Crusher (22 page)

“Allow me to express our condolences on the death
of your stepfather,” said the bloke I presumed was her boss, who had introduced himself as Kamlesh Vora. He was an old Indian guy, bald on top apart from a neat fringe of white hair, and sporting a silk tie that probably cost more than everything I was wearing.

“Thanks,” I said. We were sitting in a conference room lined with books so thick you could have built a bomb shelter out of them. Hale had the case open now and was sifting through the piles of documents and the envelopes full of printouts from the mortgage people. She pulled out a bundle of old passports, opened one and glanced across at me: I felt my face starting to burn. I could have brought my old passport and instead I brought an entire bloody suitcase full of bumpf. Why didn’t I just get a friendly passer-by to write “I CAN’T READ” on my forehead? Of course, they might have written “WANKER,” but I wouldn’t have known, would I?

Hale offered the passport to Vora, who slipped on a pair of glasses to look at it, and nodded to Hale. She slipped the passport back inside the case while he put his glasses away.

“We act for the estate of Mr. Charles Egerton,” he said.

“Who?”

“He was a friend of your father’s. A distinguished
actor in his time. We handled his business affairs here in the UK after he retired to Spain.”

Oh,
that
Charles Egerton. The one Dorothy Rousseau had mentioned at the funeral, the old man with the beard I could only just remember.

“Right,” I said. “I met him once, a long time ago. How’s he doing?”

“Mr. Egerton passed away two months ago,” said Vora. “As I said, we act for his estate.”

“His estate? You mean the place in Spain?”

“His entire estate,” explained Hale. “We’re the executors of Mr. Egerton’s will.” She was still browsing through the contents of the suitcase, which I considered rather nosy, now we’d established who I was.

“He stipulated that his entire estate should pass to Noel Maguire, your stepfather,” said Vora.

“My father’s dead,” I said.

“Yes,” said Vora. “We had been trying to trace him, but without success, until his death was reported last week in
The Stage
.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He’d sort of given up, dropped off the radar.”

“Do you know what your father’s wishes were?” said Vora. “Did he make a will?”

“Yes,” said Hale. She was holding up a letter she’d
taken from an unsealed envelope. She glanced through it. “It’s a standard form, from a newsagent, but it’s been properly signed and witnessed.”

“When did he do that?” I said.

She checked the date. “Four years ago. It was very sensible of him,” she said. “Every parent should do it.” Her eyes flicked down the page. “He leaves everything to his adopted son Finn Maguire.”

“Ah,” Vora said.

“Oh,” I said. “Does that mean …?”

“That Mr. Egerton’s estate passes to you? Yes, it does,” said Vora.

“Sorry, when you say his estate …”

“Savings, shares and assets valued at roughly eight hundred thousand euros,” said Vora. “Plus the property itself, of course.”

“Although there will be death duties to pay,” added Hale.

My mind was racing. I owned a house in Spain? With a shitload of money attached? Then something else occurred to me. “Who else knew about this?” I said. “Apart from you two?”

Vora opened his hands in supplication. “To the best of our knowledge, no one,” he said. “Mr. Egerton was pretty much a recluse, who had almost no contact with the outside world.”

I sat there for an hour or two, taking it in. “Holy crap,” I said eventually.

“Yes,” smiled Vora. “We’re very happy to be the bearers of such glad tidings.”

“Could we get your bank details?” said Hale, flicking open a notebook and clicking an expensive ballpoint pen.

“I don’t have any,” I said. “Actually, since my dad died, it’s all been a bit of a mess.”

I saw Hale look at the paperwork tossed and jumbled in the suitcase, and at me, and decided I’d spare her the trouble of finding a delicate way to phrase her question.

“I have reading difficulties,” I said.

She nodded. “Would you like our firm to help you sort everything out?” she said, as if she was offering to do my laundry. Which in a way I suppose she was.

“How much do you cost?” I said.

“Not as much as trying to do it yourself,” said Hale. “We’ll save you more than we cost, put it that way.”

“Sounds good,” I said. I took out my phone and glanced at it. “I have to go to work.”

Both Vora and Hale looked a little taken aback as I stood up. “Where do you work?” asked Hale.

“At the Iron Bridge,” I said. “You know, the restaurant.”

“You’re a chef?” said Vora.

“I wash saucepans,” I said. “Can I leave that case with you?”

“Mr. Maguire,” said Hale, “you’ve just inherited half a million pounds. You don’t need to wash dishes for a living.”

“I know, but I said I’d be there, and now I’m late,” I said. I opened the conference-room door.

Hale hurried after me. “Please, take my card,” she said.

I didn’t bother trying to read it, I just stuffed it in the back pocket of my jeans. “Thanks,” I said. “I really have to go.”

The baggy overalls I wore at work were usually taken away to be laundered—or incinerated, maybe—and a fresh set left on a shelf in the locker room. But when I arrived at the restaurant, ten minutes late, I found the shelf was bare. Tall, skinny Gordon was wearing them at the sink, scraping away at a stubborn lump of pastry. “Hey, Gordon,” I said, “thanks for filling in. I’ll take over.” He looked at me mournfully like a freshly whipped bloodhound, but didn’t say anything. His eyes flicked over my shoulder.

“Finn,” said Georgio, behind me, “Mr. Eccles would like to see you.”

I caught the pitying glances of the apprentice chefs as I trailed after Georgio towards Eccles’s office. I had the feeling they’d seen this before: another failed candidate about to be gutted, roasted, sliced thin and eaten rare.

Eccles carried on working on his invoices as I stood in front of his desk. I recognized that technique. The headmaster of the first school to expel me had let me stand there for ten minutes before he had finally got round to expressing his disappointment: I hadn’t let him down, he told me, or let the school down, I’d let myself down. He was even more disappointed that evening when he found that someone had slashed his tyres. It would have been funnier just to let them down, of course, but that would have taken too long.

“Georgio tells me he found you in this office yesterday,” said Eccles. “What were you looking for?”

“You,” I said.

He put the last invoice aside. “Here I am,” he said. “What did you want?”

“Some time off,” I said.

“How did you get in?”

I took a deep breath. This schtick was starting to bore me. I knew where this was going, and I wanted to tell him he could shove his job, because I didn’t need it any more—I owned a sodding castle in Spain,
apparently. But I realized I liked Eccles, and I didn’t want to let him down.

“What’s the problem?” I said. “Is anything missing?”

“No,” said Eccles. “But that’s not really the point.”

“Georgio doesn’t look after your keys very well,” I said.

Eccles put his pen down and scratched his forehead. He was trying to figure out how he could ask how much I knew without giving away how much he knew. I didn’t envy him.

“Have you been in touch with your friend Mr. McGovern?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “And I told you, he’s not a friend.”

Now Eccles looked right at me, and saw how much I meant it. “Do you have any idea what you might be getting into?” he said.

“Not so far,” I said. “Do you?”

Eccles tapped his teeth with his specs for a moment. “Tell you what,” he said, pulling out his wallet, “take as much time as you need.” He flicked out a wad of twenties and offered them to me. “Your services are no longer required.”

Damn it, I thought. Now he’s fired me, I can’t tell him to shove his job. It wouldn’t sound half as good.

“Keep it.” I was going to add,
“You need it more than I do,”
but it would have been hot air—even now Eccles
had far more money than I did. But walking out of his office leaving him holding a wad of cash would rattle him more than anything I could have said. So that’s what I did.

As I grabbed my coat from the staffroom and left I felt a bit sorry for Eccles—having lent the Guvnor that van, he was in far deeper shit than me—but that was the second time in a fortnight I’d been fired, and even if they were rubbish jobs, it still stung. I’d honestly performed them to the best of my ability, done the work as well as I could—better than most—and I’d still got canned. Earlier that morning I had worried about how what I planned to do might affect Eccles, but now I was too pissed off to give a toss. There was an Internet café near the tube station. I went in and paid for a two-hour session, a cup of weak tea and a red apple that tasted of nothing whatsoever. Taking a seat in a dim little cubicle in front of a bulky old-fashioned monitor, I fired up the browser, logged into the
RTTracker
website and dug in my back pocket for the bit of paper that I’d written Eccles’s log-in details on.

It had taken me ninety minutes to get there, the last twenty on foot from a deserted, dirty tube station, and I wondered if I’d come to the right place.

In the Internet café I’d sat sipping tea and watching the red blip of the van’s tracking device circle London on the motorway until it was directly north of the city, then turn south and slow down as it hit the city streets. Zooming in, I’d followed it down past Hendon to a spot just inside the North Circular, where it turned off a dual carriageway into a blank area marked “Goods Yard,” and finally halted in the north-eastern corner next to a railway line.

Now I’d got there the “goods yard” turned out to be an industrial estate so new it hadn’t been detailed on the maps. Massive units of yellow brick with tall roller doors rose from a sea of rippled concrete floodlit with sodium arc-lights, and as I entered through the main
gates and headed east I felt as exposed and vulnerable as a rat on a skating rink. Huge articulated trucks rumbled past as I headed for the eastern perimeter, where a four-metre fence capped with razor wire discouraged suicidal strollers from exploring the railway, and turned north. I tried to creep along in the little shadow I could find, wondering if I was being observed on CCTV, and if I was, whether that was good or bad. None of the passing truck drivers had appeared to notice my presence, and if I disappeared tonight, no one would ever know what had happened to me, apart from the people who made it happen. And I longed to show Zoe this castle in Spain. See her act all cool and offhand then.

At the north-east corner of the estate stood a unit identical to all the rest. There was no sign that it had ever been leased out to a business. There were no cars on the forecourt, and the customer reception area to the right of the main door was unfurnished, apart from its virginal white service counter. No mail on the desk or the doormat, no lights from inside. I couldn’t slide under that roller door without losing some serious weight, and I wouldn’t get through the reception door without a sledgehammer. I went round the side instead, along the side of the unit that faced the razor-wire fence, and peeked around the corner at the end. Even here it wasn’t dark—the yellow light of the sodium lamps bled
everywhere like dye from a cheap T-shirt. Right on the corner, next to me, was a fire exit door—a slab of wood with no handle, just the usual “Keep Clear” sign. I looked more closely; the door wasn’t properly closed. The edge protruded from its jamb about the length of a fingertip. I’d come all this way, I thought I might as well give it a try. The door rattled when I pulled at it, but refused to open. I pushed it shut in frustration and it popped out again—this time a little further. There was obviously something wrong with the latch. I pulled and pushed and pulled and pushed, and the door opened enough for me to just reach the push-down bar on the inside. Stretching my fingers to their utmost I managed to touch it, and get just enough leverage to push it down. The door popped open.

There was a bad smell from somewhere, like cheap bleach, that caught in the back of the throat. The fire door opened onto a narrow breeze-block corridor, and now I could see a light—a faint yellow glow from where the loading bay must be, spilling from a door that hung ajar at the end of the corridor. I tiptoed up to the far door and held my breath as I pulled it open, but it was still new and freshly oiled, and barely made a sound.

There were two vehicles parked in the loading bay. One was a big four-wheel-drive, the other a high-sided white van with a refrigeration unit mounted on top
and
The Iron Bridge, Pimlico
in blue lettering on the side panels. I looked around, but the rest of the loading bay was empty and bare, apart from what looked like a wooden lockup in the corner. The smell seemed to be coming from the van itself, and under the stink of cheap bleach I picked up the sharp tang of urine. The rear doors were locked, but checking the ignition I found the keys still hanging there. I took them round to the back, unlocked the van’s rear door, took a deep breath and turned the handle.

The rear interior light had been left on, I noticed; wouldn’t that drain the battery? When I looked down and saw a pair of wide, frightened eyes staring at me I forgot about the battery.

The floor was covered with crumpled, stained newspaper and piled haphazardly with cheap sleeping bags. When I looked more closely I saw that each bag held a huddled child, and some held two. There were about ten altogether, all girls as far as I could see, and the oldest must have been twelve. They all stared at me, faces grubby, eyes wide, too fatigued and frightened to speak or even cry. There were chewed heels of bread scattered about, and discarded skins of coarse sausage; I caught the faint whiff of garlic but it was overwhelmed by the stink from a chemical toilet in the far corner that must have been slopping and splashing all the way from
Dover. I had just opened my mouth to tell them, “It’s OK,” when my head slammed into what felt like a manhole cover and I sank to my knees, stunned.