Dead End (21 page)

‘And had they?’

She frowned. ‘I would have said so, yes. Sir Stefan wouldn’t part with a penny of his, of course, but I thought Fay and Alec between them had plenty. But just lately I’ve begun to wonder. You were right about that.’ She met Slider’s eyes. She was plainly very worried.

‘What does Marcus live on, now he’s not at college?’

‘That’s it exactly, the same as he’s always lived on: Alec. I don’t know the details, but I gather a few years ago, when Marcus was still at school, there was a big scandal that it cost a lot of money to hush up. I don’t know if he’s been in trouble since then, but he’s a constant drain, and he doesn’t live cheaply. I don’t know how he gets through it all, but I do know—’ She hesitated. ‘I overheard a bit of their conversation on Wednesday. I didn’t mean to – I thought they’d finished and picked up the phone to make a call. But I’m afraid when I heard them I carried on listening. Marcus needed money for something – a lot of money – and he was threatening Alec, saying if he didn’t give it to him, he’d just have to turn to theft. Breaking and entering, he said. Alec was horrified. The scandal would finish him, of course. He’d lose all his clients. Marcus
knows that, the little swine. That’s how he puts the bite on Alec every time.’

‘So what did Alec say to the threat?’

‘He said no, no, don’t even think about it. He said to give him time and he’d come up with something.’ She shook her head. ‘I was so angry with Marcus I didn’t listen after that. I put the phone down. Alec sounded so upset I couldn’t bear it, even though – well, I suppose I still love him. I haven’t quite had time to get over it.’

‘And then half an hour later he came out and said he was ill and was going home.’

‘Yes. He looked it too.’

‘Did he go to meet Marcus before he went home?’

‘No, not as far as I know. Why do you ask?’ She seemed genuinely surprised.

‘I just wondered. So tell me, how do you think he was going to get hold of money for Marcus?’

‘Are you asking me in an official capacity, or is this still a friendly chat?’ she asked, suddenly curious.

‘I hope it’s still friendly. But you know that Wednesday is a day I have to be particularly interested in.’

She stared, and he saw her scalp shift back as her eyes widened and her nostrils flared. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘Oh my God, you think Alec killed Sir Stefan!’

He looked at her with interest. ‘Has it truly never occurred to you before that he might have?’

‘No! No, I swear to you! But you’re wrong, you must be wrong! He wouldn’t do a thing like that, not Alec. He may be a swine in some ways, but he would never harm a soul. He’s too soft if anything – that’s why he spoils Marcus—’

‘But if Marcus had got into some bad trouble and Alec was desperate for the cash—’

‘No! Oh no, I promise you, he just wouldn’t.’ Her voice was stronger, more confident. ‘He just isn’t that kind of man.’

Slider well knew there was no kind of man, but that was not the discussion he wanted to have with Helena Goodwin. ‘All right, then if you really hadn’t considered that possibility, what was it about him that’s been worrying you so much, that you wanted to tell me about?’

This was plainly difficult. She chewed her lip, staring at him
rather blankly as she tried to make up her mind. ‘If I tell you,’ she said at last, ‘it’s going to make it look worse for him. And I’m positive he hasn’t done – what you think.’

‘Then what has he done? Really,’ he added when she still hesitated, ‘you’d much better tell me. We always find out in the end, and the sooner we can check it all out, the sooner we can eliminate him from suspicion, if he really is innocent. Keeping it from me isn’t going to get anyone anywhere.’

‘I just don’t want it to be me who betrays him.’

‘That suggests there’s something to betray.’

She was silent a moment longer, and then seemed to decide to take the plunge. ‘All right, look, I don’t know if this is anything to do with it – it may be nothing at all, but it’s been bothering me. Did you know that Alec is trustee for the estate of his godson Henry?’

‘Henry Russell?’

‘That’s right. It’s a family thing – Henry’s also a sort of second cousin, I think. You know about it, then?’

‘Not much more than the name. Is it a large estate?’

‘Very. In the millions, I believe. Henry’s father was Russell’s Pies and Sausages.’

‘Ah yes.’ Russell’s had always been a rather dignified, old-fashioned firm, whose products sported old-fashioned paper wrappers decorated with dull drawings of the various gold medals won in the days of Empire. They made steak and kidney pies and pork pies of the sort Celia Johnson might have bought at the station buffet while waiting for Trevor Howard (though never, of course, actually eaten). But just lately Russell’s had suffered a belated panic and gone all trendy, with transparent cellophane packaging and a new range of synthetic fillings which McLaren adored: cheese ’n’ potato, chick ’n’ curry and crispy bacon bits. Whatever had happened, Slider wondered in parenthesis, to the word crisp? They were all ruled by nursery language these days. ‘Yes, I know Russell’s Pies,’ he said. ‘How old is Henry?’

‘Twenty-three. And a half.’

‘How come the money is still in trust, then?’

‘Oh, the trust goes on until he’s twenty-five. Apparently Henry’s father was a bit of a wild thing in his youth, and expected Henry to be the same, so he wanted the money tied
up until Henry had had a chance to sow his wild oats and grow sensible. But in fact he needn’t have worried: Henry’s never caused a moment’s anxiety to anyone in his life. He’s so sensible he doesn’t even fret about not getting his money for another eighteen months. The only impulsive thing he’s ever done is to get engaged rather suddenly, but the girl’s perfectly unexceptionable. She’s pretty and good, her parents have got a place in Berkshire, and she’s called Camilla. Every mother’s dream, in fact.’

Slider returned the smile. ‘So what’s bothering you about this trust?’

‘It was something that happened a couple of months ago,’ she said slowly. ‘Quite a bit of the trust money is in shares in the family firm, as you’d expect, and about two months ago I happened to see a share transfer document, selling a block of them, on Alec’s desk. I was surprised, because I hadn’t seen it before, and usually I deal with all the routine paperwork. Alec was out of the room at the time, so I had a closer look at it. As trustee, he’s quite entitled to buy or sell shares, of course, but share transfers have to have the signatures of both trustees.’

‘Who is the other trustee?’

‘David Fowles. He’s another cousin of Henry’s on his mother’s side. The thing is, he’s one of these lone yachtsmen and he’s been sailing round the world for almost the last year. He keeps in touch, of course, but at that time, at that time I saw the transfer document, he was somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific, and had been for weeks. He could be contacted by radio, of course, but there was no way of getting a document to him for signature. But the share transfer had his signature on it all the same.’

‘You think it was a forgery?’

‘I think Alec forged it,’ she said bravely. ‘I’ve handled lots of documents for the trust, and I know David’s signature. It didn’t look quite right to me. Besides how could it be? And why hadn’t Alec passed it through me in the usual way?’

‘Because there was something wrong about it?’

‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that he was so desperate for money he sold the shares and took the cash.’

Slider nodded gravely. Interesting that she didn’t find this
hard to suppose, though murder was unimaginable. ‘How much cash?’

‘I don’t know exactly, because I don’t know what he sold at, of course, but it wouldn’t have been much under a hundred thousand pounds.’ She looked at Slider like a puppy hoping not to be kicked. ‘And it wasn’t long before that that Marcus smashed Alec’s car. A sixty-thousand-pound Mercedes. Marcus was drunk – or something worse – and climbed out without a scratch on him, but the car was a write-off. He lost his licence, of course, but there was a hefty fine as well, which Alec had to pay for him.’

‘Have you said anything about this to anyone? To Alec?’

‘No,’ she said, almost in alarm. ‘I couldn’t be sure – I may have been quite mistaken. Maybe it was a perfectly normal transaction.’

‘You didn’t want to suspect him.’

‘Of course not. I loved him. But I’ve never been able to put it quite out of my head. I keep – wondering.’

‘Where would the money go, if he sold those shares?’

‘There’d be a cheque to the trust’s bank account. After that—’ she shrugged uncomfortably – ‘Alec could write a cheque to anyone he wanted. Even himself.’

‘And who holds the cheque-book?’

‘He does. He keeps it locked in his private filing cabinet in his office, with the other trust documents. Only he has the key to that.’

‘Of course, sooner or later he’d have to account for the money,’ Slider said thoughtfully.

‘He had another eighteen months before Henry came of age. I’m sure he meant to replace it – only where would he get the money from? He’d have to sell something of his own, I suppose; or play the market. I suppose a hundred thousand isn’t much to recoup in that time, if you play high enough. The big dealers make millions on a single transaction, don’t they?’

Dream on, thought Slider, but he gave her a comforting nod, and she fell silent. Slider pursued his own thoughts. How did the paintings fit in with this? Had he bought them to make good losses to the trust? Christie’s had said they would realise a good profit in a year; but he had bought them before the car-crash incident, so they couldn’t have been intended to recoup that
money. Maybe selling those shares had not been the first time he’d raided the piggy-bank. And if he had borrowed the trust’s money to buy the paintings in the first place, he might well have fought shy of reporting their theft to the police. Rifling the fund, abuse of his powers as a trustee: he wouldn’t want all that coming out. If that were the case, he had a bit more than a hundred thousand to find before Henry Russell came of age. But there was plenty of time – no need to be panicked into killing Radek for his fortune.

‘Do you know what I think we ought to do?’ he said at last. She looked up with faint, very faint, hope. ‘I think we should go back to the office and see what we can find out.’ The hope died. ‘You’ll feel better for knowing the truth, one way or the other.’ And so will I, he added silently.

‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘But I’ve told you, all the trust documents are in his private filing cabinet, and I don’t have the key.’

‘With all that’s been going on lately, he might possibly have left it unlocked,’ Slider said. ‘It’s worth a look, anyway.’

Darkness had fallen while they were in the pub, lamplight had come, and the streets had filled with the evening crowds: theatre-goers, diners-out, and throngs of young people looking for the High Life without any clear idea of what it was going to look like when they bumped into it, except that it would probably be making a lot of noise and have an imported lager in its hand.

It was a pleasantly mild evening, so everyone was good-tempered, and already there were groups of sitters-out outside restaurants and bars. The biggest difference the last ten years had made to London, Slider thought as he and Mrs Goodwin picked their way through the backstreets, was in how much more people liked to stay out of doors, given half a chance. Being both naturally fond of company and a Libra, Slider liked the whole idea of sitting at a pavement café watching the world go by; and he enjoyed the lighted windows of the shops that stayed open late, and the smells of coffee and garlic and delicatessen produce that wafted out of the various open doors they passed. In his early childhood everything had stopped at night, there being in the fifties little to sell and no-one with money to buy it. He still
remembered when the ban on illuminating shops at night had been lifted, and his parents had taken him up to London for a special treat, for the pleasure of walking along Oxford Street and looking in the brightly lit windows. Ah, simple pleasures! And they’d had fish and chips when they got home, bought at the chip shop opposite the station and hotted up when they got back to the cottage. Mum would never countenance eating in the street. Common, she called it.

Mrs Goodwin was plainly nervous when they reached the door of the office. ‘I’m not sure this is right,’ she said, turning to him appealingly.

‘You’re helping the police with their enquiries,’ he said. He followed her upstairs, and she let him into the outer office, switched on the lights, and then unlocked the door to the inner office. The filing cabinets were ranged along one wall, rather prissily sheathed in veneered wood so that the sight of raw metal wouldn’t offend the cultured client.

‘This is his private one,’ she said indicating the end cabinet, and reaching out a hand to test the drawer. Slider caught it gently.

‘I think it might be an idea if you locked the outer doors, just to be on the safe side,’ he said.

‘Yes, of course, I should have thought of that,’ she said, and hastened away. Slider examined the filing cabinet and smiled to himself. Piece of pie. By the time she returned, the top drawer was open.

‘Look at this,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’re in luck – he did forget to lock it!’

She looked at it, and him, opened her mouth, and closed it again.