‘I don’t know,’ Audrey said at last. ‘At first I couldn’t bear to talk about it and then it just never seemed to be the right time.’
Alec laid the locket down on the arm of the chair. His father’s chair. He let it lie, not quite knowing what to do with it. It was odd, he thought, just how quickly the story had emerged once given the right prompt. They must have talked about it in the days since Rupert’s death. Or if not talked, both thought so much about those days that their memories transmitted one to the other by some strange osmosis so that when the right stimulus was applied they both knew exactly what to say and that this was the time to say it.
‘I’ve got to ask you something else,’ he said. ‘There’s no easy way to put this, but did you ever suspect Rupert might have been involved in anything illegal?’
That shared look again. Alec’s heart sank. Something else they did not talk about?
‘He got fired from a job,’ Alec’s father said. ‘He was working for a firm of accountants. They also handled stock portfolios, insurance, all of that. I suppose they were more financial advisors than accountants in the true sense … Anyway, he was sacked, accused of what we’d now call insider trading. Seems a client had given him some kind of tip-off about a takeover. I don’t recall the details. I’m not sure I ever knew them, but Rupert was able to sell rather quickly on behalf of several of the firm’s clients and, it seems, saved them quite a packet.’
‘So they sacked him?’
‘It came out that he might have had inside knowledge and they could not be seen to encourage a technical fraud. Rupert was quite bitter about it, I believe.’
‘When was this?’
His parents thought about it. ‘You must have been about nine or ten. It was around the time we had our falling out, so 1980 or maybe 1981. I can’t be sure. Sorry Alec, it was quite some time ago.’
‘So, he was already living at Fallowfields.’
‘Had been for some years by then. He bought it for little or nothing. I remember telling him, “Rupert, I wouldn’t touch that place with a bargepole”. It needed a new roof and electrics and all the plumbing ripping out. There was no heating. It was just a shell of a place but he said he liked the location. His job wasn’t local to Fallowfields, though. He was just travelling up for weekends then and still had his flat in London. So far as I know he still did. Wasn’t it mentioned in the will?’
Alec frowned. ‘I’m not sure. The solicitor gave me a whole folder full of stuff. It’s in the car, I wanted to go through it with you but I don’t recall anything about a flat in London.’
It all fitted time wise though, didn’t it, Alec thought. The robberies, the annoyance at being sacked. Was that what had triggered Rupert? Some kind of revenge against the financial community at large? His parents clearly knew nothing about that and for the moment at least he thought he would keep it that way. Alec gave up on trying to figure out the motivation. He had another question and this was, on a personal level, the most important.
‘How did he buy Fallowfields?’ he asked. ‘Where did the money come from?’
‘From your grandfather,’ his father said. ‘Alec, there’s no mystery about that.’
‘I know he left money in his will, but Rupert owned Fallowfields long before that.’
‘No, no. You see he set up trust funds for us both and being an old-fashioned soul they were set up so we got them when we married or turned twenty-five. I used mine for the deposit on this place and Rupert used his for Fallowfields. Bought it outright, it was in such a state. Then when our father died, we came into his estate and when Mother became so ill I had power of attorney over her savings as well. We used most of it for nursing care, but what was left when she died was split between us. I invested mine and I’m pretty certain Rupert did the same. You’ve got to remember, Alec, the stock market actually returned something in those days.’
‘I think he used it later to buy the shop,’ Audrey said. ‘That’s what we always understood, anyway.’
Alec nodded, relieved.
‘Why the question?’ His father wanted to know.
‘No reason,’ he lied. ‘In my position though, I need to know.’
His father nodded. ‘Of course. Everything must be seen to be legal, I guess. I’m sure his solicitor could verify things if you’re worried.’
Alec nodded.
His father yawned and got up. ‘I’m sorry, Alec, but I’m off to bed. Way past my usual time and you look all in.’
‘I feel it,’ he agreed. He made his way up to the guest room but knew, despite his exhaustion, he would find it hard to sleep. Shrewd investments didn’t account for all of Rupert’s legacy, of that he was certain, but even if it did, Billy Pierce had told him that the money from the first two robberies had never been recovered. So, where was it? That, Alec guessed, was also what Kinnear wanted to know.
Twenty-Three
Patrick rarely slept deeply and the sound of his phone having received a message was enough to wake him. He fumbled about on the bedside table trying to locate his phone, then stared at the screen. One message, unknown number and the time was two fifteen.
Ordinarily, Patrick ignored anything that came up as unknown, but he had a fair idea who this might be from.
Patrick sat up and switched on the bedside light.
The text was brief. Meet me? Now.
For a minute or two Patrick stared at it, not sure what to do. Why did he want to meet now and for what? He had hoped the boy would get in touch, sensing something very wrong and also hoping that he was the same person Marcus had reported coming to the shop.
But he’d been unprepared for this to happen in the dead of night.
Patrick texted back, then slipped out of bed and found his clothes. As quietly as he could he made his way past the rooms now occupied by Naomi on one side and his father on the other. Patrick had been given the small bedroom at the rear of the house. The stairs creaked and groaned as he tiptoed down, taking care to keep to the very edge of the tread but flinching at every sound. Had he not been dressed he could have used the excuse of getting a drink if he was found out. He decided if his father woke he’d simply say that he couldn’t sleep and remind his dad that he didn’t have his dressing gown with him and was far too old to wander about a strange house in just his pyjamas.
But he need not have worried himself with thinking up excuses because no one stirred and he made it through the back door and out into the garden without raising the alarm.
Napoleon, curled up in the kitchen, rolled on to his back and watched him go outside, then trotted after, nuzzling at his hand. Patrick thought about shooing him back, but the presence of the black dog was comforting. He lay his hand on the dog’s flat, silky head, stroking his ears.
He should have brought his torch. He had forgotten just how dark it was here, no streetlights, no borrowed illumination from nearby houses.
Patrick stood and waited for his eyes to adjust, pleasantly surprised at the way the world slowly came into grey-blue focus and just how much light there really was from a half fat moon and a scattering of stars. He made his way across the garden, feeling the damp grass soaking through his shoes and wishing he’d worn his boots. There was still some heat in the night air and the scent of jasmine that wafted across the lawn from the terrace wall was almost too intense.
Patrick flinched as the gate creaked open. He cracked it just wide enough to slip through, Napoleon in tow. He had told the boy to meet him in the meadow, checking he knew where Patrick meant. It seemed like a logical place, the boy could get across the field behind his house and was less likely to be seen that way than if he had to come out of the drive and on to the road.
It occurred to Patrick, as he stepped out from the garden and into Rupert’s overgrown meadow, that he did not even know the name of this boy he had come here to meet or how long he would have to wait before he managed to get there.
Patrick made his way over to the fence and stared across into the field. The moon
cast deep shadows, concealing the bullocks and the nettles and the long grass at the margins. Patrick stared hard and after a moment or two could just make out a figure making its way through the shadow and heading towards him.
‘Hi,’ Patrick said as he drew near.
The boy glanced back over his shoulder and then cast a searching look past Patrick and into the meadow.
‘It’s OK. I’m on my own.’
He nodded and then climbed up to perch on his side of the fence. Patrick, taking his lead, wedged himself on the other side with his back against one of the tall ash trees that formed part of the boundary to Rupert’s land.
‘Didn’t know if you’d come,’ the boy mumbled.
‘Said I would, didn’t I?’ Patrick told him. ‘Who are you anyway?’
His name was Danny Fielding and he was not quite sixteen. He lived with his father, as Patrick had gathered, at what he called White Farm.
Remembering their visit that afternoon Patrick considered that it should have been Off-White Farm or even Grey and Unwashed Farm, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
‘Your mum not live there?’ Patrick asked. ‘Mine lives in Florida. She and Dad got divorced.’
Danny shook his head. ‘Me mam’s gone,’ he said. ‘She had a row with me dad and he reckons she left.’
‘When did she go?’
‘About three week ago. Just before he died. The man what lived here.’
‘Was it your mam Rupert came to see?’
‘Rupert?’
‘Rupert Friedman. The man who lived here.’
Danny nodded. ‘Mam grew up round here, she knew all sorts of stories like me granddad used to tell. Dad reckoned they were rubbish but mam liked to talk about them and Mr Friedman was writing a book. He had these meetings at the library, asked anyone what’d got stories to come along and tell them and me mam went. Came back full of it, how he was going to write this book and me mam’s stories were going to be in it.’
‘Did your dad not like that?’
‘Dad don’t like anything except stuff to do with the farm. He’s been making no money and it’s getting to him. Wurriting, me mam says. She wanted him to sell up and move to Epworth, get a job like she did, but he won’t have it. Mr Friedman came to our house. He sat there one afternoon talking to me mam when me dad came home and he wasn’t best pleased. Thought it were all a big waste of time and said so. She told him he were a big waste of time and they got into a big fight like they always do. Mr Friedman left and after he’d gone the fight got worse.’
‘Did you go to the shop to try and talk to him?’
Danny nodded. ‘I went to tell him not to come here again. It’d just make it all worse for everyone.’
Patrick nodded his understanding. ‘Marcus, the man at the shop, he said you looked scared.’
Danny shrugged. ‘I’d rode me bike in, but me dad, he comes into Epworth on market days. I was scared he’d see me. He wouldn’t have understood. He’d have thought I was against him too and I’m not. Not agin either of them. I just want them to stop rowing.’
‘Why did you go to the shop?’ Patrick asked. ‘Why not just come here?’
‘I did,’ Danny told him. ‘I did that first thing, but there was no one here and I looked in the garage through the gap between the doors and the car wasn’t there. I thought he’d have gone to the shop but the other bloke said not.’
He broke off, cast a resentful look back towards the farm. ‘When I got back home she’d gone. Dad said she’d waited till he’d gone out then packed her bags and cleared off. She never left a note or nothing.’
Patrick gnawed on his lower lip not knowing what to say. Danny was so obviously hurting. His dad would never just have gone off like that, Patrick thought, nor, for that matter, would his mum or even his stepdad. He was lucky, he reflected, and not for the first time. His mum and dad had managed an amicable divorce and he got along fine with his stepdad and his stepbrothers. His parents were on good terms too and Harry and his stepdad were perfectly friendly. In fact, the only problem Patrick had with any of it was in being unable to solve the mystery of how his parents had met and married in the first place. Talk about an attraction of opposites.
‘Do you know where she went to?’ he asked.
Danny shook his head. ‘She’s not called and I’ve phoned my auntie and my cousins and they don’t know where she is either.’
‘What about a friend?’
Danny laughed harshly. ‘Me dad made sure she didn’t keep no friends,’ he said. ‘Reckoned they were a waste of time too.’
It sounded as though Danny’s dad was the waste of time, Patrick thought, but he bit back the words. He wondered why Danny was telling him all this but he didn’t feel able to ask that either. It would sound as if he didn’t care and Patrick did care. His heart went out to him.
‘Can I do anything?’ he asked finally.
Danny shrugged. ‘I went to the police station and told them about my mum. They said she was an adult and could do what she liked and if my dad didn’t report her missing there was nothing I could do. I’m not old enough to count,’ he added bitterly. ‘So I don’t know what I can do.’
‘What’s your mum’s name?’
‘Sharon Fielding. I don’t know what else to do. My dad won’t talk about her, he just says she’s gone and don’t care about us so I’d best forget about her.’
Patrick fumbled in his head for something useful to say. ‘Look,’ he managed finally, ‘the man who owns Fallowfields now, Alec, he’s a policeman. I might be able to get him to … well, to tell you what you could do.’
Danny turned his gaze upon Patrick and held it there for so long it began to burn. Then he looked away and shrugged. ‘Ask him then,’ he said. ‘But I keep thinking … keep thinking how she might be dead.’
It was almost four by the time Patrick got back to his bed and when he did, sleep just would not come. He could understand why Danny felt the way he did. To have a parent suddenly cut off contact like that, with no warning and seemingly no reason, was hard to understand. Danny understood that his mother had been unhappy. He’d understood that it was likely his parents would split up sooner or later. He’d just expected to have a bit more warning and a little less drama, after all, they’d muddled along unhappily for years up until now.
Oddly, it seemed that Danny blamed Rupert. Rupert, Danny sensed, though he did not put it into words, was the straw that broke the proverbial camel. Rupert had, somehow, showed Sharon Fielding just what she was missing out on; clarified and made solid that vague discontent and provided the impetus for action.
Patrick wondered if Rupert’d had any inkling of that.
Had anyone else come asking questions about Rupert? Patrick had asked.
Danny had thought about it and then nodded slowly. A man Danny estimated to be in his thirties, thin and with dark hair, had come asking if they’d seen him. It was a few days before he died, Danny thought, though he wasn’t certain. He’d only overheard a part of the conversation between the man and his dad, but it seemed to be something about the man wanting to buy Rupert’s car but not being able to get hold of him.
‘He wanted to know when he’d be in,’ Danny said. ‘As if we’d know! Dad told him that. Like we ever see him.’
His dad hadn’t always been so angry, Danny had said in his father’s defence, but the farm was unprofitable and the bills were mounting and his mam was nagging about chucking it all in. After all, she’d argued, the farm was from her family, not his dad’s, so why was it so important to him.
Danny didn’t know the answer to that one. He’d have been happy to move closer to his school and what friends he had in town. Patrick got the impression he’d have been glad to have moved anywhere away from his dad.
That was what troubled him the most, Patrick realized. The sense of abandonment. It was almost preferable that his mother might be dead and unable to get in touch than it was to think she might simply have chosen not to.
U
nable to sleep, Patrick sat up again and propped his pillows comfortably against the headboard. He had a pad and pen on the bedside table and the first of the three journals. He’d already found four letters and two numbers in this one the night before, but was no closer to figuring out what they might mean. He began work again, picking up from where he’d left off, focussing his mind on something that he might just possibly be able to solve, unlike the Danny problem which, Patrick knew, he probably could not.
Light crept above the horizon and greyed the darkness outside his window. Patrick worked on, finally falling back to sleep with the journal in his hand and the notepad tumbling from his bed as the sun rose up above the garden wall.
Twenty-Four
Alec arrived just before midday. He sounded exhausted and distressed, Naomi thought. Harry had let him in and she hurried through to join them in the hall. His hug of greeting was more like the clasp of someone drowning and, although he tried to sound cheerful and was obviously happy to see her, she could almost feel him pulling her down into the depth of his weariness.
‘Coffee,’ he pleaded. ‘Strong please.’
Naomi laughed uneasily and led him through to the kitchen where Harry was busying himself with the newly acquired coffee maker Naomi had bought when she’d been out with Marcus.
‘I hope I’ve got the hang of this thing,’ he said. Satisfied he’d set the process in motion, he told them he was going to rouse his son and left them alone.
‘Are you OK?’ Naomi asked anxiously.
‘No. I need to sleep and I hurt like hell. I’d forgotten how lumpy my parents’ spare bed was. It’s no wonder they don’t have anyone to stay.’
Vaguely, Naomi wondered if the bed or absence of guests came first, rather like the chicken and the egg. She asked, ‘Were they able to tell you anything?’
‘Not a lot. Only that Rupert once got the sack for alleged insider trading, but that the money used to buy Fallowfields and the share in the shop was probably clean.’
Legacy of Lies Page 14