Hung in the Balance (Simpson & Lowe Detective series Book 1)

by Ormerod, Roger

  ‘What else could she mean?’ He grinned at me. ‘My — they do breed their vultures a nice shape, these days.’

  ‘Vultures? What the hell…’

  ‘Steele. I bet she’s the daughter of Archer Steele. You remember, he was the one…’

  ‘Chief Cashier and Financial Officer at Fellowes and Simple,’ I completed for him, as the memory swept over me. ‘And — oh my God — he was the one who committed suicide.’ I couldn’t help it. I clutched at his arm.

  ‘Now you go and get a shower or whatever —’

  ‘Don’t change the subject. I was talking about…about…’

  He took it up. ‘The man who took his own life when they discovered there was a quarter of a million missing from company funds. Yes. That’s the one. What’s the betting that’s the money you’ve now got in your dainty little fingers.’

  ‘It’s mine!’ I whispered fiercely.

  ‘Of course it is. But think about it. Now go and tidy yourself and I’ll be back for lunch in an hour.’

  ‘You will not, Oliver. Enn, oh, tee. Not. Understand? I want to think. And Christ, how can I, when you’re throwing words at me all the time? Oliver…go. Will you please go.’

  He gave me a weak little smile, touched his forehead with two fingers, then turned on his heel and walked out into the street.

  I reached my room before it all overcame me. It was the sight of the bed, on which still lay my painting and Graham’s watch and signet ring. He was my Graham. Mine. Not Anna’s and not this Catriona’s. Mine. And just let anybody… He was alive, I almost shouted out loud. Oliver had proved that for me…and…and…

  The rest was tears and anger as I tore off my clothes. My anorak! My new anorak! Filthy.

  Mine, I told myself as the shower blessedly calmed me, mine as I climbed into clean, soft underwear and decided on which skirt.

  Graham and the money.

  But behind it all, still with the strength to shake me, was the memory of the fear-provoked fury in which, for those few moments it would have taken, I could have killed. Our social and moral veneer is very thin. It appalled me that I now had to face the possibility that, for the rest of my lifetime, I had to expect it could happen again.

  Forcing this from my mind, I took up the phone, pressed the button, and dialled Harvey Remington’s office. Graham’s watch on the bed beneath my eyes told me it was 11.20.

  ‘Harvey? It’s Philipa. Can I come round to see you? Yes…now. I haven’t got much time, you see. Right. I’ll be there.’

  Say this for Harvey. He always found a slot between clients for the ones he considered important. Or perhaps he had very few clients. I locked the painting, watch and ring in a dressing table drawer, and walked out.

  If the money was mine, I would need to know exactly where it was located. Every last penny of it.

  7

  He was waiting for me at his open office door, hand outstretched palm downwards.

  ‘My dear…is this an emergency? Do sit down.’

  I sat. He went and settled himself behind the desk, elbows on it, praying hands tapping his lips.

  ‘Everything,’ he assured me, ‘is proceeding satisfactorily.’

  ‘I’m sure it is. Now… Harvey…you told me Graham’s money is all in a number of accounts.’

  ‘Seven, I said. In fact, six plus his deposit account under his own name.’

  ‘Very well. Then I’d like a complete breakdown of exactly how much is in each account, under what name and where.’

  ‘You shall have that. Not quickly, but it shall be done.’ His pedantic voice, that was.

  ‘I want it quickly, Harvey, please. I’m going into Birmingham shortly, to pick up somebody, and I’d like it to be waiting for me at the hotel when I get back.’

  ‘Now Philipa. Please. You know that these things —’

  I cut in. ‘These things have to seem to be difficult, so that it looks as though you’ve slaved for hours over it. I know. It’s quite simple. Name of each account, its number, location, amount. Damn it all…’

  He’d raised a restraining hand. ‘Very well. That I can do for you. But tell me, don’t you think this is all proving to be too much of a strain for you? You look pale. You’re short on patience. No, please let me finish. This is legal business, the whole thing. It will take time, and it’s not for you.’

  It wasn’t worth arguing about, but I waited politely until he’d finished before I went on.

  ‘Later on, when you’ve got time Harvey, I’d like to see all the statements from the time the accounts were opened, payments in, payments out. The lot, in detail.’

  If Harvey had had a laugh in him, I’d have got it. He opened his mouth and a huffing sound emerged. He waggled a hand, silencing me when I was already silenced and attentive.

  ‘Now, that would be almost impossible. I could find no earlier statements amongst his papers at the cottage than very recent ones. Say…back six months. And if…’ He smacked his lips. ‘If it was that easy, then other parties would have traced them through, long before this. If you see what I mean.’

  ‘I see, Harvey. Yes, I see.’

  I got to my feet. He rose.

  ‘Philipa, I do wish —’

  ‘So I’ll manage with what you can give me, Harvey. And thank you for your time.’ I paused with my hand on the doorknob. ‘At least I’ll know what to look for.’

  I walked out then, leaving him to worry about what I meant. It was just as well he didn’t ask me, because I wasn’t too sure, myself.

  Then I drove from Penley to Birmingham International airport at Elmdon. Twenty miles. I had less than an hour, but that shouldn’t be difficult, I told myself. Yet it was.

  I hadn’t noticed, when Harvey had picked me up, that there’d been a change since I’d last driven there, oh…years before, I realized, when Graham and I had gone to Majorca for our holidays. But what had been a simple approach road had now become a new motorway spur. It was necessary to concentrate on the traffic and look for the little aircraft indicators at the same time. I arrived there in a bit of a sweat, had difficulty finding space in the short-stay car park, and then discovered that the plane landing was delayed half an hour. Isn’t it always the same!

  But it did give me time to prowl the concourse restlessly, and attempt to reassess the situation as it then stood. And to consider how I was going to prevent Cornel from messing everything up. He was impulsive, clumsy, and over-enthusiastic. Sighing, I realized I’d be able to restrain him only if I shot him out of hand. But how could he possibly be made to appreciate that the pressures on me were becoming much more emotional than physical? Emotion, to Cornel, was the warm comfort of a fat cheque. Check, to him. And there were not going to be any of those for a very long while, that was certain, because the law had its dilatory fingers in it.

  During that protracted period of legal wrangling I was going to have to withstand psychological, perhaps physical, and certainly moral pressures. This last was the most daunting. It’s all very well feeling possessive over the money, but I’d be struggling against a background of emotional pressure. I said protective before. Now my feelings were possessive. Subtle distinction. But in the dead and dormant emotional surroundings — and what could be less personal than an airport concourse? — there was a touch of conscience creeping in. I had no moral right to that money.

  No, don’t argue about it, I had none. The question was…did Graham have a moral right to it? Take no notice of what Oliver Simpson would say — he was prejudiced. Yet Graham had trusted me with it. He had entrusted it to me. With confidence.

  Just look at it — what he’d done. The illegal deposition for the mock divorce, the revised will, the painting he’d left me to tell me he still loved me. And the ridiculous stock of cosmetics he’d had in order to recapture what he’d thought to be my wandering affections, and which had done the opposite.

  But what am I thinking? I asked myself. He was still alive. Wasn’t he? It was his money, his responsibility, his cons
cience. Alive. Somewhere out there…waiting.

  Waiting! I stopped dead. A man cursed, and steered a luggage trolley round me. Graham…oh, dear Lord, and I hadn’t seen it before. The whole thing was a message to me, the whole setup. Hang on to it, my love, until I can meet up with you again. I’m trusting you to hang on to the money.

  Wasn’t that what the death in the quarry had meant? He would’ve known that I, and probably only I, would know he couldn’t have driven the car, because it was I who’d tried to teach him to drive.

  He’d been shouting it out to me, that it wasn’t him in that car, though he’d rigged it to look as though it was. And with Graham supposedly dead, they’d never be able to recover the money from him.

  Not from me, either, if I could help it.

  But, oh dear me, how could that be reconciled with what Oliver Simpson had so graphically demonstrated? A man had been in that car. Not Graham. But he’d been faked as being Graham. Not murdered, Oliver had insisted. Then — what? And how had Graham arranged that? And had he?

  ‘Phillie, baby! Where ya been?’

  I turned. Cornel was standing between two huge suitcases, his arms out for the expected embrace. He towered, and seemed to sway, so thin and emaciated that you’d expect bits to snap off if he waved his arms, his hair wild because he’d probably fluffed it like that, his eyes wild because flying terrified him and he had to spend half his life in planes, and his beautifully tailored light grey suit hanging from him in perfectly planned drapes.

  ‘You weren’t in the arrivals lobby,’ he complained.

  I went up to him and put my arms round him and pressed my face against his chest, that being as high as it reached, then looked up at him. ‘Sorry, Nel. I missed the announcement. Where’s your warm coat? It’s cold here.’

  He ruffled my hair. He could never keep his fingers out of it, fascinated by the way it always sprang back into place. Then he put a finger under my chin and looked at me with his head on one side. The first I can stand; the second drives me mad. I twisted my head away.

  ‘You look strained, Phil. What’re they doing to you here?’

  I shrugged. I knew he was speaking with sincerity, because this was himself, the caring Cornel Schmidt. Usually he tried to hide this away behind a cloud of wild impersonations, assuming characters he thought would impress everybody with his worldliness and general bonhomie. It was a measure of his personal insecurity. He lived on the edge of total dissolution, the world swarming round him with slavering mouths and pointed teeth.

  Very nearly, he was due for the nut-house. He saved himself by shedding the load of tension on to those around him. Stenos left in tears, and outer office clerks resorted to pot in the rest rooms. Marietta survived because she was placid and impervious, and I…well, I suppose I liked and admired him, and sustained myself by listing his faults and throwing them at him. As these faults were never the ones he feared would engulf him — inadequacy, tentativeness, lack of forcefulness — my approach boosted his confidence. It also, unfortunately, bound us closer than I’d have wished. It was I he would eventually drive insane, but if I abandoned him before that I knew he’d fall apart and disintegrate into paranoid depression. Probably terminal. It was a kind of emotional trap.

  He was considering me with concern, and I had no idea of how long I’d been silent. I tried one of those brushing-away laughs, and turned so that I could take his arm.

  ‘I’m coping, Nel. I bet you’ve had nothing at all to eat on the plane.’

  ‘You know it’d make me sick.’

  ‘Jet-lag and starving! Heavens, you’ll be no help to me at all. Might as well take the next flight back.’

  He looked brighter, his gaunt face cracking open in various places to indicate appreciation. ‘Lead me to a bourbon and a corned beef on rye, my cherub, and I’ll be right on the ball.’

  ‘We can eat upstairs on the upper concourse. Come on, escalator’s over there. And…two cases, Nel? How long d’you expect to stay?’

  He hefted them from the ground. His frame seemed to shudder. ‘One of them’s yours, Phillie. I got Marietta to toss in a few things. Y’re kitted out from mountain climbin’ to an evening at the ballet.’

  ‘Which case?’

  ‘The heavier one.’

  ‘Then I’ll —’

  ‘No you won’t. You do the heavy thinkin’ — I’ll do the heavy carryin’.’

  I bit my lip. Cornel, being all gallant, was a sight to see, considering he was always hammering away on equality when it came to placing our female clients. I let him get on with it. His ego, along with his manic play-acting, always got left behind at around 40,000 feet. He then had to work hard to retrieve it.

  No bourbon. No corned beef on rye. We had to do with a ham salad each and a big pot of tea.

  ‘Tea!’ he said in disgust, but recovering every moment. ‘We gotta liven ’em up around here, kiddo.’

  ‘Make it your life’s work. I can get you coffee.’

  ‘Nah! This’ll do. How’d they get it this strong, d’you reckon?’

  His amiable grumbles continued all the way out to the car park. This was something else that caught his attention, my car being parked just a street’s width away. He’d probably expected to take a taxi just to get to the car.

  We fought the cases on to the rear seats, along with the box thing on a leather strap he’d had round his neck. It looked like a large camera, but he’d never taken a photograph in his life. I reckon he’d made an attempt to look American, something he’d never be able to disguise, anyway.

  ‘I gotta get in there?’ he asked, staring at the front passenger’s seat.

  ‘Yes. The steering wheel’s this side.’

  ‘Don’t the seat slide back?’

  ‘It is back.’

  ‘The hell with it.’ And he inserted himself, his head almost brushing the underside of the roof, his knees almost resting against the dash. ‘Let’s go, baby!’ he said. ‘An’ watch y’r driving. Those Britishers are plain bloody murder.’

  ‘How d’you know that, Nel?’

  ‘I’ve bin in England before. Lemme tell you —’

  ‘To London, Nel. That’s all. It’s not England. There’s more.’

  On the drive to Penley he remained blessedly silent, seeming unimpressed by this slice of England. Only when we entered the village did he seem to liven up.

  ‘Y’ booked me a separate room, Phil?’

  ‘You can bet your life. You’re not coming in with me.’

  He sighed. ‘An’ I’ve come all this way.’

  ‘I’ve booked you in as Corny Schmidt.’ He hated to be called Corny.

  ‘I’ll sue ya!’

  ‘It was a joke, Nel, a joke. Relax. Here it is.’

  ‘Then how d’you get me out?’ he demanded.

  ‘A bit at a time, Nel. Which bit d’you want out first?’

  We used a certain amount of concentrated effort on it, each of us fully aware that we were padding it out, talking inconsequentially to cover the fact that we were awkward and uncertain with each other. Our relationship had been, always, completely professional, but it would’ve been impossible to work together so intimately without a certain amount of personal understanding easing its way into the situation. We hadn’t got anything special going, as they say, but something was certainly going, to some place or other, and neither of us had dared to peer too far ahead into the mists.

  This was the first time we’d been together at the same hotel, as we normally conducted our outside work as separate entities. It didn’t require two at a time at that stage. Now we were two together. I wasn’t sure what was ahead that required both of us.

  I got him to register. I put the pen in his hand and indicated where he was to sign. He was doing his lost little boy act, he one of the world’s most experienced travellers.

  He looked surprised and bewildered when the receptionist said, ‘A package for you, Mrs Tonkin.’ To him, I was plain Philipa Lowe.

  ‘No elevator?’
he asked.

  ‘Stairs, Nel. You’re in wild country, now.’

  He carried his camera over his shoulder on its strap. Still, he insisted on taking up both cases, managing the stairs with such facility that you’d have thought he was strong. This was a fact he usually failed to exhibit. We were on the same floor, he two rooms away, the other side of the corridor.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, peering in at his door. ‘Not too crummy. How’re you fixed, Phillie?’

  He followed me into my room to see, wandering round, peering through the window, and I was all tensed up inside to get that package open and see what Harvey had left for me.

  ‘Aren’t you going to unpack?’ I asked.

  ‘Mebbe. Yeah. Guess I’ll do that thing.’

  And he wandered out.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, slit open my package and laid it out. He’d summarized it all on a single sheet of paper, and enclosed the bank statements for the past six months on each account.

  It was simple enough. All it took was one quick glance.

  There were two accounts in his own name, at a bank in Mattock, current and deposit. Open and above board. There were five other accounts, in banks at Birmingham, Coventry, Nottingham, Bristol, and London. In five different names. Not one of them his own. His deposit account held the largest sum, something over £200,000. His current account held £197. The other five, all current accounts, indicated balances totalling no more than £103, one of them being down to £16.

  I tried, with the small number of transactions available on these statements, to find a link. But in only one instance — a figure of £1,800 — was there any cross-reference. It had been drawn out of a Birmingham account in the name of Philip Cotman two weeks before the same amount had been paid into Graham’s deposit account. There were, however, a number of large payments directly into his personal deposit account, ranging from £1,000 to £2,000, which had no matching withdrawals from any of his five blanket accounts.

  I couldn’t understand it. My assumption had been that Graham, if he’d been guilty of defrauding Fellowes and Simple of a quarter of a million, had used the five accounts to launder the money. But now I saw I’d been rather naïve.