by Toby Faber
Long ago, Laurie had decided that the best way to cope with the boredom of Holy Communion was to join in the responses with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, but otherwise take the opportunity to let her mind wander at every available point. The sermon was therefore a blank to her, and if Mrs Shilling had asked after the service how she thought her James had read, then Laurie would have just had to lie, although there would never have been any risk of Mrs Shilling waiting for an answer. Other than that, there were the hymns. Laurie was quite happy to admit to herself that these were the best part of churchgoing; she had always enjoyed singing and this was as good an opportunity to let rip as any.
The processional was an old favourite, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’. Laurie began as she always did, giving it her all. By the third ‘Holy’, however, she was already moderating her volume. She had become aware of Jess’s voice to the right of her, singing out, clear and true, entirely unselfconscious, not showing off in any way, but utterly angelic. Where had that come from? Laurie shot her a glance and saw Dad doing the same. Even Mrs Shilling looked like she was itching to turn round.
It was only a moment. Soon enough Laurie was back on autopilot, thinking about the conversation during the walk to church that Mrs Shilling had interrupted. She was pretty sure she knew what Dad had been about to ask, and by the end of the service she knew what her answer would be.
As ever, church ended with multiple introductions and invitations to coffee ‘or something stronger’ and it was some time before the three of them were alone again, walking down the lane back home. Dad was almost apologetic about his refusal of the several offers that had come their way: ‘Very ungracious of me to curtail your social lives like that, I know, but I thought we should take advantage of the sun while we’ve still got it. Who fancies a picnic?’
‘Sounds lovely,’ said Jess, turning to Laurie.
‘Ye-es, it does,’ Laurie replied, the uncertainty there for both to hear.
‘I detect a “but”,’ prompted Dad.
‘It’s just I’ve got an idea I’d like to follow up. You both go. I’ll be bad company anyway until I sort it out.’
Dad looked at Jess: ‘What do you think?’
‘I think we can manage a picnic without your uncommunicative daughter – as long as we bring the Sunday papers, of course.’
That decided it. Laurie helped them make sandwiches and devilled eggs, keeping some behind for herself, watched Dad slip a Toblerone into the hamper – his sweet tooth remained as active as ever – then saw them off in the car. Jess had expressed a desire to climb Glastonbury Tor, and Dad had been perfectly willing, as he put it, ‘to help you connect with your inner hippy’.
Laurie couldn’t remember the last time she’d been home alone. The surrounding stillness made her more conscious of the sounds leaking in: high-pitched pirrips from the house martins that she could glimpse wheeling around outside the window, an occasional car moving down into low gear as it came round a corner in the lane; the almost continuous background rumble of a tractor somewhere up the hill. Perhaps she’d been wrong to let them go without her? Well, it was too late to worry about that now. She ate her lunch quickly, sitting at the kitchen table while she read Friday’s Times, vaguely wondering if she should raid Dad’s shelves for another Georgette Heyer. Then she went through to the sitting room, sat down at the desk, where Dad’s laptop was already open, and started to surf.
Google sent her straight through to Companies House. She searched to see what was being held for Sanderson Recruitment. The simple answer was everything: or at least every filing for the last ten years, including the annual accounts for the year ending last December. That would do.
Three weeks ago, Laurie wouldn’t have known where to start. Now she at least had an idea of what she was looking for. The details of the pensions scheme were in note 20. The text was dense and the language hardly designed for a lay reader. Nevertheless, it was not hard to draw an inference. At the end of the last financial year, the pension scheme had shown a deficit of over £3 million, up from £1 million the year before. Then there was another phrase: It is estimated that the employer’s contributions to the scheme during the next financial year will be £341,000. That seemed a huge amount for a company whose profits – she flipped back to check – were a little under £80,000. It was hardly surprising that Sanderson’s had not paid a dividend in either of the two previous years.
Moreover, Laurie knew from her reading on Friday that this was only part of the story. There would be the Pension Protection Fund levy to pay as well; that could be another £100,000 easily. And things could only have got worse since the date of these accounts. Sanderson’s probably wasn’t even solvent any longer.
Laurie got up from the desk and went for a walk around the garden. The air was close and humid. It seemed to amplify the scent coming off the one rose bush Dad had allowed to survive when he dug up the rest of the garden: the cloying intensity of over-liberal aftershave. She should look at the BBC website to see if thunderstorms were expected. It certainly felt like it. Just in case, she brought Dad’s washing in from the line. All the time she thought about the implications of what she had just read.
There was William Pennington, financially comfortable but far from rich. He had worked for Sanderson’s for years, looking forward to retirement on a pension from the same company. At some point he had put two and two together. He’d realised that the company he’d worked for all his life was going bust, taking his pension with it. So he’d retired. That was the counter-intuitive part. Two days ago it would not have made sense to Laurie, but it was one of the things she had picked up from her reading on Friday. She had thought at the time there was something faintly unfair about it: when a fund collapses, existing pensioners receive far more protection than members who are still in employment. William Pennington had read the same books. He’d worked out that the only way to protect his pension was to retire immediately, so he’d gone back to the office and done precisely that.
This was an insight worth sharing. Laurie dialled Dad’s mobile. It went straight through to voicemail; so did Jess’s. They must be away from a signal. The second time, Laurie wondered about leaving a message, but hadn’t worked out what to say before the beep came. She hung up, feeling faintly disappointed. Who would she share her triumph with now?
At least she could hear Paul’s phone ringing before it clicked onto voicemail, and it was good to connect with him again, even as a disembodied prerecorded voice. She hoped her message back sounded suitably casual: ‘Hi, it’s Laurie. I can’t remember if you’re still seeing your children but I just fancied a chat. I’ve found out some more about that man on the Underground. It would be good to hear what you think about it at some point. Speak soon. Bye.’
Now what? Laurie had found a perfectly good reason for William Pennington to retire; it made the possibility that he had killed himself seem even more remote. Surely that made it more likely his death was an accident? She had been so sure. She’d seen him fall, hadn’t she? What had happened to her old certainty? And yet somehow, now that she knew more about him, she was finding it harder to dismiss the possibility that he might have been murdered. Why was that? All she’d found out was that he was a harmless retired salesman living an unimpeachable suburban life, with an interest in nothing more racy than Alexandrine mythology.
Love and money: weren’t those meant to be the only motives for murder? It sounded like the sort of thing Hercule Poirot might say, and Laurie realised it deserved an appropriate pinch of salt, but she had nowhere else to start. She got a sheet of paper from Dad’s desk and wrote down the two headings. Love: was that a possibility? Might William Pennington have been having an affair? Did that sort of thing happen to people in their sixties? Laurie thought back to the man she’d seen on the platform: well dressed, smiling at strangers. How might their conversation have progressed? If he’d asked her out for dinner she’d have said no, but that didn’t mean that everyone would. Unwilling to impugn the hono
ur of a dead man, Laurie tentatively wrote ?mistress?? in her left-hand column. Underneath, with equal uncertainty, she added Margaret?. Once again, Laurie cast her mind back to that crowded Underground platform. Might Mrs Pennington have been somewhere in that throng, reaching out a hand to push an errant husband just at the moment he turned to Laurie and the train came into the station. She had the air of a woman of action, Laurie had to admit. But murder? Anyway, how did you go about finding out if William Pennington had a mistress? Someone at work, perhaps? One of the employees at Sandersons might be good for a gossip. Laurie didn’t relish the prospect.
With some relief, Laurie turned her attention to the right-hand side of her paper: Money. Who would be likely to profit from William Pennington’s death? Well, if he’d left any life insurance, or if she hadn’t fancied the cost of a divorce, then the answer was, once again, Margaret Pennington. Perhaps she was the one with a lover? Her name belonged in both columns; that much was clear. Weren’t the vast majority of murders committed by someone close to the victim? Laurie was pretty sure that was a real statistic – nothing to do with Hercule Poirot or any other fictional detective. Anyone else? Well, no children, apparently. Brothers or sisters? Very probably. Might they have been mentioned in a will? It was a long shot, but worth checking.
Laurie sat and stared at her sheet of paper; it wasn’t much to show for half an hour’s hard thinking, but she had to be ready with her answers when Dad got back. Where were they, anyway? Laurie glanced at her phone to check the time. It rang as she did so, but it wasn’t Dad calling to say when they’d be back. The screen showed the photo she’d taken of Paul beside the canal all those days ago – was it really only a week? He was returning her call.
‘Hi you.’ Laurie answered. ‘Thanks for calling back. Is now a good time?’
‘Yes thanks. Bethan’s just picked up the kids, so I’m a free man once again. How have you been?’
‘Fine, well apart from probably losing my job. So not really fine, I’m afraid, but there we are.’ Laurie wished she had not giggled then; she could imagine how it made her sound. ‘How about you?’
‘Me, oh, fine, you know. Your job? Do you mind?’
‘Well I can’t live off thin air. But it’s OK; I think I’d started to realise it wasn’t what I wanted to do anyway.’
‘Why? No, don’t worry. You don’t need to answer that. You were calling to tell me about that man.’
Was she? Laurie supposed she was. Anyway, it was good to be on solid ground: ‘It was Dad more than me, really. He found out the man’s name – William Pennington. And we went to visit his wife – widow, I suppose I should say – in Watford.’
There was a pause before Paul replied. ‘Goodness, that’s taking the sleuthing rather far, isn’t it? Was she pleased to see you?’
‘I wouldn’t say pleased exactly, but she talked to us. Dad’s quite good at that sort of thing.’
‘But why on earth go to visit her in the first place?’ Paul sounded vaguely incredulous down the phone.
‘I know, I know.’ Laurie laughed. ‘It was Dad of course. He wouldn’t let it rest. He hasn’t said as much to me, but I think he’s managed to convince himself that all the things that have been happening to me are related: you know, losing my phone and that break-in. He’s not used to the realities of urban living, I guess. Anyway, he decided to investigate that accident, look for a link.’
‘What?’ If anything Paul’s tone of disbelief had gone up a notch, to the extent that he almost sounded petulant.
Patiently, Laurie defended her father and the statistics that had convinced him that William Pennington was either a suicide or murdered. ‘But I know it’s all wrong.’ She concluded. ‘I saw him fall. I know it was an accident.’
‘There’s no accounting for parents,’ Paul replied, sounding surprisingly flat. ‘What did his wife say? What did you say he was called?’
‘William Pennington. She was pretty sure it was suicide. He’d lost his job some weeks before but hadn’t told her. I think she was angry with him for lying to her.’
‘Well, that sounds convincing.’
‘Yes, except I’ve just found out that he must have resigned. It’s a long story, but basically he protected his pension by doing so. And he’d been spending the last few weeks going to the British Library, reading about his new obsession: Alexander the Great, would you believe?’
‘Amazing. I’d never have guessed that. How did you find out?’
‘Did I ever tell you that key came from British Library? I’ve been checking out the books he was reading there and trying to work out what it all means.’
‘Oh, right. So is that where you are now?’
‘The British Library? No. I’m at Dad’s. It’s amazing what you can do online. I’m just trying to figure out now if anybody could have had a motive for murdering him.’
‘You sound like some latter-day Miss Marple, seeing murder behind every village hedge. Your dad does live in a village, doesn’t he? Where did you say it was?’
‘Somerset, a little village on the Mendips. Nothing ever happens here. That much is for sure. People still talk about how Simon Parbrook was born six months after his parents’ marriage. It’s my antidote to London – better than Hampstead Heath. You should try it some time.’
Paul didn’t take the bait that Laurie dangled out for him so temptingly. They talked for a bit longer, but he returned none of the warmth that Laurie tried to inject into the conversation. She brought the call to a close when she heard him tapping at a keyboard.
Putting down the phone, Laurie wondered what she had done wrong. She had been elated to make those discoveries about William Pennington, and her heart had genuinely leapt when she heard Paul’s voice a few minutes earlier. How quickly her mood had changed. Should she call him back, have another go at a decent conversation? No – that way lay madness, or at least humiliation. Damn it. Why did their relationship leave her feeling so confused?
The front door opened to the sound of laughter. Dad and Jess were back from the Tor.
Monday 10 August – 12 a.m.
Laurie lay in bed feeling faintly woozy. The work they’d put in on the garden was partly responsible, of course, but there was no doubt that she’d had a bit too much to drink as well. She’d been surprised when Dad opened that second bottle of wine. He was normally so restrained, but he’d been on unusually expansive form this evening, telling the funny stories of his childhood that had always made Mum groan but were new to Jess, at least. At some point Jess had noticed the difficulty Laurie was having keeping her eyes open, and suggested she went straight to bed without worrying about the washing-up. It was strange how they’d never got around to talking about her discoveries that afternoon.
The creak on the stairs woke her. That must be Jess going to bed. Laurie and Dad knew the house well enough to avoid it. God, it felt like the middle of the night. How long had Jess been down there? Perhaps Laurie had only just fallen asleep. She reached for her phone to check the time.
She must have fallen asleep again, but something – a faint click, the hint of a draught, some imperceptible change in atmosphere – told Laurie the door of her room was opening. ‘Dad?’ she murmured, her eyes still shut. ‘What time—’ She never finished the sentence. With brutal swiftness, a pair of gloved hands clamped shut her jaw, while another slapped tape over first her mouth and then – before she had time even to open them – her eyes. Laurie felt for the mobile phone still in her hand. If she could just press the call button at least she’d get through to the last number she’d called? Who was that? Paul?
It was a vain hope. The sudden weight on Laurie’s pelvis announced that she was being sat upon, mocking her efforts to buck the intruder off. Then, untroubled by her desperate attempts to resist, two pairs of hands grabbed her arms and swiftly taped them to each other, forearm to forearm, forcing the phone out of her grasp. Further tape around her bare legs, from knee to ankle, left her immobilised, lying on her back with her arms fo
lded in front, like a corpse awaiting mummification.
Now Laurie had never felt more awake, but she was blinded and helpless. Frantically, she grunted as loudly as possible, desperate to warn Dad and Jess. Then she fell silent, straining to hear what was going on around her. Was that one set of footsteps or two? Perhaps there were more of them. Sounds came from the direction of Dad’s room: a struggle, tape unsticking from a roll, then silence.
One set of footsteps returned; a click and a sense of brightness, discernible even through the tape and her eyelids, told her that the light had been turned on. Lightly, but audibly, the footsteps approached her bed.
With no warning at all, Laurie felt her t-shirt pulled down, exposing her right breast. A gloved hand caressed it, then took the nipple between thumb and forefinger, rolling it back and forth, and pulling it away from her body so she could feel the stretch, before releasing it with a disdainful flick. Used, violated, dreading what was to come, Laurie felt every muscle tense, as the hand was replaced by a mouth, once that sucked and nuzzled, pressing so hard that bristle felt like sandpaper against her areola.
‘No time for that,’ came a voice from the doorway. ‘Check the rest of the house.’ That wasn’t a West Country accent, Laurie found herself reflecting as she heard footsteps retreat and then reapproach. Mum would have called it educated. Another hand – a different one? – cupped her naked breast, as if to feel its weight. Laurie felt leather against her nipple. Then the same voice that she’d previously heard in the doorway said, ‘Pity,’ as her t-shirt was pulled back into its proper position. The sound of exhaling breath filled Laurie’s ears; it was a shock when she realised it was her own. How long had it been since she last breathed in? Now it seemed she couldn’t get enough air. Rapid inhalations did little to fill her lungs, but seemed necessary to fuel the uncontrollable trembling that had taken over her body.