Inheritance

by Ellen Kefferty

  As they passed beneath a high railway bridge the scenery changed completely. Trafford Park, the industrial estate where Edith had—it seemed so long ago—lost her way looking for Faircote Paints.

  The silence gnawed away. Pendleton was still several miles away. They had to be comfortable and trust one another if they were to be successful.

  “So,” Edith ventured to restart the interrupted briefing, “you said that Phaeton Cars rent out high–class vehicles?”

  “Yes. Rare cars, imports, the kinds of car which aren’t common and would be too costly for most to buy. I guess their market is mostly for people to show off, or just have a chance to experience something out of the usual.” Heather nodded.

  “Maybe there’s also a growing market among Arab and Chinese students for whom it would be uneconomical to buy a car to take home, yet want something commensurate with their perceived status.”

  Edith smiled to herself in the dark of the shadows. “Did you study sociology?”

  “No. Just a guess. I can’t say I have much insight, or interest, into that market. But it stands to reason.”

  “It does. I ask because the car which tried to ram...,” Edith caught herself before mentioning that she had been attacked. The mistake could have been noticed anyway. She had to recover quickly, “which rammed Thomas off the road was an Audi. Which doesn’t sound like the type of car they would have.”

  “How do you know it was an Audi?” David chipped in from the front. He hadn’t noticed the slip.

  “The police database lists make and colour.” Heather answered with a knowing glance at Edith, demonstrating to her that she, too, had had access to the police licence number database. “But you’re right that it doesn’t sound like the type of car they would rent out. Audis are considered better than average, but this business’s cars are above that. The ones listed on their website suggest as much.”

  “No Audis?” Edith asked. “So...?”

  “What it means, I guess,” Heather raised a palm upward, “is that it could be a company car. One they own for the purpose of employee use. It is often considered a benefit of employment for better–paying jobs, as the employee doesn’t have to pay for the car, and they get to upgrade on a regular basis. We should still expect to find some record of it, however.”

  Edith chuckled at the idea she didn’t know what a company car was. Heather was definitely a little touched.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Heather, as I think I would be lost without you.”

  David parked the car beneath an iron–girdered railway bridge. There were no other cars around. No people either. The streets were empty, dead, filled only with industrial yards and ugly buildings which had no life outside of work hours. There weren’t even any streetwalkers this far from a main road.

  The three had the area to themselves. It must have been around quarter to two, but it was hard to guess. Heather had insisted that they leave their mobiles at home.

  The compound for Phaeton Cars was a short walk away. The office was a workaday single–storey building extended considerably to the rear with a giant metal hangar. The tiny carpark to the front was empty. The precious cars were locked safely in the hangar.

  Edith had no idea how to begin. The palisade fence let her see into the compound, misleading her that the space was open, easy to access. The reality of scaling a two and a half metre fence was different. She looked to Heather who was rummaging through her rucksack on the ground. A coil of rope was retrieved from the bad and handed to David.

  “If you would, David,” Heather pointed to one of the fence posts. A thick supporting post, which stood spaced at regular intervals holding up the fence, “just here.”

  David reached up and looped the rope over the top. The coil unwound as it fell, revealing a series of smaller loops tied into the rope. “Use these as footholds,” David explained to Edith, “and only hold onto the post they’re hanging from. It’s not sharp but the others are designed to cut.”

  Heather climbed over with ease; better than Edith expected. She began to climb and, with David steadying her legs, reached the top without issue. She faltered thinking of a way to climb down.

  “Just jump. Like I did.” Heather planted one hand on her hip and with the other pointed to a patch of tarmac she would have been happy to see Edith crash.

  Edith leapt, falling to an unbalanced crouch. David scaled the fenced behind her and retrieved the rope.

  Her heart quickened as she approached the building. She was really going to break in. She was a burglar. A criminal. Heather had walked ahead and disappeared round the side of the building, ignoring the customer entrance and the two large roller doors for vehicles. David strolled after in no rush to help.

  “She’s gone to the fire door.” David whispered, suggesting that they had done this before, possibly many times. “It’s often the weakest point. Poorly secured and inadequately alarmed.”

  “I thought they were rigged to go off when somebody used them?”

  “Only to inform others, not as a security measure. Besides, I doubt Heather intends to let any alarm go off.”

  By the time they rounded the corner of the building Heather was already at work. In her hand there were items which Edith could not distinguish. Patiently working round the edge of the jamb, Heather inserted an item, removed it, shifted it, before finally leaving it in place and taking another from her hand to repeat the process. One by one they were inserted until, searching round the edge with yet another, Heather found nowhere for it to fit.

  “That’ll do.” Heather gave the door a blow with the flat of her hand, near the middle of the left side. The door popped open with a wobble. No alarm.

  “Whatever you do,” Heather lectured Edith with raised finger, “do not touch or brush any of these.” She pointed to the items she had inserted. “The door doesn’t know it’s open, and there’s no reason it needs to know.”

  Edith slid her toes over the threshold and into the dark beyond. She moved her weight forward, ducking low as she did. She stopped and glanced sideways at the door frame. The lack of light made it impossible to see more than an outline of whatever Heather had inserted. They appeared to be nothing more than bent metal plates. Edith guessed that her understanding of them was effectively zero and no question to Heather would remedy that.

  The inside of the metal shed lay in utter darkness. The meagre light from the street failed to penetrate through the open fire door. Edith shuffled along, checking the floor with her the toes of her foot before each step. She came to a stop, unsure and unwilling to move without further input as to where exactly she stood.

  “Did anybody bring a torch?” It was shameful to admit her sheer lack of preparation. Even a burglar naïf should have thought of the eventual need for one.

  “No, we expected we would do this in the dark.” Heather’s delivery was deadpan. Edith furrowed her forehead, bewilderingly gullible. Then two torches switched on near simultaneously.

  “Ah!” Edith breathed in sharply as she saw the room for the first time.

  Before the three of them sat four rows of vehicles at once both strange and alluring. Many were jet black, others cobalt blue, go–faster red, or shocking green; one or two metallic silver or gold. All were quite unlike the cars on a normal street. Most were outstandingly beautiful.

  She didn’t know the makes nor could she guess them, she simply knew that if any one of these—never mind the whole roomful—was seen on the streets of Manchester it would turn heads. Andrius had driven her through town in such cars on occasion and witnessed people stopping to gawk at them, even being so gauche as to take photographs.

  There must have been the same number of cars, maybe more, currently on loan and cruising the streets of Manchester, making some rich exhibitionists very happy and many onlookers very jealous. Every one of these cars would have cost six figures and, she reckoned quickly in her head, the total stock would have been worth more than ten million pounds in cars alone. Not bad for an industr
ial shed in Salford.

  She wished that she had her phone. A picture would be agony for Andrius. He could identify each and every car, and know its price. He must have driven a few of them.

  “Andrius would kill to see this.” She stepped forward to better inspect the cars.

  “Who’s Andrius?” David was more on edge than a few minutes ago.

  “Oh, he’s...,” She fell back on an earlier deception, “Andrius is an associate in our investigation firm. Cars are his speciality.”

  “Shouldn’t he be here then, instead?”

  “No he’s,” her mind scrabbled for a good answer, “otherwise engaged on a case in Abu Dhabi.”

  David leapt forward and swung the torch in her face. “You work for Arab regimes?”

  She was shocked at David’s demanding question. The accusation was clear. Though unstinting support for Palestine would have certainly been his credo, that wouldn’t blind him to the causes that needed fighting in other Arab countries against their corrupt regimes. She cursed herself for even bringing up Andrius’s name as it had nothing to do with the investigation.

  “No,” she enunciated each word as though explaining the obvious, “we work against them. We have cases—naturally I can’t disclose all the details—which involves getting people out of bad situations in those countries.”

  “I think we should get on with it.” Heather sighed and strode toward the front of the building and the office. “We technically do have all night, but the quicker the better.”

  David let his torch drop from Edith’s face. The pair followed Heather without further argument, though he gave no indication that he believed her excuse.

  The office was dimly lit from the yellow street lights outside. Heather entered with her torch pointed down at the floor and motioned to David to do likewise. To the left a long reception desk ran the width of the room. Three desks sat in the right side of the office, the interstices filled with shelves and filing cabinets. Whatever information Edith needed was somewhere in this room.

  David handed his torch to Edith. “I’ll try the computers.”

  “Can you hack computers?”

  “I can guess passwords.” David laughed at Edith’s unending naiveté.

  “Does that work?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s hard to say.” David’s face was suddenly half–illuminated in blue by the screen. He crooked his head toward the filing cabinets. “But there are other options.”

  Heather had already opened one of the filing cabinet’s drawers. “I’ll take these two cabinets. You take the other two and the shelves. Remember, we’re looking for information about company cars, most likely. Not rentals.”

  Edith resisted the temptation to say that she knew exactly what they were looking for, much better than either of them. Guilt for getting Heather and David to burgle over a lie rose in her anew. If they were caught by the police she would have to admit the truth and hope they would forgive her. But if they were caught by the police Edith was screwed anyway. The police were part of the Establishment. How else to explain the botched investigations? They falsified a blood alcohol report and ignored the blue Cortina. They had abetted at least two murders. Despite her spotless criminal record they would find an excuse to lock Edith away for years.

  As she began to scan the spines of the folders on the shelves with her torch Heather’s hand yanked her arm down.

  “No! Keep your torch low!” Heather hissed. “Anybody walking by outside can see its reflection in the window.”

  “Sorry.” They definitely knew by now she was an amateur. Instead she drew down several folders at once from the shelves, inspected their contents on a desk, and replaced them. Most were legal files, full of regulations and standards, maybe contracts. She wasn’t entirely sure but they weren’t what they sought.

  A filing cabinet stood toward the rear of the reception near two doors. She opened the top draw and worked through the files. The papers were more promising. They related to individual cars. On closer inspection they were invoices for valeting and repairs, arranged by date order. Jackpot.

  The top drawer invoices were several years old. The middle drawer invoices were from last year. The bottom drawer, however, contained invoices from the last few months. The very newest were kept in a hanger marked ‘Unpaid’. Reading through the descriptions of services provided for each invoice she eventually found the right one: ‘Repair of dents (x 3). Repair of scratches. Renewal of paintwork: Midnight Blue. Reg: MS45 UFG.’

  Her hands trembled. The memory of the attack crashed into her mind. The empty road. The headlights. The driver silhouetted in the half–light. Suddenly she could feel those dents as they happened, hear those scratches. The words on the page lived in her memory.

  She shut her eyes and swallowed. Breath. Count to ten. Heather and David couldn’t be allowed to see her agitation. She wasn’t the victim, as far as they knew. Everything had to be calm.

  She glanced again at the invoice. It was from a local garage but contained no other useful information. Nothing on the driver. No information on whether the company knew the origin of the damage. Nothing. For all they knew it could have just been a careless mistake easily made. It wasn’t enough.

  She replaced the invoice before the others noticed her scrutinizing it. They mustn’t know she had even found a document of interest. They would see the date was wrong. She was in the lie too deep. Even the people she trusted to get her this far simply couldn’t know the truth.

  Her fingers walked the file hangers looking for the invoice for repairs to the car which ran Thomas Faircote off the road. It would prove he was murdered.

  There were several invoices from the same garage interspersed through the papers, and a bunch from August and early September. Given that she didn’t know the registration number for that car there was no way of knowing which was the one she wanted. Renters regularly damaged the cars, not particularly caring if they had to pay a fine, or simply just unable to control the high–end vehicle they had hired. They must have had plenty of money and a dearth of sense. It was pointless to keep looking.

  She slammed the draw shut. “Sorry!”

  “Don’t worry.” Heather barely stirred. “Nobody can hear us unless they are in the building. Sound doesn’t travel half as well as light.”

  “Okay.” Edith examined the two doors beside her. “I wonder what these rooms are.” She spoke mostly to herself, making an excuse to investigate.

  The door to the right led into a toilet. The door ahead opened into a room dominated by an oversized meeting table. She stepped in and let the door shut behind her. Her torch made tracks on the walls as she searched to the left for cabinets or shelves. Nothing apart from a sideboard with a coffee machine and cups.

  She swung round to the right to make the same inspection. Again there was nothing except a stack of extra chairs and a display board centred on the far wall.

  ‘Phaeton Cars,’ a sign read in an unfashionable font at the top, then underneath, ‘Our Directors.’

  She stepped nearer, wanting to see who ran the company. Maybe they were ignorant, innocent of what their cars were used for. Or maybe they were organizing the whole thing. They might simply be stock photos to complete the illusion of a front company. She had hardly glanced at the first picture before another caught her eye. As the torch settled upon the portrait she blew out a long breath in confusion.

  “Guys,” she called out, “we can leave now. I have the information we came for.”

  An older gentleman with full head of well–styled white hair smiled out from his photograph. It was a few years old but he was instantly recognisable. Beneath was a caption with his name.

  ‘Gervase Hemlyn.’

  Day 18: Saturday 18 November

  Edith woke to screams. Her father’s screams.

  She leapt from her bed and covered herself with a dressing gown. She reached for the door handle. She froze and listened in fear.

  Arriving home from the burglary she had
woken her to tell him what she had found. Gervase Hemlyn was the key to the murders. She didn’t know how or why, but she needed to confront him. Ben had agreed and told her to get some rest. It was too late in the night to do anything.

  Now it was too late, full stop. They had come for her in her own home. Why today? Had they found out that she knew about Gervase?

  Another scream. It was just outside her door. Her father was on the landing. They were killing him just a metre away and she was doing nothing. She had to do something, anything. They would kill her next whether she fought back or not.

  She threw open her door and leapt out onto the landing. Her father writhed on the floor. Nobody else. Bathroom empty. Spare room too. Nobody.

  “Dad! Where are you hurt?” She crouched low to his body. She grabbed his arms which were bent upward round his face.

  “No!” He screamed and fought against her.

  “Dad!” She tried to hold his arms down. There was no blood. “Where did they go?”

  He lashed out and hit her on the side of the head. She fell backward onto the carpet.

  “Dad!”

  “Let go of me!” He struggled against her, freeing his arms and yanking them back upward to his face. Then he screamed again.

  “It’s me, Dad, Edith. You’re safe. You’re safe.” She rested her hands on her father’s body to calm him. Her hand brushed something hard under his jumper.

  ‘What?’ She felt again, at the side of his chest. ‘Is that a...?’

  She firmly pressed down on her father’s torso to hold him steady. She wrench his jumper up to reveal a holstered gun. She drew it slowly and held it aloft. As soon as the gun’s full weight was in her hand she felt a sudden attraction, a sudden repulsion. The gun mesmerized her for the moment she examined it. Then she slung the gun sideways. It clattered into the bathroom and out of sight.

  “Dad?” She thrust her face down to his. “Dad, what’s going on?”