They found themselves in the middle of an industrial city. Large white cylinders stranded in acres of concrete. Pipe and gantries cobwebbed between them. A gas works.
A workman approached them with a sharp, ‘Hey!’ They froze in expectation of his anger. His kindness confused them. As did asking where their mother was.
‘We haven’t got a mother.’ Edith had answered guilelessly. ‘Our mummy’s dead.’
The workman looked to Sunny, pleading to be extracted from the awkwardness of his mistake.
‘Our aunt Shelley looks after us.’ Sunny gripped her sister’s hand. ‘She’s at home.’
Delivered into the keeping of a security guard, a phone number was extracted from Sunny and the pair were sat in the gatehouse. Aunt Shelley arrived in her car about twenty minutes later. The security guard made a big scene about not strolling into dangerous places. Aunt Shelley nodded dramatically along. The guard overegged his performance that both Sunny and Edith knew it was only an act.
From that day they had been forbidden from going up onto the railway bank. They were forced to watch as other kids wandered by in their own explorations, knowing that such a freedom was no longer open to them.
Hugh had stopped. A soft rain had begun, lighting on his clothes in spots. He stared at Edith with his hand on his hips. She was lost in her memories.
“Well, are you going to ask something? You said on the phone that you had some questions to for me.”
“Erm,” Edith’s mind shot back to the present, “did Samuel tell you about the investigation?”
“Yes. Though I must tell you up front that I never met Thomas Faircote. I barely ever knew he existed.” Hugh scratched his neck. He looked at his watch. Then he added as an afterthought. “Either of them.”
“Okay. That’s fine.” Edith groped in her bag for a pen and paper. None came easily to hand and she gave up. “I’m, well, just looking for some background on the family and the company. There are lots of leads that need following up.”
Hugh raised his eyebrows and mock–smiled. “Are there now?”
Edith ignored him. She hadn’t caught the tone of his reply. “Right, so, how did you first meet the Faircote family?”
“In business. Faircote Paints became one of our customers soon after we began trading.”
“You didn’t know them before that?”
“Ha! I shouldn’t think so. I went into the army as a teen and stayed there until I was nearly thirty. I had no friends outside the army. No life outside the army. I think I spent most of my existence outside of England, so I definitely had no dealings with them before that.” Hugh turned to examined a nearly empty bay of minerals.
“So how did your companies start trading with one another?”
“Luck and ignorance,” Hugh laughed and smiled genuinely, the first of the whole conversation, “both our businesses were struggling. Michael had inherited Faircote Paints which was in a pretty poor state, but he was turning it around.”
“Michael?”
“Sam’s father. He saved the business. It would have gone under were it not for him.”
“It would?” Edith knew nothing of the Faircote’s business. That was something her father couldn’t tell her. “Look, can you tell me more about their business? It is a family business, isn’t it? The two dead men are both members of the Faircote family. It is a major link between them.”
Hugh faced Edith. He glanced into the corner of his eye. “Where would you like me to begin?”
“At the very beginning, if you will.” Edith hoped there would be something interesting. Something that would stand out.
“The company was founded in 1946 by Isaac Faircote, who was Sam’s great–grandfather. He had trained as an industrial chemist and served the Ministry of Defence in that capacity during the Second World War. His work involved paints and dyes, hardly the most direct contribution to the war effort, but I’m sure it helped.
“After the war ended there was a great drive toward export manufacture and Isaac Faircote seized the opportunity to put his war service to good use. The business manufactured full spectrum azos...sorry, is this interesting to you? I can’t believe it’s what you wanted to hear. It’s all industry talk. I find it pretty boring if I’m honest.”
Edith put forward a hand in reassurance. “I doubt the technical aspects are important. Go on.”
“Well, the company was successful and grew. It relocated to Trafford Park in the 1950s where it’s been ever since. When Isaac Faircote died in 1967 the company passed into the hands of his eldest son, Edward.
“You want me to keep going, like this, each son in turn? I picked up quite a lot about the company’s history over the years. I could give you chapter and verse.”
“There might be something useful.” Edith frowned. “Can I ask how Isaac died?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I never met him. He was in his sixties though, so I guess it may have been age.” Hugh laughed in the knowledge that he was only a few years younger.
“Did his son inherit the whole company?”
“By the terms of Isaac’s will all of his descendants receive payments from the company’s profits once they reach eighteen. Management of the company passes to the eldest son. Naturally he gets a bigger payment. A triple share.”
“Hmm.” Edith knew the family had money, but not that the received money individually. No wonder the younger Thomas had so much to leave to his daughter. “How big are the payments?”
“I’m not wholly sure, I’m afraid. While I know enough about the company to guess how much profit it makes, the trust is administered separately. I can’t say how many beneficiaries there are either.” Hugh sniffed and rubbed his nose. “I guess they get at least a hundred thousand each.”
“Not bad.” Edith shrugged lazily, seeking to hide her envy behind nonchalance.
“Not bad for doing nothing!” Hugh read her mind.
Edith blushed and cleared her throat. “Anyway. Please, go on.”
“Well, the company continued under Edward, but the fellow had no head for business, and the seventies being what they were the company suffered. It just couldn’t compete overseas. They lost a lot of business. The company continued but in a much reduced state.
“Edward eventually took to drinking because of the stress and killed himself.”
“He killed himself?” Edith stopped. Hugh walked on. “How?”
“The drink! What did I just say?” Hugh shouted, not looking back. Edith quickened her pace to draw alongside. “He committed suicide very slowly. He developed cirrhosis and keeled over. I’m told that the supervisor at the time, a guy called Pete Wharton, was practically superhuman in his efforts and kept the company going. He started on the factory floor as a teen and ended up running the place. I remember his funeral a few years ago. The whole family turned out to see him off. Not surprising really, given what he had done for them.”
Hugh took up a clipboard hung from a post. He examined the contents before letting it fall.
“Thankfully, when Samuel’s father, Michael, took over in 1983, he was young enough and wise enough to listen to Pete. They retrenched the company, focussed it on art supplies, and began to rebuild. Within a few years profits were much better and members of the family were getting healthy payments from the family trust.” Hugh nodded at Edith. “That’s what you’re interested in knowing, isn’t it?” He walked away.
“Yes. To be honest.” Edith blushed. It was a relief. There was no point hiding her thoughts. . Hugh was too perceptive. “I guess that by 1988, there was a lot less conflict over money than before?”
“Exactly. The company was in rude health.” Hugh kicked a loose stone. “That was the year the older Thomas died, correct? If the family were going to knock each other off over money they would have done it in the seventies, not more recently. Michael did a good job of running the company. Those who received payments from the trust could just sit around like lazy buggers and take the money.”
“You think they’re
lazy?”
“I’ve a great deal of loyalty to Michael. I know how he turned the company around and I’m proud to have been his friend. I’m sure Samuel will be just the same. In fact, I know he is. And I mean to keep him on the right path.” He scratched his chin. “Samuel is like another son to me.”
Edith saw an opening. “How exactly was the company turned round? Did they borrow money? Make any new deals? You mentioned...art supplies?”
Hugh chuckled, the seriousness of the earlier moment evaporating. “Good angle! I can see where you’re going with this. In short, this is where I came in.
“Like I said, they focussed on art supplies. They moved away from synthetic dyes and toward mineral pigments. Artists consider it a premium product and so they found a niche. Though between you and me it makes no difference.
“Faircote Paints are not a volume producer any more but a quality one. People ask for Faircote by name and won’t use anything else, which is exactly how they like it. Of course, they have to deliver the right product, so it’s less about chemistry now and more about sourcing.”
“Sourcing?”
“Getting the right minerals. From me.” Hugh tapped himself on his chest, beaming as he did so. “Not, of course, that I knew what I was doing in the first place. And it feels as though I’m still playing it by ear thirty years later.”
Edith reckoned that Hugh was dying to tell his story. A self–made businessman who wanted others to know. There was no way any of it would be useful to her but, if this was the source she had for the Faircotes, it would be churlish to shut him up. Once again, her father was right. People love to talk, especially about themselves.
Without waiting for a cue from Edith, Hugh launched into his story. “When I was in the army I was posted to lots of different places. I was in this particular place called Badakhshan. You won’t have heard of it, naturally. Now, there they dig up these big solid rocks of blue stone. Lapis lazuli. Bright blue. You can see some of it over there,” he waved vaguely across the yard, “and I had never seen anything quite like it. Of course, I had seen gems, but these were huge great chunks as big as your head. They offered to sell me some, as big as I liked, for just a few dollars. I had to turn them down because there was no way I was lugging a big rock round the mountains for weeks. But it stuck in my mind.”
“I can imagine.” Edith leant against a fencepost as she listened.
“When I left the army I was searching for a new career and not really coming up with much. A lot of guys go into the police, but I had had enough of that kind of life. I only joined the army because my father forced it on me and by the time I left he was long dead. I had the freedom to choose. That’s when the lapis lazuli came back.
“I thought, ‘Hugh, if you can pick up a ton of that stuff for a few dollars a kilo, there’s no way you won’t make a killing of it back in England.’ So that’s exactly what I did. Took an empty truck from Pakistan, filled the thing up with this blue gold, drove it down to Karachi, and stuck the stuff on a boat. The whole enterprise cost me more than I expected, to be honest, but I was so certain it was a winner I didn’t care.
“Anyway, back in England I started to hawk this stuff around, only to find that it wasn’t gem quality. Nobody would want to put it in jewellery, which was the main market. So I had all this beautiful rock and couldn’t sell any of it.”
Edith tried to hurry Hugh’s story along, “But Faircote Paints wanted it?”
“Yeah, exactly. It turned out they had been realigning themselves for the last few years to use exclusively natural pigments for their paints. But they were having problems sourcing the stuff they needed. So really it was a match made in heaven. I gave them a great deal to get the lapis off my hands. They ended up taking it all and still wanted more.
“So I imported more rock, pressed my contacts for other minerals they could get me, and built up from there. Faircote Paints is still my biggest customer, though I have others.”
“Very interesting,” Edith nodded, though she was obviously lying. Hugh would have known. It hadn’t taught her anything new and useful about the Faircotes. “When did you become good friends with Michael Faircote, Samuel’s father?”
“When we saved each other’s businesses!” Hugh roared. He roughly patted Edith on the arm.
It took him a moment to recompose.
“Michael and I were the same age and had the same outlook on life. We could continue to help each other. Yet he was much more honest and upstanding than me, I’ll admit that, with a settled life. Two young sons and a lovely wife. A heap of money too.”
“Were you jealous of him?”
“Of course, that’s why, as soon as I was making good money, I found a wife and had two sons as well. He was a very civilizing influence on me, and I owe a lot to him because of that.”
“How well do you know his wider family? Siblings, cousins, the trustees of Faircote Paints?”
“I know a lot about them through the conversations we had. I picked up bits and pieces of information, like all the stuff I told you about the company. But I can’t say I know many individual family members personally. I’ve met his sisters a few times, and know his mother quite well. Of course his father had drunk himself to death years before. The wider family are mostly strangers, or people I’ve met once or twice.”
They walked on in silence, pottering round the yard, Hugh doing small things here and there while Edith thought of her next question, if any. He had warmed during their conversation, that much was obvious. Most of the information she had gleaned was background. Only the bit about the trust was interesting, yet he had few details to share.
“No more questions?” Hugh asked while keeping an eye on the front loader as it rumbled around them.
“How did Michael die?”
Hugh stopped and faced Edith. He shifted from foot to foot.
“Parkinson’s. It’s a tragedy. It robs you of everything that makes live worth living.”
“That must have been awful.”
“He did his best. He fought against it, a true soldier.”
Edith nodded consciously, readying herself for the anodyne response, “I can imagine that he must have been a real inspiration to...”
“Look out!”
Hugh thrust Edith to the ground. He leapt the opposite way onto a heap of stones.
Edith looked up. She gasped. The front loader rolled over her. Stones rained down from its bucket held high.
The wet concrete ground was unyielding as she pressed herself into it. She folded her limbs tight under her body and covered her face. Everything became dark. The ground shook. The engine’s growl overwhelmed her ears.
Then the sound stopped. The movement stopped. And the hard concrete fell still.
Edith reared her head and banged it on the metal chassis above her.
“She’s dead!” The voice of a workman cried from beyond the dark.
Hugh’s face appeared in a patch of light far off to the side of Edith’s vision as he peered under the vehicle.
“No,” he said calmly, “no, she’s still alive.”
Day 8: Wednesday 8 November
The College of Arms looked far less impressive in reality than it did in pictures. The photographs promised a grand brick mansion with thrusting wings flanking the entrance, shielded behind tall, ornate railings. In truth the wings were thinner than a terrace house and the grand entrance faced a building that resembled a block of toilets. Apart from the impressive view of St Paul’s minster down one side of the college, the whole scene was a huge let-down. Here was the master record for England’s nobility, little more than a facade overwhelmed by the city around it.
If the college could have been anywhere else it would have pleased Edith more. Not only aesthetically. The train down to London had cost about a million pounds, or thereabouts. The money from Samuel hadn’t yet arrived, despite the boast to her father, and she was working deeper into her overdraft. There would also be a small fee for identifying the shield,
which Samuel could have done for free, had she asked. Yet after their meeting in the restaurant it was best to keep him ignorant about the investigation for a while. He was hiding something, that much was clear.
Ben hadn’t needed to know either after his performance. He had the investigation—her investigation—mapped out and it didn’t leave any space for her further initiative. At least he hadn’t bothered to repeat his claim that he was nearly ready to come back, to take over the investigation. That was a small blessing.
Ben wasn’t ready. He might never be. Edith was alone as soon as she left her father’s room. Except now she had to carry round his sense of failure. She could see herself adding her own.
There was too little to go on in this investigation, or too much. There was a whole family full of potential motives if she bothered to do the research her father asked her to. Andrius’s lead seemed as good as any that might turn up.
Edith strode through the gates and up the small set of curving steps. The entrance hall was heavy with burnished wood on the walls and floor. Each window and door sat in a deep bay between piers decorated in classical order. Above each bay hung a painting of a dead rich man staring out from the centuries. The upper walls and ceiling were painted a soft pink and adorned with carved coats of arms and draping flags.
In the entrance hall alone history lay hundreds of years deep. A historian could talk for days, were anybody interested enough to listen to the meaning, significance, and reasons of it all. The archives and research rooms held many times that. The paintings, the arms, the flags, as thickly as they covered the walls, were only a taster for what lay beyond. And Edith understood precisely nothing of what she saw.
“Excuse me,” Edith sidled up to the reception desk on the left, “I have an appointment with Lynne. Lynne Baxter. For half two.”
“And your name?” The young woman on reception barely looked up.
“Edith Pimlico.”
“Take a seat and I’ll inform Lynne that you have arrived.”
Edith pulled a leaflet from among dozens on offer and sat down pretending to read. By luck or fate the leaflet detailed the process for granting of arms. She thought of Andrius. Anybody could apply, they only had to prove some kind of eminence or worthiness. Oh, and pay the best part of £6,000. At that price Andrius would have two.
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