Last Will

by William McIntyre

  ‘I like your hair.’ It’s important to at least pretend to notice when a woman’s had her hair done. ‘Is it shorter?’ Again, another safe line because, although it’s difficult to get hair cut longer, it still sounds as though you were paying attention to the state the hair was in previously.

  ‘It’s exactly the same,’ Vikki said. ‘I never made the hairdresser’s, I was way too busy.’

  ‘Still,’ I said lamely. ‘I like it.’

  Sandy came back, set the snowdrops in between us and added Vikki’s request for a latte to my order.

  ‘So Barry told you?’ I said. ‘About Molly?’

  Vikki smiled and rubbed one of the plastic snowdrops leaves between her fingers. ‘Can you believe it, after the way I treated him? It looks like he may have saved the day. Saved Molly from a life in a children’s home anyway.’

  How entirely predictable of Barry to take all the credit for my work.

  ‘Not that he knew what he was doing,’ I said. ‘He didn’t know anything about it until I told him last night.’ There was no way to say it modestly. ‘If anyone’s saved Molly, it’s me.’

  Vikki sat back abruptly almost bumping into Sandy who’d arrived with my coffee. ‘You, saved Molly?’

  ‘Of course me.’

  Vikki didn’t seem to be taking me seriously.

  ‘What did you do?’ she asked, smiling expectantly as though waiting for me to deliver a humorous punchline.

  ‘What do you think I’ve been doing these past few weeks?’ I said. ‘Obviously, I’ve been looking after Tina, but, in any spare time I’ve had, I’ve been making enquiries. Enquiries that I’m pleased to say have been to Molly’s benefit. So, you see, if I’ve been in any way remiss in not giving my daughter my full attention, it’s only because I’ve been trying to help out another wee girl. A more disadvantaged wee girl.’

  Vikki hadn’t moved since I began my little speech. Sandy arrived with her latte. She picked it up, brought it to within six inches of her lips and then set it back down on the table.

  ‘Let me get this straight. You’ve been spending the last few weeks trying to find Molly a new mum?’

  ‘Yes . . . what? No.’

  ‘That’s what Barry just might have done.’

  If I’d had a mirror I might have been able to work out which of us looked the more confused. ’When did you last speak to Barry?’ I asked, after a drink of coffee, hoping the injection of caffeine might assist my thinking process.

  Vikki pouted and frowned. ‘Couple of weeks ago. He probably doesn’t know what he’s done yet. Which is good, because it will give me some time to think up an apology.’

  Now I was completely lost.

  Vikki lifted her latte glass. ‘In case you didn’t know, I was furious with Barry,’ she said, taking a sip of hot coffee through the froth. ‘I’m still a bit annoyed. His delaying Molly’s adoption means she won’t inherit Sunnybrae Farm and it will end up going to some long-lost relative, a laughing heir in Canada or somewhere or, if there are no takers, to the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer.’ Vikki drank some more milky coffee. ‘Now it looks like thanks to Barry insisting that intimation of the adoption be made to certain relevant people the Local Authority thought irrelevant, Molly may have a possible contender for Mum. I didn’t even know she had an aunt in Portobello. I took Molly to see her yesterday afternoon, we had a good long chat and . . . ’ Vikki checked her watch. ‘I’m expecting her to arrive any minute, so . . . ’ She held up a hand, fingers crossed.

  Over Vikki’s left shoulder, I could see Sandy at the counter, winking at me and signalling his approval by placing a hand on a bicep and raising a straight forearm.

  ‘Now then. What’s your good news?’ Vikki asked, oblivious to the café owner’s gestures.

  I’d been planning what to say most of the afternoon. I wanted to take my time, lay out my investigations in detail, demonstrate how much work I’d done and why it could only be expected that, in turning Molly into a very rich young woman, I may have on occasion had to leave Tina in the care of others. Instead I blurted, ‘Molly is the love child of Sir Stephen Pentecost and heir to part of his fortune.’

  It took a few minutes for Sandy to clean up the spilled latte that had turned the little vase into an island and bring Vikki another.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, after I’d summarised my discussions with Zander and Dame Ursula from the night before. ‘And you found this out when you were . . . ’ Vikki pushed her new glass of latte aside, leaned forward and, both her hands planted on the table, eyes narrowed, stared at me over the plastic snowdrops. ‘You weren’t making investigations on Molly’s behalf. You were investigating Daisy’s death in order to save your client.’

  I was hoping she wouldn’t have managed to join the dots quite so easily.

  ‘Don’t give me all that . . . ’ Vikki put on a squeaky voice that I took to be her imitation of my own, ‘I was neglecting my own child for the sake of another.’ She pointed a finger straight at me, a sneer stretched across her face. It was amazing how quickly you could go off people. Even really pretty people. ‘The only person you were looking out for was your murdering client. You were . . . ’ Vikki tailed off and sat back, no longer staring accusingly at me, but at something that seemed to be fixed to the wall behind me and three feet above my head. ‘This guy Zander . . . ’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Her eyes lowered to meet mine. ‘It was him. He killed Daisy,’ she said, when at last her eyes lowered again to meet mine. ‘He killed her because the adoption didn’t go through in time and he didn’t want anyone to know about Molly.’

  It was nice to be out of the firing line for a minute and kind of her to think that my client might actually be innocent, but I’d already ruled Zander out of the who-killed-Daisy-Adams equation.

  ‘There are three good reasons why it wasn’t Zander,’ I said. ‘Firstly, he would be scared he broke a fingernail in the process.’

  ‘That’s not a reason. He could have paid someone to do it.’ Which, to be fair, did tie in with Deek’s story of the two Italian hit men.

  I ploughed on. ‘Okay, not my best point, but, secondly, there was no need for him to kill Daisy. He thought the adoption had gone through.’ After all, wasn’t that why he’d given me the cash – thinking I was Barry Munn come to collect the other half of Daisy’s money? It was a part of the story I hadn’t thought it necessary to share with Vikki.

  ‘That’s what he’d have you believe,’ Vikki said. ‘What if he knew it hadn’t? All it would have taken to find out the truth was a phone call to the Sheriff Clerk.’

  Vikki was swatting away my reasons not to suspect the House of Pentecost’s operations manager like they were flies coming in to land on the foamy head of her vanilla latte.

  ‘And thirdly, and most importantly,’ I said. ‘He had nothing to lose. Sir Stephen made a will years ago leaving Zander one-quarter of the business. Molly will have legal rights to a third of the moveables,’ I said, showing off my knowledge of inheritance law, ‘but that will only affect Dame Ursula’s widow’s share, not Zander’s 25 per cent.’

  ‘Robbie . . . ’ Was that pity in her eyes? ‘You’re a criminal defence lawyer. It’s not your fault,’ she said, without waiting for me to apologise for my chosen career. ‘These days everyone has to specialise. To learn more and more about less and less.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said. ‘Pretty soon I’m going to know everything there is to know about nothing.’

  But my attempt to lighten the mood wasn’t going to slow Vikki down. ‘You’re off to a good start then, because you certainly don’t seem to know much about wills and the laws of succession,’ she said.

  Which was harsh, if not far from the truth. All I knew about wills was that executry lawyers liked people to make homemade ones, copied from books or downloaded from the internet, because there was more money to be made sorting out the mess later than there was doing it properly before the person died.
r />   ‘Remind me,’ I said.

  ‘The birth of a child revokes a will. If Sir Stephen bequeathed a quarter-share to Zander before Molly’s birth, or even if he did it after, without knowing he had a child, all bets are off so far as Zander is concerned. He gets zilch and even his widow would only be entitled to her prior rights. Molly would scoop by far the largest part of the estate.’

  The woman was wasted in civil law. Or maybe it was a career in that murky world that had made her so cynical; whichever, my instincts had been right all along. From the minute I’d met Zander in that deserted warehouse I knew there was something not quite right about him, and it hadn’t been just his fashion sense. He’d put on quite an act for me and Dame Ursula. In fact, for all I knew, she was in on it too.

  I asked Vikki to excuse me while I went to the toilet, as much to give me time to think as to expel my recent Americano. Was Daisy Adams the only one who knew the truth? Who else might La-La have confided in? The chances were that a lot more people knew the identity of Molly’s father than just dead Daisy. Were those people’s lives also in danger? I was one of them. So now, thanks to me, was Vikki, not to mention Barry, Neil and Ellie. Zander couldn’t have us all killed.

  I washed my hands and ran out of the toilet wiping them on my jeans. ‘Vikki, who’s with Molly just now?’

  ‘Vera, your dad and Tina. I think they’re expecting your brother too. He wasn’t there when I dropped her off. I thought we’d give it an hour and then I’d try and smuggle you in.’

  By the time she’d finished the sentence I was already phoning my dad’s house. Tina answered. ‘Hi, Dad. Are you okay? Can you still come to the party?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Me and Vikki are coming along in a wee while. Put Gramps on.’

  The line went silent for a moment and then Vera’s voice. ‘Is that you, Robbie? Are you okay?’

  Why was everyone asking if I was okay? ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Your dad’s on the way to the hospital. He’s taken my car. He’ll not be long.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Had the thought of losing his granddaughter been too much? It was all Vera’s fault. ‘Is he all right?’ I yelled down the phone at her.

  ‘Robbie, don’t shout. It’s you who’s not all right. A nurse from the hospital called. She said you’d been involved in an accident . . . haven’t you?’

  Not that I knew of. Why would the hospital phone my dad? Was it a mistake? Had they meant Malky? No, he was hiding out at my house. He wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. ‘Vera, get off the line right now and call the police.’

  ‘But . . . ’

  ‘Do it!’ I reached down, grabbed Vikki’s handbag and emptied out the contents. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m taking your car,’ I said, simultaneously snatching the keys and sliding my mobile phone across the tabletop at her. ‘Phone the cops,’ I said, breathing heavily, trying to remain calm. ‘Tell them it’s an emergency and to get someone to my dad’s house right now!’

  55

  A supermodel in a super-expensive sports car is all very well; however, if you really want to break some speed limits, you need to put a dad in a reasonably priced hatchback and tell him his child is in danger. In fact the only thing moving faster than Vikki’s car on the twisting three miles to my dad’s cottage was my brain. What would I do when I got there? Screech to a halt, horn blaring and headlights blazing?

  I slowed to take the final bend. Through the gloaming I could see the high hedge at the front of my dad’s cottage and the dark shape of a motor car beyond. Whose was it? Apparently my dad was away in Vera’s, rushing to see his son in hospital. I braked, switched off my headlights and, foot on the clutch, coasted silently along the short driveway for a better look. I didn’t recognise the vehicle. Fear took hold, paralysing me. A voice in my head told me to wait. The cops were on their way. Yeah, the same cops who hadn’t noticed me breaking a new land-speed record and who, since the closure of the local police station, were based half an hour away. On a late Saturday afternoon in October, I’d be lucky if there was a mobile unit within a ten-mile radius.

  As quietly as possible, I alighted from the car and crept along the front of the cottage trying to peer in the window. A shadow skipped past a crack in the curtains that had already been drawn. Whoever it was, they were too fast. Pressing my ear against the glass I held my breath and listened. The sound of Tina’s happy voice sent a wave of relief washing over me. I might have a lot of explaining to do when the cops eventually did arrive. I really hoped so. I walked around the side of the cottage to the back door and was letting myself in when I felt something blocking my entry.

  ‘I’ll get that,’ a woman’s voice called out cheerfully. I gave the door another push and it opened to reveal Vera Reynolds struggling to shift a basin full of water in which a fleet of red apples dipped and bobbed. ‘Robbie, it’s you,’ she said when I’d stepped inside. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Did you call the police?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t be silly, and if your way of getting in here to see Tina is by sending your father on a wild goose chase, then—’

  ‘Whose is the other car outside?’

  ‘The door from the living room opened and a man came in giving Tina a piggyback. He was smartly dressed in a black suit and open-necked white shirt.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, allowing Tina to clamber down, come over and give me a hug.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, taking a grip of Tina’s upper arm so she wouldn’t wander off.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve been getting that reaction a lot recently.’ He pointed to his battered face. ‘Car accident,’ he shrugged and then, smiling, wagged a finger at Tina. ‘Always remember to wear your seat belt, young lady.’

  His English had improved remarkably over the space of only a couple of days, but I’d heard enough of Sandy’s bad Italian accent over the years to recognise the real thing. Did he know who I was? Did he recognise my voice? Did he know I’d been there when Jake Turpie had done that to his face and tried to feed him to the dog? Did he know I’d saved his life? Most important of all, did he know that I knew he was the person who’d strangled Daisy Adams?

  ‘Get out,’ I told him.

  ‘Robbie, that’s not very nice,’ Vera said. ‘This young man’s come to collect Molly. There’s a problem up at the children’s home and she has to go back, isn’t that right, Mr . . . ’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the man, no longer smiling, looking me hard in the eyes.

  Vera reached out for Tina’s hand. ‘Come on, help me find Molly. I think she’s hiding.’

  I tugged Tina away from her. ‘She’s going nowhere and neither is Molly.’ Not taking my eyes off the man in the dark suit, I sidestepped and lifted my dad’s claw hammer that was lying on the kitchen worktop next to the bread bin. ‘Now, I’m telling you for the last time . . . ’ I said, hammer at my side, ‘to get out.’

  ‘And I’m telling you, you’re making a big mistake, threatening a local authority official,’ he said.

  ‘Why don’t we give the Home a call, Robbie? Sort this all out with them?’ Vera said.

  ‘Be quiet and take Tina and Molly away,’ I said. Eyes still on the man, I gave the hammer a threatening jerk. ‘Out!’

  With a shrug, the man turned around and walked into the living room. If he’d come in by the front door and wanted to leave the same way, that was fine by me. I just wanted him gone. As soon as he re-entered the living room I could hear screaming. Molly. Other than her wails on the first day I’d come across her, I didn’t think I’d ever heard the wee girl make a sound. Now she was screaming and shrieking at the top of her lungs. I followed the man the length of the room, keeping my distance, still gripping the hammer with one hand and trying to shake off a clingy Tina with the other. Mrs Reynolds ran around me to try and console Molly who was hiding behind my dad’s favourite armchair next to the fire, hugging her stuffed pelican.

  The man came to a halt at the door to the hallway.


  ‘Keep walking,’ I said.

  He gave Vera an apologetic over-the-shoulder glance. ‘My coat?’

  Vera left the screaming child and unhooked a black overcoat from the back of the armchair. Frowning, lips pursed, she shoved past me and handed it to the man who accepted it with a little grunt of thanks and stepped into the hall. Just a few more paces. Once he was gone I’d lock the doors, phone the cops and wait.

  The man stopped in the porch to put his coat on, taking his time, doing up the buttons, one by one. Vera appeared at my side pressing buttons on a mobile phone.

  ‘Have you called the cops yet?’ I asked, not taking my eyes off the man in front of me as he walked unhurriedly to the door. His back was to me. One skelp with the hammer. That’s all it would take. I’d have him. But who would I have? A dead or seriously injured Italian. How much would Dougie Fleming and Hugh Ogilvie enjoy that? Yes, Mr Munro, we’ve examined the garden fork from Sunnybrae Farm and found no blood, just some dried soil. We have, however, found blood on a dirty big, claw hammer from your father’s home and also a good deal of hair and scalp tissue belonging to one of the workers at the local Children’s Home. What actual evidence did I have against this guy? The word of Jake Turpie? My gut feeling that Zander Skene was behind him? I knew how reliable my instincts were.

  ‘I’m not phoning the police, I’m phoning the children’s home to apologise,’ Vera said, phone to her ear.

  ‘Do that,’ I said. ‘Tell them Mr Bizi came to collect Molly and see what they have to say.’

  The man opened the door, stopped on the threshold and breathed a stream of white into the cold October dusk.

  Tina tugged at my arm. ‘I don’t like this,’ she said softly. I glanced down at her little scared face; only for a second. Too long. When I looked up again the man was facing me, something dark and square in his hand. It was barely visible against the blackness of his overcoat that merged with the shadows of the motor car and the roadside hedge at his back. In that instant I knew there would be no negotiating. No talking my way out of this one. This man had come to take Molly away and kill her. Me and my big mouth. If I hadn’t said his name, would he have gone? Now I was a witness. Just as Daisy Adams had been. He couldn’t let me live. He couldn’t let any of us live. I let go of Tina’s hand. ‘Run,’ I said. She didn’t move. ‘Run!’ I screamed and this time she ran.