Thursday Legends

by Quintin Jardine

  level, and there's no way that I, as a corporate manager, can access

  any of it directly."

  "I'm beginning to guess the consequences of the fire," said Steele.

  "I'm sure you are. The damage upstairs was total. The entire IT

  system of Tubau Gordon Oriental has been destroyed, and with it all of

  our computer records for its current financial year, which has been

  running since January the first."

  "Don't you back up?"

  "We back up on to a separate mainframe, outside the network, but that

  was also located on the sixth floor. It's gone too."

  "Paper records?"

  "Yes, and all reduced to muddy ashes. The only paper that survived the

  fire was in rolls in the staff toilets."

  "So what have you lost?"

  "As I said, we've lost everything; the current investment position of

  every one of the clients of Tubau Gordon Oriental. We'd have to go

  back as best we can and rebuild every transaction to the beginning of

  the calendar year. That would take God knows how long and even then

  we'd only have an approximation. We will have to ask every company in

  which we're invested to issue duplicate share certificates, but with

  the settlement system we'll never know what was in the pipeline, since

  we do our own trading. It's impossible; in practice, all that we can

  do is credit everyone with everything they had at the time of the last

  audit and take it from there. It's a disaster of unthinkable

  proportions."

  "What about previous years? Has all that gone too?" r

  Dolan looked up to the ceiling. "No, thank God. Once our audits are

  all completed we archive the records of each year in a secure data

  warehouse. On top of that we archive our computer records on a

  six-monthly basis. Had it not been for the fire, that would have

  happened on Tuesday."

  Steele felt a flutter in the pit of his stomach, but kept it to

  himself. "How many Far East trusts were there?" he asked.

  "Three public; Japanese, Chinese, and new markets."

  "Three public, you said?"

  "Yes. There was also one private trust located upstairs, and managed

  under our corporate umbrella. It's a family trust; not a unique

  situation. This one belongs to the Candela family."

  "As in ...?"

  "Yes, it's David's. It used to be managed within Candela and Finch,

  but he switched it here a few years back, because he liked our security

  systems and our in-house trading facility. Ironic, is it not?"

  "It sure is," Steele conceded, impassively. "When you began," he

  continued, 'you said that investment trusts were more or less all you

  did. What else is there?"

  "We have a currency section," said the chief executive, 'speculating on

  the global money markets. That was on the sixth floor; it's gone too.

  Never rains, eh."

  "That's what we find." The policeman waited until he felt that he had

  all of Dolan's attention once more. "So why were you about to pick up

  the phone?" The silence continued, for several seconds.

  "Because," came the reply at last, "I have just finished a

  reconciliation of our total assets; investments and cash in the bank

  and in transit. It's difficult, given the missing Oriental portfolios,

  but by my calculation, we're thirty million out... on the downside."

  "Bloody hell," Steele exclaimed.

  "That's an understatement."

  "Will it finish you?"

  "No, it won't, but it will send our share price floor-wards and make us

  a snip for any predators that are out there." Dolan stood up and

  walked to the window of his office; he gazed along the Western Approach

  Road, at nothing in particular.

  "So, inspector," he asked, 'are you going to call in the cavalry?"

  "I'm going to call in the fire brigade, first off."

  "I have done already. And I've called in independent experts. I did

  that on Sunday. They both agree that the fire started in a computer

  terminal that was left on over the weekend to receive incoming faxes

  ... a normal procedure, and that there is no evidence of it being

  deliberate. Someone seems to have been dead lucky, Mr. Steele."

  "So far," the policeman retorted. "I'm going to need a list of every

  person employed on the sixth floor with the skill to make thirty

  million disappear without being caught. Obviously, that will include

  the manager of the Candela family trust."

  "I wouldn't bother with that, inspector. David manages it personally.

  It's another of his many skills."

  Sixty.

  "How'd you like to stay in Buffalo and be my chief of detectives?"

  asked Bradford Dekker.

  "No offence, sheriff," Skinner replied, 'but if I stayed here, I'd be

  after your job. Elected people trying to manage policemen are the bane

  of my life back home; if I lived here the only way I could handle it

  would be to become one myself."

  "If the voters of Erie County knew all that's happened over the last

  couple of days you could run as the Taleban candidate and still get

  elected."

  Bob pulled over a kitchen stool and sat on it, glancing out of the

  window. With the phone to his ear, he could see Jazz playing in the

  garden, with Trish watching over him. "So it's over, is it?" he

  asked.

  "Yes. Poor old Candy Brew is downstairs right now in conference with

  his attorney, that's if the woman can get him to stop sobbing for long

  enough to listen to what she's got to tell him. When Madigan and I

  walked into his office he looked at us and burst into tears, and he's

  been like that most of the time since."

  Dekker sounded elated, understandably. "The hair and skin samples

  matched his," he continued, 'like you said they would, but we didn't

  need to throw that at him. We didn't need to throw anything at him, in

  fact. He told us the whole story as soon as we sat him down in the

  interview room. Hero worship can be a deadly thing, Bob, when it goes

  to extremes. Mr. Brew had more than a crush on Ron Neidholm; he was

  downright in love with him. His house is like a shrine, an absolute

  shrine. He's from Chicago, originally, but he volunteered to us that

  he took a job in Buffalo because it was Ron's home town. His obsession

  was no secret either. It was a standing joke among the staff in

  Waterside Library, and among some of the borrowers as well. We've

  re-interviewed the Bierhoff woman;

  she admitted that she didn't just happen to mention Sarah and Ron to

  him, she did it to wind him up."

  "Bitch," Skinner snarled.

  "And how. She drove Brew right off the rails; he admitted to us that

  he went to Neidholm's house to ask him if it was true and if it meant

  that he wouldn't play football any more. The victim invited him in and

  took him through to the kitchen, because he said he was about to start

  fixing a salad. He said that he was expecting company. Candy's story

  is that when he confronted him, asked him straight out, Ron was evasive

  at first, suggested very politely that it was none of his damn

  business. But he persisted, and finally the big guy lost his cool. He

  told him that he had had a lifetime
of guys like him, who thought that

  football was the only thing in the world, and that finally he had had

  enough. He wanted a normal life, among real people with a wife and

  kids, and no more freaks like Brew' Dekker was excited, now, in full

  flow; at last he paused for breath.

  "While he was yelling this, according to Candy, he reached out and

  grabbed him by the hair with his left hand. That ties in with the

  samples that were found on the sticking plaster. The guy thought he

  was going to slug him with the other one, and he got terrified. The

  knife was lying on the counter beside him. He says he doesn't remember

  picking it up ..."

  "None of them ever remember," said Skinner, quietly.

  "I'll bow to your experience on that. Anyway, he says there was this

  blank moment, and next thing he knew, Ron was on the floor at his feet

  with the knife in his chest. He just ran for it then, out of the

  house, got in his car and drove home. He sat there for two days, doing

  nothing, waiting for us to come for him, only we didn't. After a while

  he plucked up the courage to switch on television, and he saw a report.

  It said that we had a prime suspect, a woman, and that charges were

  expected imminently. He knew they must have meant Sarah and he began

  to relax."

  "He was going to let her take the blame?"

  "Without a second thought; he believed, in fact he still does, that she

  deserved it. In his mind, if it hadn't been for her throwing herself

  at Neidholm, as he put it, life would just have gone on as it was.

  That's why he approached him in the restaurant. He'd never had the

  nerve to do that before, or to write to him, or anything else; he only

  worshipped him from as close as he could get. Neidholm never had a

  public relationship, you see. Half of America thought he was gay; as

  for Candy, he just assumed it. So when he saw him there with Sarah, he

  experienced a flash of pure terror. He could tell how easy they were

  with each other, and he had this sense that everything was going to

  change, that all his fantasies were going to be taken from him, by this

  woman, whoever she was.

  "He fretted about it from that point on, until Alice Bierhoff told him

  her story, and the poor guy just went nuts."

  "Will he go for an insanity plea?"

  "I don't know yet. The DA's offered him a plea deal to second degree

  homicide; that's what his attorney's trying to talk to him about. If

  he takes it, then Sarah won't have to testify. If he doesn't, I'm not

  so sure."

  "You might try telling him from me that if he puts my wife on the

  witness stand and makes her admit to an affair in public he really will

  be fucking crazy."

  "He's never met you," Dekker chuckled, 'so he wouldn't understand, but

  I'll do what I can to keep that from happening."

  "So what's our position now?" asked Skinner.

  "Sarah has her passport back. She can leave Buffalo any time she

  likes."

  "When's this going to hit the fan?"

  "Brew's attorney won't go public while we're still negotiating, but I

  can't hold it beyond tomorrow midday. If he hasn't accepted the DA's

  deal by then he'll be arraigned on a charge of first degree murder."

  "Punishable by?"

  "In theory, death, but we won't go for that."

  "If you did, Bierhoff should be on a table alongside him."

  "I agree, but there's nothing she can be charged with. I've already

  made sure that she'll live from now on with the knowledge that her

  tongue got a man killed. If this does go to trial the whole of America

  will know it."

  He heard Dekker draw a breath. "Bob, I want to thank you again for

  this."

  "Don't, please. In a way, I'm to blame for it all; if I hadn't gone

  charging back to Scotland it would never have happened. Neidholm and

  Sarah, I mean; sure, Brew might have gone off the rails eventually, but

  probably not."

  "Can you say that for certain?"

  Skinner blinked at Dekker's quiet question, then thought about it. "Can

  I say that my wife wouldn't have had a fling with the guy even if I had

  been here?" he murmured into the phone. "Maybe I don't want to know

  the answer to that, Brad."

  "No. Maybe you don't." He paused. "So what are you going to do

  now?"

  "I'm going to shuffle out of fucking Buffalo, that's what I'm going to

  do. If I can I'll get us on a plane to New York tonight, then back

  home tomorrow. I'll call Clyde Oakdale and ask his office to put

  everything in place."

  "Good luck to you then, sir. Should Sarah be required to testify, I'll

  contact you directly."

  "You may not have to. See you, Brad. Gook luck in the elections ...

  not that you'll need it now."

  He hung up, then called Oakdale at his law firm, and gave him brief,

  terse instructions. When he was finished, he walked upstairs. Sarah

  was in the nursery, playing with Seonaid. She looked at him over her

  shoulder as he came into the room. She tried to read his expression,

  but failed. "Well?" she asked. "Who was that?"

  "The county sheriff," he told her. "You're in the clear."

  She turned and handed their daughter to him, then gave a huge sigh of

  unfettered relief. "Thank you," she whispered, her eyes moistening.

  "Thank you so much."

  "Maybe you should thank her," he said, kissing Seonaid on the forehead,

  'and the boys."

  "No. I'll thank you; no one else could have done it."

  "Eddie Brady should have done it," he replied.

  Sarah rubbed a tear from her cheek. "So that little man actually

  killed Ron."

  "Stone fucking dead, honey. You know what they say; the harder they

  come, the bigger they fall, or something like that." He looked her in

  the eye. "But it's not over. Now you have something else to face. I'm

  taking the kids back to Scotland; we're leaving as soon as Clyde can

  get us on a flight. I won't have them here to be filmed and

  photographed when this thing breaks in the media."

  "And what about me?" she asked, quietly.

  "That's your choice, love. I've told Oakdale to book a seat for you

  too; it's up to you whether you're in it when the plane takes off."

  "What do you want?"

  He laid the wriggling Seonaid on the floor and let her crawl towards a

  toy. "If I was going to kick you out I'd hardly have got you that

  seat, would I? Listen, Sarah; when I went back home to defend my job,

  I rejected you, and not for the first time, either. When you coupled

  with Neidholm, you were rejecting me. All I have to say to you is that

  I regret what I did now. I didn't consider what effect it might have

  had on you, and I apologise for that. As for what you did, I'm not

  going to ask whether you regret that, and I'm not going to make it a

  precondition of coming home. It's your life, and your decision, but

  when you make it, be in no doubt that I want you to come." He reached

  out a hand and touched her face, for the first time since his return.

  "I've taken you for granted; I'm sorry for it." He smiled, faintly. "I

  can't promise that it won't happen again, but
if it does, I'll be sorry

  then too."

  Sarah took hold of his fingers, and held them to her cheek for a second

  or two, then twined her own with them. "Whether you believe this is up

  to you, but when I went to see Ron at his place, when I found him, I

  went there to tell him that I was turning him down and going back to