Deadheads

3

Saturday had started well for Dick Elgood. At eleven o'clock he had been sitting in his office in the otherwise empty Perfecta building waiting for a visitor.

The man, who arrived dead on time, wore dark glasses and a light grey hat. These were simple measures to cut down the possibility of recognition, matters of habit rather than fear though there were certainly people in this town whose recognition was to be avoided.

Pascoe for instance might have recognized him as the man he'd glimpsed last time he had visited Elgood, but that was unimportant. Daphne Aldermann, however, might have recognized him as the man who'd masqueraded as a Water Board official, and that could have been embarrassing. And Andy Dalziel would certainly have recognized him as the man who'd punched his nose the previous night, and that would probably have been fatal.

'Come in, Mr Easey,' said Elgood. 'What have you got for me?'

Raymond Easey was a private enquiry agent, based in London, and recommended to Elgood by a business friend as having those qualities of speed, discretion, and scant respect for the law as long as the money was right, which Dandy Dick had specified. His main brief had been to procure an accurate representation of Patrick Aldermann's financial position. His work here had been satisfactory to the extent that Elgood could now prove to the board that Aldermann was in some financial embarrassment. But that in itself might not be enough to discredit him.

Easey's secondary instructions had been that any evidence of unlawful activity on Aldermann's part would bring a large bonus. The man had seemed clean, however, and the agent's efforts to penetrate Rosemont in search of evidence to the contrary had been thwarted by Daphne's unexpected return. Fortunately his intimate knowledge of the household debts had enabled him to talk his way out of that.

He had returned to London where one of his employees had been checking on Aldermann during his brief visit there. It had all been boring stuff, flower shows and publishers, except for one unexplained visit to a flat in Victoria. Easey took over. He did all his illegal work himself on the grounds that employing others to do it cost too much, laid himself open to blackmail, and you couldn't trust the bastards anyway.

Getting in was simple. He'd waited till he saw the woman leave with a fat, balding man. Always ultra-careful in such matters, he had tracked them to a restaurant and seen them safely launched on their meal before returning to the flat and getting in with a pick-lock.

A systematic search had elicited the disappointing information that Mrs Highsmith was the subject's mother. Still, mums were notorious for keeping letters and other memorabilia, and loving sons often poured their hearts out into the maternal ear in search of a totally uncritical sympathy. But there had been nothing until he had noticed that the lining of the old leather writing-case he'd just been through with no joy was torn. He stuck his fingers in. There was something in there. He had just pulled it out and read the words in an almost Gothic script Last Will and Testament of Florence Aldermann when the outer door of the flat had opened.

Carefully he'd put the will in his pocket, replaced the case in the drawer, and waited. His escape from the flat, the bruises on his knuckles, and the pounding in his heart as he fled along the street, had almost convinced him that the game wasn't worth a candle. But now Elgood's face as he looked at the will told him different. There was pleasure there, and a man had to pay for his pleasure.

'Will she miss it?' wondered Elgood.

'Hard to say. It was well hidden to the point of being lost. You know how it is. People put things away somewhere safe and a week later they've forgotten where the hell they put 'em. Eventually they forget they even had 'em!'

He was perfectly right. Penny Highsmith had had two decades to lose track of the will and with her happy-go-lucky nature, she needed far less than that. After Aunt Flo's death, the will had been genuinely mislaid, and when Penny came across it a couple of days later she'd stuck it in the lining of her writing-case, not with any real criminal intent but as a simple device for gaining pause to think. After all, hadn't that nice, amiable lawyer said with something approaching a wink that, in his view, the absence of a will would mean justice was done the way Eddie Aldermann would have liked it? Not that she'd ever felt she had any rights as far as Eddie was concerned. A dear, kind man, sadly hag-ridden by old Aunt Flo, it had seemed perfectly natural when he came across her sunbathing in the garden one balmy afternoon, well away from her aunt's disapproving eye, to draw him down beside her and give him what the old bat had clearly denied him for years. He'd been extremely concerned and generous when Patrick came along, but she'd never made any demands and it hadn't surprised her when, after Eddie's death, Flo had stopped the allowance.

But now as the lawyer steered her towards this large inheritance, it had begun to seem foolish to worry about a will which gave everything away to some daft charities, and by the end of a year it had gone quite out of her mind.

'You've done well,' said Elgood. 'I'll see you're rewarded.'

Easey smiled. He saw to his own rewards.

He put another piece of paper on the desk.

'My bill,' he said. 'Terms are cash.'

Elgood looked, whistled, but paid. He was, after all, in some ways paying for his future.

And then had come the happy moment when he phoned Aldermann.

Daphne had answered. She'd sounded surprisingly pleased to hear his voice, but he'd cut her off sharply and asked for her husband.

Aldermann he'd offered even less chance to talk. There was, he was discovering in himself, a distaste for what he was doing. It was close to blackmail. In fact, what else was it but blackmail? But Elgood had a lifetime of ruthless business dealing behind him and he was not about to go soft now.

'Aldermann?' he said. 'Listen to me. I've got something you might like to see. No, don't interrupt. It's a will. Aye, that's what I said. And it seems to me to make it pretty clear that that big house of yours and them gardens and all that cash you've got through, shouldn't by right have ever come to you in the first place!'

There was a long pause.

Finally Patrick said mildly, 'I should be interested to see this document.'

'Bloody right you'd be interested,' said Elgood harshly.

'Yes? Are you at the office now? Shall I come round?' asked Aldermann reasonably.

Elgood sitting alone at his desk was suddenly aware of the vast silence all around him. There would be a security man somewhere in the building, but he could hardly ask him to lurk outside the door while he spoke to his own accountant! What he feared he was not quite sure. But even if, as he now believed, all his previous suspicions of Aldermann had been simply and embarrassingly hysterical, it would be foolish to be alone with him when he threatened the thing the man most loved. A restaurant, perhaps? A bar?

Suddenly a better idea occurred.

'No. I'm just leaving,' he said. 'I'll be down at my cottage tomorrow, though. There's a few people coming round for drinks and a snack on the shore at lunch-time. Why don't you join them? Bring the wife and your little girl. They'll enjoy it. Oh, you might like to bring a letter too, withdrawing your candidacy for the board. Twelve to half past. Right?'

'I shall look forward to it,' said Aldermann courteously. 'Could you give me directions?'

'Oh, ask Daphne. She'll know where it is,' said Elgood.

He regretted what he'd said even as he replaced the phone. It had been silly and unnecessary. Still, it could be taken in all kinds of ways, most of them innocent, he assured himself. He put it out of his mind. Carefully he placed the will and the rest of Easey's papers in a large envelope which he put in his briefcase. Then, after a moment's thought, he took out the will once more and went next door into Miss Dominic's office, where he ran off a copy on the Xerox machine. It had struck him that permanent retention of the original might be no bad thing. Putting it in a plain envelope, he opened the wall safe in his room and placed it inside. Returning to his desk, he took out his diary and examined the list of telephone numbers which filled a couple of pages at the back. Then he began to ring.

It was late notice and after forty-five minutes he had only gathered half a dozen adults and three children for his lunch-time picnic.

It'd have been a bloody sight easier and probably cheaper to hire two coppers and a hungry Alsatian, he told himself. Then something in the thought made him smile and finally laugh out loud. He picked up the phone and dialled once more.