by Mark Timlin
Inconvenient, I thought.
‘My father offered to pay for Joanna to have an abortion,’ Elizabeth Pike continued. ‘She refused. She insisted that she loved him. He couldn’t bear the thought of any scandal besmirching the family name. He thought it would kill my mother. It probably would have. My father was a very honourable man, or so he thought.’ Her face twisted slightly at that. ‘His idea of honour was to push the poor woman off to Australia. I tend to think he was just an uptight bastard who couldn’t bear to have his good name dragged through the divorce courts. That would really have besmirched it. Times were different then, even if they did call them the swinging sixties.’
‘You didn’t like your father?’
‘I didn’t say that, but you’re right, I didn’t much. But he changed after my mother died and I did get to like him, and now I miss him. Maybe it really was her he was trying to protect all along.’
‘When did she die?’ I asked.
‘Five years ago. In Australia, of all places. She was on holiday and drowned in an accident on the Great Barrier Reef. She’d always wanted to see it, but Daddy just refused to set foot over there. We always said it was because of Murdoch. We know better now.’
‘We?’
‘My brother and I, Mother too, but of course she’s not here now to know anything.’ She paused sadly. ‘Anyway, where was I?’
‘Your mother died in Australia.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘And?’
‘And my father changed. He told us about our half-sister Catherine. It was a hell of a shock. She’s the same age as me, and I had no idea she even existed. Then I met her.’
‘How old were you then?’
‘When I met her? Twenty-one.’
‘And she was in this country?’
‘Yes, she just arrived one day not long after my mother’s death. She had no relatives in Australia, no one close at all. Apparently she and Joanna had lived like gypsies, moving from place to place since she was born. They always lived in hotels. My father made Joanna an allowance, a generous one at that, but she’s never got over being banished. That was one of the conditions my father made, you see. She must live in Australia and never ever return. Apparently she loathed the place. She was an English rose who just dried up in the heat, and she took to drink.’
‘To keep her moist,’ I said.
Elizabeth Pike looked at me from under thick, dark eyelashes. ‘You’re a cynic, Mr Sharman. I expected as much.’
‘I’m glad I didn’t disappoint you. What were the other conditions?’
‘There were two more. The fact of the child must never be made public, and Joanna was never to get in touch with my father again, or else the deal was off.’
‘But he made it public himself, if I remember rightly.’
‘He allowed it to be made public,’ she corrected me. ‘He said he wanted to stop living a lie. But as I said, he’d changed, mellowed, and by then both the women were dead of course.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Go on with the story.’
She collected her thoughts. ‘Yes, Joanna died in 1982 and Catherine disappeared for a time. There was some trouble with drugs, she went off the rails. She was desperately lonely and scared. Daddy kept paying the allowance into Joanna’s bank, for Catherine, you understand. He arranged it so that she could draw the money, but it wasn’t touched for ages. And then she turned up out of the blue, one day in London.’
‘Quite a surprise.’
‘It was, Daddy nearly threw a fit. He’d never even seen her. Thank goodness she was discreet, and clever too. It was a hell of a job to get to him. All sorts of crazy people try. When you’re as rich and powerful as he was, everyone wants a bit of you, a bit of your time. I think that people thought something would rub off, some bit of his magic.’
‘Or some bit of his cash,’ I said. ‘Sorry, I’m being cynical again.’
‘I’m getting used to it. Apparently she got friendly with one of Daddy’s secretaries, found out where he’d be one evening and turned up.’
‘Didn’t her mother have a contact number or address?’
‘Oh no. No contact under any circumstances.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘Daddy fell for Catherine, literally. He helped her financially – she wanted to be an actress – and bought her a house, although in the end she virtually moved in with us.’
‘Very generous,’ I said. ‘But you told me he’d never seen her. What proof did she have that she was who she said she was?’
‘Everything. It’s all still at the house in Daddy’s safe. Birth certificate, medical and school records, although she didn’t go to school much from what we can gather – she got her education the hard way – her mother’s death certificate and the record of all the payments Father made to her. She also had a scrapbook of anything she had ever found about Robert Pike. That really did it for Daddy. The fact that although he ignored her, she thought enough about him to collect stories about him. Anyway, no one knew about her but Daddy. She could hardly invent herself.’
‘So she could have blown the gaff on the old man at any time?’
Elizabeth Pike’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘Please don’t call him that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and I was. ‘But she could have.’
‘She didn’t need to. He wanted to help her. He felt guilty about neglecting her and, besides, she’s charming as well as gorgeous. You’ll see.’
‘I already have,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Seen her.’
‘Where?’
‘On TV.’
‘Of course.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘There are a couple,’ said Elizabeth Pike. ‘Since my father died, Catherine has changed.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know exactly, but I think she’s scared.’
‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know, she won’t say.’
‘You said “a couple”.’
‘I was coming to that. I’ve been through my father’s records with the accountants. His personal financial records. He was paying Joanna Bennett out of his private bank account, you see, to keep the payments secret. He was paying someone else in Australia too.’
‘Who?’
‘Someone called Joseph Lorimar.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What sort of payments?’
‘Regular large payments, larger than he made to Joanna.’
‘How much and for how long?’
‘They started in 1970. At the time, it was ten thousand a month.’
I whistled. ‘That was a lot then.’
‘It was, and they increased. The last payment was for fifty thousand pounds.’
‘When was that?’
‘The same month that my mother died.’
‘And then?’
‘Nothing.’
‘How was the money paid?’
‘By banker’s draft to the National Bank of Perth. I had some enquiries made. Apparently Lorimar opened the account with a small deposit. The money that my father paid in was withdrawn from various branches of the bank in cash. Not in large enough amounts to cause a stir. No one remembers Lorimar. The official who opened the account is dead. The account is still open but hasn’t been used since the last withdrawal.’
‘So who is Lorimar?’
‘As far as I can ascertain, he doesn’t exist. I’m sure there are people by that name in Australia, but I can’t find any trace of the man who opened that bank account.’
‘And the last payment coincided with the death of your mother?’
She nodded.
‘Just as a matter of interest, where was Catherine when that happened?’
She looked at me and her eyes widened. ‘You can’t think … It was an accident. My mother went out on a charter boat. It hit a submerged wreck. Everyone on board died. You can’t think that Ca
therine had anything to do with it. That’s ridiculous.’
‘It was only a thought, Miss Pike,’ I said.
‘You have a suspicious mind, Mr Sharman.’
‘I am paid to have a suspicious mind. And my suspicious mind asks me why you care so much about your half-sister.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly what I say,’ I said.
‘You don’t know her. I care as much about her as anyone else in the world. She is part of my family, and my family is the most important thing to me.’
The room went silent except for the sound of cars rushing down the main road.
‘So what do you want me to do?’ I asked.
‘I want you to protect Catherine and try to discover what’s bothering her. To try and find out why my father died. To dig around for anything that will explain what happened. I want the truth.’
‘The truth sometimes hurts.’ I knew that for a fact.
‘The truth can also set you free,’ she said. There was no arguing with that. ‘And now we’ve got the clichés out of the way, can we get back to business? My father died under mysterious circumstances and no one is prepared to do anything about it.’
‘I’d hardly say mysterious. Unusual maybe, tragic certainly. If I remember rightly the coroner’s verdict was suicide.’
She looked as if she was going to spit in my eye. ‘You read the papers.’
‘I could hardly have missed it. I read one owned by your father.’
‘Late father.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Which one?’ she asked.
‘The one with the long words and no half-naked women on page three.’
‘A snob, Mr Sharman. It hardly goes with the surroundings.’
I looked around my shabby office and then back at her. Her grooming, even in mourning, made the place, and me, for that matter, look even more shabby. ‘Not all of us,’ I said, ‘were fortunate enough to be born with money and privilege and still do a bit of hoisting on the side.’
‘Rude too,’ she added. ‘I’m glad you can afford to be so cavalier with prospective clients.’
‘I can’t, but I am,’ I said. ‘I choose my clients with care.’ Which I patently don’t.
‘A rugged individualist.’
‘So I’ve been told.’
‘That’s exactly what I need.’
‘Why not use your own people? I imagine a company as big as Pike has its own security force or can tap into one of the big boys for help. And anyway, surely Australia is the place to start.’
‘I’ve got nothing to go on but intuition. The authorities are convinced that Daddy killed himself. And the Australian end dried up with the last payment to Lorimar. I used our people to get the information I’ve given you. Banks don’t give that sort of information readily. And you’re wrong, Mr Sharman, anything that’s happening is happening here, in London.’
‘So get your people here on the job.’
‘I don’t trust them to do it properly.’
‘But you trust me?’
‘You saw me shoplifting and didn’t turn me in, you helped me.’
‘That’s hardly a recommendation.’
‘And I read about your trial in the papers.’
‘Nor is that.’
‘I don’t know. You came out of it all right. You’re honourable, and you’re not bribable.’
‘Everyone is, you’ve just got to find the right bribe,’ I said.
‘And you finish the job,’ she went on as if I hadn’t spoken.
‘There is that, I suppose,’ I agreed drily.
‘Well?’
‘Go to the police.’
‘The police wouldn’t be interested. They’d simply go along with what the coroner said.’
‘That’s fair enough,’ I replied. ‘I’d expect that they would. But you say differently.’
‘I know differently.’
‘How?’
‘I just do,’ she said stubbornly, and I supposed that in her world, when she said something it became true. I felt like telling her to join the rest of us in the real world. But like she said, she was a prospective client and she had money, so I let it ride. Like a jockey.
‘Your father was rich,’ I said.
‘An understatement,’ she replied.
‘Who inherits?’ I asked.
‘Who knows?’
‘You mean you don’t?’
‘My father was very good at keeping secrets. He kept a daughter hidden for over twenty years. He wasn’t an old man and his will was his own affair. Pike Publications will always remain in the family, that I know for certain. Other than that only my father and his solicitor knew. The reading is the day after tomorrow.’
‘Why so long after the funeral?’ I asked.
‘David had to fly to the States immediately and it couldn’t be read without his presence.’
‘Breaths are bated,’ I said.
‘You could say that,’ she replied with the certainty of someone who would never be short of money.
‘Did he leave a note?’ I asked. ‘I can’t remember one being mentioned.’
She shook her head. ‘No, no note.’
‘That is strange, most suicides like to leave a last few words. But then I suppose he lived by words. Maybe he was right out of them.’
‘I can think of no reason why he might kill himself.’
‘You’d be surprised by the reasons that finally make people do it. The last straw can be a very tiny thing.’
She looked over at me and started to cry again, and I realised I was stamping all over her life in my size tens. I went round the desk and squatted awkwardly by her and took her hand. It was a lovely hand, I noticed, with only a single chewed thumbnail to mar it. I could have held it for a very long time. She was trembling and I squeezed her beautiful fingers. ‘I’m sorry if talking about it is making it worse. I’ll do what I can to help, but there’s a lot more I’ll have to know. Can I get you something?’
‘Another cigarette and perhaps some coffee.’
I stood up and handed her another Silk Cut. I prepared two mugs of instant in my little back room. When I took the coffee through she had stopped crying. I lit myself a cigarette too and sipped at my drink. It was disgusting. I could see that she agreed but was too polite to mention it. I liked her for that. Then the cat woke up and jumped onto her lap. I told her to shove him off but she wouldn’t, even when he dug his claws into her expensive skirt and, from the look on her face, the expensive legs beneath. I liked her for that too.
‘By the way. How do you know about all this?’ I asked after a moment.
‘What?’
‘All the details about Catherine and her mother.’
‘From my father. In the end he didn’t mind talking about it. I think he found it was a relief in a way. And from Catherine herself. We’ve become great friends, although she doesn’t like talking about her early life much. It was tough.’
‘But your father never mentioned the other payments. The Lorimar payments?’
‘No, they only showed up since he died.’
‘Who found your father?’ I asked. I hoped that it hadn’t been her.
‘Our butler, Courtneidge,’ she said without self-consciousness, as if everyone had a butler.
‘Forgive me, but I forget, where was this?’
‘In his study.’
‘No, where’s the house?’
‘Our town house, in Curzon Street.’
‘Who else was in the house at the time?’
‘Our two maids, Miranda and Constance, and Cook. Everyone else was out.’
‘Who is everyone else and where were they? I’m just interested,’ I added quickly to forestall any more comments about my suspicious mind.
She thought for a moment. ‘Catherine was at the theatre with Simon. He’s our cousin. He’s a house guest at the moment. Vincent – that’s our chauffeur – drove them. I was at dinner with a friend.’ She reddened slightly and I felt a
twinge of jealousy for the lucky man. ‘And David, that’s my brother, was at a publishing function with his wife Claire.’
‘How long have your servants been with you?’
‘Courtneidge for ever. He joined Daddy just after the war when he started to make money. Cook came to us ten years ago at least. Miranda and Constance have been with us for a couple of years and Vincent started driving Daddy just a few months ago when his other driver left.’
‘I see, everyone accounted for. That’s good.’
‘Do you think that Daddy might have been murdered?’
‘I don’t think anything, yet, but you seem to.’
‘I don’t know what to think. My head aches when I do think about it. I want you to look into it. Will you take the job, please?’
How could I refuse? ‘You’re convinced something is going on, aren’t you?’ I asked.
She nodded.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll see what I can do. No promises, you understand. You might be all wrong about this. When would you want me to start?’
‘I want you to start right now, today. And I want you on hand twenty-four hours a day. You can stay at the house. There’s plenty of room. You’ll be comfortable, I guarantee.’ She went from pleading to bossing in the wink of an eye. Rich people, see.
‘No so fast,’ I interrupted. ‘I can’t just drop everything. I have arrangements to make.’
‘What kind of arrangements?’ she asked, as if I was just sitting around with nothing to do but jump at her command. Which I was in a way, but she didn’t have to know that.
I nodded towards my cat who was lying comatose on her lap. ‘That kind of arrangement, for one thing. I can’t just dump the poor little bugger on the street. I have a friend who’ll take care of him. Why don’t I sort myself out and meet you tomorrow?’
‘Because there’s an important reception we have to attend tonight. I want you there to nose around for information.’
‘Reception?’ I asked, smelling a free drink or ten.
‘Yes, we’re going to the launch of our new magazine. It’s called Cause Célèbre, a sort of glossy mix of Interview and Ritz.’
I was glad that I was hip and knew what she was talking about.
‘It’s rubbish really,’ she went on. ‘But it was my father’s last project. He thought it would sell and who am I to argue?’