Fatal Legacy (6 page)

The report and accounts for Wainwright Enterprises were brief to say the least, just the minimum required to be lodged with Companies House. Nevertheless, Alexander read them with great interest on his return from the office each day, working back over the records for the past ten years. In the weeks since he had been appointed managing director he had taken his new responsibility very seriously, as had his wife. He impressed on her the importance of understanding the accounts in detail and they developed a shared obsession with the financial aspects of the business. Now that they were personally wealthy Sally transferred her fixation with money from their still meagre housekeeping to the millions of pounds passing through the business.

They quickly devoured the published accounts and soon mastered their content, but what they found intrigued them and inflamed their desire for yet further information.

‘So what do you make of these latest accounts, Alex?’ Sally asked one evening. He had just reread the most recent set.

‘They don’t say much. In fact, I would say that they are deliberately succinct – just the bare minimum required. The company’s extremely profitable and keeps on paying a healthy dividend to the shareholders.’

‘Exactly! It’s far too profitable. There’s simply too much cash in there.’

‘I agree. I’ve compared our results with those of other companies in a similar line of business, and in every single year Wainwright’s has made ten times their profits.’

‘Well, you’ve always said that it’s a very well-run company, Alex.’

‘Not to this extent. I think there’s something strange about it, and what’s more, I can’t get a straight answer from either Neil Yarrell or Arthur Fish. Neil insists that he leaves all the detailed running of the finances to Arthur whilst he focuses on
shareholder
relations and acquisitions; and Arthur never gives me a simple answer to a straight question. If I don’t receive the information tomorrow that I asked him for over a week ago, I’m going to lose my temper with him!’

‘Is he incompetent or crooked, do you think?’

‘Perhaps he’s both. Come on, we’ve done all we can for tonight. Let’s go to bed.’

The accounts department at Wainwright’s was silent and dark except for a solitary yellow glow from under the closed door of the office of the financial controller, Arthur Fish. It was very late. Normally he would have gone home over three hours earlier, but he had called a neighbour and asked her to sit with his wife so that he could stay behind in the office and sort things out. Now, as he stared at the mound of paper in front of him, he felt sick. His hands shook as he tried to put the bundled files in order, and he knocked over a box of paper clips as he tried to save a huge cascade of computer printouts from falling to the floor. The whole lot went crashing down and he had to sit there with his head in his hands, struggling to control his breathing.

It was awful … everything was out of control. He had been told to have the information ready for the new managing director by the next day or start looking for another job. Arthur knew that he was facing exposure and ruin. Old Mr Wainwright had never been like this. He and Neil Yarrell had made it very clear how they liked the accounts department to be run, and he had followed their instructions to the letter. The problem was that the new MD and his wife were playing by different rules, and Neil Yarrell had created so much distance between himself and the mess he
knew
they would find that Arthur felt very much alone.

He stared balefully at the orange rent-a-crate in the middle of the floor and cursed the Wainwright-Smiths’ dangerous curiosity. There had never been any trouble before. He, together
with their external accountants, had always dealt with the
year-end
audit very nicely; no awkward questions and just enough testing to make sure that the files looked correct in case they were examined by someone other than their compliant auditors, which they never were. Now Mr Wainwright-Smith was demanding full access to the files, and Arthur knew what he would find – or rather, what he wouldn’t, if he was any good. He would not find the records and ledgers that would make the whole thing balance, simply because the books didn’t balance. Mr Alan Wainwright had known that and had never asked awkward questions. There was no way in which Arthur would be able to sort things out by morning. Neil Yarrell wasn’t worried because he thought that Alexander could be persuaded to be less inquisitive – for his own good. But Arthur didn’t agree. He detected a stubborn streak in young Mr Alexander and a toughness that he thought Neil was underestimating. And as for his wife! Well, he hadn’t met her yet, but by all accounts she was even worse than her husband.

He glanced nervously at the clock on his desk: in less than twelve hours either Mr or Mrs Wainwright-bloody-Smith would arrive and expect to see that crate full to the brim with orderly management accounts. Arthur picked up the printouts that littered the floor and composed them into piles, sorted roughly by year. At eleven o’clock his phone rang and an irate neighbour summoned him home. He locked his door on the mounds of paper and tried not to think about the morning.

‘Sally, my dear, what a pleasant surprise. How lovely to see you again. You’ll recall we met at the Hall, just before your wedding?’

‘Yes, of course, you’re Neil Yarrell, the finance director. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you again. Alex is busy so he asked me to collect the accounts and take them home so that he can study them tonight.’

‘This is my financial controller, Arthur Fish.’ Sally and Arthur clasped hands and locked eyes. An alert observer would have noticed Arthur’s widen momentarily in shocked recognition, but Sally missed it as her gaze moved on restlessly to the crate full of paper behind him.

‘Are those the accounts?’

‘Yes, all of them. You didn’t need to come in personally, you know, we could have had them sent to the Hall for you like before.’

‘No, I wanted to come in, if only to meet you all. Anyway, within a month I shall start work here as Alex’s PA. I’m looking forward to it, but in the meantime he has asked me to help him pull the numbers apart.’

She smiled brightly, a predator’s grin. Yarrell and Fish glanced at each other with barely concealed concern.

‘Wainwright’s is a very complicated company. You might not—’

‘Yes, yes, I know all about that. Don’t worry, Alexander and I haven’t yet found a problem involving money that has defeated us.’

With that she motioned to the doorman hovering behind her, who picked up the crate and followed her out.

Arthur scurried back to his office and closed the door once again on his bemused secretary. In the privacy of its confines he rubbed his hands with glee. He had her now, the mysterious Mrs Wainwright-Smith. She could pretend all she liked but he had recognised her instantly, and he had only to remember her real name to secure the hold over her that would mean that he would never again have anything to fear from little Miss Sally.

That night Arthur returned from work at Wainwright Enterprises and eased his key into the lock of his wide front door. He put his shoulder gently behind the swing of its weight as it opened noiselessly on well-oiled hinges. At first he could hear muffled conversation and his spirits rose, then he realised that it was the radio and his mood deflated in an instant.

Nurse Brown had heard his quiet entry and walked into the hall. He raised his eyebrows in a silent question but she shook her head and his spirits sank even lower. In the kitchen he set a white-and-green M&S carrier bag on the island unit. To his left, past the built-in oven, fridge and larder unit, was the door to the utility room; straight ahead a double-width back door led via a ramp into the carefully tended garden. To his right there was a passage, and beyond, a purpose-built extension where his wife
now spent the remainder of her days.

Behind him, in the hall, Nurse Brown was putting on a lightweight coat.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then, Mr Fish, just before eight. I’ve left a note of things we need on the worktop – and there’s a new prescription to pick up from the doctor if you have a moment at lunchtime.’

He thanked her and wished her a good evening. When she had left, the silence of the house surrounded him, broken only by small mechanical noises in the kitchen. The fridge motor clicked on and hummed, the tap dripped erratically, and away to his right, faint in the distance, the radio chattered.

He walked through the passage and into the pretty sitting room cum bedroom beyond. His wife was half lying, half sitting on her bed, the radio beside her. As soon as she saw him her eyes rolled slightly and the left eyelid flickered. She was welcoming him home.

‘Hello, love. How’s today been?’

With great effort she closed and opened her left eye twice. One was good, and three bad.

‘Oh.’ Arthur wasn’t quite sure what to say; he never was. He put all the troubles of his day at work behind him and focused on the next hour he would spend with his wife.

‘I’ve got us a bit of a treat for tea tonight. A Marks and Spencer steak and kidney pie – your favourite – and a summer pudding with cream to follow.’ Even as he spoke he knew it was for his own comfort; she ate like a bird these days, pecking at the mashed food he served her for a few minutes at a time, before dozing off. How could anyone be so ill and yet continue to live? It baffled him, and yet she remained the only sane, controlled part of his awful life.

He walked back to the kitchen and set the oven to warm whilst he went to change out of his suit. His bedroom was neat and tidy, the double bed carefully made up with envelope corners that would have pleased the sternest nursing sister. In a freshly laundered casual shirt, cardigan, check trousers, socks and slippers, he made his way back down to the kitchen and popped the pie in the oven. He’d bought ready-prepared runner beans and it took him only a moment to peel the potatoes. At
seven o’clock precisely, his early-evening chores complete, Arthur went to join his wife in time for
The Archers
. He told himself she still looked forward to the series, but there was no way of really knowing any more. Still, she always blinked once when he asked her whether she had enjoyed it.

Arthur looked at her now, her eyes closed. Was she asleep or conscious? What went on behind that paralysed, twisted face? He tried hard to remember her as she had been: a smiling, quiet, contented wife with not a bad word to say about anybody. She’d had no great gifts save her ability to be a wonderful, calm wife and mother. Their three grown-up children were a testament to her abilities; Arthur took no credit for their upbringing. And now look. All that goodness trapped inside a sick, bloated body that needed twenty-four-hour care. It made him very angry. No wonder he had gone so badly wrong.

The buzzer went off on the cooker, reminding him that he still had the beans to cook. He raised himself to his feet and returned to the kitchen, steeling himself to prepare his wife’s mush and talk to her for the next half-hour until the night nurse arrived and he could escape to hours of mindless television before bed and the guilty pretence of sleep. As he picked up the fork, his mind switched to the memory of his meeting with Sally Wainwright-Smith, and he set about mashing the food with a passion that smashed the innocent potato into fragments that shot across the edge of the plate and on to the floor.

He was surprised at the violence of his feelings towards Sally. Look at her now, so smart and smug, probing into the company accounts and consequently into his past as if she owned both. Her butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-the-mouth looks filled him with contempt. Who did she think she was, parading around like the lady of the manor? He knew better, oh yes. Arthur had recognised her at once; there was no forgetting that face, particularly those eyes. He had seen them gleam in malicious delight, narrow in anger and close in ecstasy, but she had no idea what he knew.

The sense of power this knowledge brought him was
disorientating
, and he had to rest his hand for a moment on the worktop to steady himself before lifting the pie from the oven. He had rarely felt this strongly, and adrenaline pumped into his system
as he realised that he might be able to reclaim some control of his life. Let her probe and bully all she liked; there was a point beyond which she would not be able to push him, and when the time came he would tell her so. The thought made him lick his lips with pleasure, and he actually smiled as he placed his wife’s small bowl of food on the tray next to his own plate.

‘Supper’s up, love!’ he called as he walked down the short passage whistling the familiar theme tune.

Throughout the following Friday night and the whole of the weekend Alexander and Sally worked their way diligently through boxfuls of Wainwright accounts. Sally was baffled within the first hour; Alexander admitted his confusion not much later, but between them they gradually worked out a solution. They would concentrate on just one year and on one part of the business in order to try and understand it completely. At first they would work independently and then compare notes.

By eleven o’clock on the Saturday morning they were ready to discuss their conclusions for the first time. Sally started.

‘This part of the business received forty-five million pounds in income, had costs of only eleven million and transferred twenty to another subsidiary company.’

‘I agree. Let’s look at the subsidiary that received the twenty million next.’

They worked on until one, when they ate a hurried salad, and completed their analysis by three in the afternoon. This time Alex spoke first.

‘Total income for this subsidiary of the company was
eighty-three
million, including nineteen and a half million it received as an intercompany transfer. In other words, half a million pounds went missing in the year. It also transferred forty million to two other parts of the business.’

‘That’s what I have too. Now you look at one of the divisions that received some of the forty million and I’ll look at the other.’

Throughout the rest of the afternoon and into the night they followed a daisy chain of transfers among Wainwright
Enterprises
subsidiaries. They stopped for a few hours’ sleep and
resumed again before dawn. By the end of Sunday afternoon they had trawled through just three-quarters of one year’s detailed accounts and had calculated that five and a half million pounds had so far ‘disappeared’ in the web of intercompany transactions.

Sally defrosted some leftover goulash for supper and laid places for them at the kitchen table. She poured two glasses of a supermarket wine and served large bowlfuls of the stew with potatoes and chunks of Saturday’s bread refreshed in the oven.

‘Five and a half million! Where’s it gone, Alex?’

‘No idea. We need to finish going through the papers for the rest of the year, and if we don’t find it there we have to assume it’s been siphoned off.’

‘By whom – your uncle, Neil Yarrell, Arthur Fish?’

‘Or all three, perhaps. There’s no point speculating, though. Let’s finish supper and get back to work.’ They ate quickly and in virtual silence, their minds preoccupied with the mysterious disappearance of so much money from Wainwright’s.

It was midnight before they closed the final file and refolded the last computer printout. The amount of missing money had risen to seven million pounds out of a total of one hundred and eleven million that had been passed from subsidiary to
subsidiary
for no apparent reason.

The following morning they confronted Neil Yarrell together. At first they just asked about the transfers of money and he gave them a detailed and plausible explanation involving corporation tax and VAT. He seemed relaxed and confident until Alex sprang the matter of the missing seven million on him. The finance director looked as if he had been slapped in the face, but said nothing.

‘You sign off the accounts, Neil. A discrepancy that large must have been spotted by you or the auditors.’

‘There was no discrepancy, I can assure you. It must be a miscalculation on your part.’

‘We don’t think so.’ Sally’s voice was hard and
uncompromising
. ‘It looks like fraud, and if you know nothing about it, I suggest you ask Arthur Fish. He must have been stealing from the company consistently.’

‘Now look here …’ Their voices were so loud that none of
them had heard the tentative tap on the half-open office door, and Neil Yarrell stopped in mid-sentence as his financial controller walked in. It was obvious from Arthur Fish’s face that he had overheard them, and he looked about to faint.

There was a silence, which was eventually broken by Sally.

‘It was as well you heard that, Fish. If you and Neil want to avoid a scandal, you’ve got twenty-four hours to come up with a credible explanation.’

Arthur looked to Alexander, but the managing director merely shook his head, his expression unreadable, then took his wife by the arm and walked out, leaving his senior accountants to confer.

As soon as they had gone, Neil Yarrell told Fish to leave and called James FitzGerald. He explained their problem succinctly.

‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed FitzGerald. ‘That didn’t take them long. And the tax explanation didn’t work?’

‘It doesn’t explain the missing seven million. Given time, I’m sure I could work up a missing set of accounts with Arthur, but they’re like bloodhounds on the trail! Now that they’ve got the scent of missing money beneath their noses, I bet they’ll work through every year.’

‘I’m going to have to pay them a call, then. It’s sooner than I would have liked but it can’t be helped. You just do what you need to on the figures and leave the rest to me.’

‘Alexander’s going to be in the office all day but I’ve no idea where Sally went when she left – to the Hall probably.’

‘I’m going to sort them out today, Neil, separately. They’re an unhelpful partnership and, if we can drive a wedge between them, it will make controlling them easier. It’s about time we created some distance between those two love-birds.’

‘You think that this is a love-match?’ Yarrell sounded surprised. ‘Haven’t you heard what everybody’s saying about her?’

‘Oh, I’ve more than heard, mate, don’t you worry. I think I know exactly where Sally’s coming from. You just stay shtoom, OK? And tell your pal Fish to put a sock in his whining, it’s getting on my nerves.’

James FitzGerald arrived at Wainwright’s in the middle of the afternoon and blew a kiss at the receptionist as he made his way unchallenged to the lift. As it climbed slowly, he glanced at his watch. It was nearly three o’clock, plenty of time for him to sort Wainwright-Smith out before going on to visit his wife at the Hall. On the top floor, he knocked lightly on Wainwright-Smith’s door and walked straight in, closing the door behind him.

‘Yes? What do you want?’

FitzGerald ignored the anger in the new managing director’s voice and flopped down in one of the armchairs. He leant over easily and poured himself a small whisky, then waved the crystal decanter towards Alexander, his whole manner proprietorial.

‘Just who the devil do you think you are?’

‘Alexander, you probably don’t remember me but I’m James FitzGerald, an old friend of your uncle’s.’ He smiled and the flash of canine enamel was wolfish. ‘I need to talk to you, now.’ The man’s hard-edged accent grated on Alexander’s nerves and he let his annoyance at the interruption show in his face.

‘I’m very busy, Mr FitzGerald. Make an appointment with my assistant. If it’s urgent then I think I have some time left tomorrow morning. Now if you’ll excuse me …’

‘I’m afraid that won’t do, Alexander. You seem to forget that I’m a rather substantial shareholder in Wainwright Enterprises, and I take a great and personal interest in this company. Whilst I have every confidence that Alan knew what he was doing in recommending you as MD, I’m not sure you yet realise the
full
extent of your responsibilities.’

There was something about the man’s tone that stopped Alexander giving a blunt response and he paused to let FitzGerald continue.

‘That’s better. We need to have a private chat, just you and me, not a word to anybody else, you understand, particularly that pretty and determined young wife of yours.’

‘What’s this all about?’ Wainwright-Smith stood up from his desk and walked over to the group of chairs in which FitzGerald was sitting.

‘It’s about money, Alexander, death, money and family obligations – your obligations now, to me and others.’

Wainwright-Smith sat down, his expression studiedly neutral.

‘Go on, Mr FitzGerald, I’m all ears.’

‘I understand from Neil that you’ve been asking questions about the company’s finances that would be better, quite frankly, left unasked or answered. He’s tried to persuade you but you’ve ignored his advice. I’m not here to argue with you, I’m here to tell you. Let it go.’

FitzGerald could see the expression of indignation and anger that crossed Alexander’s face, to be replaced with a stubbornness that reminded him so much of his dead uncle it made his heart sink. Alan Wainwright had been a proud man as well, and it was only his dire money troubles in the
nineteen-seventies
that had allowed FitzGerald and some of his friends to gain the influence they had needed over Wainwright’s. There had been no persuading him until necessity had driven him to accept their offer, and FitzGerald could see that there would be no persuading the nephew either. He had no option, then, but to tell him and hope that greed or fear – perhaps both – would do the rest.

‘I’m going to tell you a secret, Alexander, known to a very few people, and if you ever reveal it to anyone, including your wife, I promise you that I will personally cut your tongue out and choke you with it.’

The threat was delivered so coldly that Alexander could feel the hairs on his arms and at the back of his neck rise with a chill of fear. He had no doubt that the man sitting before him was capable of doing exactly what he had just described.

‘OK,’ he said and marvelled that anger had kept his voice steady. ‘Get on with it.’

‘I mean it. There is a skeleton in your family’s cupboard that I’ve helped keep hidden for over thirty years. Just view it as part of your legacy now and we’ll all be fine.’ He smiled again, with a white flash of enamel, and bent forward confidentially to tell Alexander his secret.

The phone was ringing when Sally returned to the Hall from a brief shopping trip, just before five o’clock. Before she could reach it, Mrs Willett had answered.

‘Yes? She’s here.’ The receiver was banged down on the
mahogany side table with a disregard for her property that made Sally’s blood boil. ‘For you, madam.’ The housekeeper retreated into the passageway that connected the entry and main halls.

‘Sally Wainwright-Smith.’

‘James FitzGerald here, Sally. We don’t really know each other, but we met briefly at Alan’s funeral.’ His voice crackled as the signal from his mobile phone weakened.

‘Oh yes.’ She vaguely remembered meeting him, a common little man with bad manners and worse breath.

‘I need to see you, it’s quite urgent.’

‘Not today, I’m very busy. Shall we say—’

‘I’m already on my way, Mrs Smith, and believe me, you will want to see me.’

She had only just hung up her jacket when she heard the crunch of tyres on the gravel outside. A silver-grey Mercedes pulled up in front of the main doors and a thin man in a lightweight suit climbed out of it with athletic ease. He was carrying a large brown envelope. For a moment she considered denying him entry but then curiosity overcame anger and she opened the door.

‘Sally!’ His tone was intimate and patronising.

‘What do you want?’

He pretended to look hurt at her bluntness, and then smiled. It was an unpleasant, knowing expression and Sally suddenly realised what was coming. Her eyes strayed to the brown envelope.

‘Yes, exactly. Shall we …’ He gestured with an easy familiarity towards the study to one side of the entrance hall.

‘You seem to know your way around.’

‘Oh, I was a regular visitor here in Alan’s time. Please, after you.’

Behind them, in the shadow of the passage, Mrs Willett put her duster and polish on the floor noiselessly and waited for the study door to close before moving towards it.

The room was dark and smelled of a lemon-scented polish. FitzGerald handed the brown envelope to Sally and waited while she flicked through the glossy black-and-white pictures. A few made her smile.

‘You could have published some of these, they’re really very good.’

FitzGerald regarded her with admiration; this was hardly the reaction he had expected.

Another photograph caught her eye and she burst out laughing, a sound full of innocent enjoyment.

‘Oh, poor Alan! Look at his face.’ They both laughed together then Sally’s expression suddenly hardened.

‘So is this what you do to get your money, then, Mr FitzGerald? Are you a grubby blackmailer, making money by taking blurred photographs at other people’s windows? Are you no more than a peeping Tom?’

For a slender man, James FitzGerald’s grip was surprisingly strong. He squeezed her arm tight, but the pain only made Sally smile. The sight of it made him close his fingers until their tips locked and she gasped out loud, but it still sounded like a sigh of pleasure.

‘They were my insurance policy, that’s all, in case Alan ever misbehaved. I never expected them to come in handy after his death. Tell me, do you believe in the power of three, Mrs Wainwright-Smith?’

‘Oh yes! Grant me three wishes is a particular favourite of mine, although I’ve rarely known a man to manage more than two.’

Her assurance incensed him and he twisted his hand, burning the bare skin of her arm, but her eyes never lost contact with his, nor did they blink to shed the tears of pain that gathered there.

‘Did
you
go to church as a child, James? I did, and I can still remember my favourite hymn. Forget Father, Son and Holy Ghost; forget father, mother, child. It is the three in
one
that matters. Yes, I believe in the power of three, but I believe in the power of one even more.’

Her face glowed an ethereal white in the gloom, her eyes were brilliant with the power of mastery over pain, and her voice recited the words with an inexorable rhythm that drew him closer. But James FitzGerald was not another Alan Wainwright.

‘You see, Sally, there were always three of us to keep things
steady for the company. When Alan died, it left me a little short-handed, which means I haven’t got the resources I need and I’m having to become more personally involved than I would like to keep things under control. Wainwright’s is a special company in which I take a very close and personal interest.