The Herring Seller's Apprentice (9 page)

Geraldine however stretched to the limits even real life’s capacity for the capricious and unexpected. Her sudden changes of tack, her ability to contradict one minute what she had confidently stated the minute before, made little sense when considered from day to day or week to week. It was only when you were able to take a longer-term view that you saw that her life was like an impressionist painting. Close to it was a series of random splodges of colour – very pretty, but not adding up to much more than that. It was only when you stood back that you were obliged to gasp at the daring and supreme economy of effort in the grand plan.

But what was the grand plan this time? For a moment I thought that I had caught a glimpse of it. Now I had begun to wonder whether that grey smudge was a boat or a cloud on the horizon. And was that figure in the foreground turning towards me or away from me? I needed to step back a little further, and question some of the things that I had taken for granted.

My next stop that autumn morning was at a bank on Upper Street. Geraldine had abused it for many years, both for her business and private banking. I too had been a customer in the days when we were together.

I suppose there would have been a time when, under these circumstances, I might have expected to have been met personally by the bank manager and offered condolences. I was not surprised however to be met by a young lady with a large file and a clipboard that she checked from time to time to remind herself of my name.

‘I have prepared these papers for you to sign, Mr … um … Tressider,’ she announced nasally. ‘They will enable us to set up an executor’s account for you, into which we can transfer your wife’s assets.’

‘Which are relatively modest.’

‘But in credit.’ She smiled. My wife was dead but she was in credit, which would be a great comfort to me.

‘So, it’s all straightforward from your point of view?’ I asked.

‘Perfectly. As Mrs … um … Tressider’s executor you are however aware that there may be funds of hers in Switzerland?’

‘Really?’

‘Well, we’re not terribly sure, but there were two large transfers from her personal account to an account in Geneva. I had assumed that you would know about it.’

‘I’m sure it is all quite in order,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘That’s what we had hoped.’

I signed the papers.

‘Thank you Mr … um … Tressider,’ she said.

I had already gathered together my papers and shaken her hand when the phone next to her rang.

‘Yes, Mr Smith, we’re just tying everything up now. No, Mr … um … Tressider is about to leave. Yes, certainly, I’ll ask him.’ She turned to me. ‘The manager would like to see you, if you have a few minutes.’

I looked at my watch. ‘A few minutes?’ I said. ‘Why not?’

I had met Smith, the manager, before, in the days when he had watched over our minimalist joint savings and our quite substantial joint mortgage. I had good cause to remember him for all sorts of reasons, but, as with Rupert, I failed for a brief instant to recognize the plump figure behind the mahogany desk, though I would have been hard put to say in exactly what ways he had changed. At all events, he now looked very much like the bank manager he was: of medium height, rapidly thickening waist and gradually receding hairline, disguised for the moment by none-too-skilful sideways combing. His lips were of the rather prominent variety that can sometimes look full and sensuous in youth, but which become increasingly flabby and unattractive with age. His skin was distinctly oily. His suit, a cheap but still new-looking grey chalk-stripe, was easily the most presentable part of him. He seemed both to have remembered me and to have forgotten our last painful interview some ten years before, because he greeted me with a firm handshake and a sympathetic smile. Perhaps, after all, these old-fashioned niceties had not been completely forgotten.

‘Ethelred … my condolences. Terrible business.
Terrible
business. Coffee?’

He poured me a cup from a pot that was sitting on a warming device on a side table. I had not been offered coffee the last time we had met.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ve already been through things with your assistant. I’m told that everything is in order.’

He coughed, and he took a sip of coffee. For a moment a gossamer thread of spittle joined his thick lips to the cup. ‘I hope so,’ he said. He spoke slowly and carefully, with a slight Scottish accent, dwelling unexpectedly on certain words as if for emphasis. ‘Yes, I
do
hope
so.’

‘But the account is in credit?’

‘Oh, yes. In
credit.
Oh,
certainly.
Unfortunately she also has quite a large loan outstanding, and no trace of funds to cover it.’

‘Sorry – was there another account that I have missed?’

‘Not another account, no. Not another
account
as such. But she did owe a great deal of
money.’

‘How much?’

‘Three hundred thousand pounds.’

‘I see.’

‘It appears that she transferred this and some other money to Switzerland shortly before she … er … died. I need to recover it. Or rather I need you as
executor
to do this for us.’

‘You know where the money is then?’

‘We know the bank, but they are, being a
Swiss
bank, reluctant to divulge details about the account. We believe that your wife had an account with them into which she transferred the funds in question. It is unlikely that she could have done very much with the money before her death, and so it is presumably still there. Its recovery should be a relatively simple task – for you.’

‘Will it indeed?’

‘I shall obviously offer you what help I can.’

‘I’m surprised that the bank was willing to lend her so much, given her past record. What did she offer as security?’

‘Yes. Well, there lies the problem. She did not offer any
security
for the loan.’

‘And the bank gave her the money? You’ve changed your policy since I banked with you.’

‘Ah. There lies the other problem. The
bank’s
policy has not changed at all.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘
I
gave her the money, Ethelred. Me. It was a personal loan. The
bank
was not involved. I sold shares to raise the sum.’

‘But why?’

‘I must admit that it does now appear a foolish move on my part, but the proposition that she put forward offered a
very
high rate of return. I had only intended to leave the money with her for a short time before
reinvesting
it.’

‘I see.’

‘I need to reinvest as soon as I can.’ He took a quick sip of coffee.

‘Before the stock market rises?’

‘Before my wife finds out. I had not told her of this particular plan. She may feel, with hindsight, that it was a little
unwise.’
He gave a little nervous laugh and a conspiratorial glance. One husband to another (ex-) husband. ‘So, you really
do
have to help me.’

I smiled back and said nothing.

He looked at me uncertainly. ‘Are you saying that you can’t …
won’t
help me?’

I in turn took another sip of coffee, but very slowly, then replaced the cup carefully on the saucer.

‘I shall need all the facts,’ I said.

‘Of course,’ he said, with a gasp of relief. ‘The
facts.
Of
course.’

He provided me there and then with a small sheaf of papers, promising to phone the remaining details through as soon as he could.

As I left the office I felt that another small piece of Geraldine’s grand design had been fitted into place, but exactly what the piece was remained unclear. A boat? A cloud? Only time would tell.

I had one final visit to pay, following up a telephone call I had made earlier that day. In a side street of narrow red-brick houses, just off the Holloway Road, rain was streaking the grime of long-unwashed windows. There was no need to push the gate open: years of unchecked wet rot had made sure that it would never close again. A long pause followed my pressing the fourth-floor bell, then I heard slippered feet descending the stairs. The door opened a few inches and Rupert’s face appeared briefly round the edge. It closed, I heard a chain being removed, and the door finally juddered open again.

‘Thank goodness. Do you have any news?’

‘I’m more worried about the weather forecast than the news,’ I said. ‘I’m getting absolutely soaked. You might just let me in.’

‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ he said. ‘Come on up, then tell me.’

As he led me up the seemingly endless flights of stairs, it struck me that the seediness of his new surroundings had started to rub off on him. The corduroy trousers were old, the jersey had only one elbow rather than the normal number, and he had not shaved.

The flat was small and had all the marks of being a temporary staging post on his route to wherever it was he was going. The botched paintwork, the ill-fitting chair covers, the stained rug, the dusty Indian blinds suggested that few of the previous tenants had planned to stay there long either. It was bad enough, but even from here you could of course still go down. Down is one way you can always go.

‘I have less news than I would like,’ I began. ‘It won’t surprise you to learn that there is no money in Geraldine’s account.’

‘But my two hundred thousand?’

‘Gone to Switzerland,’ I said.

I watched his expression carefully, but it betrayed nothing except blank incomprehension. ‘Switzerland? Why?’

‘It’s where all money would go if it had the choice. It’s where money is loved and appreciated. You mean you didn’t know that she was planning to move the money overseas?’

He shook his head as if at some impossibly difficult crossword question. ‘To Switzerland? No. I’ve told you: she was planning to invest it in some houses in Hackney. What would be the point of transferring it to Switzerland? Look, Ethelred, I have just got to get that money back.’

‘Which is why I am continuing my researches. The bank is getting me details of the account. If it is in her name it may not be too difficult for me to retrieve the money.’

‘It might not be in her name? Why do you think that?’

‘Let’s not worry about that yet,’ I said quickly, though if he was not worried at this stage then he never would be. Or perhaps he could be a tad more concerned if he knew about Smith’s little loan to Geraldine, which would complicate the ownership of anything that might be recoverable. I could have told him, of course. But I didn’t.

‘I’m terribly grateful to you, Ethelred. You don’t know how reassuring it is to know that you are looking after things.’

‘We go back a long way,’ I said with a friendly smile. ‘But perhaps you can give me a little more help?’

‘Anything. Just ask.’

‘Over the past year did you ever get the feeling that there was somebody else in her life?’

‘Before we split up or after?’

‘Both.’ There had been something that he was planning to tell me that evening at my flat in Findon. Perhaps he would choose to reveal more now.

‘I’m not really in a position to comment on after, but before – yes, certainly. Since about March, if I had to put a date on it. Nothing I could really put my finger on – just that she would be away for odd days, or sometimes overnight. She said that she was also looking at various projects outside London, which she may well have been, of course.’

‘But it made you suspicious?’

‘No … well, yes. There was one occasion when she said she had been to Leeds. Then, when I borrowed the car a couple of days later, I found one of those car park tickets on the dashboard. It was for the day that she said she had been in Leeds, but it was for a car park in Chichester.’

‘Careless,’ I said.

‘I mean: Leeds … Chichester … it would have all been the same to me, so why tell me one when she was at the other? Then of course six months later her car turns up at West Wittering, not half a dozen miles from Chichester.’

‘Coincidence?’

‘Maybe. That’s why I wondered … you live down that way … did she ever call in to see you … about last May, it would have been.’

‘Why should she do that?’ I asked.

‘No, of course not. Silly of me to ask. But it did make me think at the time.’

‘Was there anything else? That made you suspicious, I mean.’

He frowned and then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Just that she was away a lot and sometimes appeared … I don’t know … distracted. And it isn’t that I haven’t thought about it. I suppose I might feel better about all this if she had left me for another man. But in the end she just left me. I had expected her, once we split up, to move straight in with somebody else. But she never did.’

‘Does the name Darren Oxtoby mean anything to you?’

‘Darren? He was the gormless office boy she took on.’

‘So there was nothing going on there?’

‘Darren?’ He laughed out loud. I had really managed to cheer him up, it seemed. My journey had not after all been totally in vain. ‘Darren? Good God, no. Not even in my wildest extremes of jealousy could I have supposed that Geraldine would be attracted to Darren. Could you?’

‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘No, I couldn’t. Forget I said it. And there was nobody else?’

‘Like I said: I really don’t know. There could have been. I knew what I was taking on with Geraldine. That was why we split up all those years ago at Oxford of course; her attention tended to wander unless you watched her closely. You must have had the same problem.’

‘Other men? While she was married to me? I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Except for you, obviously.’

‘But …’ He gave me a funny sort of look that I couldn’t quite account for, then shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, old man. How is this important anyway? Do you think that she was planning to run off with somebody?’

‘I honestly don’t know either,’ I said. But the piece of the jigsaw next to the grey smudge was now in place. And it was a boat all right. It was a boat.

All the way back to Findon the rain splattered against the windscreen. The traffic crawled through the seedy, puddled byways of Clapham and Wandsworth. The road danced in my headlights, the glimmering surface in a constant state of agitation. I arrived back tired and ready only for a whisky and bed.