KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) (4 page)

‘You’re in a state and I know you when you get like this. I don’t want you going round to the judge’s house and doing something we’ll both regret like ramming his wig down his throat. All that stuff’s in the past. You’ve got to forget about the Mangler and bloody Dee Elsworth and all that crap about Pimpernel Investigations. Our future’s here now.’

‘Jan, you know me … ’

‘I ought to.’

‘I’ve never been one of these people with total recall of every incident in their past life.’

‘Who is, Dave?’

‘Well, I mean I can remember things when I want to but I’m not trying to. I don’t want to be all bitter and twisted even though I have good reason. I’m already forgetting about my so-called colleagues who booted me out of my own business and were happy to see me banged up for something I couldn’t possibly have done.’

‘I hope you aren’t including me with them.’

‘No, no, no!’

‘Dave, I know I treated you badly but when the kids started demanding to be a family again I knew I had to go the whole hog. It suddenly came to me that if I stayed in journalism the most I could achieve would be a by-line of my own in some supplement of the
Guardian
and the occasional appearance on a panel show when they wanted a hard faced feminist to sneer at.’

‘Jan, feminist maybe but hard faced never.’

‘Oh, I was getting that way. It hit me like a sledgehammer when I was so wrong about you.’

‘Oh …’

‘Dave, I know I said it was the kids who wanted you back but it was really me.’

‘Yes.’

‘I kept waking up in the middle of the night wondering where you were.’

‘I was banged up, Jan. I was in the special wing with the nonces.’

‘Don’t Dave. You can’t make me feel guiltier than I feel already.’

‘Jan I never blamed you. Have I ever said a word?’

‘No, but sometimes you have a look.’

‘Jan, I never blamed you. I never will blame you. I blame myself and that cowboy copper Rix for what happened. You only ever wanted me to get off the case.’

‘I don’t want you off my case,’ she said. She pulled me to the sofa, pushed me down and then collapsed on top of me.  I suppressed a gasp; never a sylph-like figure, pregnancy hasn’t reduced Jan’s avoirdupois.

‘Dave, you know I never believed you were a serial killer. It was just that you kept on working for that American bitch Ruth Hands.’

‘Ruth isn’t a bitch. She was a client and she was waiting for me when they let me out of that damned prison.’

‘I know. She’s wonderful and I’m the bitch who let you down.’

‘I never said that. I knew what I was getting myself into. You weren’t like those worms plotting behind my back. With you everything was out in the open.’

‘I was never jealous of her. I thought she was just exploiting your good nature. That’s the trouble with you, Dave. Sometimes you’re too nice for your own good. You don’t know when to say enough is enough.’

I strained to move my head so that I could look her in the eye.

‘Listen my love, nice or nasty; I’ve already decided not to lift a finger to help Lew. God, if he thinks being Dad’s remote relative is enough to involve me in some murder plot he’s crazy. Bugger the lot of them. I’ll change my name to Smith if I have to. Anyway, let me up now Jan, or you and baby Cunane are going to crush me to death.’

She made no effort to move.

‘He did give us a lovely coffee service, Dave, don’t forget that,’ she said with a laugh.

‘Yeah, like it was fashionable back in eighteen hundred.’

Jan put both hands against my chest, pushed herself upright and incidentally expelled the remaining breath from my lungs.

I let out a sigh of relief.

‘Well, Dave Cunane, there are some things that never go out of fashion.’

She took me firmly by the hand and led me into the hall and up the stairs to our bedroom.

‘Er, Jan,’ I said when I saw where things were trending, ‘Where are the children?’

‘I told you, Dumbo, they’re at school. You delivered them, remember? God, that bloody Sir Lew really shaken you up hasn’t he? There’s plenty of personal time for us.’

‘Do you think we ought to?’

‘I’m still in the second trimester and I’m as horny as hell.’

‘So am I,’ I muttered as I lifted off her print top.

Afterwards we lay in each other’s arms for a long time, making up unlikely names for our child. Lewis wasn’t even suggested, nor was Patrick.

I began to feel a little more normal.

We dozed and the afternoon slipped by.

Eventually we showered and dressed.

‘It’s the hormones or something,’ Jan said. ‘I know I should be screaming about bloody Sir Lew Greene but I feel too placid to get worked up. This is just how your little escapades always start.’

‘Not this time, love.’

‘That’s what you say and I know you mean it. Just make sure you don’t get involved. Anyway the thought occurs to me that Paddy and Eileen have their reasons for not backing you over Lew. They may not be telling you everything.’

I drew in a sharp breath. Jan has a journalist’s keen intuition.

She mistook my response.

‘I’m sorry love. My brain’s probably addled. Do you think I’m turning into a vegetable?’

‘An earth mother, you mean,’ I said, giving her bump a friendly pat.

A few minutes later the children clattered into the family room, our peaceful idyll ended and family life resumed. That is, the children switched on the television, quarrelled over choice of channel, raided the kitchen for biscuits, demanded to be fed and then sprawled in awkward postures over the main pieces of furniture and the floor, moving frequently to achieve maximum coverage.

Using the culinary skills honed over my long years of bachelorhood and the immense range of utensils available in our ‘dream’ kitchen I dished up omelette, chips and beans followed by ice cream.

Afterwards Jan managed to coax Jenny into the study to get on with homework and settled to listen to Lloyd doing his reading. I loaded up the dishwasher.

5

Monday evening

On the surface normal life had resumed but I still felt unsettled. There was a feeling of vertigo as if I was standing on the edge of a precipice that I couldn’t shake.

Jan’s remark about my parents knowing more than they’d let on had a feel of the truth about it.

There had to be something. Normally they were so protective.

I went into the barn the barn and phoned on my mobile.

Paddy answered.

‘Oh, talking, are you? After you stormed out like a bear with a sore behind …’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t start! You’re the one who’s always telling me to keep my nose clean and now you want me to help Lew. I want to know the reason why. You must know more than you told me.’

‘Eeeeh, you’re not so green as you’re cabbage looking are you, our David?’

‘Oh, come on Dad. Cut out the Les Dawson impersonation. I’m not in the mood.’

‘There
was
something we didn’t tell you,’ he said in his normal voice.

‘Go on.’

‘Lew’s dying. He’s been diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. He’s been through all the treatments, radiation, chemotherapy etc, etc. They haven’t worked and he’s not got long.’

‘Oh,’ I muttered weakly, ‘but even so … to ask me to …’

‘Shut up David, don’t you know that when you speak on a mobile phone you’re broadcasting to the world? Lew’s health wasn’t what I was referring to. As you’ve figured out there was something else I might as well spill the beans. You know he’s very wealthy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Some time ago, before the bit of bother he came to you about was even on the horizon, he told us he was thinking of changing his will. He was going to leave everything to various charities, church bodies and the like but all these scandals in the church upset him. The estates and properties, especially his late wife’s Weldsley lands will be kept in one piece. Death duties will be paid out of his investments so the lands can be handed on in one piece.’

‘So?’

‘So, Thicko, you’re his sole heir. You’re going to get the lot. You’ll be proper landed gentry, a country squire.’

I like to think it’s to my credit that I didn’t drop the phone or faint or something. I just said ‘No’ and grunted.

Paddy resumed after a pause. He detailed the extent of Lew’s wealth. It was much greater than I’d ever imagined. Of course, I knew about the big house in Wilmslow and the massive legal fees earned as a barrister but the rest was staggering.

‘Yeah, you get the lot, lucky boy. He’s left me and your mum a nice sum too and Dee Elsworth gets his porcelain collection but that’s it.’

‘Dee Elsworth?’

‘Yeah, the sly old devil’s been carrying on with her for years.’

‘The bastard!’

‘No, you’ve got to feel sorry for the poor woman married to that plank of a banker. Lew’s tried to get her to leave him for years but she won’t. She thinks it’ll upset the twins. How, I don’t know as Elsworth’s out of the country half the time and they’re at boarding school. Anyway, it must have been from her that he learned about your adventure.’

‘She’d no right.’

‘Grow up, Dave. If you’d kept your name out of the newspapers nothing would have come out but Lew happened to mention your name and then she told him she knew you were innocent of the Mangler Murders and that’s when it all came out.’

‘OK, but I still don’t see why you didn’t tell me this before.’

‘Because if Lew was gentleman enough not to influence
you by telling you he was leaving his fortune to you the least your mother and I could do was to say nothing about it.’

‘I see,’ I muttered.

‘Do you? Listen, David whatever you do is up to you …’

‘No pressure then?’

‘Help him or tell him to shove his money where the sun don’t shine, whatever. But you’re still our son and don’t forget what you were saying about your business. You said it was going down the tubes and David, it’s Lew’s body that’s ill. There’s nothing wrong with his mind.’

The phone went dead. Well, at least I now knew what Paddy wanted me to do: help Lew find a hitman and then get out of the PI game.

It was tempting. The recession has turned the PI trade into a dog-eat-dog struggle. There’s always someone ready to undercut no matter how low you price a job. The whole industry’s too specialised. The free and easy days when I would spend weeks investigating some mystery and righting wrongs are a distant memory. There are firms focusing on every separate branch of investigation. There’s even a ‘women only’ detective agency. My niche, insurance scams and social security fraud is jammed with rivals not least my treacherous former colleagues just across the street. It took a major legal battle to wrest the title ‘Pimpernel Investigations’ back from them. They wanted to keep the name and the former clients. I got the name back, they have the old office and I’m making inroads on the rest.

I looked around the walls of the barn, white washed by my own hand. There was no answer written up anywhere.

I don’t know how I felt at that moment. I was perplexed more than anything. The naked terror came later.

Afterwards for want of something to do I went outside and policed the area. The short track leading to what I now think of as the ‘main road’, actually the winding country lane connecting us with civilisation, is terminated by a five barred gate. It was wide open. Lloyd loves swinging on it.

I swung it shut and the hinge creaked like someone strangling a cat. I’d been meaning to oil it for some time. I fastened it, not just with the latch but with the steel hoop that folds over the connecting fencepost. We were secure inside our twelve acres. I looked down the lane. It was quiet as evening approached and dusk began to gather. There’s not much traffic round here except for the twice daily commutes.

I’d made my mind up. The hesitations of the day were behind me.

The message to Lew would have to be ‘no’. I couldn’t turn assassin even for him and his fortune and if that meant taking the chance of having my murky past investigated I’d just have to hope the police wouldn’t find that grave by the lake. That was a bluff wasn’t it, Sir Lew? You’d never land Dee Elsworth in trouble with police and husband.

As for the rest, he’d have to cut me out of his will.

A little glow of self righteousness began to appear on my mental horizon. I told myself I could never live on inherited wealth. OK, there was my parent’s property but the way they were going they were likely to outlive me. I could accept that but much of Lew’s wealth: the Lancashire farms and the villa in Tuscany were his wife’s birthright. She was the survivor of an old landed family. I’d no right to any of that. There was no connection between me and that long line of Weldsleys that could justify it.

It wasn’t even like winning on the lottery. A win may be undeserved but you have to buy a ticket and you know it’s a chance in a million and that the money’s going to good causes.

Even as these righteous thoughts crossed my mind another sneakily popped up behind them:
if it doesn’t come to me, who gets it? The Treasury?

It was wrong. Lew had to be spoken to. OK, a little legacy would be nice but leaving the lot to me was impulsive to the point of insanity. It was the action of a deeply disturbed man.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a communist. I leave the politics to my beloved wife. I’m just a man making his own way in the world who doesn’t want to owe anything to anyone. Independent, that’s me.

I collected the children’s bikes, guiding each with one hand, kicked a discarded football up to the yard and headed towards the barn. Protecting their bikes against the remote chance of rural crime was the thought that made me pause as I was about
to lock the barn door. Despite constant reassuring statements to the contrary crime has got worse, very much worse, even in my life time. Was it so incredible that someone was plotting the highest crime of all, the overthrow of the state? I told myself that it was. There’s all the difference in the world between say, drug trafficking and high treason.

But just suppose that Sir Lew wasn’t on a one way trip to Fantasy Island.

Damn it to hell, the man was a QC and an Appeal Court judge after all. According to Paddy he wasn’t mad, just dying of cancer.

What was it Lew said about a ‘tripwire’? Some reference in a document that had made him suspicious but when he researched it further secret alarm bells began ringing, alarms which alerted his mysterious traitor. Just suppose for the sake of argument that the traitor was real and that he was on his way to Topfield Farm.

Nah!

There are probably plenty of traitors in the government machine but were they bold enough to kill a High Court judge? No, Lew’s illness must have affected his mind despite what Paddy said.

Still there was nothing to be lost by a little paranoia. I went back to the barn and took certain precautions. In the same mood I slipped in via the backdoor, went quietly to the gun cupboard and took out my shotgun and cartridges. I took them upstairs and hid the unloaded gun under the bed and the cartridges on top of the wardrobe.

Jan and the children were sprawled on the sofa when I got back to the family room. Jan raised her eyebrows questioningly. Even if I’d wanted to keep Paddy’s bombshell a secret from her it was pointless to attempt it. I put my finger to my lips and whispered ‘later’.

I tried watching television. The news and the Discovery channel are the only things I can bear to watch these days. Children’s programmes definitely don’t hold my attention. Fortunately, the children were soon yawning. I read a story to Lloyd while he got off. He was always first in bed according to a strict protocol. Twenty minutes later Jan went up with Jenny.

‘Well?’ she said when she returned.

‘Your guess was right. There was something they weren’t telling me.’

‘Let me guess. He’s got a brain tumour and doesn’t know what he’s saying. They want you to humour him.’

‘No. Nothing like that!’ I snapped. ‘Well, it is a bit like that. He’s got pancreatic cancer but according to Paddy, who should know, his mind is perfectly normal.’

‘Normal, apart from the fact he’s decided to kill someone. Homicidal mania is the term for that.’

‘Janine, leave his mind out of it.’

‘Out of it? A High Court judge who’s as nutty as a fruit cake? I should be phoning the news desk at the Guardian but as he’s one of your relations I suppose I have to accept the idea that he’s as crazy as a screech owl.’

I shut up, folded my arms and picked up the television control. I started flicking through the fact channels.

‘Go on,’ she demanded impatiently. ‘Tell me the rest.’

‘I don’t think I should. The news might unbalance you in your present condition.’

I continued to fiddle with the channels.

She pulled off her slipper and cracked me over the leg with it.

‘Talk Mister or you sleep in the barn tonight.’

‘OK, OK, he’s decided to name me in his will. He changed it two months ago.’

She looked at me blankly. Lew Greene hadn’t figured largely in my life in recent years, hadn’t figured at all. Jan had even less idea of his financial status than I had.

‘The coffee set, remember?’

‘Of course I remember it. I was tempted to take it on Antiques Road Show and pretend I found it in the attic so I could look shocked when they valued it. Paul Storr, it must be worth plenty unless it’s a fake. I asked you about him but you were so tight lipped and grim I thought he must be gaga or something … the dark secret of the Cunanes. You made it pretty clear you don’t like him.’

‘It’s not that. He’s disapproved of me for years and that can turn you off anybody.’

‘Yes … right, I was going to suggest that we sell the coffee set to get the money to do up the barn up for Mum. So, Uncle Fester’s loaded is he? What’s your share?’

‘Jan, he’s more than loaded. He’s very, very wealthy indeed, up there in the top one or two percent.’

‘So, what are we talking about? Give me a ballpark figure; half a million, a million or what?’

‘Jan, we’re talking about millions, lots of millions and I get the lot. He made his own fortune at the Bar but inherited the Weldsley Estates from his wife; lands all over the country, including London and the Villa Arabella near San Gemignano in Tuscany. He gives a case of the local wine to Paddy and Eileen every year but it never clicked with me, brilliant detective that I am, that he owned the vineyard it was grown in.’

I studied her nervously. What would happen when I told her I was going to turn it all down?

She remained expressionless.

Then she suddenly started roaring with laughter.

‘A villa in Tuscany,’ she gasped. ‘I’d be able to invite all the Guardian bigwigs over when they take their summer hols in Chiantishire. It’s unbelievable.’

‘I know. Phone Paddy, he’ll give you the full run down.’

‘No, I don’t mean that,’ she said. ‘I was thinking about the expressions on the faces of certain people at the Guardian if I really did invite them to a grand villa and tell them we owned it. They’d ask if it was purchased with the proceeds of your undiscovered crimes.’