The Silent Inheritance (2 page)

He wasn’t alone. He glanced at the pale beauty at his side. She had the appearance of a vestal virgin. He knew otherwise. He’d spent the night in her bed. She had baggage too, and was older then he’d initially believed, old enough to expect commitment.

‘I drove in this way yesterday,’ she said. ‘The traffic was worse at eight.’

‘We call it the car park,’ he said.

‘I could get to work easier in Sydney.’

‘The tram stop is a five-minute walk from the house, one of my reasons for buying it.’

‘If you’re wearing running shoes it might take five minutes – and it takes an hour or more to get into the city, and they set off before you’re sitting down. I hate trams.’

‘They can be slow,’ he agreed.

‘Are you driving me home tonight?’

‘Sadly no. My appointment with Smyth is at four thirty. I could be tied up with him for over an hour.’

‘About the divorce?’

That D word again. She’d shed her Yank. ‘Yes,’ he lied – or perhaps it was not a lie.

‘When will I see you?’

‘At work, my pet. All day.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I do,’ he said, his words raising the memory of an earlier
I do
, in the holy Catholic church, Maureen at his side through an hour of smoke and bells. Catholics weren’t into divorce. He’d never considered divorce.

Catholics were into separation. Maureen had found her own solicitor and they were threatening to split the company, the properties and bank accounts.

‘You’re so quiet this morning. What are you thinking about?’

He reached out a manicured hand to brush her flawless face. ‘Your beauty leaves me speechless,’ he said.

Like the Catholic marriage service, he was all smoke and bells – though not last night. She made him smoking hot. He’d burn out. He had before, and until he did, he had to … to appease the wife… and her parents. Nine twenty-five when he drove into the car park, and suggested she go up while he parked. Watched her walk behind the car, heard the click-click of her heels on concrete, saw the sway of her hair, and knew he had to find a way to keep this one, and keep the business intact.

*

Three streets south of Crow’s office, Frederick Adam-Jones, of Ainsworth, Adam-Jones and Smyth, punched the down button then waited for the lift to trundle him to the ground floor.

A man of substance, Frederick; his voice had substance, his profession gave him substance, as did his most recent acquisition, a red Ferrari. He owned a significant property in Camberwell and was in the process of selling a less significant property in Vermont.

His handsome wife gave him substance – and might have given him more if she’d learn not to open her mouth at inappropriate times. He had a son, as handsome as his mother, and already being pursued by pretty girls.

Frederick had never been pursued. Pretty girls had been more likely to run from him. Physically, he had little substance, other than around his girth. At fourteen he’d measured five foot five and three-quarters, and had grown no taller. He blamed genetics for his weight. His wife blamed lack of exercise. She suffered from hyperactivity.

For twenty years, Ainsworth, Adam-Jones and Smyth had rented spacious rooms in an elderly building where an elderly lift made frequent appeals for retirement. It appeared too to be losing its memory. He’d hit the ground floor button but was delivered to the basement car park.

Frederick Adam-Jones didn’t make mistakes – or perhaps he had. His Ferrari dominating his thoughts since parking it this morning, his subconscious may have overridden his conscious mind. A brief glance told him his prize was there, its red striking amid the silver, the blue, the white. He offered it a satisfied nod, then very positively thumbed G for ground, and waited.

A glance at his watch told him he was due in court twenty minutes from now. The courthouse was a five-minute walk away.

The doors hiccupped but remained open. Use the stairs, the stressmonger within urged, but no stair climber, he thumbed the button again and waited, tapping the heel of one pointy-toed shoe, ultra-pointy. They restricted his toes but offered small feet the illusion of size, and their higher than average heels gained him an extra centimetre of height.

Another hiccup, the doors closed and, arthritic joints creaking, the lift trundled on its way while Frederick turned his mind to the day ahead. He hadn’t liked this case from the start and liked it less this morning. Losing it was not an option he cared to contemplate.

‘They tell us you’re the best, Freddy,’ the father of the accused had said, words that meant more than they should have to one who’d spent his early years the least of the best.

The last born in a litter of seven, little Freddy had ever been the runt. His mother had loved him. His difficult birth had led to her hysterectomy. She’d told him once he had been sent by God to save her from his father’s excesses.

She’d put her all into her last born; she’d had little Freddy reading from her Bible before he’d seen the inside of a schoolroom. By his eleventh birthday, she, her church and Freddy’s headmaster had weaselled him into one of Melbourne’s prestigious schools. All very exciting to an eleven year old – until he’d been buttoned into his scholarship-supplied uniform and dragged blubbering from his mother’s apron strings.

John Swan may have been born wearing that same school uniform. Freddy had learnt to wear it. He’d learnt a lot during that first year, learnt that his mother who loved him hadn’t looked or spoken like the other mothers who’d filled the auditorium on presentation night, and that John Swan’s mother had. During Freddy’s third year, he’d coveted John’s mother, who hadn’t been plain Mrs Swan but Lady Cynthia Swan.

And they’d come to him in their hour of need, John and the widowed Lady Cynthia. They’d ridden that antiquated lift up to his floor, sat on his clients’ chairs.

‘They tell us you’re the best, Freddy.’

He needed to win this one, which, as far as he’d been able to ascertain, was unwinnable.

Swan’s only son, heir to Lady Cynthia’s fortune, raised to expect the best, had been on track to being the best at the age of nineteen. At twenty-three, Michael Swan was charged with the murder of his girlfriend’s infant son, who according to the accused had received his fatal injuries in a fall from the kitchen table.

At a pinch, it was possible. Male infants were adventurous. Freddy’s son had spent a few months of his life with a bruised head. He’d never broken his arm, been black and blue with bruises. The deceased infant, fourteen-month-old Cory Martin, had sustained a broken arm, multiple bruises and a crushed skull. The arm may have been the result of a desperate grasp, an attempt to break the infant’s fall. The crushed skull?

The infant sleeping peacefully in his cot when the mother returned from work, the couple had gone to bed and slept late. Very late. Cory Martin had been dead for fifteen hours before an ambulance was called.

Freddy had lined up several of the upper echelon who were willing to swear to Michael’s lack of violence. He’d found a paediatrician willing to state on oath that the infant’s injuries could have been sustained in a fall from a table and a failed attempt to break the fall.

The prosecution had big Ross Hunter, the arresting officer. They had Cory’s maternal grandparents’ home videos, one in particular, taken at the infant’s first birthday party, with a damn sight more on it than the chocolate cake – which Freddy had to keep out of court or he’d have a jury baying for Swan blood.

Out of the lift and walking, fat thighs rubbing, trousers bunching at the crotch, fat Freddy toddled towards the courthouse. He had his suits hand-tailored, and his tailor did a stellar job of camouflage – when his customer wasn’t moving. Freddy allowed his trousers to bunch until approaching the place of his greatest substance, where he slowed his pace, adjusted his trousers and forced his trio of chins to lift in a smile for the cameras.

His wig offered him an extra inch of height, which this morning wasn’t enough. John Swan had hit the six-foot mark at sixteen and Michael topped his father by an inch.

He looked innocent. They’d decked him out in a dark suit, a white shirt and grey tie – eye candy for the female jurists. Freddy may have been eye candy for his mother; he’d been Freddo Frog to his siblings.

Hop to it, Freddo.

Jump to it, Froggie.

The year he’d started at the university, determined to disassociate himself from the brothers, Freddy had added the hyphen between his middle name and the too common Jones. He’d determined, too, to buy and sell the lot of them before he was done. He could have done it today, but received better returns from other investments.

You can add a hyphen. You can shed your past. You can live in a 2.2 million dollar property in Camberwell. You can’t escape your genetics. He’d seen himself at his mother’s funeral, seen his gut, his round water-green frog’s eyes looking back at him.

‘All stand.’

The jury rose faster than Freddy, most of them wearing their serious first-day faces, a few looking pleased to have been chosen. If you had to do your lawful duty, the Swan trial was the one to do it on.

By eleven o’clock on Saint Valentine’s Day the jurists were listening to the prosecutor’s opening narrative, and Freddy was leaning on an elbow, watching their faces. He’d ended up with four women. No young mothers amongst them; two grannies, one in her late sixties, the other a few years younger who looked moneyed, who may relate to Lady Cynthia – though few could.

‘… expert witnesses will describe to you the details of the infant’s injuries. You’ll be shown photographs that will disturb you. You will hear how fourteen-month-old Cory’s tiny skull was fractured, how his arm was bruised and broken, how he lay dead in his cot for fifteen hours …’

As the litany of veiled accusations droned on, Freddy cleared his throat, and he set off a chain reaction. One juror first, then two more caught his tickle, relieved perhaps to know that they were allowed to cough in court. Always on their best behaviour on day one, always ultra-attentive. By the end of Freddy’s last case, a long one, an elderly chap had spent his days nodding off in one of the rear chairs.

Bore ’em deaf, Freddy urged silently, turning his frog eyes on the judge, studying his face. He could be a fly in the ointment. Judge Blackwood, a long, lean coot of a man who would have looked at home in a Dickens novel, though relatively new to the bench, was gaining a tough reputation.

‘… Cory Martin’s death was no accident. We may never know the true circumstances. What we do know is that tiny Cory Andrew Martin died slowly, died painfully, and died alone …’

And Michael John Swan may well have been guilty of his murder, but the prosecution done, Frederick Adam-Jones rose to wash his client lily white. That’s what he did, and he was the best at what he did, though maybe today he was pleased his old mother was dead.

T
he summons to Crow’s office didn’t come that Thursday, but at five minutes to two on the Friday, Sarah received an inter-office email. It set her pulse racing, sent her racing to the Ladies’ to tuck in her blouse, to tidy her dark, wildly curling hair. She wore it short, the sides combed forward to cover her ears. She added a swipe of lipstick and at two o’clock on the dot she entered the lion’s den, where she learned that her summons hadn’t been a personal invitation. They were all there, a dozen of them, standing bunched together on the far side of Crow’s desk.

Barbara Lane, a recent part-timer who’d transferred down from the Sydney office was there, but not standing with the crowd. She was seated, between David Crow and Bob Webb, where Annette, the previous payroll/accounts officer used to sit at office meetings, and without needing to hear Crow’s words, Sarah knew. She knew too why Bob Webb had been dodging this morning.

Sand-dumped, the breath sucked out of her, her racing heartbeat pumping every litre of blood in her body to her face, she turned to Jackie – Jacqueline Jefferson, who liked to say,
She who expects nothing is never disappointed
.

Sarah had expected and Bob had allowed her to expect, and if preening, smiling Barbara Lane hadn’t been looking at her, Sarah might have howled with disappointment. Instead, she looked over Barbara’s head to that wall of windows and the white heat of the sky.

Forests were burning out there. There was a big fire out near Gramp’s farm. People were losing their homes to it. That was worse than not getting a job.

Couldn’t buy the Toyota she and Marni had been watching on eBay. Didn’t have her licence anyway. If she’d stayed with Gramp for two more weeks she would have.

Jackie’s middle finger drew her mind back to this place. She scratched Sarah’s sleeve with it, and, having gained her attention, scratched her own chin. Jackie liked that middle finger. She loathed David Crow. Had names for him and Bob Webb.
Sleazebag and his briefcase.
Every week she’d said she was leaving. Like Sarah, she couldn’t. She had four kids to feed, not one, and she had a huge bank loan to repay.

Some people didn’t spend their lives worrying about money. Bob Webb didn’t. He’d bought a brand new car before Christmas then flown to New Zealand for three weeks.

Dimples and his dwarf
, Jackie called them. Bob wasn’t a dwarf, just shorter than average. Crow had dimples, in his cheeks, in his chin. He had four kids and a wife who owned half of his business. Until ten years ago, she’d worked here. Twelve years ago, when Sarah had come in for her interview, Maureen Crow had been sitting in Barbara Lane’s chair. She’d had a third daughter and a son since. He hid her now, with his kids on a ten-acre property at Pakenham. The staff only saw her at Christmas parties.

Shane, the IT boy, knew someone at the Sydney office who’d told him that Crow had been on with Barbara Lane in Sydney. She was older than his usual blonde. Eve, from HR, had been twenty-three. Barbara was thirty-six.

Sarah glanced at her, just briefly. Cool, beautiful, perfect nails and hair. She knew how to use a computer well enough to check her emails and Facebook. She’d need training.