Faith

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘That’s a bit harsh, Stu,’ Gregor retorted. ‘Of course they investigated properly.’

  ‘Did you really believe she did it?’

  ‘I did.’ Gregor looked a little shamefaced. ‘But there was a lot of talk about her after you left for London. She mixed with some heavy-duty characters, and we had scores of complaints from her neighbours about noise and people coming and going. It was thought she was dealing drugs. Then after her boy was killed she was mad as a jar of wasps. I picked her up down in the Grassmarket one night; she had no shoes on and she didn’t know what year it was, let alone the time of day.’

  ‘Who could blame her for that?’ Stuart exclaimed. ‘And anyway, once she recovered from that she was as straight as a die for ten years. She ran a successful business, paid her bills and kept her nose clean.’

  ‘Us policemen only see people when they go off the rails,’ Gregor admitted. ‘I knew she got a shop out in Morningside, but I never ran into her.’

  ‘And now, after all the stuff I’ve found out? Do you still think she’s guilty?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gregor said defiantly. ‘I’d like to say that I don’t, for your sake, but I’m not entirely convinced.’

  Stuart was deeply disappointed. He felt Gregor’s opinion was representative of the entire force in Edinburgh. ‘I’ve got to go now,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Thanks for delving around for me. She is innocent, Gregor. And I’ll find some way of proving it.’

  Stuart walked back to the flat feeling tense and angry. In his mind, if the police had done their job properly at the time of the hit-and-run, Charles would have been charged and Jackie might still be alive today. Even if Laura won her appeal, that wouldn’t alter the general public’s mind about her, not until the real murderer was apprehended and brought to trial. But if Gregor’s attitude was anything to go by, the police wouldn’t make much of an effort to do that.

  As he got into the flat he heard David talking on the phone in the living room. He thought he was speaking to Julia and he felt a pang of irrational jealousy. Everything was fine for David, whatever happened to Laura: his life would remain the same; his wife, kids, job and home would all still be there waiting for him.

  David put the phone down. ‘Hello, Stu, didn’t expect you back so soon,’ he called out. ‘Goldsmith just rang, he’s found Jackie’s solicitor. He’s got an office in Portobello, wherever that might be.’

  Stuart walked into the living room and he suddenly felt irritated by the mess. They’d had a takeaway curry the previous night and the dishes were still lying on the floor, along with empty bottles and dirty plates, cups and glasses.

  ‘It’s the seaside bit of the city,’ he said, bending to pick up some plates and cups.

  ‘You sound and look pissed off,’ David said.

  ‘I am, and the state of this place doesn’t help,’ Stuart snapped. ‘But then you’re used to Julia cleaning up after you.’

  David just crossed his arms and looked at Stuart. ‘What’s eating you?’ he said.

  Stuart piled up the plates and took them into the kitchen. The sink was already full and he thought they must have run out of clean china by now. ‘Give me the solicitor’s address – I’ll run down there now and cut his throat for him,’ he shouted back to David. ‘Maybe it needs another death to wake the fucking police up.’

  David was suddenly in the kitchen doorway. ‘Leave those dishes, I’ll do them,’ he said. ‘I’ve had more experience of that than soothing irate Scotsmen.’

  Stuart banged his fist down on the draining board. ‘Don’t patronize me, smart arse,’ he hissed. ‘Just give me the sodding name and address.’

  ‘Okay,’ David said coolly, turning and walking away. ‘But if you blow it when you get there because you haven’t given yourself time to calm down, don’t blame me.’

  He wrote down the name and address and handed it to Stuart. ‘We can go to the prison tomorrow afternoon,’ he said. ‘Try to stay out of trouble until then.’

  Stuart had always had a soft spot for Portobello. Before his world was expanded by having an annual family holiday in Fife, just across the Forth, this was where they went for a day out. The sea was always freezing, but he and Fiona and Angus always raced to be the first one in, even if their hearts did almost stop with the cold. He remembered that his mother made a kind of large towelling bag that they changed under. They never bought food in a cafe, his mother would take sandwiches in a bread bag, and sometimes they had an apple each too.

  His dad would play cricket with them. The stumps, bat and ball were all packed in an army kit bag, along with the picnic and the swimming things. He could remember his father lugging it along over his shoulder, and he often made jokes that his entire kit when he was in the Army hadn’t weighed so much.

  In the last twenty years, Stuart had seen many beautiful beaches all around the world, with white soft sand, palm trees and warm turquoise sea, yet however exotic or sophisticated they were, his mind always turned back to Portobello. He would remember the hand-knitted woolly trunks he had, the joy of taking off his shoes and socks and feeling sand between his toes. Even the bus ride to get there had been seeped in adventure because from the top deck he could peer down into people’s houses and gardens, and believe he was going to the ends of the earth, not just a few miles.

  Stuart parked his car in a side road close to the promenade because he intended to take a walk along it after calling at the solicitors in the High Street. It was four o’clock now, and he expected they closed at five. His anger was fading, in fact he wasn’t sure why he had got so irate earlier. It would serve him right if David jumped ship and went home.

  Conway and Calder Solicitors were at number 156, but Stuart crossed over the road to look in an antique shop window just before he got there. He knew Julia collected old blue and white china, and he thought if they had something suitable he might take it back to David as a peace offering.

  There wasn’t anything blue and white, and as he turned to go back across the street, he saw a familiar figure coming out of the solicitor’s office. It was none other than Robbie Fielding.

  Stunned, Stuart turned back to the antique shop window so Fielding wouldn’t notice him. His head told him there was no reason why the man shouldn’t have the same solicitor as Jackie, in fact he could have recommended her to them. Yet in his heart he sensed sinister undertones.

  Once Fielding had gone, Stuart went across the street and into the office. A fresh-faced blonde of about twenty was at the reception desk and she smiled at him.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘I’d like to see Mr Calder, please. I’m afraid I haven’t got an appointment, but Mr Goldsmith spoke to him earlier and said I would be coming. I’m Stuart Macgregor.’

  ‘If you’d just take a seat, Mr Macgregor, I’ll check if he can see you,’ she said, and promptly disappeared through a door at the back of the office.

  She came back and said that Calder was on the phone to a client at the moment, but if Stuart would like to wait he would see him as soon as he’d finished.

  It was some fifteen minutes before a thin-faced man of about fifty, wearing a dark grey suit and gold-rimmed glasses, put his head round the door. ‘Mr Macgregor? If you’d like to come this way. I’m sorry I had to keep you waiting.’

  Stuart was a little surprised by the plushness of his office. All the solicitors he’d been to in the past had huge piles of papers and files littering every surface, and still more on the floor. There was no clutter here, instead a quality duck-egg-blue carpet, a mahogany desk which Stuart’s experienced eye knew was a real Georgian one, not reproduction, and the leather-bound legal books in a glass-fronted cabinet looked brand-new.

  ‘Do sit down, Mr Macgregor.’ Calder indicated a dark blue leather club chair and sat down behind his desk. ‘Mr Goldsmith said you had an interest in the affairs of Mrs Davies. I hadn’t known until I received his call that she had died.’

  Stuart’s hackles rose,
for that was clearly a lie. The murder had been in the nationals and local papers. During the trial it had been front-page news.

  ‘Murdered, Mr Calder. You must be one of the few people in Edinburgh who didn’t know about it.’

  ‘I may have read about it but not connected it with one of my clients. I do have a great many and some of them I have only met once or twice.’

  Stuart nodded as if that was a good enough explanation. He didn’t like Calder, who had the pinched nose and lips of a mean-spirited man, but he liked him even less for implying he couldn’t remember Jackie. No one ever forgot her. Her looks and personality were the kind that stayed in men’s minds. ‘I understand you handled the sale of Brodie Farm for her?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, I did, though I had forgotten it entirely until Mr Goldsmith rang me. It was a long time ago now. I was just getting started in my practice then. Is there some problem with the deeds? I believe Mrs Davies kept them, rather than giving them to me for safekeeping.’

  ‘No, there’s no problem with them as far as I know. I’m sure Goldsmith informed you that he is collating new evidence for an appeal for Laura Brannigan. We’ve been informed by a witness that Mrs Davies had a deed of gift drawn up, in which she intended to give the farm to Brannigan.’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct.’ Calder nodded. ‘I tried to dissuade her. It is always foolhardy giving away property, even to members of your own family. Clearly I succeeded, for she didn’t return it signed and witnessed.’

  ‘Did she tell you why not?’

  ‘No. But that’s not unusual. And of course I don’t chase clients up about such things. It is their right to change their minds.’

  Stuart was dying to point out that Calder’s memory appeared to be selective. He’d said he didn’t remember Jackie yet he had no problem recalling she hadn’t returned the signed deed. But he decided not to make any comment; after all, the man wasn’t being obstructive.

  ‘How did Mrs Davies come to you? Was she recommended by another client of yours, or what? I mean, Portobello isn’t just around the corner from Fife.’

  ‘I think it must have been a recommendation,’ Calder said, not looking at Stuart. ‘But I really can’t remember now.’

  ‘Would it have been Mr Robert Fielding by any chance?’

  Calder hesitated. ‘That name doesn’t ring a bell,’ he said, then picked up his pen and fiddled with it nervously.

  Stuart’s anger flared up again and he found it hard to restrain himself from leaning across the desk and grabbing the man by the throat. ‘That’s odd considering he was in your office just twenty minutes ago,’ he said instead. ‘And I met him a week or so ago and he claimed he helped Mrs Davies obtain Brodie Farm.’

  Calder blushed. It showed clearly as his complexion was naturally very pale.

  ‘Oh, you mean Robbie,’ he exclaimed. ‘I never think of him as Robert. Yes, of course he was here, but I couldn’t say if it was he who recommended Mrs Davies to come to me. It was far too long ago.’

  Stuart had had enough of this selective memory lark. ‘Mr Calder, if you can’t be straight with me, I shall have to make a complaint to the Law Society,’ he said with steel in his voice. ‘You are likely to be called as a witness to Laura Brannigan’s affairs at her appeal, so I advise you to tell me the truth now.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ the man said indignantly, but he looked alarmed. ‘I have told you that I handled the sale of Brodie Farm, and about gifting it. I gave Mrs Davies proper legal advice, and clearly she acted upon it as she didn’t go through with it. I can also tell you I handled other property purchases for her too, namely cottages in Cellardyke.’

  ‘Did you draw up a will for her?’

  Again the man hesitated. ‘Yes,’ he said somewhat reluctantly.

  When was that?’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t have told you that an hour or two ago. But I looked through her file when Mr Goldsmith rang me, to refresh my memory. It was the same day she inquired what was needed to gift the farm. In December ’92. I drew it up, then a few days later she came in and signed it.’

  ‘Who witnessed it?’ Stuart asked.

  ‘Mr Conway’s secretary. Margaret Cameron.’

  ‘And where is this will?’

  ‘We have it here in our vault. As I said, I didn’t know about her death until today. If I had I would have passed it on to her executor.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘You, Mr Macgregor.’

  15

  ‘I need a stiff drink,’ Stuart said as he came back into the flat.

  David looked up from some paperwork he was doing.

  ‘You didn’t thump him, did you?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course not, but I reckon Calder could do with it. I’d say he’s as bent as a hairpin.’

  David poured him a large Scotch, then sat down to hear what had happened. Stuart told him first what Calder had said about the deed of gift, then went on to tell him that Jackie had made a new will.

  ‘When he said I was the executor, I nearly keeled over with shock. That was the last thing I expected. But it was a stroke of luck too, for I doubt he’d have handed it over to me, or even told me the contents, unless I was,’ he said, taking the will out of his inside pocket and handing it to David. ‘There was a letter for me with it explaining why she asked me. She said I was the only person she felt she could trust with it.’

  David unfolded the will and began to read it. ‘Bloody hell,’ he exclaimed. ‘She left Brodie Farm to Laura and two of the cottages in Cellardyke to Ted. Another one to Gloria.’ He looked up at Stuart with a jubilant expression. ‘This is brilliant, we’ve got the perfect reason now for calling Ted and Gloria as witnesses.’

  ‘Read on,’ Stuart said. ‘The plot, as they say, thickens!’

  ‘Roger gets some of the London property, a house in Kensington for Toby, and blimey, Stuart, you get one in Notting Hill!’

  ‘Yeah, you could have knocked me down with a feather at that bit. But there’s more astounding stuff,’ Stuart said.

  ‘Numerous other smaller bequests,’ David murmured, reading out some of them, including the sum of £15,000 to Jackie’s parents, which she urged them to blow on a trip around the world. ‘Kirkmay House! What’s that doing in here?’ he exclaimed in shocked surprise. ‘Kirkmay House was Jackie’s, not Belle and Charles’s!’

  Stuart nodded. ‘And she’s left it to none other than Meggie and Ivy, Laura’s sisters.’

  ‘But what about Belle and Charles?’ David’s eyes were scanning down the page, assuming he had missed them. ‘She doesn’t appear to have left them anything!’

  ‘That’s right. She explains it to me in a letter.’

  ‘I thought she didn’t know about Laura’s sisters?’ David said. He looked so puzzled that Stuart laughed.

  ‘You’d better read her letter,’ he said, taking the envelope out of his inside pocket and handing it over. ‘Read it aloud. I’m so blown away by it all that I probably haven’t taken it in properly.’

  David moved closer to the window to see better and cleared his throat.

  ‘Dearest Stuart’ he read.

  As I write this I’m quite sure you’ll never read it, which makes me feel pretty silly even putting pen to paper. I always hated the idea of wills as I often told you. Roger coerced me into writing one years ago, and it made me feel like my business was the important thing about me, not me as a person. But I’m forty-eight now, and as Mum is so fond of telling me, I may just pop my clogs before I’ve managed to give away my little empire or spend my dosh.

  I’ve taken the liberty of putting you down as my executor as you are the only person that is younger than me, who I know I can trust implicitly. I’m sorry if it proves onerous, maybe even nasty, but your shoulders were always big enough for anything.

  I’ve got Laura down for Brodie Farm, but I intend to give her it soon as a gift, so by the time you read this, that will be a fait accompli. She is to inherit any dosh left over too, though I
intend to spend as much of it as I can! You’ll also know by the time you get to read this that I’ve shot off to live happily ever after with Ted Baxter, who I love to pieces. But just on the off chance my life is cut short I’ve left him two cottages so he will be financially secure. You’ll understand about Roger and the London property, I’m still fond of the old bastard, and I wouldn’t have got started without him. Toby and the house in Kensington is equally understandable. What may surprise you is that I’m leaving nothing to Belle and Charles. Believe me, I didn’t make this decision lightly. They’ve taken from me for years, and I suppose I want to show them I wasn’t quite the sucker they took me for. I let them have Kirkmay House to run when they were broke, but all they did was take the piss. You wouldn’t believe the bills Belle dumped on me for the furniture and soft furnishings! I think she thought she’d be having royalty staying there. Right from the start they only played at running it as a guest house, neither of them had any aptitude for work, much less running a business that requires diplomacy and a modicum of grovelling to the public.

  Lately they haven’t even kept to the original agreement that I was to have twenty per cent of the takings. They turn guests away, and she’s out buying new clothes and drinking, while Charles lords it at the golf club. There’s a lot more too, but I can’t even begin to tell you about that. I have already warned them that if they don’t shape up I’ll throw them out, so the chances are you won’t have to do anything with them anyway.

  Yes, I’ve given you something too, because you were a loyal friend and the most trusted of my employees. It will probably come to you too late for you to find a croft up in the Highlands and get a couple of dogs. You’ll probably attend my funeral on a zimmer. But I kind of hope you might have already made your dreams come true anyway.