The Count of Eleven (24 page)

Laura alleges that the three boys (16, 15 and 11) attacked her, but the police will not prosecute because of lack of witnesses.

As patrons of the restaurant’s Mexican promotion watched in astonishment, Mrs. Evans threatened to bring a counter-prosecution if Laura’s parents try and prosecute any of her sons. Later she told this reporter that she was considering suing the Orchards for distress she claims she suffered after the original incident.

Laura and her parents would not comment on Mrs. Evans’ statement. “It would take more than her to spoil our evening,” Mrs. Orchard said. “We’re just glad we can afford this holiday.”

“What a world you’re growing up in, Tommy,” Janys said to her son, ‘where the paper thinks any of that’s worth reporting.” She dropped the open newspaper on the breakfast table, and the majority of pages carried the rest over the edge to sprawl on the carpet tiles. “What a pair of messy slobs we are,” she said as Tommy waved his spoon and chortled while she gathered up the paper. She unstuck the sucker of his yellow bowl from the table of his high chair and dropped the bowl in the kitchen sink, she retrieved the spoon which was at least as thick with mush as he was, she mopped his small broad blue-eyed face quickly with a wet sponge before he could decide to cry, and then she turned on the tap. As the drumming of water on metal deepened, Tommy’s face lit up. “There’s the sound you like. What do we call it?” Janys said.

“Waa.”

“Not war, no. That kills people. We don’t like war. It’s waaa ‘

“Wawa.”

“Good boy, Tommy. I’m proud of you. Water Try saying water

“Wawa.”

“Nearly. Water.” Janys turned off the tap and undipped the plastic table from his chair, and had just dunked it in the sink when the phone rang in the hall, making Tommy wave his hands as if he was conducting the notes. She left the kitchen door open and extended the aerial as she picked up the receiver. “Portrait Studio,” she said.

“Is that the portrait studio?”

“Certainly is.”

The voice, which was so roughened by age that Janys couldn’t sex it, sharpened. “The portrait studio?”

“Yes,” Janys said patiently, ‘it is.”

“Do you take children?”

“Happy to.”

“Children.”

“All ages welcome.”

“Bridesmaids.”

“By all means.”

Janys was already preparing to repeat her enthusiasm, but instead of demanding it the voice said “Must we bring them to the studio?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Their grandfather and I will bring them.”

“Whatever’s best for you.”

“Will a week hence suit?”

“I’m sure it will,” Janys said, carrying the cordless phone into the studio, opening her diary one-handed and then resting her elbow on it while she grabbed a used envelope on which to scribble details. “What time would you like?”

“About now.”

“Half past nine? And may I take your name?”

The caller gave it, and Janys thought: oh dear. “How’s that spelled, sorry? Haugh, is it?”

“Haw. Haw,” the woman said in a rising tone, and at last spelled it as though to a very young child: “Hore.”

It could have been worse, Janys thought as she wrote down the address and phone number. “I’ll look forward to meeting the mob,” she said. “How many bridesmaids are there, by the way?”

Two.”

Janys rested the phone on her slippered instep while she copied the details neatly into the diary. The back of the envelope hadn’t much space left on it, but the whole of the back of the page which insisted she could turn ill luck into good was blank. She already had, thank you very much, by getting a divorce. At least the letter was good for something -just about everything was. She tidied the diary and the pile of scrap paper into the drawer of her desk and reinserted the receiver in its plastic stand on her way to fetch Tommy, repeating “Two’ in the tone Mrs. Hore had used, as though the number couldn’t have been more obvious. When that made Tommy giggle she picked him up, burying her nose for a moment in his hair which smelled as blond as it looked, and said “How old are you, Tommy?”

Toooo.”

“That’s right, my big two-year-old. Soon be three.”

He gazed expectantly at her, but she said no more until she had carried him along the hall, past the framed portraits which he often greeted but which he wasn’t interested in just now, and planted him in the playpen in the corner of the studio, where the lights were well out of his reach. “Two,” she said then in Mrs. Here’s tone, and tried to keep a straight face as Tommy’s giggling exposed all thirteen of his teeth. It was no use; his giggling infected her so much she almost didn’t hear the doorbell.

“Someone’s early,” she told him, and shouted “Hold on’ as she dashed into the hall. On her way upstairs she kicked off her slippers and grabbed them as she caught up with them. She sat on the bed, dropped them, slipped her feet into her nearest pair of flat shoes, took the stairs two at a time and unchaining the front door, pulled it open. There was nobody on the doorstep or on the garden path no sign of anyone except a faint smell of fuel.

She’d been as quick as she could be. She hadn’t wanted to appear any sloppier than she was, that was all. Artists might wear slippers when they met their subjects, but she was a professional. She hurried down the path and unlatching the gate, stepped onto the pavement to survey the road. Sunlight glared from the windscreen of a neighbour’s Jaguar parked opposite the house, and even when she shaded her eyes she could see only a pale blotch, expanding like smoke. She was trying to blink her vision clear when she heard footsteps behind her, and the squeal of the hinges of the gate.

She almost panicked. Being unable to see had revived her old fear that one day Tommy’s father would take him, although she was sure he wouldn’t except to spite her; Tommy had been the reason why he’d gone off with that bitch. Janys closed her eyes and groped onto her path, and as the obscured patch of her vision began to shrink, she bumped into someone standing just beyond the gate.

“I beg your pardon,” he said at once. “Are you all right? Can you see where you are?”

Now she could, however overexposed her house and garden looked, and she saw a young couple, the woman cradling what was obviously her first baby, the man waving away the trace of fumes in the air. “We need to get that exhaust fixed,” he said. “I rang your bell and then I thought I’d better park around the corner in case I blocked your road. You’re not expecting us till ten o’clock.”

“Nothing my little one and I like better than surprises,” Janys said, ushering them into the house.

Three days after the presentation at the restaurant Julia was still experiencing surges of rage. She walked to the ferry on her way to work, hoping the walk would calm her, but the sight of the stretch of promenade where Laura had been attacked made her dig her nails into her palms. It didn’t help that Laura kept trying to persuade her to forget the Evanses or that Jack had managed to retain his equanimity. If she was the only unreasonable member of the family, she didn’t care: she wanted the Evanses to suffer as badly as Laura had. Now that both she and Jack were earning, they could afford to prosecute.

They wouldn’t, not when that would need Laura to relive the attack and to be subjected to cross-examination by whatever lawyers Mrs. Evans found to take her case. Once they had paid off the debt the thieves had charged to their credit card they ought to consult Luke about investments. Surely if there was any justice the Evanses’ own lives would catch up with them.

On the ferry businessmen were strolling round and round the upper deck, hands behind their backs, some stooping forwards as if challenging a wind to oppose them. Julia stood at the rail and watched the Liverpool bank of the river swing towards her like an immense ship laden with warehouses. A party of schoolchildren wearing smiles on their round symmetrical faces met the ferry at the landing-stage. At the top of the exit ramp, people who looked inert enough to have been there all night were smoking cigarettes in the all-night cafe. A stray dog raised an explosion of pigeons from a scattered sandwich as Julia crossed the flagstones of the Pier

Head. Beyond the dock road she climbed a wide old street between office buildings pierced by arcades and turned along the side street to Luke’s office.

Though the parking meters outside were hooded, a Ford saloon was parked under the window. A traffic warden peered at the windscreen and turned away without writing in her book. Luke must have an important client, Julia thought as she let herself into the building. Then she hesitated with her hand on the knob of the office door. Someone was crying.

Julia inched the door open until she could see into the outer office. Only three of Luke’s staff were in the room. Lynne was at her desk and sobbing into a handkerchief. More disconcertingly, neither of her colleagues was comforting her; Susie was on one phone, Luke’s appointment diary in front of her, and Val was using the other phone to put off a client of Luke’s. Julia went forwards and touched Lynne’s shoulder. “Lynne, what’s wr ‘

Lynne jumped up, blowing her nose while pushing Julia towards the door with her free hand. She’d cut off her tears like a tap. “Don’t come in,” she whispered indistinctly. “Call you later.”

“I should at least speak to Luke.”

“He’s busy. Can’t see anyone,” Lynne whispered, pushing harder. “Don’t hang around. Go home and I’ll call you, I promise.”

“Come outside and tell me.”

Lynne nodded, but it was too late. The rest of Luke’s staff had come downstairs from the Ladies and were blocking the hall. As Julia sidled around Lynne to make way for them the door of the inner office swept open, and a man emerged. Though he looked somehow proprietorial, he wasn’t Luke. Given the sombreness which had settled over the office, Julia wondered if he was in mourning: so much about him was black shoes, socks, suit, tie, even his glossy receding hair -though his shirt was uncomfortably white beneath the fluorescent lighting. “Do you work here?” he said.

Julia didn’t care for his tone, nor for his assumption of the right to ask. “I’m responsible for the computers.”

“In that case I should like a word with you.”

Lynne sat down quickly and covered her face with her hands, and Julia was aware of having made a bad mistake. “Not until I’ve had a word with Mr. Rankin.”

“I regret that won’t be possible.”

“Then I want him to tell me so.”

Lynne interrupted, her voice muffled by her hands. “Julia, he’s from the Fraud Squad.”

So the dark blotch on the frosted glass of Luke’s office door was another man in black standing over Luke at his desk. The first man crossed the office to Julia, who held his gaze, trying to feel brave rather than trapped. “Why are you here?” she said.

“We can talk privately in the car.”

“Why, are we going somewhere?”

“That isn’t necessary,” he said as if he meant it as a rebuke. As she followed him she glanced back at Lynne, who refused to meet her eyes, and it occurred to her that Lynne might have been trying to protect her by hustling her out of the office.

The Ford saloon smelled of upholstery and after-shave and very faintly of petrol. The policeman closed the passenger door behind Julia and walked around the front of the car to slide into the driver’s seat. Julia was reminded of her first and only driving lesson, not least by her present nervousness. As he locked his door she heard hers lock too. “May I ask your name?” he said.

“Julia Orchard. May I ask yours?”

“Inspector Dicker,” he admitted, lounging in his seat so as to watch her face. “Tell me in what way you’re responsible for the computers.”

“I train the staff in using them.”

“Including Mr. Rankin?”

“Very much so. He still needs some training. I wonder if there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t think Luke is capable of any tricks with the computer.”

He met her eyes with no expression at all. “How long have you worked for Mr. Rankin?”

“Nearly a year.”

“And before that?”

“I taught beginners at a night school for three years.”

“So it would be fair to say that your knowledge of computers is …”

It felt like an English test where you had to fill in the blanks. “Reasonably extensive, unlike Luke’s.”

“Which might imply that you would have to be familiar with the information stored in his computer.”

It wasn’t a test, it was several kinds of trap. “Luke’s always kept as much to himself as he can,” she said carefully. “I mean, he locks the kettle and the milk in his office overnight. There’s nothing sinister about it. It’s just him.”

“Surely you must have access to the information on the computer if you taught him how to store it.”

“Not if he renamed the files,” Julia said without thinking, and remembered the Sunday when Luke had been anxious to learn remembered the name he had given a file. She’d thought HIDEY HO had expressed his growing confidence, but suppose he had been thinking hidey hole “He’d have to restrict the access as well,” she added quickly, ‘if he really didn’t want me seeing what was there.”

“Did you teach him how to do so?”

“No, he never asked.”

“Which suggests that he didn’t want it to be realised that he knew.”

“You’re assuming he does know.”

“Hardly assuming, Mrs. it is Mrs. Orchard.”

The hint of sympathy in his voice only made her feel more vulnerable. “What’s he supposed to have done?” she asked.

He considered her for an uncomfortably prolonged few seconds, then he said “It would appear that your employer has been trying to conceal his use of monies entrusted to him by his clients.”

“What kind of use?”

“We have reason to believe that he intended to make it impossible to trace a considerable amount of money until he had used it for his own purposes.”

“But why? That doesn’t sound at all like him.”

“Financial difficulties of his own that have supposedly been building up for years.”

That did. Julia could imagine Luke panicking, growing secretive and desperate, and so she tried to deny the possibility. “Can you be sure he’s done anything wrong?”