Legacy of Lies (15 page)

‘Um …' said Harry glancing absently at his son.

‘It's the parrot,' Patrick protested.

Mrs Thorpe clucked her tongue at him. ‘No, dear,' she said firmly. ‘My parrot doesn't slouch.' She focussed attention back on Harry. ‘Now,' she said, ‘where were we?'

The parrot switched tack and hopped down on to the arm of Patrick's chair, out of sight, he noticed, of its owner. Once there it began a concerted attack on his sleeve, pulling viciously at the cuff and sinking its beak through the fabric and right into Patrick's arm.

Patrick yelped again.

‘My dear –' Mrs Thorpe stared sternly at him through rimless spectacles – ‘perhaps if you are determined to torment my parrot, you ought to go and wait outside.'

Stung by injustice but more than happy to escape, Patrick fled. Outside he examined his torn sleeve and the damaged flesh beneath. The beak had drawn blood. He wondered what nasty diseases you could catch from parrots and whether you might risk going to jail should you wring its neck.

There was a patch of overgrown grass in front of the cottage and Patrick sat down with his back to the wall wishing he'd brought his MP3 player. Instead, from the inside pocket of his record bag he pulled the journal that he had been reading after breakfast and hidden in there when Marcus arrived to collect Naomi.

He wasn't sure why he should be worried about Marcus seeing it – he had made a point of taking the other two journals to his room that morning. Patrick wasn't sure, either, what made him so uncomfortable around Rupert's business partner but something did.

The journal he had brought with him was the second one of the three. The first they had skimmed briefly and the third read in more detail the night before. It contained several references that appeared to relate to Sam Kinnear, but never by name and nothing that added to the sense of what they already knew. The second journal had remained untouched until today.

Patrick had begun to plough through the accounts of cinema visits and restaurants and buying trips detailed in the journal. He flicked back to the page he had been reading that morning. On the face of it there was no reason for Rupert to have concealed these books or, for that matter, the laptop. An initial examination of the laptop last night had revealed the text of his new book, some saved emails and a favourites list of internet sites that were fascinating for the variety of sites he visited if nothing else. Patrick was eager to get back to the task.

He found his place in the journal. Rupert was writing about a film he'd watched the night before and the entry was for June 14
^th
2004. Rupert liked his films and he wrote short reviews on them. Many of the films seemed to be art house or foreign language films that Patrick had either never heard of or never seen, but this one was familiar:
Memento
, a film Patrick had watched with Naomi. It had been a fascinating story, Patrick remembered. A man who had lost his memory was slowly trying to piece together who he was. The film ended with a twist and Patrick had liked that. He'd enjoyed
The Usual Suspects
for the same reason, that twist in the tail, and had watched it several times over, noting the clues by which he could have worked it out.

Patrick looked up from the book and stared out across the road and into the field beyond. There was something … something now nagging at the back of his mind. Something about the way the journals were written? He wasn't sure. Patrick shook his head. It would all come together, he thought. It usually did but he had learnt that such flashes of intuition could not be forced.

He read on. Another lunch – Rupert had been fond of his food – another meeting with a client who collected arts and crafts silver and gave details of what he might be looking for. Patrick read on. His heart skipped. Another reference to a man who was probably Kinnear:

I thought I'd got rid of the man. Last year, when he first barged his way back into my life and started making his demands, I thought I'd done enough to satisfy the man's greed. I should have known better than that. Men like him are never satisfied. I should have cut my losses then, before he got out, cut my losses, signed the business over to Marcus, and gone away. You may not be able to run away from your past, but at least you can try to run from the people you left behind there.

Patrick mulled this over. So, in June 2004 Kinnear was still in prison but already causing problems for Rupert. So, why did Marcus think that the problems were more recent, starting only a month or so before Rupert's death. What had changed?

He read on and found a partial answer a couple of pages on:

It turns out he still doesn't know where I am, a fact for which I give profound thanks. Elaine returned his letters ‘address unknown' and I'm glad she didn't have to lie about that. Glad I never let her know where I was. Elaine was always loyal. God alone knows why. I never did anything to deserve it. But the question remains, how long can I breathe easy in the knowledge that he has lost me. A man like Sam does not give up and go away, especially when he feels he has been wronged and, I suppose, from his perspective, he has.

But I would do the same all over again. Indeed I would, though to be truthful, the actions I took have done little to assuage the guilt I still feel.

Who on earth was Elaine? Patrick wondered. He flicked through the remaining pages but there was no reference to her again that he could see from that brief check. And what did Rupert feel guilty about? How might he feel he had done wrong by Kinnear?

Patrick frowned, staring down at the neatly written text. Irritated now, he flicked through the book again, then froze. What? Patrick laid the book open flat on the ground and lifted the pages, then flicked slowly. No, not quite right, with those flick books they had to be flicked properly. Fast.

Not quite sure what he'd seen, he did it again. Earlier, when he'd tried to figure out what bothered him about the book, he had intuited that it was something about the way that the words were written – and he'd been right. Every now and again Rupert had changed the spacing of his entries, added a random letter to a line, or what had at first looked like a date, to the foot of a page. Patrick had taken little notice of the odd misspelling or random annotations; his own writing was full of them. He now realized he had assumed Rupert was having the odd dyslexic moment.

Now, he concluded that wasn't so. Rupert's handwriting was elegant and controlled, the letters evenly shaped and fluently written. These tiny additions and alterations, some even in a contrasting pen, some scribbled as though he had just remembered something,
meant
something. They were deliberate.

Patrick flicked the pages again, trying to see some pattern there. Fumbling in his bag he found a stub of a pencil and a moleskin notebook – Patrick was rarely without the means to draw. He stopped at the first page on which he'd noticed something odd and noted down the capital letter A, where it should have been in the lower case. A little later he wrote down the number 2. Patrick held his breath. His heart raced with excitement. He had no real idea what he had found, but he knew that he was on to something here.

Behind him the cottage door opened. Harry emerged, followed by Mrs Thorpe, the parrot on her shoulder. Nervously, Patrick eyed the parrot, expecting to be assaulted yet again. He was thankful to get back into the car.

‘That woman could talk for England,' Harry said as they drove away. ‘What was it with you and the parrot?'

Patrick showed his torn sleeve and mauled arm.

‘Oh my goodness. You'd better get something on that.'

‘Did she say anything useful?'

Harry shook his head. ‘Not a thing. You know, I think this is just one big wild goose chase. I'm for going back to Fallowfields and getting on with the ledger.'

‘Suits me,' Patrick told him. He wondered if he should tell his dad what he'd found out. He hesitated in case Harry should be annoyed that he'd removed the book from the house. After all, it now did seem to be evidence. Besides, he really wanted to find out more first and deliver the revelation in full.

He took the contact list from the glove compartment and skimmed through the addresses, ticking with a pen those they had visited. ‘We may as well make one more call though,' he said.

‘Oh? Why?'

‘The farm that backs on to Fallowfields. It's on the list.'

‘Right.' Harry sounded reluctant. He'd had enough. ‘All right then,' he agreed. ‘We may as well, but I think that'll be the last. I hope Naomi and Marcus have had more luck than we have, that's all.'

The farmyard was reached by a narrow track similar to that at Fallowfields but muddier and even more rutted. The yard itself seemed equally uncared for.

Patrick got out of the car and glanced around, curious as to the arrangement of buildings he had glimpsed through the gap in the hedge. The farmhouse was pebble-dashed and had at some point been whitewashed. Now, the covering was crumbling away from the brick and the finish was grimed and weathered. Small windows gave no real glimpse of the inside.

At right angles stood out-buildings including a brick barn. Patrick guessed they were older than the house and looked better built. Bright sunlight angled down, casting deep shadows at the barn's end, almost but not quite concealing the outline of some kind of farm machinery, something with wheels and spikes that Patrick could not begin to identify. Patrick glanced back at the barn admiring its high roof and the way it seemed to sit so solidly in the landscape. By contrast the house seemed to squat uncertainly, as if unconfident of its own foundations. Given the choice, he thought, he'd have chosen to live in the barn.

Harry rapped on the door. Flakes of dark-blue paint dropped on to the flagstones. Absently, Patrick poked at them with the toe of his trainer.

No reply.

‘Looks like we're out of luck again,' Harry said. He prepared to knock once more as Patrick wandered back into the yard. A boy, about his own age, stared at him from the shadow cast by the barn. Patrick glanced back at his father and then made his way over to the boy.

‘Hi.'

The teenager nodded and glanced warily at Harry, then past him to where there was a narrow path leading to the rear of the house.

He's scared, Patrick thought. He remembered being told about the teenager who'd come to the shop to find Rupert. Marcus's description of him could well fit this boy, though, to be fair, he supposed it could fit maybe half the teenage boys Patrick knew.

‘You live here?' Patrick asked. He was aware of his father behind him, watching. Patrick willed him to stay back. He took a few steps closer to the barn.

‘'Course I live here.' He glanced nervously back towards the house. ‘You better go,' he said.

‘We came about Rupert Friedman's book,' Harry said. ‘We're planning to finish it and—'

‘And what's that got to do with us?'

Patrick jumped, so did Harry, only the boy seemed unsurprised. His eyes flicked past Harry and settled for a moment on the man who had emerged from behind the farmhouse, then he moved back further into the shadow of the barn.

‘Your name was on a list of people who'd helped him with information,' Harry said to the man. ‘We're trying to put his notes in order, so we're checking back through his list of contacts.'

The man snorted. ‘Waste of bloody time,' he observed. ‘Lucky for ‘im he didn't have to work for a living.'

Patrick, now watching Harry, saw his father's shoulders stiffen. Harry could not abide bad manners or slights on people not in a position to defend themselves.

‘I'm sure Mr Friedman worked very hard at his business,' he said.

‘And he should have learned to
mind
his own, too.'

‘I'm not sure what you mean,' Harry challenged. ‘Look, I'm quite happy not to talk to you, but your name was on the list of contacts Rupert Friedman made. Perhaps someone else here was Mr Friedman's informant?'

‘There is no one else here,' the man growled. ‘Now get yourself off my property.'

Patrick held his breath, sure that his father was about to challenge the assertion and draw attention to the boy. He didn't think that would be beneficial. Impulsively, he felt in his bag and managed to tear a scrap of paper from his notebook and grab the stub of the pencil. Hoping the older man wouldn't see, he scribbled his mobile number on the piece of paper.

The boy was watching him and took a further step back as though afraid Patrick might approach. Patrick glanced back to where the two men faced off then looked at the boy. He crushed the paper in his hand and dropped it into a clump of grass in front of the barn. The boy was watching him. His gaze fell for a mere instant, then met Patrick's once more.

‘We're going,' Harry was saying. ‘And don't worry, we won't be back.'

Stiff backed he marched to the car. Patrick followed swiftly. A glance in the wing mirror confirmed that the boy had slipped away, though the man still watched as if making certain they did not change their minds. Patrick wondered if the boy would retrieve the number. He worried that the man had seen.

‘Thoroughly unpleasant fellow,'

Harry at his most pompous made Patrick smile. ‘Back to Fallowfields?' he asked hopefully.

‘Oh yes. I'm starved.'

‘Did you know,' Patrick asked, ‘that round here starved used to mean freezing cold as well as hungry?'

‘No, I didn't know that.'

‘It was in Rupert's notes.'

‘Oh. Well, I'm certainly not cold. It's a wonder you can stand it in those long sleeves.'

Patrick grinned. He hardly ever uncovered his arms. ‘I just feel naked with that much flesh exposed,' he said, ‘and, yes, I know that's weird.'

‘Happy with weird,' Harry told him contentedly. ‘Perfectly happy with your kind of weird.'