She turns sideward, studies the Union Jack tattoo on her behind. No one but her and the tattooist who put it there has seen it yet. She pads over the cream shag pile carpet to the low table with her cellphone on it. She laughs and picks it up. It’s untraceable. Packed with pay-as-you-go credit that no one but she and her girlfriends know about. She turns it on and taps in the pin. While waiting for it to find a network, she looks at her ass again, thinking how hard her pop will kick it if he ever finds out what she’s about to do.
The phone finds a signal and she thumbs her way through to the camera function. It takes a while for her to stop giggling and shoot some pictures. Most are hazy and badly framed — finally she takes one that will do just fine.
She sits on the edge of the bed, brings up Jake’s number and adds a brief message. She hits send and collapses with laughter.
26
Chepstow, Chepstow and Hawks looks more like an antique auctioneers than a law office. A legal professor at Cambridge once told Gideon you can classify the client according to the lawyer he engages and Chepstow and Co. seems to prove his point. Traditional and reliable no doubt, but old-fashioned and dusty. The place fits Nathaniel to a T.
A grey-haired, bespectacled woman in her fifties tells him politely that Mr Chepstow is ready to see him and leads the way to a mahogany-panelled door bearing its occupiers’ brass nameplate. The man rises from behind a squat walnut pedestal desk in the corner, framed by a curtain-less sash window. ‘Lucian Chepstow.’ He thrusts a Rolex-wristed hand from the cuff of a blue pin-striped suit.
‘Gideon Chase. Pleased to meet you.’ He silently curses his automatic politeness.
‘I’m very sorry about your father. Please take a seat.’
Gideon occupies one of two leather library chairs positioned on the near side of the grand desk, while the lawyer, a man in his early forties with grey-white hair, returns to his seat, smoothes down his jacket and sits.
‘Have you been offered tea? Or water?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
Chepstow places his hand on the desk phone. ‘Are you sure?’
Gideon’s irritated to be asked twice. He puts his uncharacteristic edginess down to unfamiliarity, the unpleasant circumstances. ‘Thanks, but really I’m fine.’
The door opens. A worn old man lumbers in — shoulders slightly rounded. Unmistakably Lucian’s father, the practice’s founder. ‘Cedric Chepstow,’ he mumbles, almost as though answering a question. Without offering his hand, he takes the chair beside Gideon. ‘I hope you don’t mind my coming in. I want to offer my condolences. I knew your father very well. Splendid fellow. I’ve been his solicitor for twenty years.’
Gideon considers pointing out that Nathaniel never qualified for the title ‘splendid’ but lets it slide. ‘No, not at all. Thank you.’ He adds, almost surprising himself, ‘How well did you know him? What exactly did you do for him?’
The Chepstows exchange glances. The question has clearly thrown them, and that interests Gideon.
‘More professional than personal,’ concedes the old man. ‘We handled all the legal paperwork connected with his businesses — deal memos, contracts, agreements, some import and export documentation, those kind of things. He was one of our major clients.’
‘I’m sure he was.’ It comes out with a little more acid than Gideon intended.
Lucian feels obliged to chip in. ‘Your father was very driven. Very successful, Mr Chase. He was a pleasure to work with.’
Gideon stays focused on Chepstow senior. ‘And personally?’
He purses his dry old lips. ‘I’d like to think we were friends. We shared the same love of history, same respect of generations gone.’
Lucian withdraws an envelope from a drawer in the desk, keen to get on with the business side of the meeting. Gideon isn’t. ‘My father left me a letter.’
The old lawyer flinches.
‘A suicide note. Do you know of anything that would make him take his own life?’
Cedric’s eyes widen.
Gideon looks from one to the other. ‘Can either of you tell me what he might have done, what he was ashamed of that made him feel so desperate and so depressed?’
Chepstow senior plays with a fold of wrinkled flab beneath his double chin. ‘No, I don’t think we can. There isn’t anything. Certainly not legally. Nor could we share such information, even if we knew, because of client confidentiality.’
Now Gideon can’t hide his annoyance. ‘He’s dead. So I presume such confidentiality doesn’t apply.’
The old man shakes his head like a professor about to point out an elementary mistake. ‘That’s not how we work. We respect our bonds to our clients — for ever.’ He looks Gideon up and down. ‘Mr Chase, let me assure you, to the very best of my knowledge — personally and professionally — there is nothing your father should be ashamed of. No skeletons in his closet.’
‘Skeletons?’ Gideon laughs. ‘My father was a grave-robber. He stripped tombs in Syria, Libya, Mexico and god knows where else. He sold historic and irreplaceable objects to foreign governments or private collectors who had no right to them. I’m sure he had a whole necropolis of skeletons to hide.’
Years of experience have taught Cedric Chepstow to know when arguments are winnable and when they are not. ‘Lucian, please inform Mr Chase of his father’s will and ensure he has a copy.’ He creaks his way out of the chair. ‘Good day to you, sir.’
Lucian Chepstow doesn’t speak until his father has left and shut the door behind him. ‘They were close,’ he says. ‘Your father was one of the few mine spent time with.’
Gideon’s still annoyed. ‘Seem like a good pair.’
The timid lawyer doesn’t respond. He passes a sealed letter over the desk and pulls another copy across his red, leather-edged blotter. ‘This is the Last Will and Testament of Nathaniel Chase. It’s witnessed and fully in accordance with English law. Would you like me to talk you through it?’
Gideon takes the envelope in both hands. His mind still on Cedric Chepstow. The old man probably knew what his father was hiding. Why else react like that? Why the resort to ‘confidentiality’, covering himself with the pathetic ‘to the best of my knowledge’?
‘Mr Chase. Would you like me to talk you through the will?’
He looks up and nods.
‘I should warn you that one of his requests is unusual. Your father made pre-death arrangements at the West Wiltshire Crematorium.’
Gideon frowns. ‘That’s unusual?’
‘Not in itself. Many people prepay and prearrange their own funeral requirements. But after cremation at West Wiltshire he wished his ashes to be scattered at Stonehenge.’
27
Jake Timberland saw himself stepping out of the shower this morning and almost died. He dragged the scales from beneath the sink and stepped up to be judged. Fourteen stone. Holy fuck. He stepped off and back on again. It wasn’t a malfunction. At five foot eleven he could carry thirteen but at fourteen, before you know it you look like a fat man’s body double.
His misery morphed into determination. Fifty sit-ups later he could see his six-pack rising through the flab again and felt better.
Now he’s sitting in a winged chair in his club downing the third cappuccino of a breakfast meeting. He’s listening to his guest, Maxwell Dalton, talk about cash-flow problems, the downturn in the economy, a slide in ad revenue and how he needs investment or he could go out of business. Dalton is chubby with big glasses as black as his hair and baggy suit. He runs a website that showcases short films made by the kind of people who can’t get proper jobs in TV.