Читать книгу Double Entry - Margaret McKinlay - Страница 7

CHAPTER 1

Friday began, deceptively, like any other day. John Leith looked from the window of his flat at a grey sky, at litter being blown into shop doorways by a cold November wind, and almost decided not to bother going to work. However, there was young Tracy, already on her way in from Rose-burn, a five-minute bus ride away from his office, so he really had no choice.

He didn’t hurry over breakfast—being his own boss, he had no need to reach the office at a certain time. Young Tracy would arrive before him and open the mail, make fresh coffee, and they might discuss her latest boyfriend while she added more gel to support her new spiky hair-do. He’d keep her there for as long as he could, to put off the moment when he had his own day to face, before she collected up any typing he needed done.

Then she went on to her real job in Kramer Property, the office block in the High Street, owned by his uncle, Rees Kramer. It was a convenient arrangement—John didn’t have to employ an assistant and Tracy enjoyed her late start to her own day at Kramer’s.

She was sixteen, bright and talkative and totally unconcerned by the fact that he was her boss’s nephew. Sometimes she made him feel old as she told him about her latest romance while they had coffee. She perched on his desk, swinging her legs, and then with a final smoothing down of her mini-skirt, a manœuvre that gave the morning its sparkle, she would leave around ten—depending on when he got there in the first place.

It was a good way to start any day. It set the tone for the rest of the hours he felt obliged to put in and if he had no appointments he might even drive her to Kramer’s and loiter there for an hour or so. But today was to be slightly different because he was to spend the weekend with his sister who looked after his son David. He had a vague plan to leave around lunch-time, arriving at Gwen’s home in Biggar in time for afternoon tea.

He switched on the radio in the hope of catching the weather forecast while he gathered up the bits and pieces that he was taking with him, David’s birthday present, Gwen’s favourite chocolates, his briefcase and suitcase.

‘… central Scotland down to the Borders may have snow flurries. Drivers are warned to watch out for ice on the the roads …’ More or less what he’d expected.

Outside it was freezing and he slipped on the icy pavement, scattering his armload of smaller items. As usual, the gritters had not listened to the forecast and the pavements were treacherous.

Everything was slowed down that morning, mainly because he’d caught the worst of the traffic coming in from the Forth Bridge and as always, if the roads to the north were bad, the commuters would be crawling into town. The minutes ticked by as he got stuck in a jam on the steep cobbled street out of Stockbridge, but it didn’t bother him because he wasn’t on a strict timetable. The car was warming up and he was enjoying a Rush tape—one of Tracy’s—and he didn’t have a twinge of premonition that anything unusual was about to alter his plans for the day.

He parked in the private space reserved for permit holders outside the elegant Georgian terrace where most of the houses had been converted into offices, then said good morning to the elderly cleaning lady who was polishing the brass plate on the wall of the building. Minutes ticked by as Rachel discussed the weather.

‘Too cold for snow, do you think?’ she asked, straightening up with one hand supporting her back.

She was long past retiring age but said her little job was all that kept her from stagnating.

‘Is it this weekend you visit your boy?’

‘Mm. Leaving around lunch-time. It’s his birthday tomorrow.’

Rachel had been cleaning the offices for years and she knew the history and habits of every person who worked in the converted Georgian building.

‘I’ve bought him a camera.’

She nodded approvingly. ‘Well, you watch yourself, Mr Leith. It’s a nasty old road in bad weather.’

And she went back to giving the brass a further polish. There were several names on the plate, including his own which read ‘John Leith, accountant’, and beside it there was an entry-phone system. He went in through the open glass door, up one flight of carpeted stairs, past two other company offices where people were already at work, then reached his own half-glazed door. He could smell the coffee perking on the small stove in the back room but Tracy was playing one of her favourite heavy metal tapes loudly and she didn’t hear him come in, so he stood at his desk and looked through the morning’s mail which she had already opened.

He didn’t hear the glass door open behind him, nor did he see the intruder who held a short heavy wooden club.

The man didn’t hesitate: he brought the weapon down hard on the back of John’s head, but some instinct made John move just enough for the blow to be a glancing one. He was still conscious as he fell, long enough to see the frayed ends of jeans and a pair of dirty white trainers and then he sank into a dark painful pit.

His face was deep in carpet pile when he came round and he could smell the stale dustiness of it. There was fluff in his mouth and the taste of the blood that had trickled from the back of his head.

He couldn’t understand what had happened and he lay there for some time trying to work it out but in the end he was forced to move because of the acrid smell from the dried-out coffee pot. He lurched towards the small back room that was little more than a cloakroom and bumped against the door frame as his vision blurred. The handle of the pot was hot and he dropped it, but all the liquid had evaporated and the dregs had congealed into a foul mess. Where was Tracy? Close to passing out again, he staggered back into the other room and leaned against his desk, and that was when he saw her lying behind it, sprawled beside his one expensive item of furniture, a soft leather reclining chair.

She was on her back, one arm flung up beside her head, and she was deathly pale.

A red swelling over one eye was pulling her eyebrow upwards and a tiny line of blood had run into her eye socket to create a dark puddle. At first he thought the eye itself was gone and a wave of nausea brought bile into his mouth, but after he’d moved around the desk, leaning on it for support like a drunk, he saw it was not as bad as that. Bad enough, though.

Her mini-skirt had risen up to reveal brief panties under her patterned black tights. Illogically his first instinct was to bend to pull down the skirt, because although the young girl liked to give the impression of being trendy, he knew that she would have been embarrassed by the almost obscene position in which she was lying. But he knew he couldn’t possibly bend down without passing out again, so instead he reached for the phone.

The ambulance came almost at the same time as the police and he was again sitting on the floor with his back against the desk when the first uniformed man came through the door.

‘Please see to Tracy first. I’m all right,’ he said but the words were so carefully pronounced, with lips and tongue like rubber, that now he even sounded like an elegant drunk.

They were very good, both sets of uniforms, and in no time he had given a statement of sorts, had been examined, and was on his way to the Royal Infirmary.

From there someone phoned Rees Kramer, who arrived to find his nephew on a bed in the casualty department, waiting for the results of a head X-ray.

The back of John’s neck felt as if it was being pierced by a red-hot shaft of steel but he knew it wouldn’t do to let Rees see how badly he felt. Rees wouldn’t want to know those details anyway.

‘See if you can find out how Tracy is,’ he asked his uncle. ‘I’ve asked, but they keep telling me to wait.’

Rees, as usual, looked immaculate in a dark suit and white shirt, regimental tie. His moustache was neatly trimmed and he looked as if he’d just shaved, yet John knew that no real effort was needed to present this image to the world; Rees was just that sort of person.

‘I’ve already asked,’ Rees said, lowering himself on to the edge of a moulded plastic chair.

He kept his spine very straight as if to avoid contact with the cheap material. ‘They’ve managed to get hold of her mother, who is on her way here, but a nurse says the girl doesn’t appear to be seriously hurt.’

He looked through a gap in the green curtains around the cubicle. ‘The doctors are too busy to see anyone, apparently.’ Then he turned back to John. ‘Did you see the man who hit you?’

The question sounded polite, but it was evident from the sharp expression in his eyes that he was intensely interested.

‘I didn’t see his face, just his feet,’ John murmured as his neck throbbed viciously again. ‘I’m not going to stay in here, Rees.’

‘You’ll do whatever the doctors think best,’ his uncle said stiffly and John realized that they were both whispering, as if unseen ears were listening on the other side of the surrounding curtains. Someone was groaning quite close by and hurrying feet in soft-soled shoes squeaked on polished floor tiles; instruments clattered into a steel tray and trolleys swished by, while all around were the soft tones of nurses and doctors in other cubicles and the usual hospital smells.

‘I hate bloody hospitals,’ John muttered, trying to stop the questions that were zipping through his mind. ‘Who hit me and how the hell did he get into the building?’ he muttered, trying to lift himself up higher on the pillows. ‘And why would anyone want to get into my office?—I don’t have anything worth stealing.’

‘The police think he slipped in behind you. The cleaning woman was outside apparently and she’d left the doors open. All those offices get visitors and she wasn’t to know what he was up to.’

‘So much for the security of an entry phone,’ John said, resting his head back gingerly on pillows that seemed to be lined with stiff water-proofed material.

‘They’ll be asking questions and no doubt someone will give a description of him,’ Rees said. He shifted on the chair and John realized that his uncle was ill at ease in these surroundings, or perhaps he was just irritated by the need to be there at all. John felt the usual twinge of guilt, that somehow he’d interrupted Rees’s plans for the day and that now his uncle was counting the lost minutes. Probably he was entirely wrong, but for as long as he could remember he’d never been able to read his uncle’s mind because the man was so private. To make amends, he tried to be constructive.

‘Rachel,’ he said. ‘She must have seen the man.’

Then the curtains were pushed back and a young Chinese lady doctor moved to take his pulse.

‘I’m Dr Wu. Your X-ray is all right, no fractures, no need for stitches.’ She smiled slightly as if she could hear her own fractured English. ‘And you can go as long as you promise to take it easy for a day or two. Head injuries are not to be taken lightly and there is a degree of concussion.’

John assured her that he wouldn’t do anything too energetic.

‘I’m visiting my sister for a lazy weekend.’

‘That would be sensible, but before you leave a policeman wants a word with you.’

And Rees immediately stood up. ‘I’ll go and see if I can find out anything about Tracy,’ he said, and moved smartly through the curtains.

There were two policemen. One looked John over while the other reached into his pocket for a notebook; they both looked as if they did this sort of interview regularly and the questions were perfunctory and a repeat of those John had already answered at his office.

‘No, I didn’t see the man’s face,’ he told them. ‘And there’s nothing worth stealing in my office.’

‘Your wallet?’ the man asked and John struggled to pat his pockets, then reached in to produce it.

‘I don’t think there’s anything missing,’ he said, flicking through the compartments. ‘That’s strange, surely?’

But the policeman with the notebook snapped it shut and tucked it back into his pocket.

‘He was disturbed by your young lady and both she and the cleaning woman got a good look at him.’

Relief flooded through John. ‘Tracy’s all right, then?’

The man nodded. ‘A bump on the head. She’ll be fine. She says he was bent over you when she came from the back room and he lashed out at her. She probably scared the shit out of him and he acted without thinking, but she was very lucky to get off so lightly. Even so, they’re keeping her in overnight. We got the best description from the old girl, the cleaner.’ And now the policemen exchanged amused glances. ‘She said he had a big bum, that it “caught your eye because the rest of him wasn’t fat”. Actually, that’s the sort of detail that is really helpful … now we just have to find a five-foot-ten villain with a big bum.’ And they left with a promise to let him know what developed, but John thought they didn’t sound too hopeful.

Rees came back after the constables had left. ‘The girl’s going to be all right. Look, why go to Gwen’s? Come to Elmwood for the weekend.’

‘Because I promised David I’d be there for his birthday,’ John said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ His legs felt shaky as he went with Rees to the car, and his head felt as if it would be easily disconnected from his neck, so he didn’t argue when Rees drove to the High Street, to the rear of the Kramer building where there was private parking for the staff. They took the lift to the small flat that Rees had on the top floor which they both used quite often. There was only a large bedroom with a double bed, a small sitting-room, a kitchen and a bathroom, but Rees had furnished it with nice pieces and the décor was discreet, in Rees’s style. The carpets were thick and the flat was so high above the street that the traffic sounds were hardly noticeable. It was a haven that Rees often used when he decided not to go home to Elmwood, his country house, and John kept spare clothes there so that he could change if he was going out for the evening and didn’t want to rush home.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ Rees said.

‘And I’ll get changed—the blood has dried on the back of this shirt and it’s rubbing my neck.’

‘Do you always dress like that for work?’ Rees wore a slight frown which was a distinct mark of disapproval, and John shrugged and looked down at his jeans.

‘It’s comfortable and makes the clients feel comfortable.’

Rees sniffed.

John took the time to shower too, and as he dried himself he noticed how gloomy the room was. He walked to the window that was several floors above the busy street below, looked at the sky and wondered if David would be disappointed if he couldn’t get out with his birthday camera.

‘Coffee’s ready,’ Rees said from the doorway. ‘How’s your head?’

He was a tall man with an erect carriage, in his early sixties, and had the pink complexion that went well with his short silver hair. He had an air of success about him, but the expensive suits that sat well on his shoulders had nothing to do with the aura that Rees had. It was something that oozed out of the man, an elusive trait of character that spelled confidence in himself and inspired it in others. He wore his wealth like an overcoat but never made a show of it. He had great charm with clients but also had a rigid reserve that masked the inner core of the man.

John respected him as the man who had not shirked his duty when John’s parents disappeared on a sailing holiday. There was never any question that Rees should be given due respect, but love was a different matter. It had not been easy for a ten-year-old boy because Rees had never pretended to be fatherly, had never attempted to be any more than a caring guardian. There had always been an unspoken agreement that Rees had his own life, valued his privacy, but would provide material comforts, and that he’d done generously. There had never been any great feeling of closeness between them although they’d shared the same house for ten years.

‘My neck’s stiff, that’s all,’ John assured him as he reached for the strong black coffee. ‘It’ll be a bit uncomfortable driving but it’s not bad enough to cancel my weekend.’

Rees nodded. ‘Then you’d better get something to eat—we’ve missed our lunch. Tollis and I were going to meet for a pub lunch and they’ll still be serving—I’ll phone and see if he’s in his office.’

The Sentinel Agency was the other half of Rees’s business, situated in the same building, although clients used a separate door leading in from the High Street. Tollis managed it now that Rees was cutting back on work, ‘semiretired’ he said, although he seemed as busy as ever.

‘He says he’s busy but he’ll come,’ Rees grunted. ‘You can tell him exactly what happened.’

Tollis ran his side of the business with only a little interference from Rees and the three of them discussed the intruder at John’s office as they ate.

Tollis, taciturn as usual, said, ‘These opportunist crimes are on the increase in the city. Drugs. Addicts take chances out of desperation, when other criminals wouldn’t risk it. Your man chanced his luck, John—he wanted anything of value that he could carry easily and he would hit anyone in his way. And they don’t bother to wait for darkness any more. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Put it out of your mind.’

He spoke as if he knew what he was talking about, but John, who had grown up knowing that Rees owned Sentinel, had never been interested enough to ask what Sentinel did.

Tollis was a man of the same height as Rees but was much heavier, dark in colouring and entirely different in nature.

He was a man of few words who had none of Rees’s charm; a loner who seemed to shun close friendships, and although it had registered, John hadn’t given much thought to why he’d never heard the man’s first name, not even from Rees. It was always just Tollis.

And as if to prove that he couldn’t waste time on something that only the police could solve, Tollis was impatient to get back to work.

‘We’ve got a bit of an emergency on and I must be there when the men come in.’

Rees’s head jerked up at that, but Tollis laid a restraining hand on his partner’s shoulder.

‘Nothing for you to bother about, Rees,’ he said bluntly.

‘And I think I should get on the road,’ John said. ‘The food has helped shift the headache and I don’t want to get caught up in rush-hour traffic.’

‘That reminds me,’ Rees said, reaching down to pick up his briefcase. ‘I want you to take a look at some clients’ files—you could entertain them over the next few weeks, perhaps. If you’ve time over the weekend … ?’

He opened the case and handed John some slim folders as they left the pub. The one on top said Mr H. Carrick.

‘Carrick?’ John had heard Rees mention the name but he couldn’t connect it with any land deal.

Rees looked annoyed for a moment. ‘I told the girl to take that one out … there’s some sort of hold-up and it’s not likely to go ahead.’

John had never seen Rees so uncomfortable, so he flipped through the other files, recognizing some of the names. It was one of the perks of having a wealthy uncle that sometimes he got to entertain the clients because Rees hated one-to-one contact over a dinner table—another of his foibles.

They were walking three abreast along the pavement when Trollis paused, his brow puckered with a frown.

‘Carrick … didn’t he get the Sinclair estate by marrying the widow?’

‘That’s him,’ Rees agreed dourly. ‘John won’t remember the weekends I used to spend there when Graham Sinclair was alive …’

Tollis interrupted again as he remembered something. ‘I got one of the men to collect your car, by the way, John. It’s round the back.’

It wasn’t really John’s car because he didn’t own one, but simply used any of the Kramer cars that was free. He made his way around the rear of the building to collect it and he didn’t notice the two men in the car parked across the street who had been watching and were now ready to follow him when he left.