Illegal Tender (Three Oaks Book 12)

by Gerald Hammond

  We had reached the coffee stage but I was in no hurry to move. I was mildly intrigued. I had seen many attempts at fraud during my working days but life in the Fife countryside tended to insulate me from that sort of stimulus. The chairs were comfortable and a period of rest would be a substitute for my usual postprandial nap. One tires easily after threescore and ten. ‘How would he have got your partner’s e-mail address?’

  ‘Not difficult. People often include them on their letterheads. And Internet correspondence in what they call the forums is open to any reader. But anyone with the skill to juggle the money electronically would surely be able to hack into more personal e-mail correspondence.’

  Telephone banking had only been making an early appearance when I retired. It still required a mental effort to appreciate the huge sums which are now transmitted — indeed, which only exist — in the form of electronic signals. ‘I thought that the really clued-up fraudster hacked straight into the computer of a bank, insurance company or building society and transferred money direct from account to account,’ I said.

  Gordon nodded. As an accountant who was still among the world’s workers, he was more up to date than I was. ‘That’s a much more sophisticated operation,’ he said, ‘quite beyond most amateurs.’ He tapped the paper. ‘Any fool could carry out this one.’

  ‘This fool certainly couldn’t,’ I told him. ‘May I keep this?’

  ‘Surely. I have other copies. I only carry it around so that I can warn people not to be caught out.’

  ‘That’s what I want it for,’ I said.

  *

  I turned off the main road, which was heading in the direction of Newcastle, threaded my way through the old Borders town of Newton Lauder and climbed a hill beyond the outskirts.

  A monumental archway, looking pompous and out of place, marked the end of the drive to Hay Lodge. (The original edifice, now gone, had been known as Hay Castle but, when he caused the new house to be constructed on the site, Peter had bowed to Lady Hay’s insistence that the name Hay be retained but had jibbed at the alliteration of Hay House or Hay Hall.) As I slowed to turn through the archway a red Mini shot out and across my bows, driven by a young woman with a determined expression and a cigarette in her mouth. I heard her make racing changes up the gears as she vanished towards the town. I made more stately progress towards the house.

  I still half expected Hay Castle, the old monstrosity, complete with turrets and crow-stepped gables, to be standing at the end of the driveway. (Peter had referred to it as The Hay Stack, but never when Her La’ship was within earshot.) The sweep of bright blue sky was definitely an improvement as was the comfortable modern house set to one side of the sweep of gravel. The new house, of stone and glass and silver-weathered cedar, looked, as always, as though it had been placed there first and the countryside arranged around it later. I could not pay any architect a higher compliment than that.

  The footings of the Victorian pile, which had burned down some years earlier regretted by none save only Her La’ship (who, as I recalled, had been the most almighty snob), had been incorporated into a flower garden which, despite the advanced state of the year, still showed some roses. Most of the garden’s colour depended on the berries in beds of massed cotoneasters and berberis but a small stand of maples had been planted behind the house and these were in full flame. The birches, always the first to fall, were bare but the wood facing the lawn behind the house was green and gold.

  The former Elizabeth Hay, now Mrs Ilwand, had been an attractive girl. She would have been more so but for a very determined chin. Aided by Ralph Enterkin (my fellow trustee), I had steered her away from an unfortunate liaison with an obvious fortune-hunter and towards her new husband; but the steering had required a very delicate touch. The result had so far proved successful. Duncan Ilwand was a very good-looking young man, possibly too good-looking for his own good although, to do him justice, he seemed quite unaware of his good fortune. He had no money of his own but he was well connected and so had a proper respect for property. He and Elizabeth had been fellow students.

  It was a recurrent shock not to see Peter Hay’s scarecrow figure standing in his well-worn kilt at the front door, but Elizabeth must have been awaiting my arrival. She met me at the door. I was reminded again of the contradictions in her character when she insisted that I go for the rest which she knew I would be needing but was firmly insistent on my taking it when and where she directed and whether I wanted it or not. (There was more than a trace in her of her formidable grandmother, Her La’ship.) I can be quite as stubborn as she can, as she knew perfectly well because I had fended off the unsuitable suitor who had found favour with her; but on this occasion I was happy to have Ronnie, her factotum, carry my luggage up to my usual room and there to remove my shoes and settle on top of the bed for an hour of blissful oblivion broken only by what I took to be the sound of the returning Mini.

  After precisely one hour, which Elizabeth considered to be the correct duration for an afternoon nap, Ronnie came knocking apologetically at my door with a message that Madam expected me for afternoon tea downstairs in fifteen minutes. Ronnie was a large man. He was no beauty. To describe him as rough-hewn was almost flattery and he had a reputation as a formidable pub-fighter when in his cups, but he had a heart of purest gold. He had been Sir Peter’s stalker and ghillie, but a life spent largely on the hill or up to his immense backside in cold water had not been kind to him and, as rheumatism and arthritis began to limit his usefulness outdoors on an estate in which his functions were diminishing, he had been more or less converted into gardener, assistant keeper and general dogsbody. He even functioned as butler on those occasions when buttling was required, and managed very well.

  In accordance with some custom of his own, Ronnie brought with him a silver tray on which were two glasses of a very good malt whisky. I invited him to take a seat while I washed and made myself tidy. It had been some months since I last visited the house. Elizabeth would no doubt bring me up to date on the superficial gossip but, though he could keep his mouth shut when it mattered, I could count on Ronnie to tell me what was really going on. He knew that I had her interests very much at heart.

  He needed little or no persuasion. ‘Mr Ilwand and the Mistress are still lovey-dovey,’ he said. ‘You’d jalouse they was still on their honeymoon. She aye wants tae ken where he is, ilka minute o the day. It’s no that she disna trust him, it’s just her way. And we’ve a new housekeeper.’

  He sounded disgruntled and I could understand why. The estate was largely a family affair, so much so that at one time I had considered marrying Elizabeth off to the surveyor who was acting as factor. Ronnie’s wife Mary had been cook-housekeeper for some years, assisted by Joanna who was now married to Hamish, the game-keeper. Joanna, I happened to know, was Ronnie’s daughter, born on the wrong side of the blanket. I suspected that the lady who came in daily to help with the domestic chores was somebody’s cousin. It was all very cosy and almost incestuous.

  ‘But Mary’s still here?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh aye. But noo she’s jist the cook.’

  ‘Is that so bad? She and Joanna can take it a bit easier now.’

  ‘No a bit of it,’ Ronnie said. ‘The new wumman — Miss Payne she’s called and a pain she is — doesna fash hersel wi work or oniething like it, just handing out orders to Mary and Joanna. She was a collegianer — a student, ye ken? — in digs wi the Mistress but she failed the course or got herself expelled, something the like o that, an the Mistress met her again at some do in Edinburgh, found she was oot o work an fetched her here. Ye’ll mak her acquaintance soon enough. She dines wi the family an sits aboot the rest o the day, smoking like a lum. Or oot she gangs in her wee car, driving like a bampot an wearing a Barbour coat jist like the queen’s an nivver walks a yard if she can ride.’ He glanced at his very expensive wristwatch, a legacy from his late employer, and finished his drink at a single gulp. ‘Ye’ll need to be moving or ye’ll get your erse skelped.�
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  I took the hint and made my way downstairs.

  *

  Elizabeth was already seated in the sunny sitting room, where the big windows showed a view over the flower garden, down the valley and over the town of Newton Lauder to the hills beyond. It was a view which I had always envied. We have a view across the fields from our home in Fife, but nothing like that.

  There was tea on the low table and thin sandwiches. Dispensing both from one of the comfortable wing-chairs was a woman in her early twenties, small and neat-boned. She had blonde hair in a frizzled perm. Under an expression of discontent I discerned features which were feminine, delicate and somehow piquant. In younger days I would have described her mouth as kissable. I thought that her figure might turn out to be rather better than merely good, once one looked deeper than the long denim skirt and the denim jacket over a polo-neck sweater. Her floral perfume struggled with and overcame the smoke from her cigarette. Here, I decided, was a potentially attractive woman who either failed to make the most of her charms or else played them down, perhaps so as not to compete with her hostess or perhaps out of a contempt for men, although this seemed unlikely. Out of long though not recent experience I thought that I recognized something in her poise and expression which I had never seen except in one or two women whose passion was deeply buried but waiting to explode. When Elizabeth introduced her as Beatrice Payne, she offered me a slender hand to shake or possibly to kiss, I couldn’t be sure which. I received a friendlier greeting from the two dogs. Nick, the older Labrador, I knew had been granted the mercy of euthanasia during the previous month, but the other Labrador and the spaniel were old friends and in good health. Spin, the spaniel, when he had given me a courteous sniff, a butt of the head and a few thumps of the tail, went back to lie beside Miss Payne with his chin resting on her foot. She seemed unaware of the contact.

  Miss Payne seemed to have made herself at home — excessively so, I thought, for a housekeeper. Cigarettes and a box of matches were neatly aligned with the edge of the table beside her hand together with an ashtray half full of stubs and broken, burned matches. Her manner suggested that she was part-hostess rather than an employee, but I supposed that as a former fellow-student on hard times her position was more of a sinecure, disguising the fact that she was down on her luck and therefore, effectively, a sponger. That alone, I thought charitably, would be enough to make her defensive.

  Elizabeth’s phone call had suggested that there were a number of items of estate business to be cleared between us and I had several of my own to mention, but I had no intention of discussing business in the presence of Miss Payne and I could hardly suggest that she leave us. Thus the conversation was limited to the usual stilted topics — the weather, the harvest just past, traffic in the town, health and the likelihood of another flu epidemic in the coming winter.

  I would have to catch Elizabeth on her own and solicit a private discussion. Meantime, rather than continue a tea party which I found heavy going, I suggested that I take the dogs for a walk.

  Elizabeth nodded benignly. ‘We’ll be dining at about seven,’ she said. ‘Just the four of us, so don’t change. Tomorrow, we’ll be having the usual dinner after the shoot for those who want to stay on — mostly those who don’t have to drive.’

  ‘Does Mr Kitts stay for the dinner?’ Miss Payne enquired. She lit another cigarette, snapped the match and dropped it into the ashtray. Her tone made it clear that she could bear my absence with equanimity.

  Her tone put my back straight up. I was on the point of remarking that I would stay at least until I had had a chance of airing with her employer, in privacy, the matters that I had been invited through to discuss, but Elizabeth beat me to it. ‘Uncle Henry is welcome to stay for as long as he likes, any time,’ she said sharply. ‘Can you stay over, at least until Monday or Tuesday?’ she asked me. ‘I have several things to talk over but the urgency has rather gone out of them. The cheque for Talisman Farm hadn’t arrived but it came through the day after I phoned you.’

  She had no need to say more. Talisman Farm is remote from the estate and Peter had only acquired it to save an old friend from financial embarrassment. Its management at such long range had always proved time consuming and cumbersome, so it had been agreed to accept a very favourable offer, earmarking the money for investment in Agrotechnics for building and equipping a major extension. But the sale of the farm had entailed selling-on a large part to the local authority and the resale of the remainder to a financial institution and subsequent leasing back. The four corners of the deal should have been complete at Michaelmas and the Agrotechnics extension was already rising above the ground. Delayed payments to the building contractor would have proved more expensive than the raising of short-term finance.

  I said that I could stay for as long as it took. ‘Who’ll be on the shoot?’ I asked.

  Elizabeth reeled off names. Some I knew. Others, because there had been some changes among the syndicate members, were strange to me. And there were names that seemed familiar and yet I could not put faces to them. Recall becomes less certain with the passing years. Then she mentioned a name that made me sit up.

  Cowieson. Miss Payne’s hand paused in the act of raising her cigarette. Then she busied her hands rearranging and tidying the table. I thought that the name probably held significance for her also.

  ‘Not Maurice Cowieson, of Cowieson Farm Supplies?’ I asked.

  Elizabeth shook her head. ‘The son,’ she said. ‘Miles.’

  ‘Is he in the business?’

  ‘I think he’s the sales manager.’ She saw my face and asked, ‘What’s wrong?’ I glanced at Miss Payne. ‘It’s all right,’ Elizabeth said impatiently. ‘Bea’s very discreet.’

  In my experience, it’s very rare for someone to be as discreet as the impression they manage to convey, but I had no option. ‘Unless the older man pulls off a miracle very quickly, the firm’s in for trouble. They’re heavily in debt to Agrotechnics and you’ll remember that they granted a floating charge, virtually putting up the firm itself as security. It was all spelled out at the July board meeting. Now, by Gordon Bream’s reckoning — and he’s usually right to within a fiver on these sorts of things — the debt’s approaching the value of the business. They’re being warned that unless they come up with the money in two weeks the board will be asked to call up the floating charge.’

  ‘In other words, to foreclose?’

  ‘Near enough. You’re on the board of Agrotechnics. I was waiting for a chance to get your view.’

  She frowned. ‘I’d want to be assured that the existing staff wouldn’t suffer,’ she said. ‘We can discuss it on Sunday. Life’s going to be rather hectic until then. To go back to what started us off about it, Miles Cowieson’s a syndicate member. He took over Jeremy Graeme’s gun when the old chap had to give up. And I’ve already asked him to the dinner so I can’t uninvite him. Don’t worry about it. He probably won’t know who you are.’

  ‘His father certainly knows,’ I said. ‘I hate getting embroiled in a business argument on a social occasion. I want to relax and enjoy myself without having to keep my guard up. You’ll be doing me a favour if you try to keep him away from me and make sure that he’s at the other end of the dinner table.’

  Instead of instructing the supposed housekeeper, Elizabeth promised to try.

  Miss Payne had hardly said a word and it seemed only polite to draw her into the conversation. ‘Will you be out with the Guns tomorrow?’ I asked her.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t hold with reared game-shooting.’

  I was intrigued. Most people, if they object to shooting, object to the whole scene. ‘But not rough-shooting?’ I asked.

  ‘I was brought up on a farm,’ she said calmly. ‘How could I object to one or two men going out to see what wild meat they can collect? But game-rearing lowers the whole thing to the level of poultry farming.’

  ‘The pheasant isn’t a very good mother,’ I pointed out. ‘And, wi
th the gamekeeping profession reduced to a shadow of its old self, ground-nesting game-birds and their broods are at the mercy of every fox, stoat, weasel, feral cat, sparrowhawk or buzzard to come looking for an easy meal.’ I paused. I seemed to have forgotten half a dozen other predators but my mind had gone blank on the subject. ‘I take your point but I can’t see any real objection to taking some of the hen pheasants into a protected environment for a few months and then releasing them and their poults back into the wild.’

  ‘No,’ she said coldly. ‘I don’t suppose you can.’ She rose to her feet and left the room, taking with her the almost overflowing ashtray and an apple from the bowl.

  I raised my eyebrows at Elizabeth. ‘Not a very friendly young woman,’ I suggested.

  Elizabeth smiled faintly. ‘Don’t think too badly of her,’ she said. ‘Bea never did talk much and just at the moment — I may as well tell you in case you say the wrong thing — she’s expecting a baby. There’s a boyfriend somewhere but I sense trouble. She won’t talk about it.’

  I made my escape rather than ask whether Elizabeth thought that the boyfriend might also be the father.

  *

  I put my head into the kitchen to say hello to Mary and Joanna and then went out into the cool autumn sunshine. The dogs were old friends — indeed Spin, the spaniel, had been bred at Three Oaks and I had had a hand in his training. Looking back, I rather thought that I had been present at his birth. He had been the cherished acquisition of Sir Peter Hay and, almost immediately thereafter, a legacy to Hamish, Joanna’s husband and Elizabeth’s gamekeeper. The Labrador, Royston, had been passed on to Ronnie, but both dogs, while their owners were at work and if not themselves required in the field or being walked by anyone setting off in a suitable direction, spent their days in their former home. They gambolled round me (Royston in a stiff and elderly manner resembling my own dignified pace, but Spin more like the puppy which he had been not long ago) before settling down to the serious business of exploring all the scents in the wood behind the house and the hedgerows leading from it, to find out what had changed since their last walk a few hours earlier.