Ursula's Secret (43 page)

Jenny had barked out a laugh, shock more than humour, incredulity uppermost.

“Yeah, and I’m friggin’ Cleopatra.”

“You don’t believe me. Of course. Why should you?” The man turned slowly until she could look directly into his eyes, startling against the deep blue-black of his skin. “What would it take to convince you? Or perhaps the real question is, how much?”

Jenny said nothing. Felt her eyes narrow. Her mother claimed never to have known her parents. Been born illegitimate, she once said, put out for adoption immediately, like a discarded puppy.

The man was smiling at her, seemed to be appraising her. “More than your mother, I imagine. You don’t look as if you share her … tastes.”

Jenny snorted. “Do I look like a loser?”

“No …” There was a thoughtful tone in the voice. “I hadn’t expected you to be, of course, but neither had I expected someone quite so …”

“So what exactly? Look, I don’t know who the hell you are or what you want, but if it’s anything to do with my mother, I don’t give a toss. I’m only here to make sure the bitch is really gone, so don’t make the mistake of thinking I give a damn because I don’t. Now move. You’re in my way and I’m out of here.”

“Forgive me. I’m sure you must be busy.” The man’s smile didn’t falter as he stepped back and to one side, his arm extending to indicate a long black car gleaming in the autumn sunshine. “Perhaps I can give you a lift? Anywhere you need to go. We can talk en route, become better acquainted.”

Even Jenny with her limited experience of cars knew a top-of-the-range Mercedes when she saw one. And there was a uniformed chauffeur standing to attention beside it. Thoughts rattled round her head like the beads on an abacus as she weighed up the possibilities. Whoever he was, he was loaded. If he was looking for someone’s lost granddaughter and thought she’d fit the bill, well, maybe she would oblige. No harm in listening to the old geezer anyway.

Jenny nodded sharply once. “Battersea, then.”

“Ah, your dear mother’s flat, I assume? Well, your grandfather’s actually, if we’re to be entirely accurate.”

Jenny’s head swivelled involuntarily in the stranger’s direction.

“Oh yes, my dear. Although he’d arranged for your mother to live there rent-free for as long as she wanted. The least a father could do for his own child, make sure she had a roof above her head, particularly one with such extensive needs. Don’t disappoint me so soon, Jenny. Surely you must have wondered how your waster of a mother came to have a flat like that?”

Actually, she had. It wasn’t exactly Knightsbridge, but Jenny knew enough about the property market in London to know that even a two-bedroom flat in the depths of south London was worth a bit. She’d tried to get her hands on the deeds to find out if her mother did really own her flat. Certainly, no landlord had ever come knocking demanding rent, even in the leanest days. Despite herself, she was intrigued.

As they neared the car, the chauffeur sprang to life and opened the rear door.

“Shall we, my dear?” The stranger stepped aside to let her slide in first along the smooth leather upholstery before he settled in beside her, his movements making the leather groan. The door closed with the softest of thuds and a moment later the car purred into life, leaving the solemnity of the crematorium behind them.

The track was steeper, longer than he’d thought, and he couldn’t see the croft house yet. He prayed it was the right track. Should have stayed with the car, tried to start it again. Danny stopped, bent forward, hands on his knees, gasping for breath, trying to loosen the tight band constricting his chest, his lungs. This wasn’t the kind of activity junior academics usually went in for; in fact, the most exercise Danny normally undertook was carrying armfuls of books up and down the back stairs to and from the library.

Sweat trickled from his hair down his forehead, stung at the corners of his eyes. He flicked his hair back from his face as he straightened up again, wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, driving even more salt into his eyes, caught a glimpse of red between the banks of gorse shielding the left side of the track. He pulled back branches, cursed as the thorns dug into his palms, snagged on the sleeve of his jacket. A rusty red pickup truck, tracks on the soft ground showing where it had left the road. But not by accident. This was deliberate: someone had hidden this. His heart thumped, and he was pushing up the track again, thorn scratches, stinging eyes, tight chest forgotten.
Lexy, I’m coming.

*

“Blood. Your blood, Helen. That’s all that matters right? Whether I’m the bastard child of a bastard, the discarded daughter of a drunken bitch, or the Queen of bloody Sheba doesn’t make any difference. It’s all about the blood running through these veins being directly connected to yours, isn’t it? And he said he could prove I was your granddaughter and that would be enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“Oh, Lexy, keep up, you’re boring me. To get rid of David. Put me in his place. Stop him ruining the company by fessing up to the whole Blantyre 144 thing. Who would have thought Uncle Dave would turn into some kind of bleeding heart in his old age? Don’t expect anyone would have seen that one coming.”

“But Robert said—”

“
Robert said
” – Jenny mimicked Lexy – “Robert, cousin mine, is a prize asshole, but one whose Christmases are about to all come at once. Uncle Dave was dithering, you see, despite what the official line was. Getting all morose about his solitary, ageing state. Wanting to leave a mark and all that shit. Chakanaya believed at any moment he’d pick up the phone to his old school buddy’s son Robert and say let’s meet, sort out the world over a jar or two – or a magnum or two, given the old fart’s pretentious crap. That he’d cave in and pay off the niggers for the mudbath. But what the hell. If we got in quick, I’d get my due, finally, I’d get everything that you three old witches with your child-swapping schemes had taken away from me. My kindly visitor assured me any other claimant was either dead, mental – as in you, eh, Uncle Ross?” A nip this time, another yelp. “Or ignorant, and that, cousin dear, would be you and the lately departed Izzie.”

“My mother didn’t know?”

“When she went out to Malawi, they’d thought she’d worked it out somehow, watched her like a hawk. But nothing happened. She didn’t have a clue. Just lived in that nurse’s hostel, then in a tiny bungalow in the hospital grounds when all the time it could have been five-star all the way, Buchanan House as her Blantyre pad and not a bedpan in sight.” Jenny’s laughter was taking on a slightly hysterical edge now but Lexy ignored it as she let relief flood her mind. Her mother hadn’t known she was a Buchanan, hadn’t lied to her. Izzie was as innocent as—

“Not until later anyway.” Relief stalled, threatened to ebb as quickly as it had come. “The way she told it, seemed old Ursula tripped herself up, made some comment about you, Lexy, looking like your grandmother and Izzie was on it in a flash. Ursula had always claimed she’d never met Izzie’s mother, the missionary woman, just her father, some pastor or something. When the old bird wouldn’t talk, Izzie stormed out and that was that for years.”

Lexy exhaled. Izzie hadn’t known who she was. She hadn’t kept that from Lexy, hadn’t denied her family, hadn’t known she
had
a family. All her mother had done was keep Lexy from knowing Ursula was a liar. Her mother had been protecting her, trying to spare her all the anger and uncertainty and sadness Izzie herself must have felt at discovering she’d been lied to all
her
life, deliberately denied the simple right to know who she was, where she’d come from, those same feelings Lexy herself had felt these last two weeks and which now she could let go. Izzie hadn’t betrayed her; her mother hadn’t let her down.

“She was on to you, you know.” Helen’s voice cut through Lexy’s racing emotions.

“No, she wasn’t,” Jenny snapped. “I had her fooled; she was eating out of my hand!”

“No, she wasn’t. She didn’t trust you. She’d taken precautions in case … You didn’t find any addresses, did you? Nothing that you could use to trace me, trace Lexy, come to that. Nothing useful, apart from all those old photographs, but you didn’t know—”

“I found the money!” Jenny sounded triumphant. “I found all that cash in her flat, hidden in a book for Chrissake. Took it as a kind of advance on what I’m owed.” Jenny laughed. “It was for you, wasn’t it, that money? Might have found you lost a bit of this, Uncle Ross, when that didn’t come through.” She pinched the roll of fat just tipping over Ross’s belt, and he yelped again.

“Leave him alone!” Helen shouted, standing and starting towards her son.

“Oh sit down, Gran. He’s fine. Nothing happens to him if you do what I want.”

“Then why did you murder her?”

“Murder? Oh, that’s a little strong isn’t it? She fell. Those stairs, you know, for a woman like her.” Jenny smirked, shook her head and tutted.

“Why?” Helen persisted.

“Stupid cow. Always checking up on me, nagging me, never satisfied with anything. I’m not a bloody housekeeper after all and it wasn’t as if she was paying me. Ungrateful bitch. She’d sneak around in those minging slippers of hers. Came in just as I was counting out the notes. Said she’d call the police” – the smirk was back again. “Ended up it was me called them, though, wasn’t it? After her little tumble down the stairs.” Jenny twirled her hand over and over before she brought it down with a splat on Ross’s thigh, her laugh drowning his whimper of pain.

In the silence that followed, Helen and Lexy exchanged a glance, but Helen’s face was still impassive. Lexy knew hers wasn’t as she struggled to keep her shock under control. She looked back at Jenny, sitting smiling at her from the sofa, looking triumphant, amused, carefree.

“Oh come on, Lexy,” Jenny was saying, “don’t look like that. It wasn’t like you cared. You’d not seen the old cow in years.”

“I don’t think that’s quite the point,” Helen chipped in.

“Who was he, this man that came to you?” Lexy had been trying to piece it all together. It wasn’t David, and Cameron was dead—

“Richard Chakanaya.” Helen spat the words out like sour milk.

“Top marks, Gran. Your husband’s Mr Fix-it. Who, you may be interested to know, now holds a significant number of shares in your company. Not enough to stop David, of course, which is why he came for me, but he still stood to lose an awful lot of money if Buchanan’s went under. Wasn’t wild about that.” Jenny sniffed, crossed her legs and shuffled to make herself more comfortable before continuing.

“After he’d gone, I got to thinking. As long as there were any other claimants, ignorant or otherwise, and as long as he knew where they were and I didn’t, I reckoned I’d have to dance to his tune. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. Didn’t see why I should dance to a tune played by some native, by my grandfather’s lackey for God’s sake. And I didn’t fancy any long-lost relatives coming out of the woodwork at a later date. No. Ignorance doesn’t always last forever and I like to know where I am with things. Incapable, like Uncle Ross here, I can live with; no way this boy’s making any kind of recovery. But otherwise, dead’s best. Chakanaya wouldn’t tell me where my relatives were; why would he? So I told him to shove it and decided to sort things out all on my own. Only without his ‘proof’ of my identity I needed something else. Someone to verify that I really am entitled to Buchanan’s and all the rest of it. Which is basically why we’re here today, Helen, enjoying our nice little family reunion.”

“I won’t do it, you know. I’m not that woman now. That Helen Buchanan died fifty years ago, and I’m … someone else altogether.” Helen’s voice was flat, her eyes on Ross, an unreadable expression on her face.

“You’re forgetting the birth certificates.” Jenny’s face was smug, her eyes flashing with triumph.

“I’m not sure a piece of paper found in such strange circumstances will do you much good when there’s so much at stake. And there’s no corresponding record anywhere official. Cameron saw to that. The certificates were never meant—”

“So you admit it,” Lexy chimed in. “You admit you—”

“You will do it, Helen. You owe me this. All you need to do is sign a statement and make a brief return to the world to validate my entitlement. Then you can come back here and live out the life sentence dear Uncle Ross has imposed on you. Although you did shoot him, but what the hell. No one cares about either of you. They’ll all leave you alone. I’ll be the one everyone is interested in; it’ll be me in the headlines, the magazines.
Me.
”

“Do you really think David will stand aside and let you do this?”

“He can’t do anything – he’s an imposter, taken what’s mine!”

“And Lexy’s, if what you claim is true.”

Jenny spun round to Lexy, a hard, cold look on her face.

“I don’t want a penn—”

“Don’t take me for a fool, cousin. You’d say anything right now.”

“I don’t. I don’t want it.”

“Maybe not now. But what happens when you change your mind, as you most definitely will the first time those little brats in that school play you up and you start to think of all that money, all that freedom it can buy you. No, Lexy. Can’t take that risk.”

Jenny’s hand disappeared into the bag at her feet; it emerged clutching a bundle wrapped in hessian. Lexy looked at it, horrified. Jenny’s face split into a tight grin, as she slowly sloughed the cloth off to reveal a dark, shiny weapon. A gun. Helen gasped and her eyes flickered between Jenny and Ross, Ross and Lexy.

“My, Helen, you’re looking a little agitated there. Wondering what this is for, perhaps? Why a sweet young thing like me should have one of these handy? You should know. You had one yourself. Self-preservation, isn’t it? Protection of what’s yours, what you care about, remember? Well, same for me. This guarantees my future. One bullet removes the … competition …”

The gun barrel twitched in Lexy’s direction.

“The other provides you with the right motivation to do what I tell you.” Jenny swung the gun round to point at Ross’s forehead. The confused man blinked wide eyes, unaware of the danger the weapon posed.