Family Business (20 page)

‘Back already from your walk?' Mama asked. ‘No stamina?'

Mama was not surprised when the Old Man did not answer her. But she was surprised when a man in his mid-forties and a woman in her mid-thirties followed the Old Man through the door. And she was astonished when he introduced them as Mr and Mrs Shayler.

‘Do you want some of my fries?' David asked.

‘Your yukky fries with mustard all over them?'

‘
And
blue cheese mayonnaise off the burger,' David said. ‘Good. Good. Good.'

‘No, I do not want any of your fries,' Marie said.

‘What are you going to do now?' David asked.

Marie considered. ‘I'll think of something.'

‘Shouldn't we look for Dad?'

‘Why?'

‘To see if we're really finished with the job.'

‘Grandad said we were. So we are.'

‘I know,' David said, ‘but—'

‘What I say don't count around here all of a sudden?' Marie said in a deepened voice and with intonations that David recognized immediately.

David giggled at the accuracy of voice and content. Marie laughed too and said, ‘Careful, you'll spill your shake.' She tossed her hair.

‘My shake don't count around here all of a sudden?' David mimicked.

‘You're not half as good at him as I am,' Marie said.

David agreed by not contradicting. ‘But really, shouldn't we look for Dad? He'd want to know, wouldn't he? We've got to report.'

Marie considered. They could charge it as more working time. Why not? ‘Where?'

‘Well, he's with that Muffin,' David said as casually as he could.

‘
Doctor
Muffin to you,' Marie said.

‘He's probably showing her tourist things. We could try the Abbey and the Roman Baths.'

Marie straightened, struck by an idea.

‘Marie?' David said.

‘Yeah, all right,' Marie said with mysterious resolution. ‘Let's look for Dad and Doc Muffin down the Abbey. Come on,
Davey
.'

‘Charlie,' Gina said, ‘is this all there is on the Adamson case?' She held up the computer print-out she had been studying.

‘Don't even ask,' Charlie said. ‘I don't have access, and what you've seen already would get me sacked.'

‘I understand,' Gina said, holding her hands up.

Charlie thought about it. ‘You could talk to Varden again.'

‘He won't be back till later,' Gina said.

‘Will I regret it if I ask?'

Gina tried to explain her unease. ‘You've got a burglary in a modest house. The burglar is surprised by the homeowner, so the burglar whacks the homeowner on the head. And it all takes place about midnight.'

‘OK,' Charlie said.

Gina said, ‘After the burglar hits the homeowner, he leaves the house, but he doesn't go empty-handed. He takes eight antique pistols and rifles. So he hasn't panicked.'

‘Sounds reasonable.'

‘But the first thing I don't understand,' Gina said, ‘is that there is nothing in what I've read that mentions a forced entry.'

Charlie shrugged. ‘So maybe entry wasn't forced.'

‘Maybe,' Gina said. ‘But the house was pretty secure, in line with standards set by the antique gun club. To me that suggests a professional burglar.'

‘OK,' Charlie said. ‘A professional.'

‘But all he took were the weapons. And they are relatively difficult to sell. Why nothing else?'

‘Well …' Charlie's face suggested that he took the point, but did not think it conclusive.

‘And he left cash. Thirty-eight pounds in Adamson's wallet. Why would a pro do that, Charlie?'

‘Didn't want to hang around a dead body?'

‘The body wasn't dead. The ME's report said Adamson took hours to die. So was it a pro, or an amateur?'

‘Sorry,' Charlie said. ‘I'm just a poor computer copper. You're the private eye.'

‘Of course,' Gina said, ‘all this is probably resolved in the full case file.'

‘You got a problem,' the Old Man said when the Shaylers were settled on the couch. ‘We'll talk about that in a moment, but so everybody knows what's what, we better agree money.'

‘I appreciate your direct manner, Mr Lunghi,' Jack Shayler said.

‘Suppose we go fixed-fee and then just let it take whatever time it takes,' the Old Man said. He suggested a figure. ‘That's acceptable?'

‘In the circumstances, very acceptable,' Jack Shayler said. ‘Eileen?'

Mrs Shayler took a cheque book from her handbag and passed it to her husband. Jack Shayler wrote a cheque and passed it to the Old Man who examined it and then put it in a pocket. At that moment, Mama appeared with a tray.

The Old Man said, ‘Tea we throw in free.'

David and Marie approached the Abbey from the Guildhall side, but long before they got there the density of the town-centre crowds was evident. The pavements were packed and currents of people passed in and out of the shop-lined passageways. The quantity of humanity did not please Marie. ‘Bloody tourists,' she said.

‘If it's so crowded here, maybe they went to the Parade Gardens,' David said, looking across the traffic circle to the park beside the river.

‘Go and look there if you like,' Marie said. She continued toward the Abbey.

After an indecisive moment David followed his sister. ‘It's getting on for teatime,' he said. ‘Maybe you're right. Maybe he took her to the Pump Room.'

Getting out of the Ham Gardens car-park proved a great deal easier than getting into it. That was just as well because Gina was preoccupied with what she had read in Charlie's room. And there would be more to come if Charlie could manage to catch Varden.

At Henry Street Gina turned right, and got hooted at because she hadn't realized quite how close the oncoming car was. She waved to acknowledge her error, but the other driver hooted at her again. He's probably tired after a long day shopping, Gina thought.

Although Gina's day had been long, she was not tired. She was excited. But she recognized that even for the short drive to home she would have to buck up her concentration on the external world. She moved early into the left-hand lane for a turn at the corner.

Traffic slowed Gina's progress to the lights at the foot of North Parade. But no sooner had she crossed the intersection and turned into the Orange Grove roundabout than she saw David and Marie crossing to the Abbey courtyard. Impulsively, Gina hooted at them. Neither of her children noticed. But the driver of the car in front of her did. He turned and waved a fist.

Gina ignored him. She was puzzled why the children should be heading that way, at this time of day, together.

The car behind Gina hooted, and she moved ahead until she was stopped again, at the next lights. Then Gina remembered that David and Marie were working, following the Shaylers. If David and Marie were together, then the Shaylers were together. Gina smiled. Chances were that Angelo was paying the children to follow the Shaylers as they went into town to do their shopping.

Gina's smile evaporated a few hundred yards closer to home. As she waited by the Pig and Fiddle to turn into Walcot Street, a glance to the right confirmed that there was no oncoming traffic. But the same glance caught sight of Muffin and Angelo across the road. Muffin and Angelo were together. They were holding hands. And they were headed for the entrance of the Hilton Hotel.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The longer he trailed after Marie the more convinced David became that she was not looking for their father. Marie seemed, instead, to be checking out the buskers along Stall Street, especially those with big crowds around them.

At first David thought Marie had decided their father would be showing Muffin Bath's buskers. Maybe they didn't have buskers in America. But it soon became obvious that Marie was not studying the crowds, she was studying the buskers themselves. She would push to the front but once there she retreated and refused to stop and watch.

David enjoyed Bath's buskers. On an ordinary Saturday he might well walk into town and spend his time going from one street act to the next. They came from miles around to perform in Bath, especially in good weather, and especially on Saturdays.

Marie's rapid retreats offended David. He felt it was only courtesy to spend at least a couple of minutes watching or listening. It was also courteous to give money. It wasn't as if he and Marie didn't have any. There was plenty of change from the Old Man's tenners. Plus whatever their father paid them later. Marie was just so tight-fisted. Chronic, in fact. Nevertheless David continued to follow his sister while keeping his eyes peeled for his father and Muffin.

Eventually Marie led away from the Abbey and into the small square called Abbey Gardens. Here there was a juggling clown, and at the far side a musical group. Marie ignored the clown entirely and made for the thin crowd listening to the musicians.

When David caught up she said, ‘How do you like these?'

‘Which?'

‘This group, thickness!'

David looked at the three young men. One played a keyboard. One played a wailing clarinet. A third sang into a microphone that, along with the keyboard, was powered by a car battery. The music owed a lot to reggae and was not jazzy enough to suit David's taste. ‘They're OK,' he said.

‘Shows what you know!' Marie said.

Because the amplification was not of very good quality David could hear only snatches of the lyric. ‘Lit-tle girl,' the singer sang. ‘Lit-tle vir-gin and ton-ic.'

‘Do you like them?' David asked.

‘I think they sound mega,' Marie said without evident pleasure. ‘But I think they would do a lot lot better financially if they had a girl dancer.'

David looked at the buskers again. ‘You really think that would help?' he said.

‘A girl dancer in a short skirt,' Marie said. ‘She could be a backing singer on some of the numbers. And during the others she could go around the crowd collecting with a hat. I think it would make
all
the difference.'

Jack Shayler said, ‘This is all very hard for me to talk about, Mr Lunghi. As my poor wife has already found.' He patted Eileen Shayler's arm.

The Old Man said, ‘In your own time.'

‘You already know, I expect, that I work for a firm of accountants, Whitfield, Hare and O'Shea.'

The Old Man nodded.

‘Although I am only a clerk there, I've been happy enough. Eileen and I have modest needs and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I do good work. The youngsters who come into the firm these days may cut corners but I always say that there is nothing like detail and routine to ensure quality work. I always say that, don't I, dear?'

‘You certainly do, dear,' Mrs Shayler said with approval.

‘My job involves examining the financial records that a client submits. I check the maths, and I look at the supporting receipts and invoices to make sure everything's been dealt with properly. I'm not claiming,' Jack Shayler said, ‘that I validate every piece of paper which crosses my desk. But, if I do say so myself, I am the one clerk in the firm who always stands ready to go that extra mile. Or perhaps I should say “that extra kilometre”, in these days of such close association with our European neighbours.' Shayler paused, smiling at his own joke.

Mrs Shayler smiled. Mama nodded. The Old Man said, ‘Go on.'

‘One of the ways I go the extra kilometre is to help out when colleagues are ill or away. So when young Francis came down with gastroenteritis I went to his in-tray and picked up the file for a client called Qualico and began to work on it. Qualico is a Bath firm that imports goods for resale, mostly from African manufacturers. It's run by a man called Cyril Younger who is a friend of one of our partners, Mr Guy English. Mr English always works on Mr Younger's accounts himself, but he does sometimes let new clerks check the figures. That way he can see for himself whether they are picking up errors the way they should.'

‘So this Francis is a new clerk,' the Old Man said, ‘but ill. And you found something disturbing in the Qualico?'

‘Exactly,' Jack Shayler said. ‘You have gone straight to the nub, Mr Lunghi. Eileen said you people were good, and you have fully justified her evaluation.'

The Shaylers exchanged smiles.

Mama said, ‘So what was the problem?'

‘Shush,' the Old Man said. ‘The man is telling.'

‘The receipt in question,' Jack Shayler said, ‘the
first
receipt in question, was for the purchase of a large quantity of drums with hollowed-log bases and water buffalo hide tops. The purchase was made by a Qualico agent in Malawi. It was one of many large purchases made in Africa, leading to the accumulation there of nearly three million pounds' worth of stock, at import value.'

‘Sounds like a lot of drums,' the Old Man said.

‘Indeed,' Jack Shayler said. ‘So imagine my surprise when I discovered a secondary impression on the back of the receipt that read, “Printed by Block Letter, Bath.”'

Once the car was locked in the garage, Gina went to the office. She was not surprised to find it empty, but she had hoped to find a note from Angelo. Perhaps there was one in the house. But before she crossed to look, she went to the answering machine which showed that there were two messages.

The first was nothing, a silent pause.

The second message was, indeed, from Angelo. His voice was breathy. He said, ‘I'll be back late.'

That was it? No explanation? No nothing?

After her lunch Rosetta was full of the joys of early summer. It was a beautiful day and she was in no hurry to get back home. Some shopping? Maybe. But she felt a genuine pleasure in being out, of participating in the great tide of humanity, at not being just something washed up on the shore.

She wandered the colonnaded pedestrian thoroughfares in the heart of the city and discovered that she did not want to leave the glory of the day for the darkness of a shop. Instead she stopped to look at the wares on sale from street stalls: jewellery, candles … It was good, this life. Better than she had ever realized. He likes me, she thought. He
likes
me. He likes
me
!