by Marjorie Orr
She nodded and sighed. ‘And I hadn’t known her that long. But there are no relatives as far as she told me. Her father died a year ago and Erica had said she was the only one to attend his funeral..’
Both sat uncomfortably, eating to avoid talking. Finally she said on impulse: ‘Tell me about Harman Stone.’
He put a bland smile and was about to bat her question back when she pinned him with a straight look. He laughed wryly. ‘What can I tell you? Runs a successful business, though how much that’s down to his father I don’t know. Not a towering intellect. Drinks too much, going to seed a bit. Surrounds himself with pretty boys and passable women.’
‘Samples both?’ she asked, munching a cherry tomato.
‘Don’t know about that,’ he said, frowning in mock disapproval. ‘More he likes to cater for all tastes.’
Seeing her raised eyebrow: ‘No, not that. The boys would be there to entice older single ladies. Or married ones with golfing husbands. It’s all cosmetics and pampering in these kinds of places. Very pricey as well, to safeguard the exclusive brand.’
‘Except,’ she murmured, ‘for the poor kids who get free hols. That doesn’t quite fit.’
‘Being charitable makes the rich feel less guilty,’ he answered shortly. ‘And the brats won’t go when any of their standard clientele are around, I guarantee, and they’ll fumigate the place thoroughly afterwards.’
She continued to push the last remaining piece of chicken round her plate. ‘They don’t quite fit together; father and son, I mean.’
His eyebrows arched. ‘You’re very interested.’
Tire raised her fork to her mouth and replied: ‘I’m just an observer of human nature. I like to know how people tick.’
The waiter hovered with the remains of the bottle of red. Tire shook her head, indicating her half-full glass, so Sebastian’s empty glass was refilled. She reckoned he’d now drunk almost a bottle and a half and was mellowing. A couple of liqueurs might just get him to spill any information he had.
The quiet hum of the restaurant was occasionally punctuated by spurts of laughter from a nearby group of eight, although the tables were far enough apart and the acoustics well designed to keep individual conversations from drifting too far. He leant back in his chair, waving to the waiter to remove the finished plates.
Over the course of the next hour, he ate contentedly through a coconut rice pudding with caramelised mango, of which Tire, under pressure, tasted a teaspoonful, and drank two glasses of Muscat followed by a sizeable cognac. She ordered coffee and, after hesitation, a single malt.
Paul Stone, he said, had made his millions in mining, construction and chemicals in the Far East and South America, then sold up twenty years ago to concentrate on philanthropy and investment.
‘Not English by birth?’ she interjected.
‘He lived in Lebanon for years early on, was my impression. Though he’s not Lebanese. He’s fairly close-mouthed, not the sort to indulge in reminiscences.’ Leaning across, he clasped her hand. ‘There must be more interesting things we can talk about. You for one.’
Tire withdrew her hand abruptly then, seeing his irritated expression, added hastily: ‘It just keeps my mind off Erica, talking about someone else. I know she thought highly of the Stones, both of them.’ Not entirely a lie, she excused to herself.
The second glass of Muscat soothed his sulks and he gave in to Tire’s prompts. Paul Stone had been married, he thought, to a wealthy Iranian who had produced Harman and then been killed when he was months old in a car crash in the Alps. After that, Paul Stone settled in England with his mother, who had died only a few years back.
‘Never remarried?’ Tire asked, mentally storing a note to check out the car crash.
‘Too grief-stricken was the story, I gather. Though Lord knows I wouldn’t have thought he was much given to emotional attachments.’
‘With the exception of his mother,’ she said, as warmly as she could manage. ‘Presumably that’s why the Alzheimer’s research and the Lifelong Friends.’
By this time he was starting to slur his words and leaning on her arm, breathing into her face.
‘Actually, mother was a great mystery,’ he confided. ‘A colleague used to visit their house in Holland Park for business meetings. Said he never understood a word she said. Spoke very thick French or Spanish, he could never work out which. Bit of a peasant and a flirt, which was quite grotesque given her age. He said if she’d been his mother he’d have hidden her away in a sanatorium. But Stone Senior insisted on having her there with carers.’ His lips were beginning to drool.
Tire decided it was time to wind the evening up, nodded at the waiter for the bill and ordered two cabs. He paid up meekly, fumbling in his wallet for his black credit card and muddling the pin code twice before it went through. When he objected to her going home alone, she patted his shoulder and said briskly: ‘Too soon Sebastian, too soon.’ Then swept out as the first cab arrived.
She was sure he didn’t know anything about Erica’s death, but he was bothered about something from that night. Was it worth pursuing? Might have been a sex tryst gone too far. With a client? The rich at play. Russian hookers swinging from the chandeliers more than likely.
CHAPTER 24
The gallery in Bothwell Place, just below the Glasgow School of Art, was already crowded when Jimmy and Elly stepped nervously out of the cab. Jimmy’s new shoes were rubbing his heels and the stiff corduroy trousers felt strange against his legs. Not only had Ricky, the gallery owner, sent them a car for the evening opening, he had also instructed his assistant to ensure they were dressed for the occasion.
She had arrived at their flat bearing a long bright red tartan scarf for Jimmy. He viewed it doubtfully, but was assured it would set off his olive green jacket, bought from the charity shop, perfectly. Elly was handed a black cashmere wrap, which she stroked wide-eyed, saying it was far too good. But she happily discarded her old and only tweed coat, wrapping the fine wool shawl round her skirt and jumper.
Three of Jimmy’s watercolours were on small easels in the window. Two were of Italian gardens with towering cypresses and the third was a meticulously observed, grey-blue aloe flanked by white marble male nudes. Elly had fussed about their genitalia on display, but Jimmy had shrugged and said: ‘I just paint what I see. They’re no obscene if they’re art.’
Inside, expectant faces turned to Jimmy as he entered very slowly, blinking in the light. Clutching Elly by the hand, he tried to find a familiar face and was much relieved to see Len, his social worker, among the blur of people. A round of applause brought a blush to his face and, to his discomfit, tears to his eyes. He stared embarrassedly at his feet, unsure how to respond.
After a minute, Elly took one elbow and Len the other to walk him round his sketches and watercolours hanging inside. There were thirty in all, some fine details of plants, the others the ones Elly disliked: a woman’s face shattered into bubbles, a fish sitting on a television set, a huge ornate key melting over the side of a carved box, two striped dogs with elongated, stilt-like legs unable to reach their food, a tree floating in the sky, its roots dangling into clouds.
‘It is extraordinary,’ a clear-cut voice from the crowd carried across the room, ‘how someone from that background would even begin to know how to paint subjects like these and with such talent and no tuition.’ Jimmy shivered, twisting his borrowed scarf in his fingers.
‘Well, Jimmy, this must be quite a new experience for you.’ Dr Donaghue’s kindly tones behind him made the effort of turning round to face the room easier.
Jimmy smiled shyly. ‘Aye, well, I’ve had a couple of showings at the community centre. But I knew most of the people there. No as posh as this’. He looked round warily, stiffening slightly as he noticed Janet Birch beside Donaghue.
‘I think it is absolutely marvellous,’ she gushed, ‘You must be so pleased. Where do you get your ideas?’
‘Same as most artists,’ he answered after a sho
rt pause. ‘I just paint what’s in my head. Don’t really think about it. Just comes out that way.’
‘So it’s almost like a photographic memory?’ she asked, moving closer than he liked. He shifted back a pace, knocking his shoulder on a frame.
‘Nah,’ he frowned, ‘can’t be a memory since I never seen it before. It’s just in my head, that’s all.’
An arm round his shoulder caused him to flinch and a breeze of tangy aftershave tickled the back of his throat. Bunching a hand to his mouth, he half-turned to see Ricky, in a beige jacket over midnight blue trousers and shirt, with a vivid green, silk cravat, beaming at him. ‘Needed for photographs, my love. Do excuse us.’
Sweeping back a ribbon of black hair off his forehead, he whispered: ‘Buyers love to see photographs out in the media. You’re going to be a star by the time I’ve finished. And I’ve found you a studio, near where you live, so you can start doing oils. They make much more money.’
Jimmy’s head was spinning so he didn’t respond, allowing himself to be moved among the crowd, doing his best to smile or look thoughtful when asked. After fifteen minutes he was getting irritable, so the photographer took him into a large back office. A print of the painting in the front window of the giant aloe and two nudes was sitting framed on an easel.
‘They’re making copies, then?’ he said, puzzled.
‘No. Well, I’ve no idea to be honest,’ the photographer replied. ‘Just makes it easier to photograph without the glass. This one will go out to London magazines and papers. But a good idea. You can make a lot of money from prints.’
He had to take a deep breath before going back into the main gallery, wishing fervently he could go home. He looked down to avoid the blur of interested faces smiling at him. He spotted Elly’s sensible laced shoes among the mass of feet on the far side. Only when he reached her side did he realise she was talking to Janet Birch. He forced a smile.
‘Jimmy, I was just asking Elly about your friend Lachie. This is his gravestone, isn’t it?’ She indicated the watercolour behind them of a solitary tombstone with sea and hills beyond. The inscription ‘Lachie Nichols, 1955–2004’ was clearly visible.
‘Aye,’ he said slowly, ‘I wanted to remember him.’ He blinked back a tear.
Elly patted his arm. ‘Jimmy collected money from all the people who knew him to pay for the stone to give him a send-off. Well, a marker, like. And he wrote the words on the stone as well,’ she added proudly.
Jimmy laughed embarrassed. ‘Nah, I didn’t make them up. They were just words I knew.’
Janet Birch peered at the painting where the first lines of the epitaph were faintly visible, reading aloud: ‘We pray for you, Our Lady, star of the sea.’ She sniffed. ‘How touching.’
Jimmy stared fixedly at the painting over her shoulder, then said quietly: ‘Shine upon us in our distress on the sea of life and lead us to the joys of eternity.’
She turned to face him, her eyes widening: ‘You learned that from someone at the Hall, did you Jimmy?’
He glared irritably at her, wishing she would stop asking questions. ‘I’ve no idea. I just know it, that’s all.’
On the way home in the cab half an hour later, Elly nagged Jimmy about his lack of manners. ‘She’s only trying to be interested. No need to snap her head off.’
‘She just never stops poking and prodding. It gets kind of tiring after a while. If I don’t remember, I don’t remember and there’s no amount of pushing will make me.’
Elly patted him on the knee. ‘Ach well, the evening went well. You must be pleased with seeing all your pictures so well laid out.’
He didn’t answer, staring out at a rain-swept Sauchiehall Street, the crammed tenements giving way to the damp green space below the gothic spires of the university on the hill. His eye switched across the road to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the red sandstone dulled to a deep rust by the constant downpour.
‘D’you know. It’s an odd thing to say, but I sometimes miss the Hall. Outside at least. It was open with green fields, no as cramped and lumped all together as this place is.’
‘Can’t say as I do,’ she murmured doubtfully. ‘All I think of is being freezing cold and no enough to eat. And having to work all the time.’
As the cab turned into the bottom of Byres Road, he sat up straight and said: ‘I’d like to go and see Mary. You remember, she was one of the nicer nurses and there right from the start.’
‘Mary? For heaven’s sake. Is she still alive? She’ll be ancient. What d’you want to see her for?’
‘She was only about nineteen when she went to work there, so seven years older than me. She’d remember Lachie. I’d like to talk to her. Len found her. She’s living in Largs. We could take the train down.’
Elly look astonished and then quizzical. She smiled.
‘So Dr Birch is getting you moving, is she?’ Then, hastily before he could respond: ‘That would be nice. A day out for us. We deserve it.’
CHAPTER 25
Next morning the aroma of sizzling bacon met Tire before she reached the kitchen. Herk pointed a questioning hand at the frying pan crammed with four fatty rashers and two eggs. Wincing a refusal, she wordlessly made herself a coffee and carried it through to her office.
Five minutes later he came through carrying a mug of tea in one hand, his breakfast plate in the other and a bulky packet under his arm, which he offered to her. Between munches that she attempted not to see or smell, he said the surveillance on the watchers yesterday had been useful since he’d managed to get a photograph of one without his helmet. But since they were on foot, he glared at her, they couldn’t follow them.
She filled him in on the evening with Sebastian Crumley. ‘More wisps of mist. There’s nothing solid. Harman Stone is a playboy, none too bright. Senior is an icon of respectability. His mother was a complete fruitcake. And that was pre-dementia.’
Herk fiddled with his mug of tea and said slowly: ’Well, you can always give up, there’s no pressure on you to sort this out.’
She put her feet on the desk and looked over the clouded rooftops. With a break in her voice, she said: ‘But Erica didn’t have anyone else. Sebastian said she was the only one at her father’s funeral a year ago and no one came to hers except colleagues. And they sure as hell are going to do nothing. And the police are stalled.’ A feeling of enveloping loneliness pulled her perilously close to frustrated tears, so she banged her fist on the desk.
‘My vote would be to keep going for the time being,’ she said, her voice still husky.
‘That’s OK by me,’ Herk answered calmly, ‘but it’s equally OK if you decide to call it off and get on with your life.’
Her eyes lit up. ‘Drat, I forgot. Paul Stone’s second wife died as well. I’ll get Matt to check cause of death if he can track down where.’ She scribbled a note. ‘Or ask Harman when we’re in Spain. Simpler.’
‘That’s still on, then? You’ve given up on Wrighton?’
‘Not exactly. I’m just waiting on inspiration to see how to get further into him.’
‘That usually works?’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘You’d be surprised. If I think hard enough, something usually pops out. In the meantime follow what’s available, which is a trip to the Costa Brava.’
She sat up straight, her energy and mood rising. Travel always made her feel better even if this one was on the slimmest of pretexts. If she were to be honest it was really displacement activity. Still, she could always write a newspaper piece on Paul Stone even if he had nothing to do with Erica’s death. That at least would pay for the research expenses and the Spanish trip. Her eye fell on the packet on the desk. ‘That’ll be from Russell,’ she said. ‘His initial report on Stone’s finances.’
‘No. It’s from Harper & James, it says on the back. Ali downstairs said sorry, by the way. Came in yesterday lunch time. He was in the midst of another family panic so somehow it got forgot.’
A lead wei
ght thumped in her heart and she clenched her jaw, staring at the packet as if it was about to explode. Jumping up, she went to the filing cabinet and pulled out the package she had thrown in yesterday. Ripping it open, she found Russell’s papers. She sat down heavily.
‘And what’s that, then?’ he looked closely at her, his eyes alert. ‘Who’re Harper & James?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said tersely.
‘Aye you do. If it’s trouble, you’re best to open it and see the worst. Otherwise it sits there like a lump of undigested food.’
‘I can’t,’ she said miserably. ‘It’s legal papers from my father’s estate and I really don’t want to know.’
‘You’ll never get on with your life if half of you is stuck in the past. Just bite the bullet, preferably before we go to Spain. I want your mind on the job, not wandering around somewhere else.’
They stared at each other for a minute, then she sighed and smiled wryly. ’Who’s organising who now?’
He grinned and got to his feet, saying he was off to check Erica’s flat.
The Harper & James package sat on the side table, lowering at her. She racked her brain trying to find a pressing task to divert her attention, sent several emails, made herself another coffee, smoked another four cigarettes, flipped open Russell’s balance sheets and closed them again. Sibelius’s ‘Finlandia’ was brooding and threatening, in the background, an icy protest against oppression that suited her mood. Finally, with her stomach churning, she reached across and opened it.
Her father’s will sat on top, a short document leaving all his money to her, to be held in a trust till she was twenty-five administered by Albert Fennington of Fennington & Fulsome. Jackson St Clair, of Albany Mansions, London, was named as guardian and executor. There were reams of papers below about payments for her schooling and clothes and, she noted with a grim chuckle, sizeable annual payments to Euphemia Dougall, Isle of Harris, whom she’d thought was a courtesy aunt offering her school holidays out of the goodness of her stony heart. Now she turned out to be a paid retainer.