Fault Line - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  ‘Can I come in now?’

  ‘Oh, yes. You better had.’

  She took another pace back as I stepped up into the doorway. At that moment, there was a sharp crack from somewhere behind me and a ping of impact on the roof of the caravan. It was a gunshot. The certainty of that rammed into my thoughts along with the sickening realization that I’d misread Adam totally. He was here. He’d been here all the time, waiting for my arrival to confirm his belief that Vivien and I were allied against him.

  A second shot followed the first almost instantly. This one drilled a hole in the window to my right. I leapt forward into the caravan, pulling the door shut behind me. ‘Get down,’ I shouted to Vivien. She ignored me, darting back to throw a switch that plunged us into darkness, then forward to lock the door.

  ‘Down!’

  Now, at last, she dropped to her knees beside me. ‘What’s happening?’ she panted, her face close to mine. ‘Who’s out there?’

  ‘Adam. I learnt this evening that he stole the records.’

  ‘Adam?’

  ‘In his mind, we’re his enemies, you and I. God knows what it’s all about. I didn’t think he’d come here. I only wanted to—’

  A third shot shattered the rest of the window and ploughed into the farther wall of the caravan. ‘Has he gone mad? For God’s sake, Jonathan, why is he doing this?’

  ‘I think he has gone mad, yes. Something’s pushed him over the edge.’ Pete must have heard the shots. He’d already be on the phone to the police. But how long would it take them to arrive? ‘I’m sorry, Vivien. I don’t know what to do. There’s no reasoning with him.’

  ‘Are there more notes in the files like this?’

  ‘Probably. I never got the chance to check. Adam took them with him.’

  ‘Oliver really was on to something, then.’ I had the bizarre sense that she was smiling. ‘He wasn’t deluded after all.’

  ‘Maybe not. But that doesn’t help us now.’

  ‘Yes, it does. It means—’

  ‘Come out,’ Adam bellowed from no more than a few yards beyond the door. ‘Come out and face me.’

  To my astonishment, Vivien started to get up. I pulled her back down. ‘What are you doing?’ I whispered.

  ‘I’m not afraid of him.’

  ‘Well, you should be.’

  ‘Maybe so. But I’ve lost too much over the years to hang on to fear, Jonathan. I don’t have any left.’

  ‘Are you coming out or not?’

  ‘Pete Newlove’s waiting for me at the site entrance, Vivien. He’ll have heard the shots and called the police. They’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Not soon enough, I suspect.’

  ‘You can’t go out there.’

  ‘Adam’s always hated me. I’ve never really understood why. Perhaps this is my chance to find out.’

  ‘I’m not going to wait for ever.’

  Vivien tried to pull away from me again, but I held her fast. ‘I won’t let you go.’

  ‘There was a time I longed to hear you say that. But that time is past.’

  ‘He means to kill us.’

  ‘I’ll take my chances. What do I have to live for, anyway?’

  ‘For God’s—’ I broke off, my attention seized by unexpected sounds outside the caravan: a metallic clunk, followed by the splashing of something liquid against the door and along the wall. ‘What’s that?’ A whiff of petrol through the smashed window supplied an answer even as I asked the question. ‘My God, he’s going to try and burn us out.’

  ‘I won’t wait for him to do that.’

  ‘Neither will I.’ It occurred to me that a fire was Adam’s crazed notion of how he could make our deaths look like the work of an unknown arsonist. The fact that there were ample clues to lead the police to him probably hadn’t crossed his mind. No matter. He’d just given us our best chance of escape. He couldn’t hold a gun, let alone aim it, while he was sloshing petrol out of a jerry can. ‘Stay behind me.’

  I scrambled to my feet, certain that I had to act fast if I was to get the better of him. I pushed Vivien back, unlocked the door, flung it open and jumped out, turning as I did so in the direction the splashes had been coming from.

  I landed awkwardly and, steadying myself, saw Adam as a dark shape ahead of me. He looked to be holding the jerry can with both hands. Petrol vapour caught in my nostrils. There was a tang of tobacco smoke as well. He’d lit a cigar, no doubt intending to use it to ignite the petrol. The tip of it glowed as he looked towards me.

  I charged him without further thought – and no idea of where the gun might be. He tried to dodge me, but, drunk and impeded by the jerry can as he was, he was too slow. I took him in the chest and down we went. He grunted as we hit the ground and the cigar fell from his mouth. Exactly where the jerry can ended up I couldn’t tell, but I could hear the rest of the petrol gurgling out of it.

  I pinned Adam down with my forearm across his throat and cast around with my free hand in search of the gun. ‘Fuck you,’ he gasped. Then there was a whoosh as the cigar set the spreading pool of petrol alight. Flames billowed up to my left and, an instant later, they were on us. Adam’s trousers must have been soaked in petrol. His legs were on fire and so were mine. I rolled off him and, looking back, saw Vivien standing in the doorway of the caravan as a tentacle of flame began to run along its base.

  ‘Get out of there,’ I shouted.

  But all she did was retreat inside. I sat up and began thrashing at my legs in a vain attempt to put out the flames. Adam was moving too, heaving himself slowly up, apparently oblivious to the flames curling around him. I could smell flesh burning, though whether his or mine I wasn’t sure. There was smoke coming from the caravan as well now – an acrid, choking ribbon of it.

  Suddenly, Vivien reappeared. She jumped out of the caravan, cradling a bundle in her arms, and rushed towards me. It was a blanket. She dropped it over my legs and beat down on it. The flames went out. But she didn’t stop beating.

  Then I heard a weird, half-despairing, half-exultant shriek. Vivien’s face registered her shock at what she saw behind me. I turned and saw it too.

  Adam was on his feet, his clothes ablaze. But he didn’t seem to care about that. He’d wrestled the gun out of his pocket and was trying to point it at us. But the flames on his sleeve were dazzling him and obstructing his aim. He cocked his head one way, then the other, in an effort to focus on his target.

  At that moment, light flooded over him, swamping the shadows cast by the flames. It was coming from the headlamps of a car speeding along the approach road towards us. I knew the police couldn’t have arrived so quickly. It had to be Pete. He must have seen the fire and decided he couldn’t just sit where he was and wait for them to turn up.

  Adam stared towards the light, as if fascinated by it. His mouth sagged open. And his face registered pain for the first time: a wide, wincing grimace of agony. I’m not sure he could see us any more. He said something, but I couldn’t make out the words. He fired the gun. Two shots whistled off into the night a long way wide of us.

  ‘Drop the gun, Adam,’ Vivien cried. ‘We can help you.’

  But he was past helping – way past. He gaped in apparent surprise at the bubbling flesh on his wrist and arm and must have recognized, deep within himself, the finality of the moment. He thrust the barrel of the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  FORTY-ONE

  I SPENT THE night in hospital after being treated for the burns to my legs and hands, while the police and the Fire Brigade busied themselves at Lannerwrack and began their painstaking inquiries into what had happened. I answered their questions as best I could, but the truth was that none of us could properly explain why Adam had acted as he had.

  The memory kept recurring to me of Adam as a five-year-old, firing his cap-gun at Oliver one Sunday morning at Nanstrassoe House. There’d been hatred in him even then, though I’d done my best to ignore it. Advantages had been showered on him through his life, but they c
ould never erase the central flaw in his character: in his mind, the world had always been set against him.

  That wasn’t enough to explain the behaviour that had led to his death, of course. The cause of his self-destructive frenzy was to be found, if it was to be found anywhere, in the decades old files of Walter Wren & Co. he’d gone to such lengths to keep from us. The police discovered them in his Lotus, parked in the lane that ran along the far western boundary of the Lannerwrack site. He’d cut a hole in the fence and gone in from there.

  The files were impounded as evidence, though soon enough the police did the obvious thing and asked Fay Whitworth to come down and examine them. Nobody from Intercontinental Kaolins was to be allowed a look before she delivered her verdict. Rumours about what she might discover spread freely from St Austell to Augusta. All I could tell Presley Beaumont was that we wouldn’t have to wait long to learn the worst.

  Meanwhile, there was Adam’s funeral to be arranged. But none of his relatives seemed in any hurry to take charge. When I called his father to break the news of his death, I was obliged to do it by answerphone message. According to Beaumont, the old man never took calls directly any more. Evidently, he didn’t respond to messages directly either. Jacqueline phoned me from Georgia to report that Greville simply wasn’t fit to travel. It was ‘difficult’ for her to come to Cornwall herself and impossible for Michelle, who was committed to competing in an equestrian tournament in Uruguay. She suggested Vivien could do whatever had to be done.

  But Vivien wasn’t in any state to deal with the administrative complexities of sudden death. She’d lost most of her possessions in the fire, including Oliver’s photograph album, her most cherished memento of him. Homeless and to a large degree helpless, she didn’t put up any resistance when Pete persuaded his sister, a kindly soul, to take her in. That left me to deal with the coroner and the undertaker and the family solicitor. My various attempts to talk to Vivien about what had happened – and to thank her for coming to my rescue that night – all ended with her gazing past me and shaking her head and saying simply, ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  She was in shock, of course. To some extent, so was I. The dressings on my legs and hands slowed me down and the drugs the doctor had put me on made me drowsy. I shambled around pitifully, feeling my age, and was grateful when Pete volunteered to run a few errands for me. University commitments delayed Fay’s arrival until the end of the week, which consigned us all to limbo. No date was fixed for the funeral. The possibility remained that Lashley would rouse himself and fly in to confront the consequences of his son’s suicide. I half expected it to happen. But, as the days passed without word from him, it seemed less and less likely.

  I’d booked Fay Whitworth into the White Hart, at IK’s expense. She arrived on Friday afternoon and met me for dinner after checking in with the police. Solicitous though she was about my injuries and what Vivien and I had been through, she made no effort to deny her eagerness to see what the records held.

  ‘It’s clear, I think, that they must contain something pretty sensational. Otherwise why would Adam Lashley have stolen them in the first place?’

  ‘We don’t actually know Adam stole them, Fay. Only that he was storing them.’

  ‘Hiding them, you mean.’

  ‘OK. Hiding.’ I shrugged. I had no energy to waste on debating turns of phrase.

  ‘I’m surprised you want to minimize his behaviour. He did try to kill you, after all.’

  ‘I know. It’s just …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The whole thing seems so … inexplicable.’

  ‘Well, I’m here to explicate the apparently inexplicable.’

  ‘And will you let me know what you find out? Or will that be deemed sub judice?’

  ‘I don’t see why. Adam’s dead. There isn’t going to be a trial.’

  ‘Not of Adam, no.’

  She frowned at me. ‘That’s an interesting remark, Jonathan. What are you afraid might come out?’

  ‘I’m not afraid. I’m … wary.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon know whether you have good cause to be.’

  ‘How soon?’

  ‘I’ve agreed to present my findings to the police on Monday. But I reckon a solid day’s work tomorrow will get the job done.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. So if I were you, I wouldn’t stray far.’

  I had no intention of straying. Pete drove me over to his sister’s house on Saturday morning and I told Vivien what Fay’s timetable was likely to be. She seemed philosophical about the outcome, but she was still so numbed by what had happened that it was difficult to tell what she was really thinking. I suspected it was similar to what I was thinking myself. It was almost impossible to believe we might be about to learn, after so many years, why and for what Oliver had died. The past was shifting ground beneath our feet. But the truth was no longer necessarily out of reach.

  Pete took me down to Charlestown for lunch at the Harbourside Inn and set out his stall. ‘If any shit is going to fly fanwards because of what the doc digs up, Jon, I want early warning. I think having a gun waggled in my face by the late lamented barking mad Adam Lashley puts me ahead of the likes of Presley Beaumont in the queue for info.’

  I didn’t argue. In fact, I agreed with him. One hundred per cent.

  Late that afternoon, I was resting in my room at the White Hart when there was a knock at the door. I can’t have been a glorious sight when I opened it, but Fay Whitworth didn’t seem to notice as she strode in.

  ‘I could use some coffee,’ she said, flapping her notebook meaningfully. ‘It’s been a hard day.’

  ‘But rewarding?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Seeing me fumbling with the kettle, she took charge and told me to sit down, pointing to the armchair rather than the upright by the desk. I had the impression she wanted that for herself.

  While she made the coffee, she complained about the vending machine at the police station and the grim lighting in the room they’d allocated to her. I waited patiently, gazing through the window at the wind-stirred trees in the churchyard on the other side of the road. I felt no eagerness for the truth. If it was coming, it would come. And I would hear it.

  ‘It wasn’t what I was expecting, Jonathan,’ Fay said, settling herself at the desk and taking a first sip of coffee. ‘Not that I knew what to expect, of course. But this …’ She shook her head. ‘It was a surprise.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me what it amounts to?’

  ‘That’s as much for you to say as me. I can give you the facts. What they amount to is to a large degree conjectural. I suppose it depends on how far you want to take it. Maybe it’s more than what it appears to be.’

  ‘And what does it appear to be?’

  ‘Fraud, of a subtle kind. I haven’t had time to study every single document, but the conclusion to be drawn from those I have examined is clear. Oliver Foster has been my guide. There are lots of notes in his hand and his distinctive green ink – like on the memo you abstracted – and lots more underlining and asterisking by him that identify the key figures and passages in invoices and letters that would be easy to miss otherwise. He was a clever boy. Very clever. Very … analytical. A chess player, you said?’

  ‘Yes. A good one.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. Though he’d probably have admitted he was up against a better one.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Greville Lashley.’

  I’d known she was going to name him. It had seemed inevitable, even if it was still – for a little longer – incomprehensible. ‘You’re accusing our mutual employer of fraud?’

  ‘I shan’t be accusing anyone of anything. And I doubt the police will be interested in pursuing a nonagenarian expatriate based on the kind of evidence the records contain. They might’ve wanted to ask him a few questions, though. If he was in the country.’

  ‘He’s too ill to travel.’

  ‘So they tell me.’<
br />
  ‘What exactly are you saying he did?’

  ‘Nothing that the untrained observer – or even the incurious accountant – would notice. But Oliver Foster knew what he was looking for. And he found it.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Over the twelve years covered by the files – 1956 to 1968 – Greville Lashley slowly but surely ruined Wren’s.’

  ‘Ruined them?’

  ‘They were viable as an independent outfit and could have gone on being viable. That’s one of the surprises. They didn’t have to sell out. Lashley forced it on them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By manoeuvring the company into buying new equipment when the old was still serviceable, paying more than they needed to for supplies and services, bidding excessively low to secure contracts, purchasing land they had no immediate use for and generally throwing good money after bad. The Trudgeon deal was a case in point. Wren’s had always paid Trudgeon’s more than the going rate, on the grounds that CCC would gobble Trudgeon’s up if they didn’t have Wren’s business and there was no one else with sufficient experience of loading operations at Charlestown. It was a weak argument, but George Wren was a weak man. And a poor reasoner. Lashley regularly bamboozled him. When they finally bought Trudgeon’s to acquire an A licence for transport of their own, they paid far too much. And that’s not the worst. It looks like they’d regularly paid Trudgeon’s two or three times over for the same work. Lashley was a master of tricksy paperwork. But Oliver tracked him through the maze he’d constructed. And I’ve followed Oliver. There’s really no doubt that what I’m saying is true.’

  ‘Trudgeon’s must have connived at this.’

  ‘I imagine they must.’

  ‘Gordon Strake was the go-between, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Oliver certainly thought so, based on the note he wrote on the copy of the letter Lashley sent to Strake at the time of his dismissal. Even pliable George Wren had finally had enough of the man and insisted he be got rid of. But what does Lashley say in the letter? “Your loyalty and discretion remain greatly appreciated.” “I’ll bet”, Oliver scrawled next to that. With multiple exclamation marks.’