demanded more money, and she had him killed. Or killed him herself. And …’ She paused. ‘You didn’t get attacked until after you’d spoken to her, remember?’
Birdie had a point.
‘We shouldn’t discount Yates, Edgar, or the Blacks either. They were all interviewed before I was beaten up. But one thing to consider is we know that the person with Donald on the day of his death was male.’
‘We need to pass this over to CID. We’ve gone far enough with it,’ Birdie said.
‘Not yet. I want to wait until we’re sure.’
‘Really? Aren’t you keen to get away from here and back to the bright lights of London?’
He hadn’t even thought about it.
‘Where did you get that idea from?’
‘I don’t know. I just assumed. I’m more than happy for CID to take this over, especially if the sarge lets me in on the case.’
‘And what’s the likelihood of that if he believes you’ve been working on something you shouldn’t? It wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility that he’ll exclude you.’
Was that what he truly thought, or did he say it so she’d agree to continuing with their investigation?
‘Crap. I hadn’t thought of that. Why are you right all the time? Did Yates say what he was being blackmailed over?’
‘He asked me not to tell you because you’re a police officer.’
‘And you’re going to let him dictate what you do, are you? Because if you do—’
‘I was telling you what he’d said,’ he said laughing out loud. Birdie was very easy to wind up.
‘Ha. Ha. Very funny. Now tell me,’ she demanded.
