DEAD MONEY

by TERESA HUNTER

  “What d’ you mean?”

  “Work it out for yourself.” His next words, he pronounced one at a time, like I was an imbecile. “Who has most to lose?”

  “The other trustees?”

  “Who’s got money a court could come after?”

  “The advisers?”

  “Who’s got the big money?”

  He had lost me.

  “What exactly is your agenda?” My blood was rising. “Who are you working for?”

  His eyes hardened. The glow had gone. My time was up.

  “I don’t see any point in continuing this conversation. I’ve a plane to catch in an hour. I’ve got ….”

  “Don’t tell me ……a parents’ evening.”

  He jumped to his feet. I had gone too far.

  “I think it’s time you left.”

  His dismissal annoyed me, so I went for the jugular, regretting my next words almost before they were out.

  “No wonder your wife left you,” I spat at him.

  “How dare you. How dare you.” He was furious. “Your husband died, so you think that gives you the liberty…”

  “My husband didn’t die…”

  “Philip died. You visited his grave.”

  “Of course, you know everything about me, thanks to your private dick.”

  His face was white with rage. “How can I get it through your thick skull…”

  “And to think I nearly trusted you,” I spat at him.

  “Trust? You don’t know the meaning of the word. Your right hand wouldn’t trust your own left hand.”

  I shook my head. When I spoke again my voice was calm and steady.

  “Philip wasn’t my husband,” I said. “He was my son.”

  With those words, I walked out of the room and slammed the door.

  Chapter 32

  4pm Monday, November 5,

  Whitechapel

  I was still fuming when I got back to the office, although a big part of me was more hurt than angry. He had no right to snoop into my private affairs.

  “That phone’s not stopped ringing for the last ‘alf-hour,” Mina greeted me. “Drivin’ me crazy.”

  “Try answering it for a change, you lazy – ”

  “Julia!” Marsha shouted from her room, stopping me saying something I would regret.

  It rang again, the minute I sat at my desk.

  “Yes,” I snapped down the line.

  It was Ross.

  “Look. We could both have handled that better.”

  I said nothing.

  “Can I apologise. I’ll cancel the flight. Do you want to…”

  “Don’t bother,” I slammed the phone down. What a nerve. After all he had said and done.

  It rang again almost immediately.

  “What now,” I shouted into the receiver.

  “I have a call for you, madam.” It was the refined voice of a Scot. I waited, the line clicked again and, this time, a gentle female voice spoke.

  “I am Mrs Kelly. Mary Kelly. I believe you know my son, Jack.”

  I was stunned.

  “Ms Lighthorn,” she continued. “I’d like us to meet, when you’re next in Scotland. Do you know when you will be coming north again?”

  “My next trip isn’t planned,” I replied.

  “I see. Perhaps you could let us know when you’re next in town. I’m sure a meeting will be useful for us both.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Good. I’ll put my secretary, Angus, back on the line.”

  I scribbled down her number, although this was one invitation I would be in no hurry to accept. I could imagine the white-washed version of events, I would be force-feed. These old dames excelled in blanking out reality, where their precious family was concerned.

  I hadn’t long hung up when the phone rang again. It was Pitcher.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m in the Blind Beggar, waiting for someone to buy me a pint.”

  “What do you do with your police salary?” I snarled.

  “Oh well, I’ll keep my bit of news to myself then.”

  “Get the order in, I’ll be down in five.”

  Pitcher was standing at the bar, sipping his pint. I ordered a half, and paid for them both. We moved to a table and sat down.

  “So what’s new?” I began.

  “Hello, inspector, how are you, what have you been getting up to today?” he said, sarcastically.

  “Yeah, well, all of that too.”

  “My, my, someone has upset you.”

  “The only person who upsets me, is you,” I glanced irritably away from him and round the bar, where notorious east end gangster Ronnie Kray had shot dead his gangland rival.

  “And I thought I was your angel.”

  “Angel of darkness.” The murder, for which the Kray’s were finally jailed, took place in full view of countless witnesses.

  “That’s hurtful.”

  “The problem with criminals,” I said, going off on a tangent, “is they get arrogant and start to believe they’re untouchable,” I said, not only thinking of the Krays.

  “Same could be said of journalists,” he replied.

  “Not to mention the police...”

  “Change the record, Hawthorn. Do you want my news or not?”

  I nodded.

  “First, tell me, how you got on with Mrs Livingstone.”

  “Buy the newspaper.”

  “Can’t afford it. OK, OK!” He held up both hands as to surrender. “I was only joking. What has got into you today?” He took a sip of his bear. “I’ve read your pieces. Learn anything else?”

  “Not anything you don’t know.”

  “No. I guess not. But your favourite inspector does have some news for you.”

  “As in?”

  “Remember the Hannigan case?” How could I forget.

  “The one Raeburn suggested Strachan had taken a back-hander over?”

  He nodded. “We sent someone to make inquiries. There may have been something in those stories.”

  My stomach churned.

  “Hannigan was paid to go home,” he continued.

  “Did it have anything to do with Strachan?”

  “He arranged the deal.”

  This sounded bad.

  “What deal?”

  “The kid got £10,000 to go home. It kept the bigots at the works happy and production flowing.”

  “I see. How was he? Angry?”

  “Not about going home. It was what he wanted. He’d had his fill of bonny Scotland. Things worked out OK for him. Strachan found him a job, a good job. The payoff allowed him to buy a house. He loves the guy, eternally grateful.”

  “Did he think Strachan took a bung?”

  “Extremely unlikely he thought. Couldn’t see it at all.”

  “Any report on the other accusation.” I couldn’t bring myself to say paedophilia.

  “I’m still looking.”

  I told him about the call from Mary Kelly.

  “Interesting. Will you be going?”

  “I’ve no plans right now.”

  I wanted to tell him about Ross and the private eye, but something held me back.

  Instead, I said, “I don’t trust Ross.”

  “You don’t trust anyone.” He was right enough there.

  “You don’t think he could be in league with...”

  “Kelly? No chance.”

  “What about the actuaries or the bankers?”

  “He’ll be working with anyone he can to sort this mess out.”

  His words had the ring of truth.

  “Sherlock?”

  “Only if he can find them, when no one else can.”

  He was quiet for a moment, thinking.

  “There’s something else you should know,” he began slowly. “The word on the street is that someone is offering a big reward for information.”

  His eyes went to a line of men standing at the bar. He had informants all over London.


  “About what?”

  “The offer’s vague. But there’s a big reward out for information about Strachan’s death and anything connected with it.”

  “The pension, the missing girl….”

  “I guess.”

  “How much?”

  “Hold onto your tonsils, Lightweight…… it’s for half a million.”

  “Christ, that should flush something out.”

  “You’d think so, always supposing there’s something to flush out.”

  Pitcher dipped his middle finger into his glass.

  “What d’you think, Pitcher? You never said? What do you really think happened that night?”

  “It’s not what I think, it’s what I know.”

  “As in?”

  “There was no suicide note.” His glass chimed, as he ran the finger round the rim.

  “There was a note,” I said. “That young police officer said there was at the inquest.”

  “He said what he was told to say,” he took a swig of his beer, then stared at the glass, as if concentrating hard.

  “Sugden confirmed it. He said it was Ken’s writing,” the words tasted bitter in my mouth.

  “He confirmed nothing,” the glass chimed as he stroked the rim again, lower this time, a sustained ringing. He continue: “I told you that inquest was pure theatre. Did you see his hand shaking? And the way he squinted at that note? And the light over the witness box? He’s short-sighted. Didn’t even put his reading glasses on.” He took a final swig, emptying his glass, before handing it to me.

  “Your turn I think,” I rose and went to the bar.

  “So they brainwashed Jim, convinced him, Ken had left a note,” I said, when I sat again with our drinks.

  “Trust me, there was no note,” Pitcher sipped his pint.

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked.

  “If there’d been one, I’d have seen it,” he had a strange look in his eyes. And suddenly the fog cleared.

  “You were there, weren’t you?” I said, as the penny finally dropped. “At the scene of the murder?”

  He nodded slowly. “They knew there’d be an outcry over the delay going in. So they called for a tame copper to give them a clean bill of health. Thought someone from the Met would have bigger fish to fry, than worrying about a domestic.”

  “Pitcher, I’m sorry. I never knew. It must have been awful.”

  “Awful…. I’m a police inspector.”

  “Even so…tell me about it.” I desperately wanted to hear, in his own words, what he’d seen that night.

  But he wasn’t playing ball.

  “You’ve heard it all already at the inquest, except for the note.”

  “You say you don’t believe there was one. Why?”

  “Nothing had been removed from the house, when I entered it, except for Emma, the daughter, who was being brought out on a stretcher when I arrived. There was no note on his desk.”

  “What if someone had moved it before you got there?”

  “Well, if they did, it has vanished now, just like the forensics?”

  “Gone from the file?”

  He nodded. I could hate Pitcher for always being two steps ahead of me.

  “You think it was a forgery?”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. It could have been Strachan’s writing, they may have found a note he started to write about something entirely different.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “No, not really.”

  “What do you think happened then?” I continued.

  “I don’t know. He could have killed them and shot himself. Anything else doesn’t make sense. Why would an outsider wipe out a whole family? It doesn’t add up.” He was right.

  “Did you realise the wife and kids had been away for a few days at her sister at Inverness?” I asked.

  “Yes, she told us. How did you know?”

  I pretended I couldn’t remember. I’d never told him about the diary.

  “What if they weren’t meant to be there?” I added. “What if they came home early?”

  “It’s a possibility, I suppose, she didn’t say.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “I’m not sure we did. I’ll call her tomorrow.” He looked at his watch. “It’s gone six, I’d better be going.”

  “Me too.”

  I headed to the tube, while Pitcher walked back down the Whitechapel Road. I watched him stroll along the stalls. What a day. First the business with Ross, and then the disclosure Pitcher had been at the scene of the murder. I was beginning to suspect, I might have read him all wrong from the start.

  I stood watching him still, when my mobile rang. It was Ross.

  “Look, I want to apologise. We need to talk...”

  “I thought you had a parent’s evening...”

  “I’m still down here. I thought...” suddenly, I felt sorry for him.

  “I see,” the heat had gone out of my anger.

  “Look, the meeting with that private eye. There was nothing sinister about it. I don’t know why you reacted – ”

  “You think I over-reacted?”

  “I’m not saying that,” he was struggling to be diplomatic.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” the fight had left me.

  “Let me buy you supper.”

  “I thought you’d already eaten?”

  “I can cope with lunch and dinner.”

  I wasn’t sure I could. “I was looking forward to a quiet night,” I said. He chuckled at the other end of the line.

  “It’s firework night. You can’t possibly have a quiet night. There’s a display starting on the Thames in half- an- hour. It might be fun.”

  In the end, I agreed to meet him by Cleopatra’s Needle. Fun was something I could do with, it had been in short supply. If nothing else, I could clear up, once and for all, what he was doing with the woman, who had been following me for days.

  Chapter 33

  6.45pm Monday, November 5

  Ross was waiting for me by the Needle, as we agreed, and my heart melted the moment I saw him. It was already dark, there was no moon, but the river was lit on both banks, and across its bridges. It didn’t need fireworks to look magical.

  He had secured a spot down by the waterfront, and waved for me to join him. I felt a warm rush, when he placed an arm around me to ease me into the gap.

  The fireworks began almost immediately, to William Walton’s Battle in the Air music. A colony of silver spiders, swarmed in the black from the south bank in our direction, to the edgy violins. We watched in silence, as they got nearer, beautiful, but creepy. They finally exploded above our heads in a cascade of diamonds to piercing “oohs” and “ahs” from the crowd.

  Blue fountains, like torchlights scouring the river, were lit next, to a quieter section of the music, making speech finally possible.

  “Enjoying it?” Ross asked. I detected a trace of nervousness behind his warm smile.

  “It’s great, particularly the music,” I smiled back.

  “Spitfire music, hmm,” he grinned, “very apt.”

  The fireworks and music were getting louder, so he drew close and whispered in my ear.

  “Look I’m sorry about earlier. I can see how upset you were. This woman rang me and asked to meet. I knew absolutely nothing about any surveillance.”

  A battery of rockets whooshed into the sky, like a doodlebug attack, lighting the darkness red, gold, blue and yellow, with ear-splitting blasts. A dog standing nearby started to bark furiously. Another volley followed immediately, and another. The crowd was screaming with delight and terror. Ross moved towards me, again, and this time shouted in my ear, in order to be heard above the crowd.

  “You don’t think you could be mistaken do you? It seems a bit…”

  His next words were drowned out by a massive detonation of firecrackers, sizzling and blistering, like popcorn in boiling oil. I was beginning to feel I had seen and heard enough.

  “This is hopeless,” I poin
ted back to the road. “Let’s walk, we can enjoy the fireworks, without being deafened.”

  He smiled, and we moved away from the river frontage, passing some children, with fists full of sparklers, who were painting weird, glittery patterns around the Needle.

  “Did she ask about me?” I asked, as the bangs faded.

  “A bit.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Not much,” he could be infuriatingly discreet.

  “Did she say who’d instructed her?”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” he shook his head.

  “But you have an idea?”

  “I could guess.”

  “It must be Kelly or Cameron,” I suggested, but his face was a mask. Whatever he thought, he was giving nothing away.

  “If you think you’re being followed you should tell the inspector,” he changed the subject.

  “I have. He told me to see a shrink.” Ross swallowed a laugh, before trying, with only limited success, to straighten his face.

  “So I’ve no intention of mentioning it to him ever again,” I continued, ignoring his enjoyment of the joke at my expense. “Someone is anxious for information, though.”

  I repeated Pitcher’s news that someone was offering half-a-million for a lead.

  “Phew,” he whistled. “That’s a great deal of money.”

  I also told him about Pitcher being present at the crime scene, but this didn’t seem to come as news.

  We were crossing Waterloo Bridge as Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance began to boom from of the loudspeakers. The river lit up, as a million candles gushed colour into the darkness. A group of tourists moved from one side of the bridge to another, leaving a gap by the wall. We moved into their space, and watched the spectacular finale from on high. When the music reached Land of Hope and Glory, the crowds were singing with all their might, but you couldn’t hear them for the batter of blasts, as a barrage of rockets again lit the sky, showering rubies, emeralds and diamonds down onto the silver-glistening water below.

  And then it was over, and people started to drift away. We continued to cross the bridge in the direction of my home.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” he said, when we reached the bank. “There are some good restaurants further along.”

  We continued walking. I told him about my meeting with Jack Kelly, the dinner at Loch Lomond, and seeing Ragland. He didn’t seem to think it was suspicious.