The Company

by Sally Spencer

  And if she’d wanted me for my body, why hadn’t she taken advantage of the numerous opportunities which had been offered to her over the previous two years? God knows, I wouldn’t have pushed her away.

  So why had she picked me up? And even more important, what had made her decide to drop me so completely now?

  I thought of Andy McBride’s offer again. We could be in and out of the flat in five minutes, he’d promised me. Five minutes! Three hundred seconds! In that short space of time, I just might be able to resolve all the questions and worries which were eating away at my brain.

  I sighed and checked my watch. It was a quarter past three. I would give it till five, then go home and grab a couple of hours’ sleep before setting off for work.

  NINETEEN

  It was another chocolate-box-pretty morning in the village, and the church clock was just striking ten as Detective Chief Inspector Flint walked up the High Street toward the church.

  He had just reached the stocks when the tranquillity of the morning was suddenly shattered by the sound of a powerful car engine being heavily revved. He turned in the direction of the noise and saw a black Jaguar X-JS roaring up behind him.

  He recognized the driver immediately, and was not the least surprised when the man brought the shiny new machine to a halt in front of the stocks.

  ‘That’s a nice vehicle,’ Flint said. ‘It’s very nice indeed. Had it long, have you?’

  Bill Harper shook his head. ‘I only took delivery of it last night, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘You must have a very optimistic nature, Mr Harper,’ Flint commented.

  ‘Optimistic nature? I’m not sure I’m following you.’

  ‘I’m sure this is a very suitable car for a joint managing director …’

  ‘Yes, you have to keep up appearances when you’re a serious player in the business world.’

  ‘… but I would have thought it was well beyond the reach of a mere executive assistant. Yet that’s what you must have been when you ordered it – and at that time, the possibility of making the leap that you have, in fact, made, must have seemed very remote.’

  Bill Harper laughed uneasily. ‘Oh, I see what you’re getting at. The Jag wasn’t ordered for me at all. It was going to be Tony Conroy’s new company car. But he doesn’t need it now, does he? And so it’s mine.’

  ‘There are some people who could fall into a shit heap and come up smelling of roses,’ Flint said dryly. ‘So what are you doing in the village at this time of the morning, Mr Harper? Just showing off your new wheels?’

  ‘No, of course not – that would be totally irresponsible. The fact is, I needed to talk to you, and at the police station, they told me that this was where I’d find you.’

  ‘And what would you like to talk to me about?’ Flint wondered.

  ‘Are you still looking for Paul Taylor?’ Harper asked.

  More than just looking for him, Flint thought. There was a general alert out. But the search lacked both the intensity and the urgency – not to mention the resources – which would have been devoted to it if the object of the search had been a missing child, because Taylor wasn’t a child – and anyway, they simply didn’t have enough on him to warrant that sort of operation.

  ‘I asked you if you were still looking for him,’ Harper repeated, in a tone which said he didn’t like to be kept waiting, especially by a man who probably earned a quarter of the salary he was now pulling in.

  ‘I don’t see how it’s any business of yours, sir,’ Flint said, ‘but I believe it’s fairly common knowledge that we’d appreciate the opportunity of having a few words with Mr Taylor.’

  ‘You haven’t really answered my question, you know,’ Bill Harper pointed out.

  ‘No, I haven’t, have I?’ Flint agreed.

  For a moment, it looked as if Harper would slide his new toy into gear and drive away. Then, though he gave Flint a look which showed both anger at him as a man and disappointment in him as a chief inspector, he seemed to decide not to abort his mission.

  ‘The reason I was asking about the search is that I think Paul Taylor might be much more involved in this case than you seem to imagine,’ he said. ‘I also think that you should extend your search – if indeed, since you seem to be so cagey about it, you’re actually conducting one – to the continent.’

  ‘Are you telling me that you know for certain he’s done a runner?’ Flint demanded.

  Harper smiled smugly. ‘Let us just say that I consider it a very distinct possibility.’

  ‘Based on what?’

  Bill Harper ran his hands lovingly over the leather-covered steering wheel of his new car.

  ‘It was something that one of my accountants came up with, which set me on the trail,’ he said.

  One of my accountants, Flint repeated silently. Only a few days earlier, Harper had been nothing more than an executive assistant, but now he was talking as if he had built up Conroy Enterprises single-handed.

  ‘And what, exactly, did this accountant of yours find?’ he asked.

  ‘Both Paul and I have drawing rights on the company’s current account,’ Harper explained. ‘It’s a necessary mechanism for the smooth running of the business, because there are circumstances when one of us needs to make a large cash payment and—’

  ‘There are times when I’d really enjoy a nice leisurely trip round the houses, sir,’ Flint interrupted him, ‘but right now I’m investigating a murder case, and I really would be grateful if you’d come straight to the point.’

  Just for an instant, the expression on Harper’s face was of a man who was not as confident and self-assured as he appeared to be. But it didn’t last. He was a joint managing director of a large and expanding business now. He didn’t need to feel intimidated by a mere policeman.

  ‘A couple of hours after the crash, Paul Taylor made a substantial withdrawal from that account,’ he said.

  He waited for Flint to ask him how much.

  ‘How much?’ Flint said.

  ‘Twenty thousand pounds – which is the largest amount either us can withdraw without it being countersigned by one of the directors. But what is even more significant – at least to me – is where he drew it out. Can you guess which bank he used, Mr Flint?’

  You bastard! Flint thought. You cocky, smug bastard. I’d like to shake you until your teeth rattled.

  ‘He wouldn’t have withdrawn the money from a branch of a bank in Bristol, would he, Mr Harper?’ he asked levelly.

  Harper nodded. ‘That’s right. In fact it was the branch closest to Temple Meads railway station.’

  Having gone down to the village store to replenish his stock of sweets – and settled on a mixed mint selection and a bag of chocolate éclairs – Flint wondered what he should do next.

  ‘The problem was, Rob,’ he would tell me later, ‘I knew in my gut that the roots of the murder lay buried in either the village or Oxford, but I hadn’t got a bloody clue where to start digging. And that meant that instead of making things happen, I was forced to hang around, like a spare prick at a wedding, and hope that when something did happen, I’d notice it.’

  As he walked back towards the church, he found himself thinking about Paul Taylor again.

  Could the case really be as simple as Bill Harper had implied it was? Could Paul Taylor have travelled down to Bristol, sneaked into the garage, sabotaged the brakes of the BMW, then taken the money and run?

  Why should he have done that?

  What could have motivated him to arrange three murders?

  He didn’t look, on the face of it, to have any reason to want the Conroys dead. Unless, of course, my father had treated him so badly that he wanted his revenge at any cost.

  But even that didn’t make sense, firstly because from what Flint had learned of my father, he didn’t seem to have been the kind of man who could arouse such passion. And secondly, everyone – including the admirable and practical Jo Torlopp – had said Taylor was a gentle man, who wouldn
’t hurt a fly. Besides, if Taylor had wanted to kill him, it would surely have been simple enough to arrange an accident in the village.

  Flint reached the pump house next to the pub and wondered where he should go next. Turn to the right, and he would soon reach the home of the late Charles Conroy, the founder of the empire. Turn left, and he would eventually arrive at my sister-in-law’s house. For no particular reason, he decided to go left.

  Paul Taylor … Paul Taylor … Paul Taylor … Paul-bloody-Taylor.

  The name kept running through his brain, matching the rhythm of his footfalls.

  The man was supposed to be trying to make a name for himself in business, yet he had asked for – and been granted – a leave of absence just when the company was on the verge of making the most important deal in its history. Why should he have done that? And perhaps even more to the point, whatever had possessed my father to give his permission?

  Flint was less than a hundred yards away from my sister-in-law’s house when he noticed the black Golf GTI parked outside.

  Now that was interesting, he thought – indeed, it could almost be said to be fascinating. Just what the bloody hell was she doing back in the village?

  Flint reached into his pocket and popped a glacier mint in his mouth. It might be some time before she came out, but he was perfectly prepared to wait.

  It was, in fact, less than ten minutes before Lydia’s front door opened, the red-haired woman stepped out, and somebody – probably Lydia – closed the door behind her.

  Marie walked halfway down the path, stopped to light a cigarette, and saw Flint.

  ‘She wouldn’t let me smoke inside,’ she said disgustedly. ‘Too house-proud.’

  ‘What exactly are you doing here, Miss O’Hara?’ the chief inspector asked.

  Marie took a deep drag of her cigarette and blew the smoke out through her nostrils.

  ‘What exactly am I doing here?’ she repeated. ‘I’m visiting.’

  ‘I may be wrong, but when we spoke at Charles Conroy’s funeral, didn’t you tell me that you didn’t know any of the family?’ Flint asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ Marie agreed.

  ‘So am I to take it that the nature of your visit to Mrs Conroy was not social?’

  Marie sighed. ‘You can take it any way you want, Mr Flint.’

  ‘If it wasn’t social, it was business,’ the chief inspector said doggedly. ‘And your business is private investigation. So what I have to ask myself is what Mrs Conroy would need a private detective for.’

  He paused, giving Marie time to speak, but she said nothing.

  ‘This wouldn’t be connected with the murders by any chance, would it, Miss O’Hara?’ he continued.

  ‘If I didn’t come to see Mrs Conroy on business, then your question’s meaningless,’ Marie said, choosing her words with extreme care. ‘And if I did come to see her on business, then exactly what we discussed is protected by client confidentiality.’

  ‘I’ve warned you before, you should be careful not to get mixed up in a police investigation, Miss O’Hara,’ Flint said sternly. ‘You could lose your licence. You could even go to prison.’

  Marie took her keys out of her handbag and unlocked the driver’s door of the Golf.

  ‘We must have another drink some time, chief inspector,’ she said. ‘I owe you one.’

  ‘You like to live dangerously, don’t you?’ Flint asked. ‘You drive a fast car, you smoke too many cigarettes—’

  ‘And you, chief inspector, are rotting your teeth with all those sweets you guzzle,’ Marie interrupted him. ‘I’ll see you around.’

  Then she put her key in the ignition and fired up the engine. As she pulled away, the back wheels of her car threw up cinders and small stones.

  Flint watched her drive off down the lane at a speed he knew was solely designed to provoke him.

  What the hell had she been to see Lydia about? he wondered.

  Whatever it was, he doubted very much whether my sister-in-law herself would tell him.

  TWENTY

  The Georgian carriage clock on my desk – a gift from Andy McBride, which, he assured me, he had paid for ‘wi’ real money’ – said it was a quarter past ten in the morning. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Spending the entire night cramped in a car outside Marie’s flat had done my injured leg no good at all, and my eyes prickled from lack of sleep.

  I picked up a manuscript, already dog-eared from passing through the hands of a dozen publishers, and started to read. It was only when I got to the bottom of the third page that I realized that though my eyes had passed over the words, my brain had received no message at all, and I couldn’t even begin to guess what the book was about.

  I pushed the manuscript aside and turned my thoughts instead to my brother. His death had become an obsession with me, not only because I missed him, but also because I still believed – perhaps even more strongly now than ever – that there had been some point in the past when the chain of events which led to the crash could have been broken – and that I should have been the one to break it.

  I found my exhausted mind wandering back to the day of the board meeting at which I’d been told that my beloved publishing house was to be put at risk for no other reason than to enable my uncle to increase the size of his own personal empire.

  I’d stormed out of that meeting and – after I’d failed to persuade Grandfather to reverse his decision – I’d gone back to my father’s house, where I was just on the point of pouring myself a very stiff drink when the phone rang.

  It was John.

  ‘I thought we might go out for a drink tonight,’ he suggested.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m in the mood,’ I told him.

  ‘Not in the mood for a drink?’ John asked, with mock incredulity. ‘I’m willing to bet you’ve already got one in your hand.’

  Despite myself, I laughed.

  ‘Nearly right,’ I said. ‘Another five minutes, and I’d have been halfway down the world’s strongest gin and tonic.’

  ‘Save it for later,’ my brother told me. ‘I’ll pick you up at eight.’

  ‘Will Lydia be coming?’ I asked.

  ‘She’d like to,’ John said, unconvincingly, ‘but she’s got another one of her blessed committee meetings to attend. So it’ll only be the two of us – just like old times.’

  John arrived at exactly eight o’clock. He looked as calm and placid as he normally did, but as I climbed into the passenger seat, I could sense a hidden tension.

  ‘Since you’ve brought the car, I’m assuming we’re not going to the George and Dragon,’ I said.

  John nodded. ‘I’d rather like to get out of the village for a couple of hours, if you don’t mind. I thought we could drive over to that little pub in Lower Peover.’

  ‘The one where I first met Lydia?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why there?’ I asked.

  ‘No particular reason,’ John replied – and I could tell he was lying.

  It was a fifteen-minute drive to the pub, and during the journey, though I got the distinct impression John had something he was bursting to tell me, he said nothing. Even when we were sitting down, with pints in front of us on a copper-topped table, my brother still seemed unwilling to come out with what was on his mind, and it was me who broke the silence.

  ‘What happened after I left the meeting?’ I asked.

  John shrugged. ‘Not much. Uncle Tony said that unless there were any questions, we could consider the business of the day over. Then he told us where to pick up our briefing folders. I’ve got yours in the boot of the car, if you want it.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘That’s up to you, Little Brother.’ John picked up his pint. In his massive hand, it looked more like a half. ‘You didn’t do yourself any good by storming out of the meeting like that, you know.’

  ‘It made no difference whether I left or whether I stayed,’ I told him. ‘My opinion didn’t matter. Uncle Tony ha
d it all neatly sewn up before any of us even entered the room.’

  ‘True,’ John agreed.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re taking this all so calmly,’ I told him. ‘This acquisition is dicey. We’re probably over-extending ourselves. The company could quite easily go to the wall, you know.’

  John smiled, softly. ‘And what if it did go bankrupt? Where would that leave us? Out on the streets with our begging bowls?’

  I forced myself to smile back. ‘Not quite that,’ I conceded.

  ‘Nothing like that,’ John said. ‘Grandfather’s a smart man. There’s enough private family money, outside the company, for us all to live in modest affluence for the rest of our lives.’

  ‘So what?’ I said exasperatedly. ‘Doesn’t it bother you that you might lose your business?’

  ‘I enjoy my work,’ John said, ‘but it’s certainly not the obsession with me that yours is with you. Perhaps that’s because when you’ve got someone to love, business doesn’t really seem that important anymore.’

  I remembered John’s moment of panic on the morning of his wedding, and the doubts I had entertained myself about Lydia as a suitable partner for my brother. Well, we seemed to have both been wrong – thank God! She wouldn’t have done for me – I could never have stomached all her committees and her social gatherings – but if she made John happy that was all that mattered.

  But was he right in what he’d implied about me? Was my obsession with Cormorant Publishing only there because I had a great void in my life to fill? If Marie could bring herself to feel for me as I felt for her, would I be spending quite so much time in the office? And would I really care as much as I did about the success of the people I had under contract?

  I was experiencing an emotion which was entirely new to me. I found myself envying my brother his happiness – and wishing I could trade places with him.

  ‘You’re not listening to me, are you, Rob?’ John asked, piercing my bubble of moody introspection.

  I jumped slightly. ‘Sorry, I was a million miles away for a minute. What did you say?’