Last Will

by William McIntyre

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked.

  Zander had come to meet me at the warehouse with a wad of cash and handed it over assuming I was somebody I wasn’t. If, for what reason I still had no idea, he had organised the hit on Daisy, he must have known that one of the assassins was dead – the murders at Sunnybrae Farm had been widely reported. That meant he would also know that one of the assassins was still at large. Did Zander think that was me?

  Zander nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again.

  I tried another tack. ‘Who do you think I am?’

  He sobbed and took in a big gulp of air, then another and another. He was starting to hyperventilate. I ran some cold water in the sink, cupped my hands under the flow and threw it in his face. It didn’t compare with smearing dog food on his chest and threatening him with a hell-hound, but then I wasn’t dealing with an Italian gangster. Zander would probably have been just as terrified if he knew I was wearing navy-blue socks with my charcoal suit.

  At the impact of the water, he sat bolt upright as though I’d hurled acid, the scared look for a moment transforming into one of angry petulance.

  ‘I paid you your money!’ he shouted.

  I clamped my hand over his mouth and pointed a finger at him. ‘Keep the noise down. Understand?’

  He stared at me for a second or two and then nodded. I took my hand away. ‘Good. Then let’s talk about the money. Why did you give it to me?’

  Zander looked at me narrowly. The brain behind those teary eyes whirred. He had to wonder why I’d be asking such a stupid question.

  I clenched a fist and held it right where he could see it. ‘Tell me.’

  For just a moment it looked as though he might, and then the door burst open. Into the room, crutches first, came Ursula Pentecost, all yellow taffeta and lace underskirts. Behind her the tanned doorman and behind him Malky.

  ‘Right then, I’ll just away and leave you to sort things out,’ my brother said to no one in particular. ‘Nice to see you again . . . Mrs . . . Dame . . . Ursula . . . ’ he tailed off and disappeared.

  Ursula Pentecost leaned on one crutch, pointing the leg of the other directly in my face. ‘Got you!’ she said. ‘Right, this time I want to know exactly what is going on.’

  Zander’s attempt at a protest was cut off when the crutch-leg swung in his direction and the rubber stopper planted itself in his chest.

  ‘Not here,’ Ursula said. She lowered the crutch, performed a clumsy pirouette and hobbled out again.

  The doorman crooked a finger at us, and like a pair of naughty schoolboys we followed him, Zander still clutching the towel to his groin, out of the door and further along the same corridor to a much larger and more extravagantly furnished room; Diamond Dave’s personal quarters I presumed, whoever and wherever he was.

  At that moment I could have just left. What could anyone do if I insisted on leaving the party I’d gatecrashed? I hadn’t broken any laws, unless throwing water in your host’s face was a crime. But I decided to stay. I wanted to winkle out a lot more information from Zander and had a feeling that where I had failed Dame Ursula might succeed.

  ‘Let me help you with those.’ I caught Dame Ursula’s crutches as she lowered herself onto a cream chaise-longue. Though there were other equally comfortable-looking seats in the room I had a feeling the rest of us were expected to stand.

  Once she had flattened her frock and got herself settled, Dame Ursula dismissed the doorman with a regal wave of the hand.

  ‘Zander, you have some explaining to do,’ she said, once the man with the tan had left, closing the door behind him. ‘First, you meet a strange man in an empty warehouse, now in a cupboard. Stephen’s barely been dead a month and already you’re putting some kind of plan into action. What is it? A takeover bid? Is it not enough that he left you one-quarter of the business? What scheme are you hatching?’

  She turned an accusing eye in my direction.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ I said, ‘I’d like to know what scheme he’s hatching too.’

  Dame Ursula leaned back, layers of lacy underskirts billowing her yellow dress about her. ‘You can stop the innocent act now, Mr Munro. I know you’re in on this. And to think you nearly had me believing all that murder investigation nonsense.’

  Zander leapt back as though someone had plugged him into the mains. He dropped the towel. The dark stain remained in his groin and had spread south. ‘I had nothing to do with any murder.’

  ‘Is that right?’ I said. ‘You had nothing to do with a woman who was strangled to death in her own home? Her daughter left terrified and living in squalor for a week. You don’t know anything about that?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That had absolutely nothing to do with me.’

  ‘She had a mobile phone,’ I said. ‘It had only one number on it – yours.’

  Zander didn’t respond so I continued. ‘I still have the phone.’ I took it out of my suit pocket and tossed it into Dame Ursula’s lap. ‘I should have handed it over to the police, but I don’t trust them to keep as open a mind about things as I do. They’ve got my client locked up and are unlikely to place much store in anything that doesn’t point to his guilt. I, on the other hand, find it all very strange.’

  Dame Ursula extricated the phone from the folds of bright-yellow fabric and examined it carefully. She tapped the screen and scrolled through the call logs. It didn’t take long. One final tap and the strains of a musical ringtone could be heard emanating from Zander’s suit pocket.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Zander asked me. ‘We had a deal.’

  I had to disagree. ‘No, we didn’t. You had a deal with someone, but it wasn’t with me. I don’t kill women and terrify children. I am a—’

  ‘You’re a lawyer!’ Zander screamed, face crimson, a bright-blue blood vessel proud on his forehead. ‘What happened was supposed to be done in the strictest confidence. You know fine well that was the arrangement. What is it?’ he sneered. ‘You’ve had your money and now you want more, so you’re piecing together a story linking me with the murder of Daisy Adams in order to blackmail me?’ He turned to the Dame. ‘That’s what this is, don’t you see? This man is nothing but a shake-down artist.’ If he was seeking support from his boss he wasn’t finding any. ‘You’ve got to believe me, Ursula. I’ve done nothing wrong. This man is making everything up. He wants money or he aims to blacken the name of the House of Pentecost.’

  Dame Ursula reached out a hand to me and let me help her to her feet. She hobbled over to where her crutches were propped against the wall. ‘I’d like to believe you, Zander,’ she said, putting her hands through the grey plastic arm-supports. ‘But there’s just one tiny thing bothering me.’ She walked up to the young man and stared him in the eye. ‘I don’t recall Mr Munro mentioning the name of the murdered woman. So how do you know it?’

  Zander held his hands out by his sides to steady himself, like a man on his first day at surfing school. I thought for a moment he was going to faint. I grabbed him. He pushed me away. Beads of sweat had gathered in the roots of his hair. One or two ruptured and began to trickle down his broad and rapidly paling forehead. He wiped them away with the back of a hand. ‘I need a drink,’ he croaked.

  ‘You need a fresh pair of trousers too,’ Dame Ursula said, pushing past him and propelling herself towards a drinks cabinet in the corner of the room. Leaning on one crutch she filled a tall glass with ice, poured a shot of gin over it, added a dash of Angostura bitters and topped it up with tonic. ‘Mr Munro? What’ll you have?’

  Seeing how she was asking, I walked over to view what there was in the way of single-malt and settled for a Benromach ten-year-old; in my dad’s humble opinion the best-value malt out there, and for him to say that about a spirit not distilled on his beloved Islay was praise indeed.

  ‘I take it yours is a vodka martini?’ she asked the man in the damp trousers, pushing the cork back into the neck of the whisky bottle. ‘Sorry, we’re out of olives.’
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  But the young man seemed to have lost his thirst. ‘Munro . . . ’ he said. ‘Did you call him Munro? I thought his name was Munn. Barry Munn.’

  49

  The bottle of ten-year-old Highland malt was one hour older and a couple of inches shallower by the time Zander had finished his own drink, sent out for a change of clothes and finished putting things straight with his boss.

  Dame Ursula had asked for the truth and had been given it, both barrels at close range. Her husband was a womaniser. The quickest way to get on the front cover of a fashion magazine was to go under the covers with Sir Stephen.

  At first Dame Ursula wouldn’t believe it. She knew all about La-La Delgado. The affair had threatened their marriage and nearly brought down the House of Pentecost. Stephen would never have dared run such a risk again.

  Oh yes he would. I listened intently as strip by strip Zander peeled away the layers of intrigue and disguise that had been the clandestine love life of Stephen Pentecost, reeling off a list of names, each one a razor-slash to Dame Ursula’s self-esteem. She might have thought her husband had trespassed just the one time; that was because she’d only managed to catch him once. The reason she was unaware of the scores of others was largely down to Zander, who for years had been tasked with concealing Sir Stephen’s indiscretions from both the public and his wife. He’d bribed hotel staff, eased the pain of jilted lovers with jewellery and bought the silence of over-inquisitive journalists with extravagant nights out and trips to exotic locations.

  Over a few drinks Dame Ursula’s initial denial turned to disbelief and, eventually, acceptance. The woman in the bright-yellow gown who had earlier blazed at us like some kind of angry sun-goddess, now sat on the chaise-longue, a wilted daffodil.

  ‘And where does Barry Munn fit into all this?’ I asked.

  Zander seemed much more relaxed in his recently delivered clothes, a dark grey suit and lilac shirt. He walked over to the drinks cabinet and poured his boss another stiff one. ‘Most of Stephen’s . . . well, most of them were one-night stands. Sometimes they’d last a week or two if we were off on a shoot. Usually, the girls knew the score. There was nothing permanent about the arrangements. Stephen never left them in any doubt about that. La-La was different. He became infatuated, careless. I couldn’t buy off everyone who owned a camera. It was just a matter of time. The best I could do was leak the story the day after the General Election. It got some coverage. Nothing like it would have on a slow-news day.’

  Zander mixed himself another drink and sat down beside his boss. ‘You think it was you who drove La-La away?’ he said, handing her a tall glass. ‘It wasn’t. It was me.’

  ‘How could you?’ she said. ‘After all I’ve done for you. Why didn’t you tell me this was going on?’

  Zander’s laugh was as dry as his martini. ‘Honestly? I didn’t think you’d want to know.’

  ‘You didn’t think I’d want to know that my husband was cheating on me with the owners of every pair of legs that strutted our catwalk?’

  ‘Your not knowing kept you and Stephen together, kept the House of Pentecost standing . . . and there was something else.’ Suddenly the young man didn’t look so young. ‘La-La was going to have a baby.’

  Dame Ursula’s body went rigid at the news.

  Zander put a comforting arm around her shoulders. ‘Stephen didn’t know. If he had, he would have encouraged La-La to have it. I booked her into a private and very discreet clinic in Switzerland.’

  ‘She had the baby. You know that, don’t you?’ I said. ‘A wee girl called Molly.’

  Dame Ursula stared into her drink.

  Zander tightened his arm around her. ‘The minute the thing was born La-La tried to put the squeeze on Stephen. I intercepted her call. She thought she could blackmail him, screw him for money for herself and the child for evermore. I told her it would never work. The minute Stephen’s name went on the birth certificate, he’d have had the lawyers onto it.’

  You didn’t need to be an expert in family law to guess how the case of Pentecost v Delgado would have gone. Rich Establishment Figure v Junkie Mum. Not so much a custody battle as a massacre.

  Dame Ursula knocked back her drink in one go. ‘How can you be so sure the child is his?’

  Zander took the empty glass from her. ‘I had tests carried out. Told Stephen we needed a blood sample to check on his cholesterol level. It’s his all right. After that I explained to La-La in words of one syllable that if news got out, the child would be taken from her. She had a choice to make. She chose to keep the baby and to keep quiet about it. For her discretion, I kept her on the House of Pentecost payroll with a small monthly retainer.’

  The more Zander explained, the more admiration I had for him. After the car crash in the Highlands Sir Stephen had lain in a coma for months while the doctors tried everything they could to save him. After a time it became apparent that no more could be done and it was just a matter of deciding when to turn off the life support, something his wife had tried to delay indefinitely. Dame Ursula had been a basket case throughout much of her husband’s hospitalisation. Sir Stephen was dying, she couldn’t walk and there was only Zander keeping their business alive. That was when the issue of Molly’s parentage had arisen once again, though, by this time, La-La had been dead for a few years.

  ‘I thought that when La-La died, the identity of the child’s father had died with her.’ Dame Ursula declined Zander’s offer of a refill and let him continue. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘during Stephen’s last days, I received a call from the Adams woman to say that when he died, the child would have a claim on his estate.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Dame Ursula was starting to pull herself together. ‘Stephen left a will. I’m sure you’re very familiar with its terms, Zander, since he left one-quarter of his share in the House of Pentecost to you.’

  Zander looked at me invitingly.

  ‘In Scots law there are such things as legal rights,’ I said. ‘They take priority over a will. I suppose the idea is to stop parents cutting their children out of an inheritance.’

  Suddenly Dame Ursula seemed less distressed and a lot more alarmed. ‘How much?’

  ‘One-third of the moveables,’ I said.

  ‘And those are?’

  ‘Cash, cars, insurance policies, savings, shares, anything not classed as heritable property, like land and buildings.’

  Dame Ursula’s condition had advanced from a state of alarm to one of shock. Zander set down her empty glass, took her hand and stroked it. ‘Don’t worry. I took care of things. Mr Munro will explain why, but once a person is adopted they no longer inherit from their natural parents, only from their adoptive ones.’

  I remembered my conversation with Vikki the day of our almost kiss. How Daisy had sorted her life out and applied to adopt Molly. Though I didn’t know much about the actual procedure, I assumed that was when Barry had entered the picture. La-La and Daisy were friends at the time of the baby’s birth. La-La must have confided in Daisy and she had told Barry.

  ‘So,’ Zander said, ‘you can appreciate how vital it was that the adoption went through before . . . before . . . ’

  Before they pulled the plug on Stephen, he meant, but didn’t say. If it was all Barry’s idea, it was a good one. Molly was being adopted anyway; why not make a few quid out of it?

  From the look on Dame Ursula’s face she was having great difficulty taking it all in. ‘What does it mean for me . . . ?’ She squeezed Zander’s hand. ‘For us?’

  ‘It means Molly’s out of the picture and Stephen’s estate is all yours,’ I said. ‘Apart from Zander’s quarter-share and what Barry Munn took for his troubles.’

  ‘His demands weren’t all that high,’ Zander said lightly. ‘A country property for his client and a cash sum for his legal services.’

  ‘How big a cash sum?’ I asked.

  ‘Fifty. Half upfront. Half on completion.’

  ‘You seem to have been acting fairly free with the Pentecost ban
k account,’ Dame Ursula said.

  ‘Would you have stopped me?’

  ‘What about our meeting in the warehouse?’ I asked.

  Zander stood up. ‘I’ve never actually met Munn, never even spoken to him. All my dealings were done through his client. Daisy said Munn was way too cautious to become personally involved. He just saw to the legal work. House of Pentecost purchased the farm for two hundred and fifty thousand and transferred title to Daisy. The first instalment of cash I delivered personally to her a couple of months ago.

  It began to make sense. Sort of. When I’d phoned Zander he must have thought I was Barry who, in Daisy’s absence, had come to collect the rest of the money.

  ‘So you see, Mr Munro. Before you go accusing anyone of murder you should really get your facts straight. I had absolutely no reason to kill Daisy Adams. In fact, Daisy did Dame Ursula and me a great favour. Our shares in the House of Pentecost secured for a measly three hundred grand? That, I think you’ll agree, was an excellent piece of business, and . . . ’ Zander got to his feet and walked across the room, ‘all perfectly legal.’ He opened the door. ‘Mr Munro is leaving,’ he told the doorman. The man with the tan stepped into the room and politely gestured to the exit.

  I looked down at Dame Ursula.

  She didn’t look up. ‘Goodbye, Mr Munro.’

  As I turned to leave, the side of my face met the flat of Zander’s hand. It was a feeble blow. ‘I take it you have the twenty-five thousand you stole from me?’ he said. I felt the doorman’s vice-like grip on my upper arms. It was pointless struggling and, anyway, I’d deserved it.

  ‘Strangely enough not on me,’ I said. ‘But it’s safe.’

  ‘Then as per my arrangement I’ll expect you to account to Mr Munn for it.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m going to.’