Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased) (15 page)

              Thrashers tic on the left of his face began twitching rhythmically as he thought about the Sanderson file. He was sure that the letter hadn’t been substituted without his knowledge. So how, he wondered, could he explain this. He looked down at the photocopy of the shredded letter that he had moments ago collected from his secretary. It wasn’t the letter that he had opened. How had it happened?  Thrasher got up and walked across to the Sanderson file that had been abandoned on the conference table. He tipped the file out onto the table and started leafing through the contents, page by page.

“Bollocks. Sanderson you cunning bastard.” Shouting for Siobhan at the top of his voice, he demanded,

“The Sanderson File. The top secret, confidential, keep locked in the safe at all times, Sanderson File. You know the one I mean?”

Siobhan nodded.

“Is it ever taken out of the safe without my knowledge?”

“Only to add correspondence to it and then it is locked back in the safe.”

“You do that in person I expect?”

“Of course. Oh except once. You were attending a conference on forensic law and Josie had left so we had a temp in. I got her to sort the post and once I had checked it, she filed it. I remember Sanderson had a sealed envelope that day. It superseded the sealed client envelope we had on file. The accompanying letter asked us to return the envelope we were holding to Sanderson, so we did. The temp put a note in the file.”

Staring at the piece of paper in his hand, he asked,

“Is this the note she put in the file?”

He placed a piece of paper on the desk that stood between them. Glancing down at the paper, she shrugged.

“It might have been; I didn’t see what she wrote. I told her to leave you a note on the file so that you would be aware that Sanderson had updated his instructions.”

“Thank you Siobhan. Can you let me have the name of the agency we used for that temp please?”

“We didn’t use an agency, she was a graduate who had approached us a few months before and we offered to employ her for the holidays. Odd, but she only came in that day and then we never saw her again. I’ll dig her CV out for you. Is it important or can it wait until the end of the day?”

“What was her name?”

Frowning, Siobhan concentrated tapping her teeth with her fingernails.

“Got it. Unusual name, Mercury. Persephone Mercury”

Gerald Thrasher blanched his face the colour of putty. He stared at the wall ahead of him and whispered,

“The messenger, Mercury is the messenger.”

Recovering enough to send Siobhan out of his office, assuring her he wasn’t about to collapse, he slumped onto the sofa by the window and groaned long and low, characteristic of an animal in extreme pain.

He poured himself a large single malt whisky from the decanter and sat behind his desk. He smoothed the piece of paper he had found in the file and reread it.

‘Dear Mr Thrasher

I have amended the information in the Sanderson file with an update that was received in the post this morning.  I have returned the other sealed envelope to Mr Sanderson as requested. He asked me to tell you that he would be forwarding some sensitive material for safekeeping. Please treat these documents when they arrive as private, his eyes only.  I’m sure you know the seriousness of breaching client confidentiality, especially to another client, even Ms Cortez.

Regards

Persephone Mercury

For Ernest Sanderson’

Looking at the photocopy of the reassembled shredding, he reached across, picked up his telephone, and dialled Felicity. As he tapped in the numbers his face twitched in time with his taps, the thought of the conversation to come caused the entire left side of his face to spasm.

“What?” she snapped.

He was sure few people could inject a single word with such venom and loathing.

“Well, have you finished puzzling?”

Bracing himself, Thrasher answered,

“Yes, we’ve pieced the shredding together and I’m afraid it isn’t good news. We might have a problem; it appeared that Sanderson knew a lot more than we had thought.”

“What does it say? No, that is irrelevant. We need to find out what he knew. Expect me in ten minutes."

***

Sanderson’s resourcefulness was becoming tedious, even in death he was causing complications. She had to know what he had found out. If he had discovered as much as his brother discovered and managed to pass it on; she was in trouble. Anything less was manageable. The key was just that, management. If she could manage Mr Bacchus and Thrasher with sufficient adroitness, then all would be well. Once she had a clearer idea of what William wanted to achieve on behalf of the late Ernest Sanderson she could ensure he succeeded or thought he had. Failing that he could be killed.

              It was of course brilliant. The initial idea by her grandfather was so far reaching it beggared description. How had he hit on the realisation that we, the inhabitants of this planet, were going to use its resources at a rate that was unsustainable? What had he seen to awaken him to the possibility, no probability of a shortage of natural resources? His self-belief had bankrupted his first business empire, leaving him walking the streets of London with a suitcase of clothes, a briefcase of documents and a young family to support. The story that had been told to her was that he had borrowed enough money by pawning some family jewellery he had inherited from his mother and was back in business within a month. Charles Cortez had been astute. He had concentrated on establishing himself as a player while in the background continued working on his vision of the future of the world. He had felt sure that that the human race would consume its natural resources faster than they could be replenished. He was determined to have an alternative in place for when that happened. Enter Jonas Sanderson.

              ‘Mission Impossible’ sounded from the depths of Felicity’s coat pocket breaking her reverie. The display showed that the call was from Jemima, calling to announce her arrival no doubt. Smiling, to be sure her voice was happy and friendly, as the sales courses recommended; she answered the phone.

“Jemima, did you like the earrings I had delivered to your hotel? I thought they were adorable. As you were born at midnight on the 30
th
April, I wasn’t sure which birthstone you had chosen to adopt. A combination of emeralds and diamonds covered both months. Anyway, to business. Thrasher has called with his usual tale of woe; I’m on my way round to find out what has happened and also to try and piece together what Sanderson might have bequeathed to the vicar. Have you seen Bacchus yet?”

Jemima chuckled into the telephone,

“I have driven down to this little town from London, found the little hotel, unpacked and booked a table for this evening. I will call you later with any news and be back in London by tomorrow. Ciao.”

Before she could disconnect the telephone, Felicity cautioned,

“We need to approach the vicar with more care than we have done in the past. I’m afraid you might be in Sherborne a little longer than one night. Watch what he does, who he sees and anything he collects for a couple of days and then we can decide what approach to take. Get to know the cripple, Ben. At the moment, he’s our only connection to Bacchus until we work out why he benefited from Sanderson’s will.”

              The response that she got to the change of plan was the sound of a disconnected phone. Smiling to herself as she approached Thrasher‘s offices she muttered,

“That didn’t go down well; this could cost me a fortune in baubles.”

William leaned back on the captain’s chair and clasping his hands behind his head, he stretched. Rubbing his eyes, he got up and walked around the small attic room trying to shake the kinks out of his shoulders and back. Ernest Sanderson was a very thorough man. Checking his watch, he realised that after three hours of constant reading, he was still just one per cent of the way through the documents, spreadsheets and photographs. The complexity of the myriad documents involving CHC Industries and the Cortez family meant his progress was slow.

              The first document was a summary, a route map to the other documents. This identified each section, subsection, and down to individual source documents. Each of the source documents had been photographed using a high-resolution camera and these were the .jpeg files that were on the memory stick. Each photograph had an identifying code, which related to the section it was in and its number within that section. William could now see how he had amassed and controlled such a large business empire.

              The summary, which ran to over forty thousand words, set out what needed to be achieved.  It began by giving a detailed background to his brother’s childhood, schooling, first degree and doctorate. On completion of his doctorate, it went on to describe his early employment history up to when he was approached by CHC Industries. William started a separate document that he used to pose questions that he could address later once he had worked his way through the files.

              Jonas was a brilliant scientist and creative thinker who had dreamt up innovative applications for existing products as well as inventing numerous new processes. Ernest had included some of the more technical elements of Jonas’s achievements, but these were wasted on William and didn’t seem relevant. Jonas had worked for CHC until he had died of a heart attack in nineteen seventy-three. William typed another question that hadn’t occurred to him during his initial reading of this section of the overview. ‘Had there been an autopsy performed on Jonas?’

              A tinny version of Handel’s Messiah sounded from William’s jacket pocket making him start and scramble for his mobile phone.

“Yes, William Bacchus speaking.”

“William, it’s Annabel. I’m not interrupting am I?”

“No, no, I think I have had as much as I can cope with for today. How can I help?”

Annabel paused at the other end of the telephone; the only sound was her breathing into the microphone of the telephone.

“It’s a bit tricky, delicate. I need to ask you something. Can I buy you a drink at the pub across the road? Ten minutes?”

William looked at his watch; two o’clock, that explained why he was feeling so hungry.

“And a sandwich and you’ve got a deal”

              William removed the memory stick from the computer and as requested put it around his neck. Never having worn jewellery, it felt alien and cold, not something he was accustomed to. The computer he slid into the padded backpack and hefted it onto his shoulder to assess its weight. He was surprised how comfortable it felt.

              Checking that no one was in the office he went through the door and locked it rearranging the files to disguise the doors existence to a casual observer. The key he put onto the chain with the memory stick and safe key and put it back around his neck. Collecting Wooster from Debbie, he walked across the road to the pub.

“Annabel, what would you like to drink? Are you a white wine woman or a gin and tonic girl?”

“A pint of real ale raver, if that’s ok.”

“A woman after my own heart” William said as he ordered two pints of Palmers IPA and took a lunch menu for them to look at.

              They took their drinks outside and sat at one of the picnic tables in front of the pub. William stared with pride at the outside of the bookshop, like a new father over his baby.

“Beautiful isn’t it. I’ve never been that interested in architecture, interior design, that sort of thing, but now I see the point. If it’s right, it looks good, doesn’t jar or offend the senses. Aesthetically pleasing. What a delightful phrase, aesthetically pleasing.”

Annabel laughed at him, looking at him in wonder. What a lovely man. Lovely was such a vacuous word but it described him to perfection she thought.

“Yes. Do you know a very attractive woman?”

“An attractive woman? Let me think.” He smiled and continued, not taking the question seriously,

“The only really attractive woman I know, present company excepted of course, has chestnut hair cut into a bob, slender with a symmetrical face, though her face does tend towards plainness because of the perfect symmetry. Her manners leave a lot to be desired. Why?”

Annabel’s expression had lost its comfortable, calmness and now looked uncomfortable and unsure.

“Are you sure she had chestnut hair?”

William could see how concerned she was at his description of Felicity.

“Yes, I met her at Salisbury Cathedral when I was staying with Freddie. Why? You look like my description of Felicity fitted someone you know.”

“Jemima. She said her name was Jemima. Your description of Felicity could have been used to describe Jemima except she has long blonde hair and is muscular rather than slender. She has the sculpted look of someone who spends a lot of time in gyms. From the very brief conversation I had with her, no manners, is a good description. She also has an unhealthy interest in you.”

William looked puzzled and then the mental mist lifted,

“As I have told you; no one knew that I was coming to Sherborne, the only person who could know that I was going to be here was Thrasher and I did tell Freddie, but he doesn’t count. So, Thrasher must have a connection to Felicity. What did, Jemima?” Annabel nodded in response to the question, “Jemima, want to know?”