Twelve Red Herrings

by Archer, Jeffrey

  Jeremy was soon finding excuses to spend more and more time in Leeds, and I am bound to admit that his sudden enthusiasm for the north of England enabled me to advance my ambitions for Cooper’s far more quickly than I had originally dreamed possible. I had felt for some time that the company needed an in-house lawyer, and within a year of our first meeting I offered Jeremy a place on the board, with the mandate to prepare the company for going public.

  During that period I spent a great deal of my time in Madrid, Amsterdam and Brussels drumming up new contracts, and Rosemary certainly didn’t discourage me. Meanwhile, Jeremy skillfully guided the company through a thicket of legal and financial problems caused by our expansion. Thanks to his diligence and expertise, we were able to announce on February 12, 1980, that Cooper’s would be applying for a listing on the Stock Exchange later that year. It was then that I made my first mistake: I invited Jeremy to become deputy chairman of the company.

  Under the terms of the flotation, fifty-one percent of the shares would be retained by Rosemary and myself. Jeremy explained to me that for tax reasons they should be divided equally between us. My accountants agreed, and at the time I didn’t give it a second thought. The remaining 4,900,000 one-pound shares were quickly taken up by institutions and the general public, and within days of the company being listed on the Stock Exchange, their value had risen to £2.80.

  My father, who had died the previous year, would never have accepted that it was possible to become worth several million pounds overnight. In fact, I suspect he would have disapproved of the very idea, as he went to his deathbed still believing that a ten-pound overdraft was quite adequate to conduct a well-run business.

  During the 1980s the British economy showed continual growth, and by March 1984 Cooper’s shares had topped the five-pound mark, following press speculation about a possible takeover. Jeremy had advised me to accept one of the bids, but I told him that I would never allow Cooper’s to be let out of the family’s control. After that, we had to split the shares on three separate occasions, and by 1989 the Sunday Times was estimating that Rosemary and I were together worth around thirty million pounds.

  I had never thought of myself as being wealthy—after all, as far as I was concerned, the shares were simply pieces of paper held by Joe Ramsbottom, our company solicitor. I still lived in my father’s house, drove a five-year-old Jaguar, and worked fourteen hours a day. I had never cared much for holidays and wasn’t by nature extravagant. Wealth seemed somehow irrelevant to me. I would have been happy to continue living much as I was, had I not arrived home unexpectedly one night.

  I had caught the last plane back to Heathrow after a particularly long and arduous negotiation in Cologne, and had originally intended to stay overnight in London. But by then I’d had enough of hotels, and simply wanted to get home, despite the long drive. When I arrived back in Leeds a few minutes after one, I found Jeremy’s white BMW parked in the driveway.

  Had I phoned Rosemary earlier that day, I might never have ended up in jail.

  I parked my car next to Jeremy’s and was walking toward the front door when I noticed that there was only one light on in the house—in the front room on the first floor. It wouldn’t have taken Sherlock Holmes to deduce what might be taking place in that particular room.

  I came to a halt, and stared up at the drawn curtains for some time. Nothing stirred, so clearly they hadn’t heard the car and were unaware of my presence. I retraced my steps and drove quietly off in the direction of the city center. When I arrived at the Queen’s Hotel, I asked the duty manager if Mr. Jeremy Alexander had booked a room for the night. He checked the register and confirmed that he had.

  “Then I’ll take his key,” I told him. “Mr. Alexander has booked himself in somewhere else for the night.” My father would have been proud of such thrifty use of the company’s resources.

  I lay on the hotel bed, quite unable to sleep, my anger rising as each hour passed. Although I no longer had a great deal of feeling for Rosemary, and even accepted that perhaps I never had, I now loathed Jeremy. But it wasn’t until the next day that I discovered just how much I loathed him.

  The following morning I rang my secretary and told her I would be driving to the office straight from London. She reminded me that there was a board meeting scheduled for two o’clock, which Mr. Alexander was penciled in to chair. I was glad she couldn’t see the smile of satisfaction that spread across my face. A quick glance at the agenda over breakfast and it had become abundantly clear why Jeremy had wanted to chair this particular meeting. But his plans didn’t matter anymore. I had already decided to let my fellow directors know exactly what he was up to, and to make sure that he was dismissed from the board as soon as was practicable.

  I arrived at Cooper’s just after 1:30 and parked in the space marked “Chairman.” By the time the board meeting was scheduled to begin, I’d had just enough time to check over my files, and became painfully aware of how many of the company’s shares were now controlled by Jeremy, and of what he and Rosemary must have been planning for some time.

  Jeremy vacated the chairman’s place without comment the moment I entered the boardroom, and showed no particular interest in the proceedings until we reached an item concerning a future share issue. It was at this point that he tried to push through a seemingly innocuous motion that could ultimately have resulted in Rosemary and myself losing overall control of the company and therefore being unable to resist any future takeover bid. I might have fallen for it if I hadn’t traveled up to Leeds the previous evening and found his car parked in my driveway, and the bedroom light on. Just when he thought he had succeeded in having the motion agreed without a vote, I asked the company accountants to prepare a full report for the next board meeting before we came to any decision. Jeremy showed no sign of emotion. He simply looked down at his notes and began drumming his fingers on the boardroom table. I was determined that the report would prove to be his downfall. If only it hadn’t been for my short temper, I might, given time, have worked out a more sensible way of ridding myself of him.

  As no one had “any other business” to raise, I closed the meeting at 5:40 and suggested to Jeremy that he join Rosemary and me for dinner. I wanted to see them together. Jeremy didn’t seem too keen, but after some bluffing from me about not fully understanding his new share proposal, and feeling that my wife ought to be brought in on it at some stage, he agreed. When I rang Rosemary to let her know that Jeremy would be coming to dinner, she seemed even less enthusiastic about the idea than he had been.

  “Perhaps the two of you should go off to a restaurant together,” she suggested. “Then Jeremy can bring you up to date on what’s been going on while you’ve been away.” I tried not to laugh. “We haven’t got much food in at the moment,” she added. I told her that it wasn’t the food I was worried about.

  Jeremy was uncharacteristically late, but I had his usual whiskey and soda ready the moment he walked through the door. I must say, he put up a brilliant performance over dinner, though Rosemary was less convincing.

  Over coffee in the sitting room, I managed to provoke the confrontation that Jeremy had so skillfully avoided at the board meeting.

  “Why are you so keen to rush through this new share allocation?” I asked once he was on his second brandy. “Surely you realize that it will take control of the company out of the hands of Rosemary and me. Can’t you see that we could be taken over in no time?”

  He tried a few well-rehearsed phrases. “In the best interests of the company, Richard. You must realize how quickly Cooper’s is expanding. It’s no longer a family firm. In the long term it has to be the most prudent course for both of you, not to mention the shareholders.” I wondered which particular shareholders he had in mind.

  I was a little surprised to find Rosemary not only backing him up, but showing a remarkable grasp of the finer details of the share allocation, even after Jeremy had scowled rather too obviously at her. She seemed extremely well-versed in the
arguments he had been putting forward, given the fact that she had never shown any interest in the company’s transactions in the past. It was when she turned to me and said, “We must consider our future, darling,” that I finally lost my temper.

  Yorkshiremen are well known for being blunt, and my next question lived up to our county’s reputation.

  “Are you two having an affair, by any chance?”

  Rosemary turned scarlet. Jeremy laughed a little too loudly, and then said, “I think you’ve had one drink too many, Richard.”

  “Not a drop,” I assured him. “Sober as a judge. As I was when I came home late last night, and found your car parked in the driveway and the light on in the bedroom.”

  For the first time since I’d met him, I had completely wrongfooted Jeremy, even if it was only for a moment. He began drumming his fingers on the glass table in front of him.

  “I was simply explaining to Rosemary how the new share issue would affect her,” he said, hardly missing a beat. “Which is no more than is required under stock exchange regulations.”

  “And is there a stock exchange regulation requiring that such explanations should take place in bed?”

  “Oh, don’t be absurd,” said Jeremy. “I spent the night at the Queen’s Hotel. Call the manager,” he added, picking up the telephone and offering it to me. “He’ll confirm that I was booked in to my usual room.”

  “I’m sure he will,” I said. “But he’ll also confirm that it was I who spent the night in your usual bed.”

  In the silence that followed, I removed the hotel bedroom key from my jacket pocket and dangled it in front of him. Jeremy immediately jumped to his feet.

  I rose from my chair, rather more slowly, and faced him, wondering what his next line could possibly be.

  “It’s your own fault, you bloody fool,” he eventually stammered out. “You should have taken more interest in Rosemary in the first place, and not gone off gallivanting around Europe all the time. It’s no wonder you’re in danger of losing the company.”

  Funny, it wasn’t the fact that Jeremy had been sleeping with my wife that caused me to snap, but that he had the arrogance to think he could take over my company as well. I didn’t reply, but just took a pace forward and threw a punch at his clean-shaven jaw. I may have been a couple of inches shorter than he was, but after twenty years of hanging around with truck drivers, I could still land a decent blow. Jeremy staggered first backward and then forward, before crumpling in front of me. As he fell, he cracked his right temple on the corner of the glass table, knocking his brandy all over the floor. He lay motionless in front of me, blood dripping onto the carpet.

  I must admit I felt rather pleased with myself, especially when Rosemary rushed to his side and started screaming obscenities at me.

  “Save your breath for the ex-Deputy Chairman,” I told her. “And when he comes round, tell him not to bother with the Queen’s Hotel, because I’ll be sleeping in his bed again tonight.”

  I strode out of the house and drove back into the city center, leaving my Jaguar in the hotel parking lot. When I walked into the Queen’s, the lobby was deserted, and I took the elevator straight up to Jeremy’s room. I lay on top of the bed but was far too agitated to sleep.

  I was just dozing off when four policemen burst into the room and pulled me off the bed. One of them told me that I was under arrest and read me my rights. Without further explanation I was marched out of the hotel and driven to Millgarth Police Station. A few minutes after five A.M., I was signed in by the duty officer and my personal possessions were taken from me and dropped into a bulky brown envelope. I was told that I had the right to make one telephone call, so I rang Joe Ramsbottom, woke his wife, and asked if Joe could join me at the station as quickly as possible. Then I was locked in a small cell and left alone.

  I sat on the wooden bench and tried to figure out why I had been arrested. I couldn’t believe that Jeremy would have been foolish enough to charge me with assault. When Joe arrived about forty minutes later, I told him exactly what had taken place earlier in the evening. He listened gravely but didn’t offer an opinion. When I had finished, he said he would try to find out what the police intended to charge me with.

  After Joe left, I began to fear that Jeremy might have had a heart attack, or even that the blow to his head from the corner of the table might have killed him. My imagination ran riot as I considered all the worst possibilities, and I was becoming more and more desperate to learn what had happened when the cell door swung open and two plainclothes detectives walked in. Joe was a pace behind them.

  “I’m Chief Inspector Bainbridge,” said the taller of the two. “And this is my colleague, Sergeant Harris.” Their eyes were tired and their suits crumpled. They looked as if they had been on duty all night, as both of them could have done with a shave. I felt my chin and realized I needed one as well.

  “We’d like to ask you some questions about what took place at your home earlier this evening,” said the chief inspector. I looked at Joe, who shook his head. “It would help our inquiries, Mr. Cooper, if you cooperated with us,” the chief inspector continued. “Would you be prepared to give us a statement either in writing or as a tape recording?”

  “I’m afraid my client has nothing to say at the moment, Chief Inspector,” said Joe. “And he will have nothing to say until I have taken further instructions.”

  I was rather impressed. I’d never seen Joe that firm with anyone other than his children.

  “We would simply like to take a statement, Mr. Ramsbottom,” Chief Inspector Bainbridge said to Joe, as if I didn’t exist. “We are quite happy for you to be present throughout.”

  “No,” said Joe firmly. “You either charge my client, or you leave us—and leave us immediately.”

  The chief inspector hesitated for a moment, then nodded to his colleague. They departed without another word.

  “Charge me?” I said, once the cell door had been locked behind them. “What with, for God’s sake?”

  “Murder, I suspect,” said Joe. “After what Rosemary has been telling them.”

  “Murder?” I said, almost unable to mouth the word. “But …” I listened in disbelief as Joe told me what he’d been able to discover about the details of the statement my wife had given to the police during the early hours of the morning.

  “But that’s not what happened,” I protested. “Surely no one would believe such an outrageous story.”

  “They might when they learn the police have found a trail of blood leading from the sitting room to the spot where your car was parked in the driveway,” said Joe.

  “That’s not possible,” I said. “When I left Jeremy, he was still lying unconscious on the floor.”

  “The police also found traces of blood in the trunk of your car. They seem quite confident that it will match up with Jeremy’s.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “He’s clever. He’s very clever. Can’t you see what they’ve been up to?”

  “No, to be honest, I can’t,” Joe admitted. “This isn’t exactly all in a day’s work for a company solicitor like me. But I managed to catch Sir Matthew Roberts QC on the phone before he left home this morning. He’s the most eminent criminal attorney on the northeastern circuit. He’s appearing in the York Crown Court today, and he’s agreed to join us as soon as the court has risen. If you’re innocent, Richard,” Joe said, “with Sir Matthew defending you, there will be nothing to fear. Of that you can be certain.”

  Later that afternoon I was charged with the murder of Jeremy Anatole Alexander; the police admitted to my solicitor that they still hadn’t found the body, but they were confident that they would do so within a few hours. I knew they wouldn’t. Joe told me the following day that they had done more digging in my garden during the past twenty-four hours than I had attempted in the past twenty-four years.

  Around seven that evening the door of my cell swung open once again and Joe walked in, accompanied by a heavily built, distinguished-looki
ng man. Sir Matthew Roberts was about my height, but at least thirty pounds heavier. From his rubicund cheeks and warm smile, he looked as if he regularly enjoyed a good bottle of wine and the company of amusing people. He had a full head of dark hair and he was attired in the garb of his profession, a dark three-piece suit and a silver-gray tie. I liked him from the moment he introduced himself. His first words were to express the wish that we had met in more pleasant circumstances.

  I spent the rest of the evening with Sir Matthew, going over my story again and again. I could tell he didn’t believe a word I was saying, but he still seemed quite happy to represent me. He and Joe left a few minutes after eleven, and I settled down to spend my first night behind bars.

  I was remanded in custody until the police had processed and submitted all their evidence to the Department of Public Prosecutions. The following day a magistrate committed me to trial at Leeds Crown Court, and despite an eloquent plea from Sir Matthew, I was not granted bail.

  Forty minutes later I was transferred to Armley Jail.

  The hours turned into days, the days into weeks, and the weeks into months. I almost tired of telling anyone who would listen that they would never find Jeremy’s body, because there was no body to find.

  When the case finally reached Leeds Crown Court nine months later, the crime reporters turned up in hordes and followed every word of the trial with relish. A multimillionaire, a possible adulterous affair and a missing body were too much for them to resist. The tabloids exceeded themselves, describing Jeremy as the Lord Lucan of Leeds and me as an oversexed truck driver. I would have enjoyed every last syllable of it if I hadn’t been the accused.

  In his opening address, Sir Matthew put up a magnificent fight on my behalf. Without a body, how could his client possibly be charged with murder? And how could I have disposed of the body, when I had spent the entire night in a bedroom at the Queen’s Hotel? How I regretted not checking in the second time, but simply going straight up to Jeremy’s room. It didn’t help that the police had found me lying on the bed fully dressed.