Crusher

by Niall Leonard

  “Sweet Thames, flow softly …”

  “Serious Organized Crime wants to give you a medal,” said Zoe. “My dad nearly blew a gasket.” We were lying in my bed and she was resting her chin on my belly, looking at the bruise Hans’s heel had made on my sternum. She seemed fascinated by the marks he had left on me, and while we’d been making out she’d somehow managed to nudge every one of them hard enough to make me yell. I wasn’t sure if me nearly getting killed made a difference to her, but it made a difference to me; when she’d walked in I’d gone for her like a randy bear, without the finesse. I hadn’t slowed down till she’d kicked me in the kneecap Hans had stamped on.

  “They’ve been after that guy for years. He was the number one suspect in half the Camorra killings last year.”

  “The Camorra?”

  “The Naples Mafia.”

  “Jesus. There’s no reward, is there? That’d be a lot more use than a medal.”

  “His name was Hans Ostwald.”

  “No shit. He really was called Hans?”

  “Good liars stick as close to the truth as possible.” She pressed her chin into my bruised sternum till I yelped, then grinned in satisfaction and wriggled up to slide her arms round my neck.

  “Does Serious Crime know who sent him?” I said.

  “Of course not. But whoever did must be seriously connected. And there’d be nothing in writing, no emails, not even phone calls.”

  “Great. Maybe I should try to catch the next one alive.”

  Zoe sat up, suddenly grim, and folded her arms across her breasts. “What do you mean, the next one?”

  “Until I find out why my dad was murdered, they’re going to keep coming after me,” I said.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No, but it’d be sensible to assume that.”

  “But you said all your dad’s notes had gone, that there weren’t any clues.”

  “I want to show you something,” I said.

  She sat beside me in the bed as I called up the RTTracker site on my laptop, praying the battery would last long enough to let me log in. It did, and I entered Chris Eccles’s ID and password, and the map appeared: now the red dot with the white label was on the east of the city, flashing at three o’clock inside the orange circle of motorways that ringed Paris.

  Zoe peered at the label. “That looks like a number plate.”

  “It’s the registration of a van belonging to Chris Eccles, the chef. The Guvnor’s borrowed it. Well, not the Guvnor himself, his sidekick James.”

  “Shit, and you’re tracking it?”

  “I think it’s bringing something back from Paris. And when it does, I’m going to go take a look.”

  Zoe was horrified. “Finn, please don’t. I’ve told you about McGovern, everyone has.”

  “If he had my dad killed, I want to know why.”

  “But what if this has nothing to do with your dad?”

  I shrugged. “It’s all I’ve got.”

  “God, you’re so bloody pig-headed!”

  “Yeah, that’s what my dad used to say.”

  The PC wheezed and rattled, then popped up a warning message as the battery ran out. I shut the lid and slid the laptop onto the floor.

  “Will you do something for me?” said Zoe.

  I looked at her.

  “Will you ask your mother about this?”

  “Not just yet,” I said.

  “You don’t trust her?”

  “She’d tell me not to get involved. That I should inform the police, let them handle it.”

  “I like her already,” said Zoe.

  “I don’t trust the police.”

  “Do you trust me?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “Then please don’t do this.” And she kissed me, and this time I didn’t go for her like a bear, and she didn’t poke my bruises, much. But I never answered her.

  * * *

  When Zoe woke me with a kiss the next morning she was already in her school uniform, smelling of soap. “Your shower is rubbish,” she said. I made a grab for her, but she dodged and headed for the door. On the threshold she turned. “What are you doing today?”

  “Going back to sleep.”

  “Are you going to tell the police about that van?”

  “I miss you when you’re not here,” I said. It was a crude attempt to avoid the question, and it didn’t work. She looked at me as if I’d slapped her, and turned away, blinking. “Wait,” I said. I leaped out of bed, grabbed my trousers and followed her bollock-naked down the stairs, getting to the door just as she turned the latch, and holding it shut with my hand. She looked at me with such anger and disappointment I could barely meet her eye. I fumbled in the pockets of my jeans.

  “I changed the locks yesterday,” I said. “Bit late, I know, but …” I pulled the keyring out of my pocket. The keys on it were shiny and new; I offered them to her. “They came with three sets of keys,” I said.

  She looked at the keys, and then at me, and she was thinking really hard about something. I didn’t ask why this was such a big deal because I didn’t want to know. I didn’t think I’d ever understand her—one minute so funny and sussed, the next so vulnerable and bitter she radiated pain.

  “Thanks,” she said, in a small voice. She took the keyring and slipped it into her pocket, so it barely jingled.

  “Will I see you tonight?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  She turned the latch and tugged the door open, and I hopped backwards so it wouldn’t catch my toes when it opened. It was raining slightly and she tugged up the collar of her school blazer, as if that was going to make a difference, and she scurried away without another word or one glance back.

  thirteen

  I never asked Zoe about her mother, I realized later that morning, as I went through my workout. I was so preoccupied by my own it didn’t occur to me. Was her mother around? Was she dead, or separated from her dad? Prendergast wore a wedding ring, I remembered, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe he was the sentimental type, though that didn’t seem likely. Didn’t it ever bother him when she stayed out all night? I wondered what Prendergast had done, or hadn’t done, to make her hate him so much. I wondered if either of them even knew.

  I cursed. I’d lost count of how many press-ups I’d done. Fine, I’d just keep going till I couldn’t do any more. But before I could start again my mobile rang, and that gave me an excuse to knock off. I was out of breath when I answered and my palms were so sweaty I nearly dropped the handset.

  “Yeah, hello?”

  “Who am I speaking to, please?”

  “Finn Maguire,” I said, before I remembered that it was them who had called me, so they ought to know. It was probably some phone spammer, I decided, and I tried to think of a good way to wind them up.

  “This is Nicola Hale, from the law firm Hale and Vora.” Yeah, right. Her name was probably Seema Singh, calling from Huckster & Huckster in Mumbai. “Could you confirm your date of birth, please?”

  “Why don’t you confirm it?” I said. How dumb did she think I was?

  “I’m sorry, I need to be sure I’m talking to Finn Maguire.”

  “You are talking to him. But I don’t know who he’s talking to.”

  “Um—sorry—Mr. Maguire, you may have received a letter from us?”

  That threw me. I glanced through the bills and junk mail that had been piling up on the table. Under a wrinkled menu from a pizza delivery joint was a thick, cream-coloured envelope with Hale & Vora, Something printed in the corner. Solicitors, that was it. Addressed to me. How long had it been there?

  “Eh, yeah. I haven’t opened it yet.”

  “We do need to speak to you, and we were hoping you might be able to come to our office.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss that without establishing your identity.”

  Shit, I thought, it’s the house. The bank must know my dad’s dea
d and they’ve stopped paying the mortgage.

  “Is this about my dad?” I sounded like a lost orphan, I realized.

  “Are you free around four today? We’re at 391 Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”

  “Sure,” I said, my heart sinking.

  “And you will need to bring some ID.”

  Lincoln’s Inn Fields was right on the border between the West End and the City, so there weren’t many fields, just a little park hemmed in by a square of massive Georgian townhouses. The gleaming brass plates beside every door announced the entire square was occupied by law firms, and judging by the Jags and BMWs parked on the off-street forecourts, law firms that made a lot of money. I’d opened the letter—nearly cutting my finger on the rigid flap of the envelope—but even though I’d read it a few times, I still didn’t know what this was about. It simply asked me to contact Kamlesh Vora or Nicola Hale at their offices. If the bank was going to evict me, I thought, it was pretty bloody mean to make me schlep all the way into the City to let me know. But then banks weren’t exactly known for their people skills, in spite of all their cheesy adverts.

  The glass door of 391 was locked. I rattled it and saw the receptionist give me a good look-over before she buzzed me in. You could see her wondering if I was a rough sleeper trying to bum a cup of tea. My battered fibre suitcase didn’t help, and I found myself wishing I’d washed or changed my jeans since splattering garlic butter over them the night before at work. But she clearly decided to live dangerously and pushed the button. I heaved open the plate-glass door and approached her huge wooden counter clutching my little suitcase to my chest like Paddington Bear.

  “Eh—I’m here to see Nicola Hale?”

  “Have you brought some ID?”

  When I slid the suitcase across the beech wood desk Nicola Hale raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow. She was slim, neat and efficient, with blue eyes and long blonde hair, in her late twenties, I supposed. She looked at the case as if it might be full of laundry.

  “It’s all in there,” I said. She was a lawyer, she was paid to read, and if they wanted to evict me I wasn’t going to make life any easier for them. Or admit that I couldn’t make head nor tail of most of the stuff in there.

  “Allow me to express our condolences on the death of your stepfather,” said the bloke I presumed was her boss, who had introduced himself as Kamlesh Vora. He was an old Indian guy, bald on top apart from a neat fringe of white hair, and sporting a silk tie that probably cost more than everything I was wearing.

  “Thanks,” I said. We were sitting in a conference room lined with books so thick you could have built a bomb shelter out of them. Hale had the case open now and was sifting through the piles of documents and the envelopes full of printouts from the mortgage people. She pulled out a bundle of old passports, opened one and glanced across at me: I felt my face starting to burn. I could have brought my old passport and instead I brought an entire bloody suitcase full of bumpf. Why didn’t I just get a friendly passer-by to write “I CAN’T READ” on my forehead? Of course, they might have written “WANKER,” but I wouldn’t have known, would I?

  Hale offered the passport to Vora, who slipped on a pair of glasses to look at it, and nodded to Hale. She slipped the passport back inside the case while he put his glasses away.

  “We act for the estate of Mr. Charles Egerton,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “He was a friend of your father’s. A distinguished actor in his time. We handled his business affairs here in the UK after he retired to Spain.”

  Oh, that Charles Egerton. The one Dorothy Rousseau had mentioned at the funeral, the old man with the beard I could only just remember.

  “Right,” I said. “I met him once, a long time ago. How’s he doing?”

  “Mr. Egerton passed away two months ago,” said Vora. “As I said, we act for his estate.”

  “His estate? You mean the place in Spain?”

  “His entire estate,” explained Hale. “We’re the executors of Mr. Egerton’s will.” She was still browsing through the contents of the suitcase, which I considered rather nosy, now we’d established who I was.

  “He stipulated that his entire estate should pass to Noel Maguire, your stepfather,” said Vora.

  “My father’s dead,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Vora. “We had been trying to trace him, but without success, until his death was reported last week in The Stage.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’d sort of given up, dropped off the radar.”

  “Do you know what your father’s wishes were?” said Vora. “Did he make a will?”

  “Yes,” said Hale. She was holding up a letter she’d taken from an unsealed envelope. She glanced through it. “It’s a standard form, from a newsagent, but it’s been properly signed and witnessed.”

  “When did he do that?” I said.

  She checked the date. “Four years ago. It was very sensible of him,” she said. “Every parent should do it.” Her eyes flicked down the page. “He leaves everything to his adopted son Finn Maguire.”

  “Ah,” Vora said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Does that mean …?”

  “That Mr. Egerton’s estate passes to you? Yes, it does,” said Vora.

  “Sorry, when you say his estate …”

  “Savings, shares and assets valued at roughly eight hundred thousand euros,” said Vora. “Plus the property itself, of course.”

  “Although there will be death duties to pay,” added Hale.

  My mind was racing. I owned a house in Spain? With a shitload of money attached? Then something else occurred to me. “Who else knew about this?” I said. “Apart from you two?”

  Vora opened his hands in supplication. “To the best of our knowledge, no one,” he said. “Mr. Egerton was pretty much a recluse, who had almost no contact with the outside world.”

  I sat there for an hour or two, taking it in. “Holy crap,” I said eventually.

  “Yes,” smiled Vora. “We’re very happy to be the bearers of such glad tidings.”

  “Could we get your bank details?” said Hale, flicking open a notebook and clicking an expensive ballpoint pen.

  “I don’t have any,” I said. “Actually, since my dad died, it’s all been a bit of a mess.”

  I saw Hale look at the paperwork tossed and jumbled in the suitcase, and at me, and decided I’d spare her the trouble of finding a delicate way to phrase her question.

  “I have reading difficulties,” I said.

  She nodded. “Would you like our firm to help you sort everything out?” she said, as if she was offering to do my laundry. Which in a way I suppose she was.

  “How much do you cost?” I said.

  “Not as much as trying to do it yourself,” said Hale. “We’ll save you more than we cost, put it that way.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. I took out my phone and glanced at it. “I have to go to work.”

  Both Vora and Hale looked a little taken aback as I stood up. “Where do you work?” asked Hale.

  “At the Iron Bridge,” I said. “You know, the restaurant.”

  “You’re a chef?” said Vora.

  “I wash saucepans,” I said. “Can I leave that case with you?”

  “Mr. Maguire,” said Hale, “you’ve just inherited half a million pounds. You don’t need to wash dishes for a living.”

  “I know, but I said I’d be there, and now I’m late,” I said. I opened the conference-room door.

  Hale hurried after me. “Please, take my card,” she said.

  I didn’t bother trying to read it, I just stuffed it in the back pocket of my jeans. “Thanks,” I said. “I really have to go.”

  The baggy overalls I wore at work were usually taken away to be laundered—or incinerated, maybe—and a fresh set left on a shelf in the locker room. But when I arrived at the restaurant, ten minutes late, I found the shelf was bare. Tall, skinny Gordon was wearing them at the sink, scraping away at a stubborn lump of pastry. “Hey, Gord
on,” I said, “thanks for filling in. I’ll take over.” He looked at me mournfully like a freshly whipped bloodhound, but didn’t say anything. His eyes flicked over my shoulder.

  “Finn,” said Georgio, behind me, “Mr. Eccles would like to see you.”

  I caught the pitying glances of the apprentice chefs as I trailed after Georgio towards Eccles’s office. I had the feeling they’d seen this before: another failed candidate about to be gutted, roasted, sliced thin and eaten rare.

  Eccles carried on working on his invoices as I stood in front of his desk. I recognized that technique. The headmaster of the first school to expel me had let me stand there for ten minutes before he had finally got round to expressing his disappointment: I hadn’t let him down, he told me, or let the school down, I’d let myself down. He was even more disappointed that evening when he found that someone had slashed his tyres. It would have been funnier just to let them down, of course, but that would have taken too long.

  “Georgio tells me he found you in this office yesterday,” said Eccles. “What were you looking for?”

  “You,” I said.

  He put the last invoice aside. “Here I am,” he said. “What did you want?”

  “Some time off,” I said.

  “How did you get in?”

  I took a deep breath. This schtick was starting to bore me. I knew where this was going, and I wanted to tell him he could shove his job, because I didn’t need it any more—I owned a sodding castle in Spain, apparently. But I realized I liked Eccles, and I didn’t want to let him down.

  “What’s the problem?” I said. “Is anything missing?”

  “No,” said Eccles. “But that’s not really the point.”

  “Georgio doesn’t look after your keys very well,” I said.

  Eccles put his pen down and scratched his forehead. He was trying to figure out how he could ask how much I knew without giving away how much he knew. I didn’t envy him.