Legacy of Lies (17 page)

Pierce's look was sharp. ‘Be thankful it's only bruises. So, what does he think you have?'

‘That's my problem. I don't know, but my uncle was Rupert Friedman.'

Billy Pierce nodded and turned his attention to the kettle. ‘It was the name that made me agree to see you,' he said. ‘I figured there wouldn't be too many Friedman's about. Not interested in Sam Kinnear, anyway. So, what
do
you know?'

Swiftly, Alec brought him up to speed and by the time Pierce had joined him at the table with mugs of tea, he knew just about as much as Alec which, he now reflected, wasn't a whole lot.

Pierce left him and rummaged in the kitchen drawer, pulling out a sheaf of takeaway menus. ‘Got a preference?'

‘Sorry?'

‘I recommend the Chinese. They're about the quickest too. I don't bother to cook for myself, I'm afraid. Lousy at it. Miriam used to leave stuff for me when she went away, but I used to put it in the oven and forget to take it out. Now she just leaves these.' He grinned sheepishly. It transformed the rather dour face and lost him a good ten years in age.

‘Chinese, then,' Alec said suddenly realizing how ravenous he was. ‘I don't think I managed lunch and breakfast was caffeine based.'

Pierce smiled again. ‘Good,' he said. ‘You've no idea how I've missed the chance to talk shop. Retirement! Bloody overrated, that's for sure.'

After the food arrived, they settled themselves once again around the table. ‘At first,' Pierce told Alec, ‘your uncle seemed like a star witness. He was lucid and coherent, which is more than could be said for most of the poor buggers caught up in the shoot out. And that's what it was, I don't care what the official report says. Two men were killed and, frankly, it's a miracle not more were injured. Kinnear was just firing off shots in all directions. Didn't give a damn.'

‘What was he armed with? The newspaper reports are a bit vague on that score.'

‘Smith and Wesson revolver of all things. Turned out it belonged to his stepdad.'

‘Stepdad?'

‘His father went off when he was just a kid. She married this other fella when Sam was six or seven. He took his name. From all accounts he didn't make a bad fist of raising the boy, but it was a rootless sort of childhood.'

‘I read he was an army kid.'

‘Well, so are a lot of kids but they don't turn out like Kinnear. No, it wasn't the moving around it was the fact Kinnear had such a short fuse no one could get close to him for long enough to build a relationship. Now, they'd no doubt have some fancy label for him. We just knew he was a little scrote. In trouble from the time he was old enough to spell the word.'

‘And by the time of the robbery?'

‘In so deep he'd need a JCB to dig himself out. Same with the others in his so-called gang. That's what didn't fit, you see. Between them they had the IQ of a chicken, and a very dumb chicken at that, yet they pulled off two very neat little jobs, made themselves a tidy little sum and if they'd waited a bit for the fuss to die down would probably have got clear away with the third.'

‘So, you suspect Kinnear didn't do the planning.'

‘It was speculated upon, yes.' He took a long draft of beer and then started on his chow mein.

Alec waited, thinking and chewing slowly. He had declined the beer knowing he had to drive and that even if he was still legal he'd be asleep at the wheel within a mile. He felt so bone weary and was having a hard time keeping his head clear enough to focus on what Pierce was saying.

‘So, when did you start to suspect Rupert?' continued Alec.

‘When it turned out he'd been at the scene of the second robbery.'

‘Oh?'

‘Took a bit of time to make the connection. He wasn't an official witness, just a name on a list of people questioned because he was in the vicinity. He claimed to have seen nothing and was sent on his way.'

‘Miracle, in that case, you even had his name.'

‘It was that. Seems they'd put a young recruit on the job who wanted to prove how thorough he was. Rupert Friedman never denied he was there and he had a valid sort of excuse if you believe someone would drive ten miles out of their way because they liked a particular supermarket.'

‘Actually,' Alec mused, ‘that sounds exactly the kind of thing he would do.'

Pierce laughed. ‘Well, you would know.'

‘So, how involved did you suspect he was?'

Pierce paused, then rammed his fork back into the foil tray and twisted it round, collecting noodles and chicken. ‘Well, it occurred to me he might have been the one that planned it,' Pierce said.

By the time Alec left an hour later his brain was buzzing, as Patrick would have described it. He couldn't see Rupert as any kind of criminal mastermind but, much as he disliked the idea, he could not get away from the thought that this too might be something Rupert could do as an exercise, just because he could. Rupert, Alec thought, had never been much on consequences. Even as a child Alec had recognized that his uncle was an impulsive being. One who gave about as much thought to the responsibilities and outcomes of his actions as did Alec himself.

So, if he had been involved, why hadn't Kinnear fingered him? Unless, Kinnear thought Rupert was looking after their money.

That made a kind of sense.

But, Alec had questioned, why wait until now to try and reclaim what was his? The only logical explanation Alec could come up with was that Kinnear hadn't known where Rupert was.

Alec had analyzed that, put the speculation to Pierce. Friedman was, as he had commented, an uncommon name.

‘Your uncle was due to appear as a witness,' Pierce said. ‘But he did a runner long before the trial and we didn't have the resources to track him down. Not that anyone was that bothered; there was no doubt Kinnear had been there, was there?'

‘Which does not explain why Kinnear didn't look for him.'

Pierce smiled and Alec realized he'd been keeping something back. ‘Kinnear thought he was someone else.'

Pierce laughed. ‘That's what we figured,' he said. ‘Kinnear kept going on about the getaway driver and how he'd been the one that planned it. That fitted with what we knew about Kinnear, but we knew from the start the driver hadn't given him a proper name.'

‘Oh? How was that then?'

Sitting in his car and signalling to come off the slip road and back on to the motorway, Alec chuckled at the remembered reply. It was
so
Rupert. Then he sobered, realizing this really clinched Rupert's involvement.

‘Because your uncle Rupert had called himself Sam Spade,' Billy Pierce had said.

I
t was very late by the time he reached his parents' home and he worried that they may not be up. He still had a key to their house, tucked away in the inside pocket of his jacket, though that might not count for much if his father had bolted the door.

Only an upstairs light shone out when he pulled across the end of the drive rather than turning into it, remembering almost too late that his father rarely put the car into the garage. He leaned back in his seat and rubbed his eyes, more tired than he could ever remember being.

Feeling in his pocket for the door key he found the locket he had discovered in Rupert's box. It had come to him later that same night why it seemed so familiar, though he had omitted to tell Naomi. Forgotten? No, not forgotten, he'd not wanted to tell her yet, not until he had an explanation. It was one of the things he needed to ask his parents.

His mother opened the door as he inserted the key.

‘Alec! Naomi phoned a couple of hours ago, she thought you might be here. Your mobile was off,' she chided. ‘And you might have let me know sooner, then I could have made up a bed. I've done it now anyway.'

She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek and Alec hugged her back. ‘I switched the phone off because the battery was low,' he explained. ‘But I should have called. Watch the ribs they're still sore.'

‘Yes, Naomi told us about that too. Alec, what were you thinking and why didn't one of you let us know? We'd have been right there, you know that.'

‘I know, I know. Is Dad still up?'

‘Well yes, we thought we'd give you another half hour and then go to bed. Come on in, come in, do.' Smiling, she reached out to take his hand. ‘What on earth do you have there?'

He opened his hand and held out the locket. He noticed the sudden rigidity that took hold of her shoulders. ‘Alec …' Then she managed a laugh. ‘Good Lord, where on earth did you find that?' She had blanched, her cheeks suddenly pale in the harsh light of the hallway. Then she flushed as though embarrassed or ashamed. Alec did not know what to say.

His father appeared in the living-room doorway. He was dressed in striped pyjamas and a deep red dressing gown. His comfortable dressing gown, Alec remembered. His favourite. Baggy and soft from years of washing and wearing and faded in patches as though the dye had been unevenly exposed to the light.

Alec folded his hand around the gold locket suddenly unwilling to ask questions that his mother's response had already told him the answers to. But it was too late by then. His father, always sharp, always observant, had seen.

‘Rupert had it then,' he said.

‘In a box upstairs. I didn't remember at first where I'd seen it, then I knew. The photograph of us all at Fallowfields.' He looked at his father's face and invented a lie, one they could all retreat behind. ‘I guess Rupert must have found it and forgotten to give it back. Then when you all stopped talking …'

‘That must have been it,' his mother said eagerly, then she met her husband's eyes and shook her head. ‘Enough,' she said. ‘Does it really matter now?'

Alec sat in his parents' front living room, and listened. They were together on the sofa, sitting close, holding hands as though for moral support and suddenly, to Alec's eyes, they looked very vulnerable and oddly young.

‘You were seven years old when we lost Sara,' his mother said.

‘Sara?'

‘She would have been your sister.'

‘My sister? I don't even remember you being pregnant.'

‘You remember I was ill. In hospital for a time. You went to stay with Aunt Liz and …'

‘And missed most of it,' his father continued. ‘Sara was stillborn. It was all a mess. Your mother was depressed after and I hid in my work. We just didn't seem to know how to get along for a while.'

‘That summer we went to stay with Rupert,' Audrey, Alec's mother picked up the story. ‘Rupert was kind and … well, it never actually came to anything, but it was a close call. I didn't tell your father for quite a while. In fact, it was Rupert that let it slip.'

‘I wasn't quite that naïve,' Arthur went on. ‘I suspected something. And to tell the truth I deserved for something to happen. I'd just shut myself off there and didn't know how to cope. It wasn't just Sara. My father died around the same time, if you remember, and then Mum was so ill and it all got a bit too much, I suppose.'

‘So …' Alec wasn't quite sure how to put this. ‘What did happen? Between you and Rupert, I mean.'

Audrey shrugged sadly. ‘Not a lot, if you must know. We kissed then we both came to our senses, or so I thought.'

‘But we still visited Rupert, right up to when I was about ten. I remember the visits.'

She nodded. ‘We did and if I'd had my way one stupid moment would have been one forgotten stupid moment. I was very careful not to be alone with Rupert and to make clear to him that it was your father I wanted to be with.'

‘But Rupert wouldn't let it go. It seems he was quite besotted and one day he said so. I didn't know how to react and we had a big row. I told your mother to pack and we left. I never did get around to making up with him, at first because I felt betrayed and hurt and angry, and then later … well, later was just too late. You know how these things can be? If it had been anyone else but my brother …'

Alec closed his eyes and sighed deeply. He wanted to sleep, but he had other questions to ask, more relevant to now, and he knew he would want to leave early the next day and be back at Fallowfields as soon as possible.

‘I'm sorry, Alec,' his mother said.

‘Why did you never tell me about Sara?'

They looked at one another, his father and mother, these adults who had raised him and done a good job by and large. These adults who had twenty plus years experience ahead of his and he saw only bewilderment on their faces.

‘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.'