Loose Ends Read online

  ‘I can understand that; the whole thing was a horrible shock to us all.’

  ‘Of course it was, not that Truman really envisaged “foul play”, but since it was no longer his concern, he didn’t feel entitled to push it any further, to question your – Gordon – and in the end it was just left hanging. And then there was this nasty hit-and-run accident in the village a few months back. He spent a lot of time with the family, and it must have reminded him about your mother’s death, because he got the papers out again. If you’d be willing to look into it, it would be something you could do for him, though what you could find out after all this time I really don’t know. If indeed there’s anything to find.’ She shook her head. ‘She was the most irritating, selfish, self-obsessed woman you could meet, but no-one deserves to die like that.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t think her husband knew what to do with himself with her gone.’

  ‘Breathe a huge sigh of relief, I should think.’

  ‘Now, now, Jeff. That’s not at all kind.’

  ‘Neither was she. Anyway, I can’t imagine Gordon at a loose end. Or perhaps all Gordon’s ends are loose!’

  ‘The thing is, none of this would have come to your father’s attention if her solicitor had sent the papers to the right address, but somehow they landed up here. I’m not entirely sure why Truman kept them.’

  ‘I’ll take them away and go through them,’ Jefferson promised. ‘See if I can find out what was worrying him about her death, see if there’s anything that still needs to be done. It’s the sort of thing I’m good at.’

  ‘You’re good at most things, Jeff.’

  ‘Except rugby.’

  ‘Your father didn’t hold that against you. He was so proud of you, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘He was. He used to say what a miracle it was that you’d turned out so well. And the one thing he wanted before he died – I’m sure he didn’t say so to you, though – was to see you married . . . properly, I mean.’ Her clear gaze met his and he could see the question in them.

  He smiled. ‘Sorry, Rom, but for the moment there isn’t anyone. But . . . I promise that when there is, you’ll be the first to know.’

  Back home, he parked his car in his allotted space behind his building on the edge of the canal, warehouses converted five years ago, when the economy was booming and money was less tight. Back in his loft space, he poured himself a small whisky – single malt of course; he never touched the blended stuff – sat back in an armchair, stared up into the intricacies of the steel beams and struts of the ceiling, and, as men so often do, thought about his mother.

  She was a woman he could scarcely imagine agreeing to call her only child Jefferson simply because his father had been called Truman, and his grandfather, Harrison. His darkest secret, one which he felt to be not only unbecoming, but also reprehensible, showing as it did his lack of filial decorum, was the fact that he had loved his quiet father but had actively disliked his mother. Since childhood he’d always felt awkward in her presence, aware when she turned her large grey eyes on him that she was looking at a job much less than well done. In a bid to rid herself of the shackles of motherhood, which impinged too far on her feminist right to her own life, it was his mother who, over the protests of both Jefferson and his father, had insisted that he be packed off to his cheerless prep school (‘It’ll make a man of him’). Later on, she had chosen the unheated public school where he learned almost nothing and, even in the height of summer, had suffered from chill-blains and the kind of hacking cough which in a Dickens novel might have been expected to result, after a few hundred pages of mind-numbing sentimentality, in the maudlin and long-drawn-out death of some poor etiolated child.

  It was his mother, too, who espoused Causes which had no resonance for either Jefferson or for his father but which, for the sake of family harmony, they had no choice but to support. Indeed, eight-year-old Jefferson’s poster of a whale spouting through a green ocean pursued by a trawlerful of fishermen of indeterminate nationalities brandishing nets and harpoons was reproduced on posters across most of the Western world. A few had even made their way, via backpackers and the like, on to walls in defiantly whale-hunting nations such as Japan, causing a furore which it took all the Foreign Office’s skills to calm. Some of the Causes – American Imperialism, anti-vivisectionists, global warming, endangered species, homosexual marriages and the like – she was for, others against, though often it was impossible to work out which was which.

  Unlike his father, a noted amateur rugby player, Jefferson had never been ‘hearty’, never ‘good at games’. From the age of eleven, after stumbling over a cache of old romantic novels in his grandmother’s house, he had for years entertained the hope that he might at least excel at gym. He’d envisaged himself in dick-defining tights and a splendid pair of crushed-leather boots, abseiling in through high Gothic windows to fight off the unwanted suitors of pining maidens, or serenading some gorgeous creature taking her ease in the moonlight on a balcony above his head, but both dreams had failed to materialize. Firstly, he proved to be physically incapable of getting over the vaulting horse in the school gymnasium; however hard he bounced on the springboard before making his leap, he invariably landed flat on his stomach, momentarily winding himself, and killing any dreams of abseiling, in or out. Secondly, he turned out to be tone-deaf, a fact he had not been aware of until a wincing music-master informed him, after an audition, that since he appeared to be unable to carry a tune, they would not be requiring his services in the school choir, which put paid to any serenading he might have indulged in.

  At school, therefore, he had learned that youthful dreams rarely came true, and in fact sometimes wondered what he would have done, once the unwanted suitor had been sent packing, and the song had been sung. ‘Heard melodies are sweet,’ the gorgeous creature might have said, were she of a literary bent, poking her head over the edge of the balcony and gazing down on him with a look very similar to the music master’s, ‘but those unheard are sweeter’ and, really, after a snub like that, there would have been very little choice left him but to slink off into the night and find some other occupation.

  When he was sixteen, he fell in love with the daughter of a man who wrote crappy pseudo-American crime novels under the pen name Bret McDermot (or perhaps it was his real name), and as a sacred duty to Love, read the man’s entire undistinguished oeuvre. He wasn’t impressed with the literary standard, but conceived a secret ideal of himself as a crime-buster, saving the world from itself, putting wrongs right, keeping a brown-paper-bagged bottle of hooch (whatever that was) in the bottom drawer of his desk, wearing a belted raincoat, peppering his investigations with a fusillade of witty one-liners and basking in the absolute certainty that at the end of the day, he would have tied the case up and justice, however rough, would have been done.

  At school, he was able to put his powers of deduction to the test when Mrs Buonfiglio, the school secretary, whose son attended Haddon Hall on a reduced scale of fees, was attacked one winter evening and robbed of her handbag and the cellphone she used to keep in touch with her son’s whereabouts. ‘It was one of the boys,’ she said, weeping in front of the Headmaster, something she would never have dreamed of doing if she had not taken out a large sum of money during the lunch hour in order to buy herself a much-needed winter coat and pay for her son to go on the school’s skiing trip to Austria under the leadership of the games master.

  The Headmaster had been intending to tell her that perhaps it was time she moved on to a job better suited to her lack of office skills but sensed that this wasn’t the right occasion, especially as it appeared that one of His Boys was responsible for the large bruise on the woman’s face, and the ruined tights on her legs. ‘Can you be sure?’ he asked. He grimaced at Jefferson Andrewes, his Head Boy, who had been the one to discover the poor woman sobbing in a flower bed beside the school gates, and even now was patting her muddy hand.

  ‘I know it was, I co
uld feel his blazer, that braid round the edge?’

  ‘But you couldn’t say which one?’

  ‘No, of course not. It was practically pitch black, and he was all wrapped up in a big scarf, plus one of those balalaika things, a whatd’youcall’em, like bank robbers wear.’

  ‘Any idea,’ Jefferson said diffidently, ‘which scarf?’

  ‘Which scarf? How could I tell?’

  ‘I mean, was it a rugby scarf, or the new bug scarf, or the swimming scarf?’ It was less a sartorial question than one of genuine curiosity: the school had an arcane system of differently striped scarves for boys who had achieved some kind of sporting or personal success or were in their first year or second years.

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean . . . there isn’t much light down by the gates but I believe, yes, thinking back, I’d say it was an athletics scarf, you know, with all those whatd’youcall’ems, round things . . .’

  ‘Hoops,’ Jefferson and the headmaster said simultaneously.

  ‘Hoops?’ It was clear that she regarded hoops as something her grandfather might have bowled along a cobble-stoned alley with a wooden stick.

  ‘There are quite a few boys with the right to wear such a scarf, including your own son,’ the headmaster said soothingly (or perhaps not). ‘But I’m sure we can track the culprit down.’

  Two days later, Jefferson knocked at the Headmaster’s door. ‘Sir, could I have a word?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you make an appointment with my secretary?’

  ‘In this instance, sir, I’d rather not.’

  ‘I see. You’d better come in.’

  Jefferson coughed a little, hesitated. ‘Sir, I know who attacked Mrs Buonfiglio.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘I . . . I observed, sir.’ Just as he had observed the chaplain’s hand on the arm of one of the prettier choirboys, the bottle of something alcoholic (hooch?) hidden in Matron’s linen cupboard, the chicken legs which Crutwell, brilliant Latin scholar, stole from the refectory table and secreted in various greasy pockets about his person.

  ‘And what, Andrewes, did you observe?’

  ‘Someone in the athletics squad who seemed to be spending a little more freely than usual. Someone walking round with a new mobile phone, sir. Someone wearing brand-new Nikes.’

  ‘I’m supposed to know what those are, am I?’

  ‘Running shoes, sir. Expensive ones. The . . . uh . . . perpetrator was also carrying a new Walkman, sir.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘A small pocket-sized device which plays music and so on.’

  ‘Wonders will never cease, Andrewes.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Or maybe no.’

  ‘And who is this delinquent character?’

  Jefferson came closer to the headmaster’s desk, looked over his shoulder at the door behind him, bent closer and said, very softly, ‘Buonfiglio, sir.’

  ‘Good God! You mean to say this wretched lad assaulted and robbed his own mother?’

  ‘’Fraid so, sir.’

  ‘And she isn’t aware?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Let’s keep it that way. What are we to do?’

  ‘I’ve got the money back, sir.’ Jefferson reached into the breast pocket of his blazer and pulled out a thick envelope. ‘It’s all there.’

  ‘I’m not going to ask how you managed that, Andrews. I assume a certain amount of pressure was employed.’

  ‘Sir . . .’

  The Headmaster smiled. ‘I’ll see to it that Mrs Buonfiglio’s money is returned. What about the skiing trip? In the light of your discoveries, it doesn’t seem quite appropriate for him to come along.’

  ‘Funnily enough, sir, only this morning Buonfiglio intimated to me that he’d decided he didn’t really want to go, after all.’

  ‘Well done, Andrewes. Discreet as well as clever, eh?’

  ‘Sir.’

  Discreet and clever or not, Jefferson poured the tiniest second nip into his glass and contemplated the cobwebs again. It was time to do some more observing, he decided, observing which could only be done at close quarters, which unfortunately were some distance away. But he had accrued some holiday leave, and he’d always believed, cliché though it might be, in striking while the iron was hot, though in this case, the iron was nearly ten years old, and unlikely to be still hot, or even lukewarm. Still, he owed it to his father to at least take a look.

  Kate

  Eight

  Before she left that Friday morning Kate peered carefully from her bedroom window. Perhaps she was being paranoid, but it didn’t hurt to take precautions, and if she’d caught sight of Stefan Michaels lurking in the vicinity, she’d have been down the stairs and out the front door so fast that he’d have no time even to blink before she’d slapped his stupid face, slammed her knee into his groin, torn his throat out.

  But as it happened, she could see nothing that aroused her suspicions. No loiterers, no-one bending down to tie a shoelace or leaning unnaturally against a garden wall with an open newspaper. Only mad Mr Radsowicz across the way, banging on the gutter with a broom handle, shaking his fist at the startled morning sparrows who’d presumed to build their nests on his roof, though by now they were used to him and didn’t bother to fly even temporarily away. Finally, she came out of the front door and walked rapidly to the bus stop, fists clenched, peering unobtrusively about in an attempt to check whether someone might be following her. As far as she could tell, no-one was. Nonetheless, the anger simmering at the base of her stomach was diluted by a sense that at last she was up and running, moving forward instead of marking time. Janine had told her a few days ago that her flatmate was moving out to live with her fiancé, and was Kate by any chance interested in taking her place. Kate was interested; Kate was very interested, though she asked for some time to consider the proposal, mainly because of Magnus and his possibly injured feelings.

  When she got off the bus, she walked quickly in the wrong direction, took the first turning to the right, crossed the road, took another turn, this time to the left, then dodged back across the traffic and ran down a short alleyway until she reached the back of TaylorMade Travel’s premises. If anyone was following her, they’d have had a hard time keeping up, let alone figuring out where she was headed.

  When she pushed through the door Janine was already there, checking figures, running over arrangements on her computer.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Janine asked.

  ‘Fine, thanks. At least, there’s this guy . . .’ Kate outlined her worry about Stefan and ended by saying, ‘So, although I’d really like to move in with you, maybe we should delay it for a while. I don’t want to be the cause of possible trouble. I mean, if the guy really is a stalker or something.’

  ‘A friend of mine was stalked once,’ Janine said. ‘It was pretty terrifying while it lasted, and he eventually went to prison for it. Your guy doesn’t seem to have done much at all, whereas this other one used to ring my friend all through the night, send thousands of emails, have flowers delivered, send letters and cards. It was only when he started breaking into her house that they could finally pin something on him. It’s not much comfort, I suppose, but the police told her not to worry, since most of these obsessional guys are actually quite harmless.’

  ‘But not all.’

  ‘Right. But what you’re describing doesn’t sound anything like that.’

  Kate shrugged. No-one else seemed to think that there was anything to be worried about. Maybe she was exaggerating. And to be fair to him – not that she wanted to be – she remembered that she had sort of implied that she’d let him know when she moved on. ‘Well, if you’re up for it, I’d love to take you up on the offer to share your flat.’

  ‘That’s great!’ A customer came into the shop to enquire about travelling across the Australian desert by camel, and Janine lowered her voice. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

  At about three fifteen, Kate was thinking about slipping into the tiny kitchen at the back
of the premises, in order to enjoy a ten-minute coffee break, when a man wandered in and took the vacant chair in front of her. He was maybe five years older than she was, wearing a three-piece suit under a broad-shouldered woollen topcoat, and carrying a briefcase of such soft leather that it looked like black butter. Banker, Kate surmised. Accountant. Insurance.

  He stared at her for a moment, as though someone had whipped out a kipper and proceeded to belabour him with it, then smiled, showing white teeth. ‘My name’s Jefferson Andrewes, and I need to . . . um . . . go on holiday.’

  ‘Then you’ve definitely come to the right place,’ Kate said.

  ‘Good. Now, a couple of my friends went on an amazing holiday organized by your company last year, and couldn’t recommend you more highly. So . . . what can you do for me?’

  ‘That depends on where you want to go, and whether you’d be travelling alone or with someone else, or children. We don’t really cater for family holidays.’

  ‘Oh heavens, no children. Just me.’

  ‘Did you have anything specific in mind?’ Kate asked. ‘Any places you’ve always wanted to go? Any dreams you want to fulfil?’

  It was as though, having delivered his introduction, Jefferson Andrewes had forgotten what he’d come in for. ‘Dreams? Plenty of those . . . but whether they’d ever come true . . .’ He tugged at the collar of his shirt, pulled down the points of his waistcoat. ‘But we’re not here to discuss the metaphysics of . . . um . . . the unconscious mind, are we?’

  ‘South America? India? China?’ prompted Kate. ‘Iceland? Nepal? Australia?’ She smiled at him. ‘The world’s a big place.’

  He smiled right back. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you have dinner with me tonight, and we could discuss it further?’

  Kate laughed. ‘So that’s what this is all about! That has to be the smoothest chat-up line I ever heard!’ How different he was from the smirking little creep who’d asked her out the other day.

  ‘Chat-up line?’ His smooth brow wrinkled like a puzzled schoolboy’s. ‘It really wasn’t meant to be. So what do you think?’