Fatal Legacy (8 page)

Detective Constable Nightingale walked out on to the rusted balcony and took a deep breath of tangy salt air. A second breath, redolent of rotting seaweed and ozone, and her head started to clear. Behind her a police officer walked on soft feet across the faded chintz carpet and sat down to touch a pallid, plump arm. They had been on the scene within fifteen minutes of uniformed’s call. She was coming to the end of her short placement on the coast and had lost count of the number of assaults she’d attended, but this was her first murder.

She stretched her cramped shoulder muscles and realised that she was far too tense to be able to blame her work. The real problem lay deeper. In February she had finally agreed with her fiancé that it was very unlikely they would be getting married that year – or any year for that matter. Now that the relationship was a fading memory she was shocked to find that she had under-estimated the loneliness.

She looked out into the orange neon glow of the street below, the streetlamp shaded on the near side to protect residents in the flats. Well, here was one resident who wouldn’t need the council’s consideration any more. Nightingale twisted and looked back into the room. The woman was slumped on the worn sofa, almost naked, eyes closed, with one hand arranged defensively across the tops of her sagging breasts. One eye was blackened and closed, her nose had been bleeding and her lip was split. Other bruises showed beneath her loose dressing gown, some new, others a dirty yellow. There was blood in her hair and some had trickled from her ears. Nightingale could see the paramedic still trying to resuscitate her, but it looked hopeless.

She couldn’t guess the victim’s age – fifty, perhaps even older. It was difficult to tell, as the heavy make-up showed every facial line and flaw. And yet there were apparently enough customers who had fallen for her temptations after reading one of the cards that advertised her services in the telephone boxes by the pier to have allowed her to pay the rent on this squalid flat.

It had been easy enough to work out her profession without the willing help of the neighbours, who’d been only too delighted to share their observations and suspicions with the police. Still, Nightingale couldn’t fathom the attraction. She turned back to the street below in disgust.

It was twilight, cool but fine. The days were starting to lengthen quickly now and the air almost hinted at spring, which made the sight of the funny little man scurrying north along Chalk Avenue all the more odd. He had his tweed cap pulled down tightly over his ears and the collar of his camel-hair coat was raised. He looked guilty, and for a moment Nightingale wondered whether he had an appointment in the flat in which she stood. If so, he was late and his meal had gone cold. But no: after casting a furtive look towards the rotating blue light on the patrol car, he turned east and away towards a housing
development
optimistically christened Sea View.

Nightingale watched him go with no doubt as to his purpose, and she despised him. She remembered suddenly an uncle, her father’s brother. A grotty little man who turned up on Boxing Day and at Easter and had to be found a place at the table next to his young niece.

She had stumbled across him once, tucked in the lee of a wall, the sun hot on his face, with a tail of shirt where his trouser zip should have been and one of her teenage magazines cramped in a sweaty palm. God, what a sight! She’d tried to creep backwards but somehow had made a noise, a twig or a stone, enough to give her away and make him look up. And that grin – surprised, welcoming, aroused. She’d wanted the ground to open up; her cheeks had flamed, the bile had risen in her throat, but she’d been trapped there by that grubby little pervert. The hairs rose along her forearms at the memory and she turned back to the distraction inside.

The paramedics had finally given up and DI Chambers was asking about the cause of death. Nightingale listened, pity warring with contempt within her, before she was dispatched to interview more of the neighbours.

Arthur Fish scuttled inland towards Sea View, feeling the easterly wind on his cheek. Although he was early as always, he was still anxious to make good time. Night was falling as clouds from the horizon closed out the setting sun. As he neared the top of a small hill, he noticed the blue strobe light ahead. He immediately thought of ambulances, and from there his thoughts slipped effortlessly towards his wife. Was she all right?

At the top of the hill he realised that it was a police car and guilt flooded him. Were they raiding Amanda’s? Had she already divulged the names of her clients? Was his secret about to break? But no, the car was parked to the left, opposite the turning to Sea View. He pulled his collar up about his ears and walked briskly past the pulsing light.

All thoughts of passions past or to come fled as he turned east into the wind. He felt frightened, old and a fool. For a brief moment he looked ahead into the next hour and saw it stripped of all the lust and emotion that usually clouded his perspective. He was a middle-aged man about to fulfil his appointment with a whore past her prime. Worse, what he allowed, no begged her to do to him could never be described as the result of a normal sex drive. He shivered inside his coat and shrank within his skin.

Amanda had seen the lights in front of the flats opposite and for a moment prepared herself for the dread of rapping knuckles against her solid front door. She had worked incredibly hard to achieve the security of her own permanent address. The fact that it was in a neighbourhood clinging to the edges of respectability made it even more of an achievement. A mere one hundred and fifty yards separated her from the blue light and the sort of run-down flats that her current charitable work and church attendance now helped to push into a distant memory.

Amanda was forty-five – still young enough to have made the break from street life quite well – and she owed it all to three things: an iron will, hard work and an intuitive insight into human beings. Were it not for the nature of her profession, her grandmother would have been proud of her achievements.

She watched the reflection of the blue lights on distant trees and realised that it would be a difficult evening. Arthur Fish was her next appointment. He was the last of her old customers. All the others had been quietly discouraged over the past few years, as she had carefully managed her transition from street life, via prison, to owner-occupation. It was five years, seven months and two weeks since she had been released from prison, an experience that had finally convinced her to do anything she could to slide her fingers on to the bottom rung of the ladder that was her only way out of the swamp in which she struggled to stay alive. She’d made it, and only Arthur and her occasional nightmares reminded her of the real source of her sizeable deposit on the house. It was her new regulars who now paid for her mortgage, private health insurance and pension.

Why was Arthur still a client? All the other originals had gone, taking the hint or the threats as necessary, but he clung on. In the past she’d had to admit, but only to herself, that she was almost fond of him, and he’d had such a tough life. His needs were so simple as to be almost laughable. He had never hurt her, and he was the only one who had turned up at the hospital that time she’d been beaten up. Despite his age – he was only fifty – he was as close to a father figure as she had ever known, her own being a changeable figment of her mother’s raddled imagination.

Thinking of Arthur, she glanced at the clock and decided to get the room ready. They always used the downstairs back room; it was the only one with a fireplace, and he so loved a real fire. He’d give that little shiver that made her hide a smile, and go to warm the back of his trousers against it. There was a big sofa on the opposite wall on which she had spread a soft pale blue candlewick bedspread. A large old-fashioned galvanised bath stood in front of the fire, and next to it talc, flannels and baby lotion. The birch was kept hidden in the cupboard until later.

Amanda thought the bath was pushing matters too far,
particularly as he’d admitted to her once that it had never actually been part of those memories he dredged up to become aroused. But these days he was so preoccupied that she needed all the props available to have him finished promptly in an hour. And that was all he paid for. She adjusted her outfit. The apron had been starched so fiercely that it cut into her neck. He was likely to be early. He was.

A bare hour later, she had run herself a proper bath, poured in some lavender oil and settled back for a long soak. She had at least two hours before her final appointment. This spare time was one of the precious luxuries she could now relish. As she eased back into the scented hot water, a frown creased her forehead. He’d been so screwed up she had almost run out of baby lotion, and then, at the end, just before he left, he had given her a sealed envelope. She was so used to little gifts that she had automatically started to open it.

‘No!’ he had shouted. ‘Don’t do that. Just keep it for me. And if anything should happen to me, take it straight to the police.’

Very odd. He wasn’t normally a melodramatic man, but his fear had been real and Amanda had accepted it. Only now, as she lay back and thought about it properly for the first time, did her worries start. What was in that envelope? Why had he given it to her – and this talk of death, what did that mean? Unable to relax, she clambered out of the hot bath. Wrapped in a fluffy pink towelling robe, she padded downstairs and opened the envelope by delicately picking at the glue with her long varnished thumbnail.

Inside was a small cassette tape, about two inches by one. There was no letter, no label or writing of any sort on it apart from a tiny figure 10 in pencil. She looked at the envelope. Nothing, simply plain manila, and yet Arthur had been scared as he’d passed the packet to her. Tapping the cassette
thoughtfully
against her cheek, she tried to decide where to hide it. There was a large china cabinet in the front sitting room full of porcelain dolls in period costume. Some were tiny, others over two feet high. All were in immaculate condition, their costume colours fresh, faces clean and bright. Amanda took a small key from a jar on the mantelpiece and unlocked one of the ornate
glass doors. She lifted out Priscilla, one of her favourites. Priscilla was dressed in a green velvet winter coat with
rabbit-fur
trim. She was twenty inches tall and carried a cosy little muff to keep her delicate china hands warm.

Amanda tucked the tape inside the coat and put the doll back, carefully arranging others in front of it again. She felt slightly foolish but relieved as she switched off the light. A shadow passed across the curtained front window. Someone had just walked between the streetlight and her house, and they would have to be close for their shadow to reach here. She shivered and glanced at the clock. There was still plenty of time to finish her bath and relax before her next client.

She was halfway up the stairs again when there was a knock at the front door. Amanda had no intention of letting whoever it was in, and she stood stock still on the stairs, waiting for the unexpected caller to go away. It was probably an old customer hoping to renew his acquaintance, but he should have known he would never be let in without an appointment.

The knocking came again, an insistent rap that would annoy her neighbours. Amanda swivelled on the stairs and went back down to a door that could have graced a maximum-security prison. There were two deadlocks, bolts top and bottom and an industrial-strength safety chain. A peephole had been inserted exactly at her eye height, which allowed a fish-eye view of the whole front garden, designed specifically to eliminate blind spots. There was an entryphone with camera attached tucked in the shelter of the eaves’ overhang.

The view from the fish-eye was of a lean silhouette, back half turned; a baseball cap worn with the peak forward threw the face into shadow, but a margin of pale hair shone in the light. As she watched, the caller knocked again, long and hard. A light went on in next door’s front room, and Amanda swore under her breath. No stranger was ever allowed into her home. Even potential new clients were vetted first on neutral territory. But now she had no option but to depress the entryphone switch.

‘Who is it? What do you want?’ her voice rasped
electronically
from the speaker in the porch. The figure turned round and smiled at the security camera. Amanda took a step back in shock – to see that face again after all this time.

‘It’s me, Amanda. Let me in. I’m freezing out here.’

She felt a surge of nervous excitement that made her fingers shake as she undid each lock and bolt, one after the other. The safety chain rattled as it fell, and she finally turned the latch.

‘It’s you,’ she said simply, as her unexpected visitor stepped into her hallway and she pushed the heavy door closed behind them.

Next door, the neighbour’s front light went off.

Arthur shivered inside his coat as he waited on the platform for his return train. As always, on nights when he had seen Amanda, he felt guilty, but tonight in addition, he felt desperately scared. He glanced around him. The platform was empty except for a courting couple. The signal light turned green and the slow stopping train drew into the station with a weary sigh of brakes. Seconds before it pulled away again, a slim youth in designer trainers and tracksuit rushed down the stairs and grabbed at the door handle. Ignoring the guard’s angry shout to ‘Stand away!’ he clambered in, almost falling across the feet of a middle-aged woman. She glared at him, and he grinned back before making his way steadily through the carriage towards the front of the train.

Up ahead, Arthur huddled in misery in the corner seat of an empty compartment. He always felt low as he returned to his invalid wife, but tonight he was so depressed he couldn’t think straight. He kept dropping his head into his hands and rubbing his eyes. His life was a mess: work, home and sex – wherever he looked, he had messed it up. And he had tried so hard to do his best.

At first things had been fantastic. Despite his lack of accounting qualifications, he had slowly worked his way up from a humble accounts clerk at Wainwright’s in the 1970s. He had been a self-taught amateur, so when he’d started noticing discrepancies he had been reluctant to draw anyone’s attention to them. Eventually, though, the problems became too big to ignore. A cheque was issued for double the amount of the invoice received, then the invoice mysteriously disappeared; a dubious claim for a refund on damaged stock was waved through
with no query; a payment was made to one of their major suppliers, and though the amount was right it was paid into a different bank account. And then there was all the cash. Most bills were settled in bundles of twenty-pound, then later
fifty-pound
notes. He’d thought it old-fashioned, but his suggestions for improvements were always ignored and the cash continued to flow. He had plucked up courage on more than one occasion to go to his supervisor, only to be shouted at and promptly thrown out of the office. Word went round that Arthur Fish was stupid, not an accountant, and with little idea of what he was talking about. There were rumours that he would be dismissed. As a young newly married man with a huge mortgage and a wife who was expecting a baby, Arthur had stared ruin in the face. Then came the afternoon he was notified that he would have to attend a review meeting with the chief accountant the next day. Even now, when things were really stressful at work, he still dreamt of that awful night of waiting, accompanied by fears of failure and destitution. If they sacked him he’d have no references, no credentials, nothing but debts.

The following morning, sick to his stomach, exhausted from lack of sleep, he had arrived expecting to be fired, but he hadn’t been, not that day, nor the next. Instead he was praised for his diligence but firmly told that it was misapplied. Wainwright’s was a unique and highly profitable company. It worked in its own way, and if he was smart and fitted in it would be to his advantage. At the end of that month there had been an additional fifty pounds in his pay packet without any explanation, a fortune in those days. He had banked it. When he noticed further discrepancies, which gradually became larger and more
frequent
, he just closed his mind to them and continued authorising the cash and cheques that paid the company’s bills.

Arthur huddled in his corner, rocking with the motion of the carriage, and realised that those early months of turning a blind eye and hoping that he wouldn’t be fired had marked the beginning of what he now knew with certainty had been a criminal career. When had he first started to think of himself as a criminal? Certainly not back then. Even when he was
mysteriously
promoted, after his supervisor had a fatal heart attack, he had been too naïve to realise what was going on.

Now he was the financial controller and Wainwright
Enterprises
comprised a vast array of businesses employing thousands of people. The original company was a tiny relic in the spreading empire. They had weathered recessions and benefited from recoveries more strongly than any of their competitors. Arthur had been proud of the company and its management. Whilst their competitors floundered and collapsed, Wainwright’s
prospered
, never wanting for orders, never experiencing cash-flow problems and all within a private company, owned by a few long-term shareholders and the family. The accounts team had been kept small and a local firm of auditors never found fault.

Arthur hugged himself for comfort. His long-dead supervisor had called him an idiot, and that was what he was. As he’d started to suspect what might really be going on, so the number of surprise cash bonuses grew, until he and Jill, his wife, could afford to move to a really nice house that she loved. Her respect for him increased and with it their love for each other. The idea of risking it all was unthinkable, so he’d carried on turning a blind eye until the arrival of Alexander and Sally Wainwright-Smith.

He should have left when Alan Wainwright, the previous managing director died. He had saved enough, but by then his wife’s health had deteriorated even further and he had chickened out. Throughout her illness Wainwright’s, of course, had been fantastic. They paid for the best possible care, flew in specialist doctors, funded experimental medicine, even helped him
re-equip
the downstairs extension when it became obvious she would never be able to do anything for herself again. Now it was too late. He was trapped in a web of deceit and lies that he had, however unwittingly, helped to construct. There was no way out. He knew he should retire and be with Jill in her last few months, but he didn’t dare leave. He realised with sudden and awful certainty that he would never enjoy a long retirement.

The connecting door between compartments opened and closed quickly, bringing a chill draught of night air. Arthur looked up and saw a lean, black-clad youth weaving his way unsteadily between the empty seats. There were just the two of them in the carriage now, and he quickly looked away, avoiding eye contact.

The young man flopped down diagonally opposite and swung his muddy trainer-clad feet on to the seat next to Arthur’s knees. Arthur huffed loudly and risked a quick look up. Two ice-blue eyes stared back at him, full of contempt. The youth grinned and Arthur turned his head away hurriedly.

No one joined them at the next stop, and Arthur began to feel very much alone in the carriage with this strange man. He calculated the number of minutes left before the train arrived at Harlden, and started to count the seconds patiently. The young man was still staring at him insolently and had started to fiddle with something in his pocket. The silence that lay between them became threatening. Arthur, already on edge from the evening’s close encounter with the police and his own guilty memories, came to a sudden decision that he would change carriages. He picked up his cap and started to stand.

‘Uh-uh.’ The youth shook his head and leant forward to block Arthur’s path. He was still smiling, but now his expression had a crazy edge to it. He was enjoying Arthur’s sudden and obvious fear and wanted him to know it.

‘Excuse me!’ Arthur put on his most authoritative tone, but the other man just laughed at him and pushed him back in his seat with a rough hand.

‘How dare you! I need to leave.’

‘Indeed you do. You should’ve left a long time ago, from what I hear.’

The man’s threatening tone sent a jolt of adrenaline through Arthur. His heart contracted painfully and his stomach churned. He leapt to his feet again, determined to push by and make his escape, but the youth blocked his way. He felt two sharp punches to his ribs and had to sit down quickly as his knees buckled in shock. He put his hand to his side to rub the dull pain away and felt a sticky wetness. He looked down at his fingers to see them covered with blood. He started to shiver, petrified now by the awfulness of the reality of what was happening to him. The youth was still standing there above him, rocking easily with the motion of the carriage, a blood-stained flick knife in his hand. He was watching Arthur intently, obviously relishing his growing terror.

‘Why?’ Arthur was stunned. There was no pain now, just a
freezing cold around his ankles and sickness at the back of his throat.

‘You’ve been a naughty boy, Arthur, and naughty boys get punished.’ The youth spat out the words, laughing at the older man’s pain. Blood trickled down Arthur’s shirt to join a spreading damp stain on the front of his trousers.

‘And now you’ve pissed yourself too. You prat!’

The train lurched over an uneven set of points and entered a cutting. Arthur recognised the familiar motion and sound and realised that they were nearing the next stop. Someone might get on. He could hammer on the window and someone might see him. He might yet escape!

It was as if his attacker could read his mind. Reluctantly he stopped tormenting his victim and looked around.

‘Time to go. Say goodbye, Arthur.’

Then he lunged forward, knife in fist. Arthur raised a hand to ward him off but his fingers were swatted away easily and the blade went home. This time it didn’t miss. The sharpened point slid between ribs and cleanly into the main cardiac muscle. Arthur’s heart took one more stuttering beat and then simply stopped.

The youth flipped the blade shut, pulled out a wallet from Arthur’s inner pocket and calmly buttoned his victim’s jacket over the bloody wounds. He placed the cap on his lap, where it covered most of the stain. Then he smashed the light immediately over the slumped body. With luck, no one would recognise it for what it was until the end of the line.

As the train slowed in anticipation of the next stop, he flicked through the wallet, looking for cash. He took the solitary
twenty-pound
note, then threw the wallet to the floor. He got off the train at the next station, which was busier than he would have liked. The buzz of the drugs he had taken in Brighton was starting to fade. He had needed them to steel his nerve, as he had never before gone so far as to kill someone in cold blood. His head felt too big for his body and his hands started to shake. He stuffed them firmly into his pockets so that no blood would show. The Gents’ was stinking but empty and he rinsed off the worst of the mess under a begrudging trickle of cold water. Amazingly, there were paper towels, and he wiped off
most of the rest of the blood on three or four of them.

There was one remaining taxi in the station car park. Cash wasn’t a problem tonight, it wouldn’t be for a while, so he decided to take the easy way home. In the back of the cab he popped his last tiny grey pill into his mouth and swallowed. It wasn’t until he was excavating the dirt and blood from under his thumbnails with the tip of his knife, feeling the shock recede and the high return, that he remembered that he had been supposed to take the man’s wallet with him to make it look like a mugging. That was going to piss off his employer, and he was suddenly worried that he might not be paid the second half of his money. Still, hopefully they’d never know and he would get away with it. He usually did. He told the driver to stop in the middle of town and walked the remaining short distance to the club, where he knew he would be able to buy what he would need to see him through until morning without nightmares.