Fault Line - Retail (47 page)

There was a sense of time turning full circle as I walked along the drive. A slim, glossy-haired young man was washing a car in front of the garage. He didn’t have Paolo’s cocksure bearing and the car was an unremarkable Lexus rather than a white-wall-tyred Alfa
Romeo
cabriolet, but the echoes of the past were audible enough. And memories compressed themselves in the moment.

‘
Buon giorno
,’ I called, to get the young man’s attention.

He broke off from his sponging and looked at me without smiling. ‘
Buon giorno. Desidera?
’

‘I’m here to see Signor Lashley.’

‘You have …
un appuntamento
?’

‘No. But—’

‘Phone to make one. OK?’ He resumed sponging the car, as if he’d said all there was to be said.

‘I’ll do that.’ I moved away, dismissing him from my thoughts. I covered a short distance back down the drive, then diverted across the lawn, striding towards the French windows of the study that I could see were half open.

‘
Eh, signor
,’ the young man shouted after me. ‘
Fermatevi!
’

I didn’t stop, of course. And before I was overhauled, a figure stepped out of the French windows to greet me. ‘It’s all right, Toni,’ he called. ‘He’s a friend.’

A ravaged handsomeness clung to Greville Lashley, even at ninety-two. He still wore his hair, white now where once it had been black, just a little too long and carried himself with the same jauntiness I’d always associated with him, albeit stiffened by age. The lines on his face were deeply incised and his eyes had lost some of their clarity, but his expression was authentically Lashleyan: wry, perceptive, genial, calculating. He steadied himself with a silver-topped cane as he stood in the doorway and smiled as if genuinely pleased to see me.

‘It’s been a long time, Jonathan.’

‘The annual conference three years ago,’ I corrected him. ‘Not so very long really.’

‘I meant since you’ve been here. To the Villa Orchis.’

‘Ah. Then you’re right, of course.’

‘Come inside. We can talk there.’

He headed back the way he’d come and I followed, moving from the glaring brilliance of the afternoon light into the wood-panelled subfusc of the study, where so little had been altered since the days
of
Francis Wren that it was easy to imagine him watching us from the shadows.

Lashley sat down at the desk, where a sheaf of papers with IK letterheading on them lay on the blotter, and waved for me to draw up a chair. He took a drink from a glass of water as I did so, a cough growling deep in his throat. He was breathing heavily. Simply walking to the French windows and back had taken a lot out of him. Physically, that is. Mentally, he was without question as razor-sharp as ever.

‘Old age is a confounded bore,’ he said, smiling wanly. ‘My doctor can’t decide whether my heart or my lungs will give out first. At this rate, it could be a tie. Or a dead heat.’ He chuckled drily at his own joke. I didn’t join in.

‘Jacqueline said you weren’t well enough to travel.’

‘But I expect you think I am.’

‘Adam was your son, for all his faults. I’d have thought—’

‘I despaired of the boy years ago. At my stage in life, I can’t waste my dwindling energy on a display of affection I don’t feel or an observance of conventions I don’t respect.’ There was an angry edge to his voice. He didn’t like having to justify himself. He never had.

‘You’re a hard man, Greville.’

‘I’ve never pretended otherwise.’

‘Then you won’t mind my pointing out that you may have had other reasons for declining to travel to Cornwall.’

‘Might I?’

‘I think you know what I mean. It’s why I’m here.’

He nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘You don’t seem surprised to see me.’

‘Presley Beaumont passed on the news that the police had asked Doctor Whitworth to examine the files they found in Adam’s car. When I phoned the White Hart yesterday and was told you’d checked out, I assumed she’d informed you of her findings … and that you were heading in this direction. It was what I expected of you, actually. It was what I’d hoped you’d do. So, welcome. Do you want something to drink, by the way? Elena isn’t here at the
moment,
so if it’s to be tea or coffee you’ll have to make it yourself, but there’s whisky in the cabinet.’ He flapped a hand towards it. ‘Go ahead.’

‘I’m fine as I am.’

‘Really? I think I’d like a tot. Would you mind?’

I went to the cabinet. There was a three-quarters-full bottle of Highland Park waiting. I poured Lashley a glass, then poured one for myself as well.

‘I’m glad you’re joining me,’ he said as I delivered it to him.

I sat down again. Lashley raised his glass, as if silently pro posing a toast, and took a sip. I looked at him, waiting, as I knew he knew I was waiting, for him to tell me what I’d travelled from Cornwall to hear: the truth.

‘You’re probably wondering why I hired Doctor Whitworth to write a history of our company, knowing she was bound to discover a gaping hole in Wren’s records; and why, after she’d discovered it, I sent you to search for the missing files, knowing there was no one better qualified, one way or another, to find them, and knowing also what the missing files contained.’

‘I am wondering, yes.’

‘Well, we’ll come to that by and by. Suffice to say for the moment that this outcome was what I both expected and desired. Not poor Adam’s death, of course. I never foresaw that. I simply had no inkling how … self-destructive … he’d become. I suppose some would blame me for the follies of my son, but I’m not inclined to. You knew him. His problems were of his own making. Or else they were flaws he was born with. I was sorry for him. But I was also disappointed by him. Many times. There you have it, I’m afraid.

‘So, to the nub of the matter. We’d better begin at the beginning. Francis Wren didn’t leave the company in 1949 because he was bored with the china clay business, though bored he may have been. He left because George Wren discovered he and Kenneth Foster were lovers. He discovered that because I told him. The information was supplied to me by Gordon Strake in exchange for the settlement of his gambling debts. George was a staunch Methodist and a widower of long standing. He disapproved strongly of all
forms
of sexual licence. As for homosexuality … need I say more. This was sixty years ago, remember. It was a different world. Francis was sent packing … to what ended up as a comfortable exile in this very house. Ken Foster, as the husband of George’s beloved only daughter and father-to-be of his first grandchild, was allowed to remain, on the strict understanding that he curb his homosexual tendencies.

‘As a result of the upheaval, I became George’s trusted right-hand man. I had big ideas even then. I reckoned – and I was right – that Wren’s was ripe for expansion. But George was as commercially conservative as he was morally censorious. He’d have none of it. Every well-reasoned proposal I made was rejected. I was given a seat on the board, but only a miserly number of shares, so I could never force any of my plans through. That wasn’t a situation I was prepared to tolerate in definitely. I had some discreet discussions with Percy Faull about going to work for CCC, but he made a more interesting and, in the long run, more rewarding proposal: that I set about bringing Wren’s to its knees, so that its capacity to rival CCC, if properly managed, would be nullified and it would become, in time, easy prey to a takeover on modest terms. I was to be rewarded with something I couldn’t realistically aspire to otherwise: Faull’s post as chairman and managing director of CCC when he retired. I accepted. We shook on the deal. And he honoured it. We both did.

‘I knew from the outset that Ken would be a problem. He had a keen eye for detail. Fortunately, and unsurprisingly, he hadn’t abided by his father-in-law’s injunction. There’d been other … dalliances … over the years. Strake had continued to act as my informant. A man with his taste for gambling was frequently in need of a supplement to his salary. I supplied it. He was useful to me in a host of ways.’

‘Such as dealing with the Trudgeons.’

‘Yes. Such as that. Anyway, the time came when I had to make it clear to Ken that I had chapter and verse on his liaisons and that he’d be wise to stop querying what I was doing. Muriel and I were already … close … by then. I think he was aware of that. And I
think
he was painfully conscious that I had a hold over him he was powerless to break free of. I’m sure that’s why he killed himself: because he couldn’t see a way out.

‘So, I married Muriel, Adam was born and my … strategy … proceeded satisfactorily. Very satisfactorily. Until Oliver started delving into the matter, in search of the truth about his father. At some point, he salvaged Ken’s briefcase from the lake at Relurgis Pit. That can’t have been easy. You have to admire his perseverance. He must have found the pig’s egg he gave you inside. It was a love token from Francis that Ken had hung on to. One small piece of the jigsaw puzzle Oliver began to assemble. I imagine he collected a few more pieces during his visit here in 1967. Then, when I unveiled the takeover plan the following year, after George had died, Oliver turned his attention to our files. He can’t have known what he was looking for, but I knew what he’d eventually uncover, sharp-brained lad that he was. I tried to frighten him off by setting Strake on him. It didn’t work. But I wasn’t unduly worried. The takeover was essentially a done deal. It only required board approval. I could deal with Oliver at my leisure once it was signed and sealed.

‘Then, during the afternoon of the day before the board meeting, Oliver phoned me at the office. He was in a call-box – in Newquay, as I subsequently learnt from Strake. He’d been giving Strake the runaround all day. Oliver told me quite bluntly that he knew what I’d done and, if I wanted to prevent the information reaching the other board members, I should meet him at Relurgis Pit at eight thirty that evening. He hung up before I had a chance to reason with him.

‘I didn’t have much option but to go. By then Strake had reported that Oliver had lost him, thanks to your intervention. I intended to do my best to talk the lad round. Failing that, I had to hope Francis, Harriet and Muriel simply wouldn’t believe him. In the event, though, when I got to Relurgis, he was nowhere to be seen. But he’d been there. I knew that because his camera was hanging from the rail on the jetty, where I couldn’t fail to notice it.

‘It was beginning to get dark. I waited ten minutes or so, but I knew he wasn’t going to show himself. I wondered if he was
watching
me, from some vantage point in the undergrowth round the lake. I expect he was. Eventually, I took the camera and left.’

‘You didn’t see him?’

‘No.’

‘But he’d summoned you there to hear his accusation. Why didn’t he go through with it?’

‘One can only conjecture. I never expected him to take his own life. I was as shocked as anyone else when I heard the news. He must have decided on that course of action some time before. I think he’d painted himself into a corner, actually. To expose me, he had to expose his father. And he couldn’t bear to inflict the truth about Ken’s sexuality – not to mention his affair with Francis – on his mother and his sister. But he wanted me to know he’d seen through me. He wanted me to understand that very clearly.’

I looked hard at Lashley. Was this really what had happened? I couldn’t believe Oliver would have let him off so lightly, however reluctant he might have been to have his father’s relationship with Francis revealed. There was another course events might have followed that evening at Relurgis Pit. And it still ended with Oliver drowned.

‘I didn’t kill Oliver, Jonathan,’ he said quietly. ‘I would never have done such a thing.’

‘I’m no longer sure what you would or wouldn’t have done.’

‘A reaction on your part that Oliver no doubt intended to induce. He wanted you to be suspicious. Hence the pantomime with the camera. I had the film developed, you see. There was nothing on it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It was blank.’

‘
Blank?
’

‘Yes. He’d never wound the film on to the spool.’

I grappled with my memory. Had I tried to wind the film on after taking the last picture and so confirmed there actually was a film on the spool? I might have. I might not have. I couldn’t be certain. It was just too long ago. But such a deception would have been typical of Oliver, of course. As Lashley well knew.

‘I don’t suppose for an instant it was an oversight on Oliver’s
part,’
he went on. ‘It was the message he’d chosen to send me in the way he’d chosen to send it. “What did you think you were going to find? What were you afraid of?” A posthumous taunt, if you like. And maybe also a diversionary tactic. The missing camera; the question of what was on the rest of the film before the photographs you thought you were taking at Goss Moor; the meaning of the monogram on the pig’s egg: those little mysteries kept you interested, as they were designed to.’

The tale Lashley was telling fitted the way Oliver’s mind had worked. I was beginning to believe it, partly, I suppose, because the alternative was so terrible.

‘Meanwhile, I ignored the danger that was right under my nose. The files. And his notes on them.’ Lashley sighed. ‘When I came across the first of his … mischievous marginalia – purely by chance, I might add – I realized he probably hoped you’d be the person reading them. And drawing the appropriate conclusions. You had to be looking for a pattern, of course. Without some initial level of suspicion, and the determination to see it through, you wouldn’t make much headway. But he’d laid a trail for you to follow if you’d had a mind to. It seemed he did want the truth to come out. He just didn’t want to be around to see it happen.

‘I did my best to put you off the scent by having Strake tell you Oliver had hired him to give the impression he was being tailed. It sounded suitably crackpot. But you weren’t the only one I had to worry about. Francis asked a lot of questions and I had the feeling an answer I didn’t want to hear was going to form in his mind eventually. When Vivien came out here the following summer, I became seriously concerned, particularly when I established that you’d joined her. I detailed Strake to dig up something – anything – that would give me a hold over Francis. I was no longer confident his homosexual past – or present, come to that – would suffice to silence him if the need arose. Italian society was inconveniently relaxed about such matters. Strake came up with the goods, but was so pleased with what he’d found he decided to blackmail Francis on his own account. Well, you know what came of that. Francis
was
silenced, more conclusively than I’d intended. And so was Strake.
No
bad thing that, from my point of view. He’d have turned on me sooner or later. He was ever one to bite the hand that fed him.’