Sheila would have responded, but Joe got there first. “And you have part of it as a driving range for golfers?”
Sir Douglas followed Joe’s gaze to the man swinging the golf club.
“My son-in-law. Quentin Olsen. You haven’t heard of him?”
“Should I?”
“Unless you’re a fanatical golfer, probably not. He’s a professional, follows one of the minor UK tours. Usually at some tournament or another, but he kept this weekend clear for my birthday. Married to Verity, my youngest daughter.”
“Good at the game, is he?” Brenda asked.
Sir Douglas gave a humorous twitch of the head. “Not especially. He has a few trophies and medals, but nothing spectacular. Most of the time, you’ll find him half way down the listings at invitation tournaments. He finds the lawns here simulate some of the fairways quite well.”
“Fascinating stuff, but with all due respect, we didn’t come here to listen to tales from the nineteenth hole.”
It looked as if Sir Douglas might take umbrage, but once more Joe got in first.
“Have you received any more of the threatening notes?”
The old man’s tone was dour, businesslike, as if he felt rankled by Joe’s blunt manner. “No. Have you made any progress with those I left you?”
Joe shook his head. He had spent much of the week wondering what he was supposed to make of them, and made little progress. “I told you, the best people to speak to would be the police—”
“And I told you, I won’t have them involved.”
“In that case,” Joe replied, “there was precious little I could do. There were no obvious spelling or grammatical errors in them, which tells us the writer was fairly well-educated. But I’m guessing that could mean any member of your family.”
Sir Douglas mellowed slightly. “True enough. They’ve all had the very best education we could afford.”
Joe cut off an irritated interjection from Sheila before she could verbalise it. “So we come down to logic, if we can. Of your three children, who stands to benefit most from your death?”
The answer did not surprise Joe.
“None of them. Understand this, Joe: my children are worth millions. When I pass on, my estate will be shared equally between them. True, the vast majority of their wealth is in the shape of company stock, but they will each receive an equal amount.”
“Thirty-three and a third percent of your holding?”
“Thirty percent of my holding,” Sir Douglas corrected.
The announcement took all three by surprise, but there was nothing about Sir Douglas’s appearance to indicate that he was joking or that he revelled in shocking them. His deadpan features said he had merely been making a statement.
“Only thirty?” Brenda asked.
The old man nodded. “As matters stand, I hold sixty-seven percent of stock in the company. My children each have eleven percent. It means that whatever I want done gets done. When I’m gone, they will pick up another twenty percent, give or take. That way, no one person can make substantial changes to the company’s articles, procedures and practises.”
“So who gets the remainder?” Joe asked.
“Alistair and his wife get five percent. They’ve been with me over twenty years, and as you may have gathered, Alistair is not the kind of man who could be bullied into anything, so it’s unlikely that any of my children could dragoon him into schemes I wouldn’t have accepted.”
“Unless he decided to materialise his holding,” Sheila suggested.
“He’s a rum’un, is Alistair. Never been interested in money. He came to work for me when he came out of the army. Tough old bugger, he is.” Sir Douglas chuckled gleefully, as if he enjoyed lapsing into working class vernacular. “And he can keep the staff in check. But all he really wants is an easy life. I know he waits on me, but he doesn’t have to commute to work and he doesn’t really do much running round after us. He considers that worth more than any flashy job at a hotel or running a pub.”
“He knows why we’re here, doesn’t he?” Joe asked.
Sir Douglas was surprised. “Yes, he does. How do you know? He wouldn’t say anything, I’m sure.”
“He did say something as it happens. He said I didn’t look much like a bodyguard. Only someone who knew what was going off would say something like that.” Joe rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “The rest of your family know nothing about us?”
“Nothing,” Sir Douglas confirmed. “And I intend to keep it that way until you can point the finger.”
“If I can point the finger.” Again Joe lapsed into silence, but this time it was Brenda who spoke up.
“Sir Douglas, you said your three children get thirty percent of your holding, and that your manservant gets five percent. Who gets the remaining two percent?”
“Ah. A fine question, dear lady. And before I answer, I know how you will react, but you will be wrong.” He eyed Joe levelly. “I should really be speaking to you alone about this.”
“The girls need to hear it, too, Douglas,” Joe insisted. “I rely on them sometimes, but they can’t help if they’re not in possession of the full facts.”
“It’s, er, delicate, and, I have to admit, a little embarrassing.”
“We’re all adults, Sir Douglas,” Sheila said. In contrast to her politically motivated challenge of a few minutes previously, her voice was soft and persuasive.
The old man coughed and stared across the expanse of grass at the woods for a long time. There was a glazed expression in his eyes and Joe knew that he was reminiscing over something. As the silence went on, Joe wished he had tobacco with him. He had stopped smoking almost a year previously, but there were times, like now, when he felt in need of the comfort he could get from rolling and smoking a cigarette.
Not that he would do so. Stopping had been the hardest thing he had ever done and he was not prepared to throw away nine months of anguish on a whim. His breathing, which had been a major concern for the medics, had improved, and while the COPD still gave him uncontrollable bouts of coughing, and frequently left him breathless, it was no longer the life threatening situation it had been.
Sir Douglas stirred and brought Joe back from his reverie.
“I’ve spent my life being sensible. You can’t head a large company like ours without making common sense decisions.”
“Or even a small company like mine,” Joe pointed out. Despite the frowns of disapproval from his two friends, he had spoken only to demonstrate that he was listening. “Go on.”
“About forty years ago, my wife fell ill. Heart trouble. It was a problem which would dog her for the rest of her days, and eventually take her life. I was a young man at the time, in my late thirties, and as you’re no doubt aware, young men have, er, needs.”
Sir Douglas’s ears coloured and Joe guessed how difficult this was for him. “You had an affair?”
The old man nodded. He appeared relieved that Joe had spelled it out so bluntly. “There were a number of women. It’s not something I recall with any pride. In fact, when I think of it I am disgusted with myself, but I can’t undo what happened and I can’t un-remember it. The guilt will stay with me until I die. The last of these young women lived in the village. Frances Asquith. Liked to be known as Frankie.”
“Your wife found out?” Brenda asked.
Sir Douglas nodded by return. “My wife found out because I confessed, Mrs Jump. I couldn’t live with what I’d done, y’see.” He sighed again. “Soon after our, er, relationship ended, Frankie moved away from the area. She had friends or relatives or something in the Midlands.” He turned to take them all in with a fierce stare. “She didn’t tell me she was pregnant.”
The penny dropped with Joe, and checking on Sheila and Brenda, he guessed they too realised where Sir Douglas was going.
“Two months ago, a young man turned up here asking to speak to me. He was my son.”
Joe chalked himself a point for his intuition. Sir Douglas had ended his t
ale as they had guessed. “You had no doubts?”
“Plenty,” the old man admitted. “I may look as wrinkled as a rotting cabbage, Joe, but I’m not entirely green. I’m a wealthy man. The number of people I’ve had over the years claiming to be related to me is probably enough to fill a Blackpool tram several times over. I take nothing at face value. I listened to him, of course. That was only courteous. The details fitted. He knew more about Frankie than anyone who was not related to her could possibly know, and his birth certificate shows her as his mother.”
“Father unknown?” Sheila asked.
Sir Douglas nodded again. “I told him frankly, I would need proof and the only way we could be sure was a DNA paternity test, to which he agreed. Blood samples were taken from us both and sent off to a laboratory somewhere in Warwickshire.”
“Who chose the doctor?” Joe asked, “And who chose the testing laboratory?”
“That was a complex issue, Joe,” Sir Douglas admitted. “Obviously, because I didn’t know him, I couldn’t trust him one hundred percent, and he felt the same way. He was concerned, not that I might cheat him out of any inheritance, but that I might be seeking to deny paternity for the sake of my, excuse the term, image. Eventually, we agreed to go to the local hospital and have the bloods taken there.”
“And the laboratory?” Joe persisted.
“Even more complicated. We simply couldn’t agree, and eventually Rodney decided to call it a draw and walk out. Then I came up with a solution. At first, I suggested we get my lawyer to select a laboratory. He wouldn’t trust my lawyers further than he would trust me, and he was actually on the verge of physically walking out, when I suggested he contact his solicitor, the young woman who had handled his mother’s estate. I was sure he could trust her.”
“And his reaction?”
“Still doubtful. He had persuaded himself that I had enough clout, for want of a better word, to sway her, too.” Sir Douglas chuckled. “I’m sure that the thought of a few bob coming his way was at the back of his mind, but he was insistent that he was more concerned about paternity than any financial gain. He took a lot of persuading, but eventually, we agreed to meet with the solicitor at her offices.”
“And the outcome?”
“She was pleasant girl. Pretty. You know. We trailed down to her office. Erdington. North Birmingham. We outlined the situation, discussed the procedure, and she suggested a laboratory in Warwickshire. I checked them up on the internet there and then.” The old man patted his smartphone on the table, and with a wrinkled grin, held up his mp3 earphones. “I might be getting on, but don’t think I don’t know my way round technology. Decant Laboratories. Reputable company, government contractor, etc. Rodney and I agreed, and when the bloods were taken, I instructed the hospital to send the samples to Descant. It took, I don’t know, perhaps two or three weeks, for them to come back, during which time, I invited him to stay here rather than booking into a hotel.”
“Wasn’t that a bit cavalier?” Sheila asked.
“I don’t think so,” Sir Douglas disagreed. “At the time, I had no idea whether he was my son, so I needed as much information from him as I could gather. If there was any doubt, I wanted to be the one to confront him. But by the time the results came back, I was persuaded. I knew damn well he was mine.”
“And the analysis?” Joe asked.
“Confirmed it. A string of matches which gave a ninety-nine point nine-six percentage rating that I was his father.” The old man chuckled grimly. “Was it Shakespeare who said, it’s a wise father who knows his own child? Well I know my son, Joe. I know him as my son more than I know Toby, my eldest boy. Rodney Asquith is my son.”
The rattle of castors on the paved terrace, orchestrating the chink of china cups and saucers, reached their ears. Behind them Alistair was pushing a tea trolley, laden with food and crockery, towards them.
Joe was glad of the respite. It gave him time to absorb the information he had just gleaned and sift into some kind of order, allowing him to formulate a range of questions. Watching Alistair set out the rose china crockery, matching teapot, and plates laden with triangular cut sandwiches, he silently applauded Sir Douglas’s perspicacity. He had said they would jump to the wrong conclusion, and Joe had jumped to that conclusion: here was a lad on the make, and a prime suspect for threatening the old man. And yet, it turned out that the boy was a member of the family. But to Joe’s agile and suspicious mind, that did not rule young Rodney out.
“What’s in the sandwiches?” Brenda asked.
Alistair waved a vague hand across the table. “Salmon paste in one lot, cheese and tomato in the other and I think the missus opened a can of corned beef for some of them.” He gave Joe a sardonic grin. “I told you you’d have been better off at the pub.”
“They’d probably have poured the tea, too,” Joe replied as Sheila picked up the pot.
“You’d like me to drink it for ye?”
Joe took a cup and saucer from Sheila. “Tell me something, Alistair, what do you think of Rodney Asquith?”
The manservant glanced sourly at his master. “They reckon there’s no fool like an old fool. Well, there’s no crackpot like this old crackpot.” With a stiff nod, he turned and left, followed by a thin smile from his employer.
“He doesn’t pull any punches, does he?” Joe commented, helping himself to a salmon paste sandwich.
Sir Douglas poured himself a cup of tea, and he, too, raided the sandwich plates. “He’s never changed in all the years I’ve known him, and I wouldn’t have him any other way.” Chewing on the corner of a salmon paste sandwich, he went on. “When he first came here, I asked why he never called me ‘sir’ and he told me he stopped calling people sir the minute he came out of the army, and if I was waiting for him to change, I had a long wait ahead of me.”
Joe smiled at the imagery. “But he’s wrong about Rodney?”
“Completely wrong,” the old man agreed. “I didn’t just leave it to a DNA test, Joe. I had him checked out thoroughly. When he went off back to Birmingham for a weekend, I sent Katya after him with orders to dig up everything she could, and when she came back, she gave him a clean bill of health.”
Chewing delicately on cheese and tomato sandwich, Sheila asked, “Katya?”
Sir Douglas gulped down a mouthful of food, and washed it down with a swallow of tea. “Forgive me, I haven’t told you about her, have I? Katya Nolan is a researcher. She’s preparing a family history. She’s a genealogist.” He smiled at them. “Now before you get images of someone chipping rocks off cliff faces, a genealogist—”
“Researches families,” Joe interrupted, and he, too, followed up with a broad smile. “I have a friend who’s a genealogist.”
Sir Douglas beamed. “Good. Glad to hear it. Fascinating subject, you know, learning who you are and where you came from. Anyway, Katya has been here since, oh, February, putting together a family tree and writing up the history of the Ballantynes. When Rodney showed up, it was only natural for me to get her to look into him. He had to go back to Birmingham to collect a few belongings, and I sent her down there behind him. Here. I’ll get her to join us.” He picked up the smartphone. Pressing a single button for several seconds, he put the phone to his ear. “Alistair. Would you ask Katya to join us on the terrace?” He leaned across, lifted the teapot lid and checked the contents. “And you’d better bring us some more tea and another cup.”
Alistair replied, but Joe could not hear what was said.
At length, Sir Douglas put the phone on the table, drank his tea and, reaching for the pot, helped himself to another cup. He smiled. “Alistair wants to know if we’re drinking or selling the tea.” Settling back into his seat, he again looked across the broad expanse of closely mown grass. “No, Joe. I know what you’re thinking about young Rodney, and I can’t blame you for thinking that way. But the truth is, the last thing he would want is me to die.”
Joe took up the challenge. “Why? I meanersay, he’s turned up a
fter all these years, and I don’t know what kind of life he’s led, but I bet he isn’t worth millions. He wants to get his hands on some of your cash before he’s too old, and he’s certain that once you’ve accepted him, he’ll get a mention in your will. Easiest way to get his hands on the loot is to bump you off.”
Sir Douglas applauded sarcastically. “Right on all counts, but one. And that one unravels the whole theory. I made sure he had money, Joe. Once everything was proven, I made him a gift of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. I also promised him he would be included in my will, and he insisted that he did not want to be in my will. I offered him a post as a management trainee at the Blackpool depot, he turned me down. He has a job – he’s a senior nurse at a Birmingham hospital apparently – and he’s quite happy at his work. He is not interested in monetary or professional gains. It’s enough for him to know where he comes from. That was all he ever wanted.” Sir Douglas nodded towards the house, from where a young woman had just emerged. “And what’s more, Katya confirmed all of this.”
Chapter Four
Katya was about thirty years old, according to Joe’s estimate. Wearing only a pair of skimpy shorts and an equally skimpy top, both of which bore high-fashion logos, she was slim and shapely, brown-haired, blue-eyed, a little shorter than his five feet six inches, and she had a bubbly, outgoing smile, matched by the raw enthusiasm of her personality, which shone through her words.
“Lots of people get confused between genealogists and geologists,” she said after Sir Douglas had introduced them, “but you know the difference. I’m impressed.”
“I have a friend who’s a genealogist,” Joe explained. “Madeleine Chester.”
A Killing in the Family Page 4