Once upon a time in Chinatown

by Robert Ronsson

  It was only when I turned towards the River Thames at Isleworth that he paused long enough for me to contribute: ‘Everything’s been fine here. Good houses. All very smooth.’

  ‘Sorry, I should have asked.’

  ‘No problem. I totally understand that The Factory is way down your priorities now.’ I coughed to try and eliminate the whining tone that had appeared in my voice. ‘I get it.’

  ‘Hell, Steve. You’re wrong. I’ve been thinking about us too. Of course, The Factory, will be yours. Call it a parting gift. You’ll be the sole owner.’

  ‘Seriously?’ This bald statement of his generosity was like a punch to the solar plexus. In that instant all sense of driving the car fell into a void. I had to consciously settle my backside into the car seat and grip the steering wheel tighter to regain my equilibrium. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course. Makes sense. My life will be in Malaysia. Why have the hassle? I don’t want any loose ends.’

  ‘It’s very generous.’ I didn’t know what else to say. It was all coming at me so fast. I hoped he couldn’t see the tears obscuring my view of the road. My dream, the one I had when standing opposite the abandoned factory had become far more real than I had ever hoped. Not only that but the asset value of the property added to my Scotia pension meant that I’d have enough to live on and more for the rest of my life. Why then did I feel so empty?

  I dropped Mick off at his flat and took the car back to the Vineyard. It was dawning on me that when I came to The Factory and joined Mick in this partnership, even living in this house, I had somehow taken over his life. I had attached myself to him like a limpet to a rock. What happens to a limpet when a tsunami dislodges it?

  Mick was my family, all I had. He had used his power to fulfil my hopes but at the same time he was abandoning me. He intended to invest his money and his future in Nancy. I would lose him. The house felt cold and empty. It echoed to the sounds of ghosts from the time when my cousin played among the carboys. Germs of worry wormed into my brain that evening and multiplied over the following days.

  Next time we met, after the usual business agenda, I raised my concerns. ‘Has it occurred to you that Nancy and her father might have cooked up a scam between them? They get your money but you don’t get the girl?’

  He smiled. ‘I know you’re looking out for me, Steve. But you really don’t get it. We’re in love. She desperately wants to marry me. She didn’t know about me having money when we fell for each other.’

  ‘But you never thought of going into the hotel business, did you?’

  ‘I never thought of going into the cinema business!’ He chuckled. ‘I don’t care what I do for a job. I have no idea what I’ll do once the hotel is built and Nancy’s running it. Perhaps I’ll bring up our children. Be a househusband. All I know is, I’ll be happy with her and will do anything to make it happen.’

  The feeling in the pit of my stomach nagged at me, pressing the notion that Nancy and the notorious S Y Lee were conniving to get what they wanted and that they would leave Mick pitiful and impecunious. It would not go away.

  As the weeks went by, all Mick’s conversation focused on the project in Ipoh and how it was taking shape. He told me how the plans had been submitted with the necessary inducements to ensure a positive result and that the work was being costed in detail. The spa hotel and country club truly would be the Leeyate Hotel Group’s jewel in the crown, rivalling anything in Kuala Lumpur. His eyes would light up and sometimes I wondered whether this, rather than his marriage to Nancy, had become the driving force behind his intended move.

  Then those same blue eyes would fill with tears as he turned his laptop towards me to show me the latest picture she had sent him.

  One day, Mick explained that as part of his desire to tidy up his affairs before he left the UK, possibly for good, he would like to formalise the transfer to me of his share in The Factory on the day he married Nancy. This would require a lawyer and, on the appointed day, we drove to Twickenham in his Alfa Romeo with the top down making the most of some unseasonably warm, spring sunshine.

  The radio was on and focused on breaking news from a town in Scotland called Dunblane. A man had gone into a primary school and, in cold blood, shot dead at least one teacher and as many as ten pupils. There were possibly more fatalities and other injured children in hospital. According to some eye-witnesses, the gunman had killed himself. It was as if the clear sky clouded over as the mood in the car darkened. We could only catch each other’s eyes and shake our heads.

  In the continuing silence, Mick swung the car into an asphalted enclosure alongside a Georgian house that had been converted to the offices of Blewett Trewithian, solicitors.

  We were shown into Kenver Trewithian’s office at the back of the building on the first floor. He wasn’t there and we both automatically went over to the Georgian-paned sash window. Below us, a garden led down to the Thames riverbank. I dared not imagine what Mick was paying for an hour of Kenver’s time.

  When he swept into the room, the lawyer, who was short, with the muscular stockiness of a rugby hooker, greeted Mick with a hug and shook my hand before commanding us to sit.

  Without preamble, Kenver explained to Mick (using his first name) that he had drawn up the contract as requested and that, on his marriage to Nancy Lee, I would be The Factory’s sole proprietor. It was to be conditional on him marrying Nancy and would be irrevocable. ‘There’s no going back on this, Mick.’

  Mick nodded. ‘I want to make a clean break. Once Nancy and I are married I’ll be committed to Malaysia.’

  Kenver twirled his wedding ring on his finger and looked up at the ceiling. ‘This is what the contract—’ he pointed to a folder on his desk ‘—specifies. It’s very straightforward. However, have you thought about what happens if, for some reason, the marriage doesn’t go ahead?’

  ‘But it will. What’s to stop it?’

  Kenver shrugged. ‘We don’t need to go into specifics but am I right that, in the event of the marriage not taking place, everything will go on as before? You will want to retain your partnership?’

  Mick nodded.

  ‘And you?’ Kenver said, turning to me.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That’s straightforward then. This contract does the job.’ Kenver’s brow furrowed. ‘But there’s another possibility. I don’t like to mention it but, with the news today from Scotland, it’s something it would be prudent to consider—’

  ‘But what?’ Mick looked at his watch.

  ‘Let’s just say things can’t go on as before if you die before the marriage takes place.’

  Mick sighed. ‘I won’t care, will I? I’ll be dead.’

  I leaned forward.

  ‘But you have a will,’ Kenver said.

  I stayed silent.

  Mick stuck out his lower lip and shook his head, ‘Never really thought about it.’

  ‘Who would be your beneficiary if you died intestate?’

  ‘Eh?’

  I bit my lip. Sometimes Mick could be very obtuse.

  ‘Your relatives. Who are they?’

  ‘I don’t have any—’

  I raised a hand from my knee.

  ‘Well, Steve here is my cousin.’ He nodded for me to explain.

  ‘Mick’s father and my father were cousins. Our grandfathers were brothers,’ I said.

  ‘You have no nearer relative than Steve, Mick?’

  Mick shook his head again. ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘It seems to me, Mick, that you ought to make a will as soon as possible.’ Kenver said.

  This may have been good advice but I suspected that Kenver also knew how to squeeze the last drop of fee income out of any situation.

  ‘Obviously, Mick, this moves into realms that are only for you to decide,’ Kenver said, glancing at me. ‘If you put a will in place now it would ensure that your wishes for your share in the cinema business and your other assets were not subject to dispute should you die before t
he marriage. I really think it would be prudent to do it. Any will you make now will only be temporary. It will be nullified by your marriage. After that, when by virtue of the contract here,’ he pointed to the folder, ‘Steve gets the cinema, Nancy automatically becomes your next of kin and is in place to inherit everything else. Although I’d still suggest you make a new will then.’

  ‘I’ll think about it. Is our business about the transfer of the cinema done?’

  The solicitor nodded. ‘Yes. I just need you both to sign this.’ He took the pages, bound with a blue ribbon, from the folder and pointed to where we each should sign. I used my fountain pen and Mick scratched his name with a ballpoint from the desk. He pushed the contract back to Kenver, who signed as witness. In the hiatus while Kenver added his details, Mick turned to me. ‘Look, we’re done here. Do you mind leaving us and I’ll sort out the other thing? Obviously, I want you to have the cinema if anything happens to me.’

  Kenver stood up. ‘You’ll have to make it clear. It won’t necessarily happen as things stand.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said shaking hands with Kenver. I could as easily have hugged him and kissed his neck. ‘I’ll be downstairs.’

  Mick came into the ground floor waiting room twenty minutes later. As we stepped out onto the pavement, he said, ‘I don’t think there’s any point keeping it to myself, except for a bit to charity, I’ve left the whole bloody lot to you. It’s so much easier and quicker than faffing about. It’s only until I’m married to Nancy. Then everything will be sorted properly.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, not knowing how to greet the news. Him dying before his wedding was an eventuality so remote that it didn’t seem appropriate to thank him. There was no reason for me to either be pleased or proud that he was legally acknowledging me as his relative. It puzzled me that he wasn’t leaving his money to his fiancée. ‘What about Nancy? Don’t you want her to be able to build the hotel if you’re not around?’

  He snorted. ‘Kenver suggested it. I did think about it. But I’d only want her to have it if I’m there to make sure that her father doesn’t take it all.’

  I could see the sense in this but I can honestly say that I would have been happy with only the cinema.

  Back in the car on the journey to Richmond we learned that 16 children and one adult had been killed in what was already being called the Dunblane massacre. So many families torn apart.

  7

  Three weeks after he had signed his will, the first he had ever made and a month before he was due to leave for the first of the extended stays in Malaysia that would lead to his marriage to Nancy, Mick slipped in his shower, banged his head as he fell and suffered a brain haemorrhage.

  I discovered his body that morning. He had fallen half out of the shower cubicle and eventually the water splashing on him that had escaped the shower tray had found its way into the apartment below. The occupants knew that I held a spare key. They called me and I rushed down, entered Mick’s apartment and, hearing water running, ran straight for the bathroom. Mick was naked and slumped across the threshold of the shower cubicle. His blue eyes were open, blank. His cheek had settled against the floor tiles like the hull of a stranded boat. His jaw was agape. The white crust of dried spittle lined his lips. There was no pulse in his cold neck.

  While I turned off the tap and wrestled Mick’s lower body out of the cubicle so I could cover him with a towel, the neighbour who had followed me in called the emergency services. Mick’s legs were warm. The electric shower had been sluicing them with hot water for… how long?

  Sitting on the puddled bathroom floor, I tried to make sense of it. What was it about me? First Luis, now Mick. Thank goodness there were no more cousins to find, cousins to curse.

  Naturally, the police’s suspicion fell on me when it was discovered that I had recently been made sole beneficiary of Mick’s will. Two police officers in plain clothes appeared on the step of my house and escorted me to Richmond police station, a typically solid, red-brick municipal building from the inter-war years. I was shown into a cell-like interview room, the walls glubbed with lime paint.

  The female officer, D.C. Quinn, pressed a button on a tape recording machine and, looking at her watch, announced the time. After giving her name and that of the other officer sitting behind her, a darkly unshaven man called D.C. Key, she asked me to identify myself. She read out the police caution from a card that had been taped to the desktop. ‘Do you have anything to say?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t understand why I am here,’ I said.

  ‘We’re investigating the death of your business partner—’ she looked down at her notebook ‘—Michael Kellie.’

  ‘Mick. He called himself Mick.’

  ‘Mick Kellie, then. What do you have to tell us about his death?’

  ‘Nothing other than I found him.’

  ‘You had a key to his apartment.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  The implication of the questions that followed were that either Mick and I were more than business partners – more than cousins – and, on the night before he was found, we’d had a lover’s tiff that ended in violence, or that I had gone to his apartment with the intention of harming him so that I could benefit from his will in the short window before he married Nancy. D.C. Quinn was keen for me to admit that either scenario, or a combination of both, was the backdrop to Mick’s death.

  I told Detective Quinn the truth and nothing but the truth as I would have done in court had it come to it. Eventually, she seemed to accept that my presence in The Factory on the night before Mick’s body was discovered would have been witnessed by enough trustworthy people for it to be a genuine alibi. I also suggested that the only time I could have appeared on the security cameras in the streets leading to Mick’s apartment building was the morning I arrived in response to the summons from Mick’s flooded neighbours.

  The questions and answers went around in circles before Detective Quinn shuffled her papers together, looked at her watch, announced the time and declared the interview was at an end. She and D.C. Key showed me out. She warned me not to leave the country, that they might want to question me again.

  After a week of hearing nothing, I called Detective Quinn to discover that I was no longer a person of interest; it would be up to the coroner to determine what happened next.

  The coroner’s court in Fulham was sparsely attended. The neighbour who summoned me to the apartment that morning was there and I was surprised to see Kenver Trewithian take a seat. The coroner, from her raised bench, explained why she had asked the solicitor to attend. ‘It is quite unusual for people of the deceased’s age to die within a short time of making a will and your evidence will help me to determine whether I should give any significance to the timing of these events. Could you tell us, Mr Trewithian, how Mr Kellie came to make his will?’

  Kenver, standing in the witness box alongside the coroner, took her through the main points of his meeting with Mick and me. He described how, after I had left, he had persuaded Mick that he ought to have a will to take effect in the period before his impending marriage. ‘I assumed that Mick… Mr Kellie would want to make sure his estate would go to his fiancée. When it came to it, however, he was adamant that his cousin, Mr Cross, should be the beneficiary.’

  All the eyes in the room turned towards me.

  ‘Did he say why?’ The coroner asked.

  Kenver twisted his wedding ring on his finger. ‘He did, but I think it would betray my client’s confidence if I were to say.’

  The coroner leaned forward. ‘I understand. But did you perceive the reasons Mr Kellie gave for the wishes as he expressed them in his will to be reasonable.’

  Kenver smiled. ‘Yes. Very reasonable… and sound. Very sound reasoning.’

  When it was the turn of the doctor who performed the autopsy to give evidence, we learned that Mick’s stomach contained a recently swallowed, full-dose aspirin. A cache of identical pills was found in hi
s bathroom cabinet. The doctor went on to say that Mick’s medical records revealed that he had attended his General Practitioner’s surgery expressing a morbid fear of suffering a stroke like his father. ‘He had asked to be prescribed blood-thinners on many occasions. He had been advised that it would do no harm to take a daily, low-dose of 75mg of aspirin. If Mr Kellie had been taking more than this for a prolonged period, and it seems that he took at least 200mg on the day of his death, it would have significantly increased the chance of a blow to the head causing a brain haemorrhage.’

  The coroner made a note ostentatiously before looking up over the top of her reading glasses. ‘Are you able to help us with the deceased’s time of death, Doctor?’

  The doctor shook her head. ‘Sadly, not. In the interval between Mr Kellie’s fall and his body being removed from the shower cubicle, it was subjected to a constant stream of hot water. Once he had been moved and the shower was turned off, it made it impossible to accurately recreate the circumstances: the water temperature in the shower, the pattern of splash coverage, how much water was escaping, how long it took to seep into the flat below. These were all unknown. Specifically, the extent of the splashing of Mr Kellie’s lower body and the shower water temperature made it impossible to estimate time of death using the usual factors such as residual temperature, rigor mortis and lividity.’

  Based on what she had heard, the coroner determined that, whenever it had happened, Mick’s fall had been an accident, the force of his head hitting the floor being sufficient to cause the brain haemorrhage that killed him.

  The architect of Mortlake Crematorium had created a façade that was imposing, palatial even, while retaining a human scale. Its single story was composed of red brick and the chimney tower rose in the background. The colours, the tower and the scaled-down grandeur reminded me of the pictures I had seen of Kellie’s Castle.