by Tony McHale
“Yes.”
“Is this some new form of ambulance chasing?”
“It’s to do with your mother’s Will,” she said trying to keep Charlie on track.
“She made a Will?” Jed was more than surprised.
“Yes. She came to me less than a week ago and asked me to draw one up.”
“Why didn’t she go to Banaszak … we’ve used Banaszak for years?”
“Perhaps because you had used him for years. I was instructed to see you as soon as possible after her death. She wanted you both to know how she intended to split her assets.”
“What assets … there are no assets,” Jed hit the whisky as punctuation to his statement.
“There are assets …”
“What? What assets?”
“This public house is freehold and she owned a fifty per cent stake in it. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“She also has a savings account that at close of business Friday had approximately twenty-two thousand pounds deposited in it.”
“What? She never told me.” Jed’s tone was verging on indignant.
“She also has a diamond engagement ring and a gold wedding ring.”
“Which I did know about, ” said Jed re-staking his claim to his knowledge of his deceased wife.
“Those were the only things she claimed had any value. Her clothes and other belongings she said could be sent to a charitable cause.”
“What the hell is this about?” Jed’s annoyance was growing by the second. “It’s like she knew she was about to die.”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to …”
“Did she,” interrupted Charlie, “did she know she was about to die?”
“All I know is she left me with certain instructions that I’m obliged to carry out on the event of her death.”
“Did she know she was going to die?” insisted Jed.
“I couldn’t say.”
“When you met her … did she say anything about dying?” Jed wasn’t letting it go. “Surely you can answer that.”
For a moment Elaine O’Hara’s sharp blue eyes moved slowly between father and son. She was measuring her answer.
“I got the impression she feared something might happen to her,” she eventually said.
“This is ridiculous,” Jed spluttered. “She knew she was going to be killed …”
“I didn’t say that.”
“… and she came to you and you didn’t do anything.”
“She never confided in me. I knew nothing for a fact. All I’m doing is surmising.”
“You should have done something.”
“I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do. All I’m allowed to do is carry out her instructions. That’s what I’m paid to do.”
“You should have gone to the police. Why didn’t you go to the police?” Jed shook his head in disbelief.
“It wasn’t my job to go to the police.”
“But she’s dead. Somebody killed her. Don’t you feel in someway, however small, don’t you feel responsible?” Jed looked straight at her, willing her to give some excuse for her behaviour.
“I had no proof that anything was going to happen to her. All I had was a feeling … a sense …”
“A feeling you should have acted on?”
“How was I supposed to act on it? She rang me late Friday afternoon. She said she had to see me that day. The office was just closing and as I was visiting friends out this way and she seemed agitated, I offered to meet her here.”
“Friday was the first time you met her?” asked an astonished Charlie.
“Yes.”
“You must have thought it strange, didn’t you?”
“I’m a lawyer. I deal with a lot of odd requests …”
“And this meeting was purely about her will?” Charlie continued.
“Yes.”
“Nothing else?”
“No. She’d outlined on the phone what she wanted and I brought the document for her to sign.”
“I never saw her signing anything,” challenged Jed.
“We went into the ladies. She didn’t want everyone to know.”
“But doesn’t a Will … need to be witnessed.” Charlie thought he’d come across a slight glitch in his mother’s plan.
“It was witnessed by a Barbara Bergin … she was in the toilet at the time.”
“Barbara Bergin?” Charlie wasn’t sure why his father was so surprised.
“Yes. Your wife said Barbara had enough secrets of her own she wouldn’t say anything to anyone.”
“So it’s all legal and binding … this Will?” asked Jed.
“Yes … it’s legal. And she specifically asked I should inform you of its contents as soon as possible after her death. She said she didn’t want anything hanging over your head …”
“My head?” asked Jed.
“Yes. She actually gave me the mobile number to contact …” she indicated Charlie, “… your son. She didn’t think he’d be here.”
Charlie couldn’t help but lower his eyes. She didn’t even think he’d show when she died. He didn’t want to feel guilty, but he did. Perhaps he should have done more.
“I’m sorry this has come as a surprise to you,” continued Elaine, “but I’m not sure what else I could have done.”
“No.”
There was a silence. Explanations were over. Time for business. Elaine’s eyes flitted between the two of them. Then taking a breath she looked at Jed.
“She has left the two rings to you, the diamond engagement ring and the gold wedding ring.” Then another breath as her eyes went to Charlie. “ The twenty-two thousand pound and her fifty per cent of this establishment … The Black Dog she left to you … Charles Ashton - her son.” Elaine took a sip of her drink.
“What?” Charlie wasn’t sure he’d heard right.
“It was part of her thinking that if you knew as soon as possible, whatever arrangements needed to be made could be made.”
“This is a joke,” said Jed.
“No. No joke.” Elaine was adamant.
“She has left half of my livelihood to Charlie who hasn’t stepped in this place for the last fifteen years. Why would she do that? Why? It makes no sense.”
“I’m just the messenger.”
Jed turned to Charlie, “Did you know about this?”
“No. Of course not.”
“This is crazy. I’m going to fight this,” exclaimed Jed.
“I won’t oppose you. I don’t need the money, I don’t want to work in a pub and I don’t want to live here.”
“There was no stipulation about having to work here.”
“Still …” Charlie couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I realise this is all a bit of a shock and you will more than definitely want to discuss this further, so please feel free to call me at any time. I have transcripts of all our communications and all documents are kept locked in the safe. She may have made copies … I don’t know. You’ve got my office number and my mobile.”
Then taking another sip of her drink, but leaving over half of it, she placed the glass back on the table and shook hands with Charlie. “Thank-you for the drink. I won’t take up any more of your time. Good-bye.” She then turned to Jed. “Good-bye Mr Ashton.” She put her hand out towards Jed who for a moment looked like he wasn’t going to take it, but eventually he grasped her hand quite firmly, but there was no shaking, just a moment of holding. He then let go and Elaine turned and walked out of the pub. Charlie looked at his father.
CHAPTER NINE
After Elaine O’Hara of Shaw and Sherman Solicitors had left, Jed sat there in silence for some time. Charlie wasn’t sure what to say. He knew his mind should have been trying to figure out why his mother had le
ft him all her money and her stake in The Black Dog, but the upmost thought in his mind was that his mother knew her life was under threat – knew that her life was being threatened.
Jed downed his whisky and walked over to the bar. Knowing he needed to say something, Charlie followed.
“I swear I knew nothing about it,” was what came out of Charlie’s mouth, although his mind just wanted to ask why his mother lived in fear. “We can sort something out dad … It won’t alter a thing. You will carry on … in the same way … I won’t have anything to do with the pub …”
“Do you think I care about the pub?” snapped Jed. “Or the money,” he continued. “I don’t care about any of it. None of it!”
As for Charlie he was asking himself the inevitable question – why had his mother left him the majority of her worldly goods? Eventually he came up with a feeble reason and if he’d thought about it for a just a moment he’d probably not mentioned it, it was just that he had to say something.
“Had you two argued?” Charlie tentatively asked.
“Argued …?! We didn’t argue. The last time we argued was when you left home. I told her to let you go … forget you. You were nothing but an ungrateful little bastard, who cared about nothing but himself.”
Charlie guessed that his father had wanted to say this for a long time and here was the perfect opportunity. After all in this situation Charlie was hardly going to mount even the feeblest of defences.
“She said I didn’t understand and she ended up walking out in tears. I found her up on the moors two hours later. I apologised, but I didn’t mean it … and we never spoke about it again. That was the last time we argued.”
“So you’ve no idea why she’s done this,” said Charlie again really just for something to say.
“I’ve said - didn’t I!” Jed’s temper was getting the better of him. And suddenly for Charlie it was like going back fifteen years. His father had never been a man to discuss things.
“Okay fine,” Charlie said coldly. “If you don’t know, you don’t know. Let’s just forget about it.”
“As pig-headed as ever, I see.”
“Me?” Charlie took a deep breath. He knew he couldn’t lose it with his father … not now. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Charlie downed the rest of his drink and headed towards the living quarters. Jed just watched him go.
Once in his room, Charlie lay on the bed fully clothed. He didn’t want half of The Black Dog, he didn’t want his mother’s hard earned twenty-two thousand pounds. What he really wanted was his mother back. He wanted to look her in the eyes and say he was sorry, sorry that he’d never been there for her, sorry he never thanked her and sorry she died in the most horrific circumstances. But he knew that was never going to happen so he needed to put his mother’s memory to bed in some other way … if that was at all possible.
He realised that what he wanted was to know what the hell was going on – simple as that. And enmeshed in that thought was the content of the new Will. She had left him everything she owned that was worth anything. She left almost everything she had to her son who she hadn’t seen for years. Her son who’d abandoned her. Her son who was never there for her. Why not leave it to her husband, Charlie’s father – Jed her life partner? Why not leave what she had to him?
Charlie couldn’t help but think that the police may not have been wrong in their assumptions. Jed had opportunity and now it seems that he may have had a reason. Charlie couldn’t stop his train of thought. There was a possibility, maybe more than a possibility – in fact in Charlie’s mind at this moment there was a probability that his father killed his mother … and if he killed her, then the chances were he had also killed Kyle. But none of this was a certainty. The only certainty now was that Charlie had to know – one way or the other.
CHAPTER TEN
Charlie’s adult life so far had been formed around a life path he wanted to follow. All of it hadn’t gone according to plan, not by a long chalk, but nevertheless it had meandered in kind of the right direction. He started taking photos when he was a kid, photos mainly of Beck le Street, its inhabitants, its daily drudgery along with the odd lighter moments. He wanted to be a photographer who brought the extremes of the world, be they artistic or social, to the masses. He wanted his photographs to be hailed as works of art, images people revered in the same way they held sacrosanct a Van Gogh or Picasso. Instead the majority of people considered them as part of the paparazzi, something that always disappointed Charlie. Still he was always looking for images, compositions, anything that he thought would make a good photo. So the following morning when he set out to try and make some sense of his mother’s death, he took his Nikon.
His first port of call was going to be Jenny Pearson’s shop. Despite the fact her son had been murdered, her shop was opened at the usual hour. By the time Charlie had crossed the main street separating the shop from The Black Dog he’d taken a dozen new photographs and deleted as many. The joy of a digital camera.
The shop door had a little bell that rang when the door made contact with it. It was the same bell that had been there when Charlie was a boy. He thought it was quaint then, now it was positively charming.
Jenny came through from the back of the shop where there was a little living area with a comfy chair and a little television – this was her haven where she waited for her sometimes infrequent customers.
She’d heard Charlie was back, but she hadn’t seen him. When he came through the door she couldn’t help but be impressed with his grey suit, open necked fitted shirt and his long dark hair that said to her … artistic.
On seeing him she managed a slight smile, but it was a smile full of hurt and anguish. She wore the same type of wrap around floral patterned overall Charlie remembered her always wearing. But the intervening years hadn’t been kind to her. Her face was deeply lined and her hair was totally ash grey.
“Mrs Pearson.”
“Charlie. Charlie … Charlie … Charlie.”
People didn’t hug in Beck Le Street, that was bit too European, so they stood for a moment just looking at each other, then Charlie broke the silence.
“Sorry to hear about Kyle.”
“What’s happening Charlie? Why here? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
She invited him into her haven, where she made him a cup tea and offered him a brandy. Charlie declined the brandy, but Jenny needed one.
Then without prompting, she opened up, like a person who was on their twentieth visit to their shrink.
“We rowed … a couple of weeks ago …”
“You and Kyle?” Charlie wanted to make sure they were on the same page.
“Yeah. He’d dropped a bottle of lemonade. It wasn’t the fact that he’d broken it – that didn’t worry me, I got angry because he hadn’t cleaned it up. I told the police. They asked if I’d hit him. Now Kyle drove me to distraction at times, but I never hit him … never laid a finger on him. I wouldn’t …”
“No.”
“They wanted to check my knives. Did I have one missing? Of course I didn’t. But even if I had, it wouldn’t mean I’d stabbed my own son. They don’t know me … they didn’t know Kyle, if they had then they wouldn’t even have thought of it.”
“I know that.”
“You never saw him since the accident, did you?” Jenny asked knowing the answer.
“No … no I didn’t.”
“He was never the same. It was very sad. That’s why he was at your mum and dad’s.”
“Sorry?” Charlie didn’t quite follow the logic.
“Ever since your mum saved his life, the minute anything went wrong he was over there. Half the time he didn’t even tell her the problem. It was like just being near to her made him feel better.”
There was hurt in Jenny’s voice. Her relationship with
Kyle hadn’t been easy.
“For weeks after the accident people would tell him how lucky it was that Caroline was there, if she hadn’t been then he would have been dead.”
Jenny continued to explain how the passing years had been for her. “Your mum was good with him … probably better than me, but she didn’t have him every day … seven days a week … And …” she emphasised, “… she was his saviour … in his head she was better than me, more important than me … That’s not easy Charlie … it’s not easy.”
In Charlie’s mind there was no way Jenny had anything to do with her son’s death. The hurt was too entrenched in her damaged soul, but he hadn’t ruled out Kyle. Could that adoration Kyle had for his mother have turned into something more dangerous? The Kyle Charlie knew before he left didn’t have a violent bone in his body. But maybe he’d changed … maybe he wasn’t the same Kyle.
“He didn’t have the best life … I know that. But I did what I could … the best I could. Whatever he didn’t deserve to die like that. Stuck like a pig … he didn’t deserve that.”
“No – he didn’t.” But Charlie wasn’t sure.
* * * * *
Charlie left Jenny’s shop promising he’d call in again before he went back to London. Jenny’s grief was palpable, but he had a feeling it was far from being exorcised.
He decided he needed to know more about the various people in the village, but it was difficult to know where to start. Who could he ask? Strangely the only person he felt he would be able to get some truth out of would be Cassie. But even that was based on some adolescent relationship, which happened years ago. Nevertheless he thought she would be his best bet.
But there was another reason he wanted to talk to Cassie, a reason he wasn’t even admitting to himself. Since meeting her outside Farrah’s cottage, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. There were probably lots of reasons for this, the main ones being she was the first girl he’d ever slept with, she was the girl he thought he was in love with and she was the first girl he walked out on without even saying good-bye. He kept telling himself he wanted to put the record straight, but was it more than that.
