A Fatal Night

by Faith Martin

  Trudy, a little surprised at first by the eccentricity, quickly became used to it.

  ‘Thank you for getting in touch with us, sir. I take it you knew Mr Parker?’ she began conventionally.

  ‘Yes, but in a professional capacity only. We were not friends, I must make that perfectly clear,’ the accountant said. He had a precise way of speaking, which matched his general demeanour and probably boded well for his professional skills. Nobody, after all, liked a sloppy accountant.

  ‘I see. Then I take it you called us in because you dealt with the books for his business?’ Trudy sought clarification, her pen poised over her notebook.

  ‘For Regal Cars, yes,’ Philip Prescott corrected her. ‘He was a partner of the company.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve already spoken to Mr Geoffrey Thorpe,’ Trudy admitted cautiously. ‘I got the feeling that they were the only two people concerned with the car dealership? That is, that they didn’t answer to anyone else?’

  ‘That is correct. It is a private enterprise, not a public company,’ the accountant confirmed. He stirred in his chair, his fingers butting his chin for a moment or two, before he sighed.

  Trudy recognised all the signs of a naturally very cautious man, who was also a law-abiding and responsible citizen, trying to work out what he felt it was his duty to say, whilst not compromising his professional ethics.

  Trying to help him out – and push the interview along – she spoke tentatively. ‘I found Mr Thorpe a very pleasant man. Very straightforward, I think,’ she offered.

  ‘Yes, so do I,’ Philip Prescott said at once.

  ‘Did you deal mostly with Mr Thorpe or Mr Parker?’ she tried next.

  ‘Oh, Mr Parker I suppose, slightly more than Mr Thorpe.’ The accountant paused to examine these words, clearly found them inadequate, and added, ‘That is to say, it was more often than not Mr Parker who delivered the accounts here, rather than his partner.’

  ‘I see. I take it they both worked on the books?’

  ‘Yes, they did. I haven’t found any pattern to their methods – I think they both made entries as and when they had the time, in between selling automobiles, I suppose.’ He shook his head over this outlandish practice.

  ‘I see.’ Trudy tried to look scandalised too. ‘And how often did they bring the books here for you to work on?’ she asked next.

  ‘Oh, every quarter.’

  ‘And you say it was more often Mr Parker who did this?’ Trudy reiterated, unsure why she was being so pedantic about this – unless the accountant’s manner was catching! Perhaps it was because she was beginning to get the distinct impression that this man was going to be tricky to interview. He obviously didn’t like making bold statements of fact, so she was going to have to be careful not to miss any inferences. Or worse still, misread any of them.

  Clement, watching benevolently as Trudy’s interview technique came on in leaps and bounds right in front of his eyes, repressed a small smile of satisfaction, and was happy to just watch and listen. He knew he could always jump in if he spotted any opportunity that she seemed to miss.

  ‘Yes. And it was certainly Mr Parker who preferred to deal with any queries that I might have had arising from them.’ There was something portentous in his emphasis on this sentence that nudged Trudy’s curiosity – as of course, it was meant to.

  Obligingly, she went where she was led. ‘And did you have many queries rising from their accounts?’

  At this direct assault, however, Philip Prescott again shifted uncomfortably on his chair. He opened his mouth, closed it again, thought for a moment, and then sighed. His fingers, during this hiatus, gently but rapidly tapped the underside of his chin.

  ‘I wouldn’t say …’ he began, then checked himself and sighed again. ‘There was nothing …’ Realising that his visitors were looking at him with impatience, he forced himself to take the plunge. ‘All right, let me put it this way. In the three years that I have been working with Regal Cars, I have never felt worried that an investigation by the Inland Revenue would turn up anything … actionable. From their point of view.’

  Prescott looked at her carefully, then turned to look at the mostly silent man by her side. Seeing that the coroner seemed disinclined to comment, he turned his attention back to the policewoman. Trudy looked back at him just as carefully.

  ‘I see,’ she said slowly, thinking it through. ‘But, putting aside Her Majesty’s revenue men, would you say that there were occasions …’ This time it was she who had to pause to find just the right word; something innocuous enough not to spook him into reticence, but enough to get him to reveal the meat of the matter. ‘Let’s say, when something in their books … surprised you, or struck you as … odd perhaps?’

  ‘I would, yes, most definitely,’ Philip Prescott said quickly and with some relief. In fact, he even managed a near-smile. He seemed pleased by her intelligence, and pleasantly surprised by her willingness to approach everything at a suitably oblique angle.

  Trudy, who was rapidly getting the hang of how to handle this particular witness, hoped they could now start making some real progress.

  ‘And was it Mr Parker’s, er, entries in the books that surprised you, more than those of Mr Thorpe?’ she asked, watching his face for signs that she’d either blundered or scored a hit.

  ‘Oh yes indeed. We accountants very quickly learn how to “read” our customers’ work, as it were. And I must say that Mr Thorpe had a very neat and tidy way of doing things. A bit over-meticulous sometimes, so he does not always find the most effective way of doing things, but his entries had the saving grace of at least being … unambiguous.’

  Clement, who was both entertained by, and very interested in the small man in front of him, took a moment or two to appreciate his latest, very careful, offering.

  ‘Unambiguous,’ Trudy, too, savoured the word thoughtfully and nodded. ‘But Mr Parker’s work, by comparison, tended to be rather more, should we say, a little slipshod?’ she probed delicately.

  The accountant’s fingertips did rapid overtime under his chin, but this time his prim lips almost twitched into a smile. ‘I think that would be a generous interpretation of it, yes.’

  Trudy nodded. ‘I see. Would you say that Regal Cars are a successful enterprise, as a whole, Mr Prescott?’

  Again, the man thought that over very carefully before replying, checking for hidden pitfalls and mantraps.

  ‘I would say,’ Philip Prescott finally said with his usual precision, ‘that it was solvent. That its turnover was appreciable and that its income seemed to be quite adequate for the two men concerned. But rather more, I think, for Mr Parker than for Mr Thorpe.’

  Trudy, for the first time, wasn’t quite certain that she’d read between the lines correctly this time. Knowing that a direct question would probably not be received well by her witness, she sought ways to get clarification.

  ‘Is Regal Cars a straight partnership, Mr Prescott? By that I mean do they equally own one half of the company?’

  ‘They do,’ Mr Prescott said, a gleam of approval in his eye. ‘They each own equal equity, and they do not draw their respective salaries on the basis of who sells the most cars. That is to say – no bonuses.’

  Trudy, feeling on surer ground now, nodded. ‘So it didn’t matter if one of them sold more cars one week than the other one did. The profits would be shared equally between them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was Mr Parker, on the whole, a better salesman than Mr Thorpe?’

  ‘No, I would say they were more or less on a par. I noticed that Mr Thorpe’s sales tended to be more regular and – well, not predictable, exactly, but shall we say, tended to follow the same pattern. Mr Parker told me that his partner tended to sell the less high-end range of sports cars, mostly to younger men. Whilst he sold fewer cars, but more of the higher-priced items, and usually to older men.’

  Trudy nodded. This made sense to her. She was beginning to get a feel for their car crash victim now. A young,
handsome man, who appealed to wealthy widows, was probably the same kind of man who found it easier to sell very flashy and expensive sports cars to middle-aged men who, perhaps, should have known better.

  ‘I can see, from a business perspective, that that would make sense,’ Trudy said, mindful that she was talking to an accountant. ‘Two partners, each specialising in a different customer base, would optimise their sales considerably.’

  Now Philip Prescott actually did manage to smile, clearly finding this young police officer very intelligent and accommodating indeed.

  ‘To be clear then, both men took exactly the same amount of money in salary from the company each month?’ she asked cautiously.

  At this, Philip Prescott’s finger-bumping stopped abruptly.

  She had become so used to it, that Trudy found its cessation almost shocking.

  ‘Ah. Now,’ Mr Prescott said, sitting up even more rigidly in his chair. ‘That’s what the Regal Car books showed. That is, the books that were shown to me when Mr Parker brought them over.’

  Jackpot! Trudy felt herself tensing and deliberately made herself relax again. She must not lose her witness’s confidence at this point. ‘And when Mr Thorpe brought them over?’ she asked, very casually.

  Philip Prescott finally separated his hands, laid them flat on the top of the desk and leaned back slightly in his chair. ‘Yes. The thing is, Mr Thorpe brought the entire set of books to me last November – that is, all the years of their trading, up until a month before the latest quarter ended. He asked me to audit them thoroughly. I have to say that I got the impression – nothing but an impression mind you,’ he stressed primly, ‘that Mr Thorpe had done so without the knowledge of his partner.’

  ‘And what did …’ Trudy caught herself just in time from asking a direct question. Quickly, she corrected herself. ‘And did the books shown to you at that time indicate that Mr Thorpe had always received his equal share of the profits every quarter?’

  The accountant gave her a congratulatory smile. Trudy had a mental picture of him patting her on the head, rather like a dog owner pleased with the antics of his favourite Labrador.

  ‘No, Constable, they did not,’ Mr Philip Prescott said, with immense satisfaction.

  *

  ‘So our dead man was cooking the books,’ Clement said, the moment they were back outside on the pavement.

  It had become almost dark during their time in the office, and the Christmas lights, yet to be taken down, cast a cheerful glow over the shops. Trudy shivered at the sudden drop in temperature from warm office to freezing outdoors.

  ‘Stealing from his partner,’ Trudy acknowledged. ‘Which was, presumably, less dangerous than stealing from the tax man!’ Trudging automatically back up the hill, she wondered aloud where this took them, exactly. ‘Presumably he’d been pilfering more than his fair share since they set up the business. He strikes me as the kind of man who would have liked to have money to splash around.’

  Clement nodded, then realising that Trudy couldn’t see him do so – since they’d been forced to walk one behind the other due to the snowbanks crowding in on either side of them – said loudly, ‘Yes, I agree. Unluckily for our dead man though, Geoffrey Thorpe had finally got wise and caught him out.’

  ‘Which might explain why Geoffrey Thorpe looked more worried when we talked to him, as opposed to being actually sad.’ Trudy nodded. ‘He must have been hoping he could keep all their business problems a secret, to avoid loss of confidence in their firm. He couldn’t have been feeling very friendly towards Terry for some time – certainly not enough to really mourn his passing. I’m only surprised they kept on trading! Mr Thorpe must have faced him with it as soon as he’d found out and demanded that Terry pay him back every penny, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘I would think that’s a fair bet,’ Clement agreed dryly.

  Chapter 13

  The news that her car crash victim was turning out to have feet of clay did not sit well with Inspector Jennings. At the top of the hill, Trudy and Clement had separated to go back to their respective workplaces, and on entering the police station, Trudy had immediately made her report to her superior officer.

  ‘So he was a wrong ’un,’ the inspector grunted after she finished speaking. ‘I don’t see how it’s relevant in the circumstances though.’ If the car crash was purely accidental, he added to himself silently. But what if it wasn’t?

  Damn it, he didn’t have the men for this sort of complication! They were stretched so tight with the few staff that he did have, that he couldn’t possibly justify allocating another officer to what was almost certainly still going to turn out to be a simple road traffic fatality.

  And had it been anyone other than WPC Loveday and that bloody interfering coroner who were currently looking into the matter, he might have felt sure enough that the odds were in his favour, to simply let it drop. But that pair had the knack of summoning very real mountains out of apparent molehills. It was enough to give a man indigestion.

  What he needed were more facts to go on. But with everything backlogged like it was, the facts weren’t going to be arriving on his desk any time soon. If it did turn out after all that there was something iffy about Parker’s death though, his superiors would come down on him like a ton of bricks for letting so much time pass before he pulled his finger out!

  ‘Damn it, I suppose you’ll just have to keep digging,’ he capitulated, pretending not to notice the look of delight that crossed her face. ‘Only until we get the autopsy report, mind,’ he admonished, scowling at her. ‘Or the mechanic’s report on the car. That’ll tell us whether there was some hanky-panky done on his vehicle. You did set that in motion?’ He shot her a hard look.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she confirmed, knowing that he would have been delighted to catch her out in failing to do something so obvious. ‘But they say it’s going to take some time. They couldn’t even find a breakdown recovery vehicle until—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Jennings interrupted her impatiently. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Isn’t it the end of your shift?’ he demanded testily.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Trudy said, and wisely scarpered before he could change his mind.

  Once outside the door, she realised that she hadn’t asked him if she could continue to use the services of Dr Ryder. Which meant that he hadn’t said she couldn’t, didn’t it?

  *

  The early edition of the Oxford Tribune was delivered later than usual (due to the inconvenient snow) at Raven’s Rest B&B in Summertown that afternoon.

  The woman who was currently occupying Room 4, a corner room on the top floor, read the article about the death of Terry Parker, a car crash victim, as she sat on the edge of her bed.

  She felt like crying. Or maybe laughing. Because when life played dirty tricks on you, you had to have a sense of humour, didn’t you? But mostly, she felt like raging. Like stomping about and throwing things, and stamping her feet and ripping something – anything – into tiny little bits.

  But of course, she did none of these things. Instead, she forced herself to read the article through twice, meticulously, before closing her eyes for a few moments and breathing deeply.

  She was twenty-eight years old, although she believed – with good cause – that she looked several years younger than that. Her thick dark-brown hair was cut in a modern, youthful style, and she wore clothes that she had made herself, copied from the latest fashion magazines. Since she was a good seamstress, she was often admired for her outfits. She walked and sat well, and she was very careful to keep her speaking voice low and clear.

  Consequently, very few people would have pegged her as the daughter of a man who made his living driving a lorry and delivering coal in Tunbridge Wells. A girl from a bleak council housing estate, who’d left school at fourteen and had fallen pregnant at the age of eighteen after being far too naïve and trusting.

  Phyllis Raynor had worked very hard and very diligently to expunge both of these latter faults from her person
ality over the years. She had also taken several correspondence courses in order to prepare herself for a career as a secretary, as well as reading widely and well, to educate herself in the more social graces.

  She’d been careful to cultivate friends who had no idea of her humble origins, learning from them the many tricks of the middle-class trade that came so naturally to them. She’d also listened and learned from the bosses in the many business offices she’d worked in, where office politics could be as vicious as any practised in Whitehall. And one of the many things she’d learned from her unknowingly helpful teachers was that people who succeeded in life didn’t indulge in theatrics, or allow any obstacle to deter them from their chosen path.

  So she did not indulge in self-pity, as her younger self might have done. And she now had far more self-control than to let her anger have free rein. Instead, she sat on the bed, coolly and calmly, and forced herself to think. Just where had this latest turn of events left her? And how could she turn it to her advantage?

  When she’d come to Oxford on New Year’s Eve she’d had a definite plan in mind. It had been a simple plan, but she didn’t think that she’d been overly optimistic in having great expectations that it would prove to be effective. It wasn’t as if she’d rushed things, or gone at things half-cocked. It had taken her a long time to finally track down her prey, and she hadn’t been about to let all that hard work come to nothing by letting impatience get the better of her. No, she’d watched, and waited, and made sure of the lie of the land before making her move. What’s more, she’d chosen her moment to strike for the optimum psychological advantage.

  But no matter how well you checked out all the angles, and thought you’d set up everything perfectly, accounting for every possible permutation you could think of, there was just no accounting for bad luck, was there?