The Endings Man (18 page)

Curle was on the second flight down when he heard the sound of Haskell’s door being closed. He turned and, stepping softly, quickly remounted the stairs.

When Linda Fleming opened the door, he put his fingers to his lips and mouthed, ‘Can I come in?’

After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped aside. He went in past her and without waiting for an invitation made his way to the front room and sat down.

When she’d joined him, he said, ‘I’ve just been with Haskell.’

‘Oh!’ Her face lit up as she took her seat opposite him. ‘I see.’

He said, ‘I wanted to put your mind at rest. I’m certain he isn’t the one.’ There was no need to explain what he meant by that.

As the animation drained away, he was shocked to see how much she had aged since their last meeting. She hadn’t brushed her hair and, without make-up, it straggled around a pale face marked by dark clown circles under the eyes.

She turned her head away from him. ‘I didn’t sleep last night.’

‘You shouldn’t stay here.’ He felt an impulse of genuine concern. ‘It’s doing you harm.’

‘How can I leave?’

‘What’s to stop you? Get an agent to put the flat on the market and go home.’

‘You’re not being honest!’ she exclaimed.

‘What?’

‘I’m just asking you to be honest with me. Haven’t I the right?’

‘I’m sorry – I’ve no idea, what do you mean?’

‘You ask me to give up. You’re not giving up. Why else would you be seeing him?’ She jerked a hand at the ceiling. ‘I don’t need protecting. So don’t lie to me about him. I know he killed my sister.’

‘But he’s gay.’

‘What makes you think that?’ Not waiting for an answer, she added scornfully, ‘Who else could it be, if it isn’t him?’

She watched him with an expression of growing incredulity as he told her about Brian Todd.

When he’d finished, she shook her head and said slowly, ‘He killed Ali because he bullied you at school?’

He flushed. ‘He hates me for some reason.’

‘What has that to do with a woman he’d never seen or even heard of?’

‘Because she was mine.’

‘That isn’t a reason to kill someone.’

‘Maybe he didn’t intend to kill her.’ No sooner had the thought come to him than it seemed enormously persuasive. ‘Maybe he went there to talk to her. Maybe he was arrogant enough to think she’d let him make love to her. When she didn’t, he tried to rape her and…it went wrong.’

‘Went wrong! You mean he beat her face, smashed all the bones in her face. And stamped on her. My sister, you’re talking about my sister. Oh, Christ,’ Linda Fleming
said, ‘you’re all so sick.’ She moved both hands across her face, pressing it gently, as if feeling the bones. ‘Could you leave me alone now? Please.’

He got to his feet.

At the door, he paused and said, ‘He knows his diary is missing.’

‘Are you sure?’

He was shamed by her fear.

Wanting to comfort her, he said, ‘It doesn’t matter. There wasn’t anything in it.’

‘But can he be sure of that?’ she cried.

There was silence for a moment. Then in a different voice, she said again, ‘Can he be sure?’

Torn between wanting to get away and pity for her isolation and vulnerability, he offered her the number of his mobile phone and escaped.

Saturday morning, Curle ate the food Liz put in front of him without tasting it, trying to decide what to do. Constrained, Liz made no attempt to break into his silence. Since her meeting with Brian Todd at the hotel, since her passion of weeping over the death of Mae, a kind of embarrassment had kept husband and wife at arms’ length. Crouched opposite Curle, his son ate without raising his head.

‘I have to go out,’ Curle said, pushing his plate away.

They were the first words he had spoken.

Liz nodded. As soon as he stood, she reached over for his plate and cutlery, which she piled on her own ready to clear away.

The boy ate on, lifting the fork to his mouth, chewing and swallowing. Curle had been so absorbed he’d hardly been aware of the other two. Now he went round and laid his hand on Kerr’s head.

‘I won’t be long,’ he said, and felt the little responsive movement under his hand.

All the way into the city, he seemed to feel it tingle on his palm.

He had no reason to believe that Meldrum would see him, always assuming he was there at all. Did policemen work on a Saturday? Of course, they did. Double time?
Almost certainly not. The police had liaison officers who answered questions about police pay and conditions and other such trivia courteously and seriously. He’d used them himself.

As he was being led along the corridor to the office, he distracted himself with the thought of Meldrum’s expression if he were to try a few such enquiries on him. I just called in, Inspector, to ask how many hours you work in an average week. At the first sight of the big man looking up from behind his desk, the distraction collapsed. Dry mouthed, Curle told himself he was innocent.

‘Mr Curle,’ Meldrum said. He scratched what must have been a signature on a paper in front of him and laid his pen aside.

‘It’s good of you to see me.’

‘Oh, I’d be seeing you sooner or later.’

It was said neutrally. There wasn’t any kind of threat in it. It was no more than a matter of fact: however their business together was going to end had still to be settled.

Gestured to a seat, Curle found himself babbling as he sat down, ‘Saturday morning. Rotten time to be working.’

The policeman looked at him quizzically. He’s trying to decide, Curle thought, if I’m play-acting. Preparing a defence of idiocy.

‘I should be with the others in the Incident Room,’ Meldrum said. ‘I had to take a meeting this morning, though.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I was just leaving.’

‘I won’t take up much of your time.’ He hesitated. He’d spent breakfast working out what he wanted to say, but now it wouldn’t come to him. The man across the desk watched him in silence. Curle began again, ‘I’m concerned about Linda Fleming. I saw her yesterday.’

Meldrum frowned. ‘Why?’

‘She looks ill and stressed.’

‘I mean, why would you go to see her?’

Thrown out of his stride, Curle stared helplessly. ‘I’d just been to see Haskell.’ He chopped at the air. ‘This is a muddle. Can I explain it my own way?’

‘It might be quicker.’

Curle took the plunge. ‘I think I know who killed Ali,’ he said.

Meldrum took the news calmly. Leaning back, he said quietly, ‘Not the Classics Professor you told me about before, I hope. We’ve checked university departments from Aberdeen to Durham and points south. Put your mind at rest on that one.’

‘Not him. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’

‘It didn’t take long. But you have someone else now. You went to see Mr Haskell?’

‘Not him either.’

‘You surprise me.’

For the second time in two days, Curle explained his theory about Brian Todd. He’d spent the previous night awake going over it, and it was a better-honed version than the one he’d offered Linda Fleming. He acknowledged, for example, how unlikely it was that a man would plan to murder a woman the moment after he’d learned of her existence. ‘But I don’t think that’s what he intended. He went to look at her. Probably he went to tell her what a weakling I was. I think then he tried to make love to her and it finished in rape. Once he’d done that, he had to kill her, and the way he did it – all that violence – that was the rage in him.’

‘Extraordinary,’ Meldrum said. ‘And you say he hates you?’

‘Ask Jonah Murray. He believes the same thing. The three of us were at school together.’

‘My school wasn’t such an exciting place.’

‘All right,’ Curle said, ‘it was a boarding school. Whatever you think of them, it does make a difference.’

‘From what I understand,’ Meldrum said, ‘they seem to be an important event in the lives of people like yourself.’

‘Yes.’

‘And yet am I not right in thinking that this man Todd hadn’t seen you for thirty years?’

Curle nodded reluctantly. He could see where this was going.

‘Is that not odd if he hated you as much as you say?’

But this was something Curle had thought about. ‘I don’t think he hated me at school. He despised me. Maybe disliked me. But he does hate me now. Something happened in the years in between.’

‘Leave it with me.’ Meldrum looked at his watch again.

Taking the hint, Curle got to his feet.

‘One thing more,’ he said. ‘About Linda Fleming.’

Meldrum had got up and was walking him to the door. ‘Yes?’

‘She’s obsessed with the idea Haskell killed her sister. I know it’s wrong.’

‘Did she tell you what she did with this diary she stole?’

‘She’s hidden it somewhere. The thing is, he knows she took it.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘He told me. Dental appointments, stuff like that, how could it matter?’

Meldrum opened the door. It was a dismissal.

As Curle stepped into the corridor, he said, ‘Thank you for seeing me alone.’

‘I’ve got you on tape,’ Meldrum said. ‘Did I mention that?’ Curle shook his head. A reflex brought the taste of vomit into the back of his mouth. ‘Well, you know now.’

Curle wasn’t sure he wanted to speak to Jonah again. Indeed, he found it difficult to picture how they would ever manage to face one another. As with other, less extreme but similar, situations, his strategy had always been to do nothing for as long as humanly possible. It was the same principle as ignoring an in-tray; if you waited long enough, everything in it would have solved itself. Time was a great healer.

Two days wasn’t long enough.

He’d come home from his interview with Meldrum to find a note propped against the milk jug on the kitchen table. Liz had taken Kerr into the shops and then over to Ster Century for lunch and most likely a film to go with it, if she could find one that was suitable. ‘I think he needs cheering up,’ she’d written.

When he read that, something like a stab of jealousy went through him. He knew his son probably loved his mother more than him. What little boy didn’t love his mother best? But as little boys grew up, fathers got their chance. They taught their sons to play golf, bridge or poker, took them to football matches. How could mothers compete with that? A non-golfer, adulterer, murder suspect; had he blown his chance?

He was still chewing over that, together with a pilchard
in tomato sauce balanced on a slice of wheaten bread, when Jonah phoned.

‘I don’t have the car,’ was Curle’s excuse.

‘You only have one car?’

‘The Vectra needs a new tyre.’

‘…I could come to you.’

Waiting for him to arrive, Curle was filled with trepidation. What could he possibly want that would make him come all the way out here to the house? He had never visited Curle before, and there, however unworthy, was another cause for concern. It was a nice enough house, but nothing to boast about. In that it was like the old Vectra, both of them middle of the range, family models. Curle had been short of money for long enough to be canny about spending it even after he had some.

When Jonah arrived, however, he was a man on a mission, too intent to spare a glance for his surroundings. He sat down in the living room with his coat on and refused anything to drink.

Needing fortification, Curle opened the cabinet and poured himself a whisky.

As he sat down, Jonah leaned forward and asked, ‘Do you know what a phoenix company is?’

Curle stared in surprise. ‘Should I?’

‘Didn’t expect you to. You write murder stories. You don’t have to know about anything to write murder stories.’

Too uncomfortable to protest, Curle settled for a mouthful of whisky.

‘A phoenix company is one that survives after it’s been liquidated. Before it goes under, all its assets and cash have been handed over to a new firm which just happens to be owned by the same directors as the old one. They go on
making money – only difference is that they’ve got rid of all their unpaid debts and taxes. You follow me?’

‘Does that work?’

‘Like the plague. It costs the country millions.’

‘It seems so obvious.’ Despite his confusion, Curle couldn’t help absorbing information that might be useful at some point. ‘You’d think the police would crack down on it.’

‘That’s where a good accountant comes in. A good crooked accountant. It wouldn’t work without them. There aren’t many of them, but they do an enormous amount of damage.’

‘Accountant…’

Jonah nodded, like a schoolmaster encouraging a pupil who was almost there.

‘Are we talking about Brian Todd?’

‘That’s who we’re talking about.’ He licked his lips as if they had suddenly gone dry. ‘Can I have that drink now?’

Curle recharged his own glass and poured a stiff measure for the dapper little man who suddenly showed signs of coming apart at the seams.

‘Don’t think this is easy to do,’ Jonah said, sipping at his drink so delicately he seemed to be nibbling on the rim of the glass. ‘Brian is a violent man.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’

They sat looking at one another as if waiting for a knock on the door.

‘He’s also a successful man,’ Curle said. He remembered the charity affair at the New Club and Todd swimming, sleek as a seal, in the approval of the great and the good. ‘I can’t believe what you’re telling me.’

‘It’s all a façade. Don’t you know how much of life is a façade? His own association, the Institute of Chartered
Accountants of Scotland, is on to him. They have a regulation and compliance department that’s just waiting for the police to make their move, then they’ll kick him out. It’s all unravelled for him. Just a matter of time. It’s been going on for years apparently. I don’t know how it started. Maybe a client tempted him to bend the rules. Maybe there was that twisted bit in him and it would have come out anyway. Some people are born to be criminals. They need a lot of luck for it not to happen. Maybe he had bad luck. However it started, it’s finished with him up to his neck in crime. Gangsters running security firms, money laundering, financial scams. He’s made a lot of money, and society’s getting ready to present the bill.’

‘He told you all this?’ It was too much for Curle to take in.

‘Christ, of course he didn’t. It’s true, though. I told you I’d find out why he hated you.’

Bewildered, Curle couldn’t see the connection. Some kind of self-protective denial made him stubborn. He said again, ‘I can’t believe what you’re telling me.’

‘Christ!’ Jonah blasphemed for the second time. ‘I sat with Frank Donnelley for three hours last night. He took me all through it.’

‘Frank Donnelley?’

‘You’ve met him. One time in the office. He’s a journalist. He wrote a book about Scottish murder trials and I sold it to Macmillan for him.’

‘How does he know about Todd?’

‘He’s a crime journalist. He’s been putting this together for more than a year.’

‘A crime journalist.’ Curle groped to make the connection. ‘When Todd told me how Ali had been killed, he said
he got it from a journalist he knew. Could it be the same man?’

‘I imagine so. Donnelley had been having trouble with his tax, so I introduced him to Todd.’

‘When was that?’

The knowledge of what he’d admitted moved like a shadow in Jonah’s eyes. ‘Five years ago.’ He dropped his head and clasped it with both his hands. While doing this, he managed to keep the whisky glass upright, not a drop spilled. Curle couldn’t help himself from noting a detail like that automatically. ‘Brian and I met just after I came back to Edinburgh. We went to bed together the same night.’

Like Ali and me, Curle thought.

‘What did you mean about finding out why he hated me?’ Curle asked.

Jonah looked up. As he did, he must have nudged the glass, for a little of the whisky slopped over the edge.

‘Over the years, I told him how things were with you. He’s not a man who reads much, but I kept telling him how well you were doing. I remembered how he’d treated you at school. And, of course, he was still a bastard – to me, I mean. It dawned on me gradually that I could –
hurt
him isn’t the right word –
get through to him
when I told him how successful you were. Recently, it’s really been getting to him. I could see that, though I couldn’t fathom why – I knew you weren’t making anything like the money he was, and money was what mattered to him. Then he told me he wanted to meet you. I didn’t like the idea, but I didn’t see any harm in it. How could I know his life was falling apart?’

The old school reunion, Curle thought.

‘I told you I’d find out why he hated you, and I have,’
Jonah said. ‘There isn’t anything else I can do.’

‘You can tell Meldrum what you’ve told me.’

‘The policeman?’ He looked horrified. ‘I can’t do that!’

‘He won’t believe me. He thinks I’m putting up suspects to get myself off the hook.’

‘Why should I tell him, for God’s sake? What would be the point?’

‘It would help me.’

It wasn’t enough. Jonah said more than once that Brian Todd was a violent man. When Curle gave up and they were at the door with the little man on the point of going, Jonah said, ‘It’s taken me twenty-five years, but I’ve finally chosen between you, Barclay.’

‘That’s…nice,’ Curle said. A lord of language, it was the best he could manage.

He was still in the same chair drinking whisky when his family came home. Hearing the car on the gravel, he got up and put the glass still with whisky in it into the cabinet and shut the door. When his wife came into the room, he saw her crinkle her nose as if catching the sweet taint of drink on the air.

‘How was it?’ he asked.

‘He enjoyed himself, except that I wouldn’t take him on the Britannia.’

‘The Royal yacht? Why not? Was it very dear?’

‘I didn’t even look. I was on the point of doing it – and then I decided, no. I remembered Prince Philip wanted to scuttle it. He didn’t want people like us trampling all over it. To hell with him!’

A woman of principle. I’d have taken him on to it, Curle thought. Maybe that’s what I’ll do. Take him to the pictures and on to the yacht. Show him what a good guy his father is.