No doubt about it, bits of me wanted to. I said, ‘Er, no, Lisa. I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
She sounded disappointed. Offended, probably. ‘Don’t you like me?’ she sniffed.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘You’re a very attractive woman, but I think we’d both regret it, afterwards.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ she declared, sounding as if she spoke with the confidence of experience.
‘Well, I would. How much have you had to drink?’
‘Just a little bit.’
She was as tight as a screw top. A thousand gallons is a little bit, when you’re talking about leaking tankers. ‘What a pity,’ I said. ‘It’s an offence for a policeman to take advantage of an intoxicated woman. Didn’t you know that?’
‘Is it?’
‘Mmm.’ I decided to change the subject. ‘How’s the parrot?’ I asked.
‘He’s lovely, but he’s not very cuddly.’
I had an idea. ‘Why don’t you stay with Justin’s parents?’ I suggested. ‘They have a big enough house.’
‘Are you joking?’ she exclaimed.
‘No. What’s so funny?’
‘Ruth wouldn’t have me anywhere near. That’s what.’
‘Oh, why?’
‘It’s a long story.’
Good, I thought. We were moving on to safer territory. ‘I’m all ears,’ I said. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘She hates me.’
‘Why? For marrying her precious son and taking him away from her?’
‘Mmm. Partly.’
‘And what’s the other part?’
‘Oh, me and K. Tom, you know.’
‘No, I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me.’ I made myself comfortable, sitting on the floor with my back against a radiator.
‘Well, let’s say I knew K. Tom a long time before I knew Justin. That’s all.’
‘In the biblical sense?’ I risked asking.
She laughed. ‘What do you think?’ she replied. ‘He didn’t insult me like you did.’
‘I’m sorry about that. It’s nothing personal. I just don’t like too many complications.’
‘It needn’t be complicated, Charlie,’ she assured me.
The last thing I needed was convincing that it wouldn’t be complicated. ‘So how did you meet Justin?’ I asked.
‘Through K. Tom. I worked as a temp for him and he was good to me. Helped me start up on my own. When Ruth became suspicious he introduced me to his stepson.’
The ultimate revenge. It sounded damn complicated to me.
‘Does Justin know about you and K. Tom?’ I asked.
‘No! Of course not,’ she exclaimed.
‘So why have they fallen out?’
‘Ah! Wouldn’t you like to know?’
‘Yes. Are you going to tell me?’
‘Why should I?’
‘It’s just conversation, Lisa. Like you said, we’re both on our own, and I like talking to you.’
‘Do you really?’
‘Of course.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got cramp.’ I stretched my legs and adjusted my position. ‘I’m sitting on the floor and it’s a bit hard.’
‘Ooh!’ she cooed. ‘Tell me more!’
‘Lisa Davis, you’re a wicked lady,’ I reprimanded her. ‘Ah, that’s better. Now, you were telling me why Justin and his dad fell out.’
‘Oh, you know, it was because K. Tom asked Justin to do him a favour, and Justin refused.’
‘That doesn’t sound like Justin. He must have had a good reason. What sort of a favour was it?’
‘He wanted him to bring something into the country. Or take something out of it. I’m not sure.’
‘You mean…smuggling?’
‘I suppose you could call it that.’
‘Well, I’m not surprised Justin wouldn’t do it. There’s big penalties for smuggling drugs these days. It’s just not worth the risk. So what happened?’
‘It wasn’t drugs!’ she protested, jumping to her father-in-law, and lover’s, defence. ‘What made you think it was drugs? K. Tom wouldn’t have anything to do with drugs.’
‘What was it, then?’
‘I…I can’t say.’
‘Money!’ I announced. ‘Bet it was money.’
‘Money? Why would anybody want to smuggle money?’
‘Good question,’ I replied. ‘It does sound silly, but people do it, I’m told. Suppose you get a better exchange rate, that way. Hardly sounds worth bothering.’ I paused for a few seconds, then, as if realisation had at last dawned, I proclaimed, ‘Oh, it’d be the gold. I’d forgotten about the gold.’
‘W-What gold?’ she stuttered.
‘Never mind. No more questions. How are you feeling, now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What did you have for your dinner?’
‘Ah! Do you really want me to tell you?’
‘I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.’
‘I had yoghurt, banana and a small jacket potato.’
‘It sounds horrible.’
‘No, it wasn’t. It was quite nice.’ She’d resorted to her little girlie voice. ‘Charlie…’
‘Mmm.’
‘Will you come and see me, sometime?’
I’d be seeing her, sometime, no doubt about it. I just wasn’t sure about the circumstances.
‘No, I don’t think so, Lisa,’ I said.
‘I thought you said you liked me.’
‘I do, Lisa. I think you’re terrific’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘I can’t make it, tomorrow.’
‘Saturday?’
‘No. I’ll be seeing Annabelle over the weekend.’
‘Then it will have to be tomorrow.’
‘I’m busy, tomorrow.’
‘I thought you wanted to know all about K. Tom. And the…you know…the stuff.’
‘You mean the gold?’
‘I might do.’
‘I don’t believe you know anything about it,’ I teased.
‘You’d be surprised what I know,’ she claimed. ‘But I’m not saying anything on the phone. Why don’t you come and see me in the morning, about ten o’clock?’
‘That’s a very tempting offer.’
‘So you’ll come?’
‘I might.’
‘Good. And if you’re a very good boy, Aunty Lisa might tell you all about…you know…it.’
‘Right,’ I replied, my voice coming from somewhere down in my bowels. ‘I’ll do that. Ten it is.’
I let Gareth Adey run the morning meeting. Soon as it ended I strode into the CID office and said, ‘You, you and you. Inner sanctum.’ I was in a good mood. I’d changed my normal route to work in order to drive past the local pub again. Two posh limos were standing forlornly in the car park, their windows opaque with morning dew for the first time in their lives. After my visit the silly prats at the bar had shared a taxi home.
Nigel, Sparky and Maggie followed me into my corner. ‘First of all,’ I told them, ‘I’m giving a lecture a week today at Bramshill. It’s on ethics.’ I turned to Nigel. ‘Could you have a little think about it?’ I asked him. ‘Write down a few ideas for me, if you don’t mind.’
He nodded.
Sparky gasped. ‘Ethics! You!’
‘What’s so funny?’ I demanded.
‘It’s like asking Genghis Khan to talk on road safety.’
‘Right,’ I said, pointedly ignoring him. ‘The enquiry into Goodrich’s death is over. Where are we with the Jones boys?’
‘You mean the suspect bank accounts?’ Maggie said.
‘Yep.’
‘It’s all in the reports, just like you insist.’
‘I know, but let’s hear it in the spoken word.’
Nigel said, ‘Maud and Brian reconciled three of the Jones’ lists of money in Goodrich’s book with real accounts in local banks.’
‘And where did it go from there?’
‘About half went to IGI, for diamonds. The other half went on a variety of things: one cheque of eighteen grand to Heckley Motors, presumably for a car; some went into legitimate investments.’
‘Goodrich was a big wheel in second-hand endowment policies,’ Maggie told us.
I pulled the flip chart from the corner and handed a pen to Sparky. ‘You can be teacher, this morning, Dave,’ I told him. ‘Good night, last night?’
He grimaced at me and stood up. ‘No, bloody awful,’ he admitted, turning over the pages until he reached a blank one.
‘Sorry, Maggie,’ I said. ‘You were telling us about second-hand…endowment policies, did you say? What are they?’
‘Maud explained it to me. If someone takes out an endowment policy, then finds out that they are dying, say of AIDS, they want the money now, not after the event. The insurance company will pay them a surrender value, based on the number of payments they’ve made, but another option is to sell the policy to a third party for a lot more money. This third party then takes over the payments, and draws the full amount when the original holder pops it.’