East of the City (26 page)

I couldn’t answer that one without either showing her the photo of Sebastian and her daughter, or lying. I chose to lie.

‘I’d like to rule out all possibilities,' I said, ‘before I point the finger at Mehmet. Listen Angela, I’m in a boatload of trouble. Humour me.’

After giving me another curious look, she drove on in silence.

It turned out White’s place was nowhere near Brentwell — in fact it was almost at the opposite end of the county. When we got to the nearby village, I had to go into the shop and get directions to Horley Farm. The shopkeeper referred to it as White’s old place. About a mile outside the village, we found the turn. It was a gravel track bending back towards the village, you could see the church steeple jutting up from the hollow further on. Before the hollow there was a farmhou, the sign on the open gate said Horley Farm.

I went to the door and pulled the bell-lever. The farmhouse was three storeys, old red brick, something out of one of those country magazines. A young woman opened the door, she had a child perched on her hip. I explained that I was after Mr White.

‘He moved,’ she said, pointing past me. ‘Down the hill on your right. It’s the only place before the church.’

She closed the door, and I went back to the car.

The track got rougher as we went down the hill, the winter rain seemed to have washed most of it away. Sheep wandered down the track in front of us, there was nothing much else except fields, but we still almost managed to miss the place. We thought it was a shed or a barn or something, but there was no other building between us and the church, so we pulled up.

At last Angela said, ‘Where’s the door?’

I got out and went to see. Around the back of the building I surprised some more sheep, they scattered instantly. In the middle of the building, there was a door. Stepping back, I whistled to Angela, beckoning her over.

Then someone said, ‘Hello?’ and when I spun round I found an old man looking at me through the open window, about three feet away. ‘If you’re from the bailiffs, you can ruddywell—’

‘No, we’re not. We’re looking for a Mr White?'

‘Jehovah’s Witnesses?'

‘No.’ It looked like he was going to close the window anyway, so I asked him straight out, ‘Are you Mr White?’

He nodded. ‘Who’s with you?’ he said.

‘I’m Ian Collier.’ I gestured to Angela as she came up. ‘This is Angela Mortlake.’

He repeated Angela’s surname, looking her over as she said hello. It seemed like he’d heard the name before but couldn’t quite place it. He peered at us through the window.

‘Mr White,' said Angela,'you a might not recall, but some time ago——’ she fished in her bag and pulled out the note, holding it up — ‘you sent us this.’

He squinted, she held the note closer. When he recognized the note, his face changed again. His mouth opened but no sound came out.

‘It is yours, isn’t it?’ Angela said.

As he pulled the window to, he said quietly, ‘I’ll get the door.’

The room we walked into was a combined living area and kitchen, the ceiling was so low I had to duck under the light. There was a gas stove by the sink. When Mr White asked if we wanted tea we turned the offer down, but he lit a gas ring anyway and put the kettle on. His back turned to us now, he shuffled plates in the sink. Angela looked at me.

‘Mr White,’ I said, ‘that note you sent—’

‘You’re from Lloyd’s.’

‘Yes.'

‘Both of you?’

‘We’re underwriters with the Mortlake Group,’ Angela said. ‘That note—’

‘Some fellow from the hardship committee came to see me,’ he said, facing us. ‘I told him to sod off.'

‘We’re not here about your losses.’ I took the note from Angela and went and handed it to him.

Without reading it, he crumpled it into a ball in his fist. ‘I wasn’t well,’ he said. He tried to look me in the eye but couldn’t quite manage it. It was obvious that he was ashamed of what he’d written. I started to say something about not wanting to reopen old wounds, but he cut me off. ‘Mortlake.’ He nodded to Angela. 'That’s you?’

‘My husband founded the managing agency.’

‘Which syndicates?'

Angela rattled off the numbers. Mr White thought for a while.

‘I wasn’t in any of those.’ He looked back to me, wary now. ‘What do you want?’

‘You mentioned Sebastian Ward in your note. Did you know him?’

‘Unfortunately.'

‘Did you know he died?’

‘Bloody thief. He ended up with an obituary in the Times, did you see that? Bloody thief the man was.’

‘What did he do?’

Mr White ignored my question, just thinking about Sebastian was turning his face red. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, then he reached across and flicked off the gas. ‘We’ll walk,’ he said.

‘It won’t take that long,’ I told him. ‘Just a few questions, then we’re gone.'

‘We’ll walk,’ he repeated, going across to the door and opening it. ‘I’ve made a mistake. I really don’t think I want you people in my house.’

Angela stiifened. I thought she was going to let rip at him, tell him what she thought of Names who wouldn’t take their losses on the chin. But in the end she kept control of herself.

White brought a walking stick, he leant his weight on it as we walked down the hill. Trying to get things back to where they were before Sebastian’s name came up, I said, ‘Nice spot here.'

He grunted. He said Horley Farm was mentioned in the Domesday Book. Walking between us like he was, leaning to the left, I had the impression maybe he’d had a stroke sometime. Behind his back, Angela gestured at me to get on with it.

‘You saw the farmhouse?’ he asked me. I nodded, and he said, ‘My wife was born there. She’d still be there now if it weren’t for you lot.’

‘With respect,’ Angela cut in, annoyed, ‘you weren’t on any of our syndicates, Mr White. It’s hardly fair to blame us.’

I shot Angela a look but the damage was already done. He clamped up, he wouldn’t answer my questions. In fact he didn’t speak to us again until we were right down by the churchyard. Resting against the wall, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a knife, and handed it to me.

‘Would you be so kind,’ he said, ‘as to cut me some of those?’ He pointed to a cluster of white flowers growing further along. Christ Almighty, I thought. But I went and cut a bunch of them. When I came back, I gave him the flowers and the knife, and he thanked me. Now or never, I thought.

‘Mr White, since Sebastian Ward died we’ve run into a few problems connected with either him or his company. You seem to think he wasn’t trustworthy. Can you say why?'

He studied the flowers, and then lifted his gaze up the hill. You could see Angela’s car parked by his shack, and further up the hill the farmhouse that he’d been forced to sell because of his disastrous investment in Lloyd’s. He pointed with his stick. ‘We had some statuary in the garden,’ he said. ‘Figures, you know. Diana the Huntress, wood nymphs, that kind of thing. Must be, what, twenty years ago? We’d had a burglary the year before and the insurers made the claim difficult for us. Different story. Anyway, we weren’t happy with our insurers, we thought we’d get a few other quotes. Picked them out of the phone book, half a dozen of them.’

He went quiet, remembering, and I said, ‘WardSure was one of them?’

‘My wife liked the name.’

‘And they insured you?’

‘God no,’ he said. ‘That Ward came out two or three times, trying to get the business. Wouldn’t take no for an answer, bloody man.’

Angela said, ‘That makes him persistent, not untrustworthy, Mr White.’

‘Mrs Mortlake, what some people call persistence, others think of as bad manners.’ He nipped off the flower-stems with his fingers.‘It wasn’t just his manners,’ he said, pushing off the wall and heading for the churchyard gate. ‘He made us an offer.’

‘Sebastian was a broker,’ Angela said. ‘That was his job.’

‘Ward offered to insure our statuary for eight thousand pounds. He implied that he could arrange a special service. Do you know what that service was?’ He paused, but Angela didn’t reply. ‘It was this, Mrs Mortlake. He would arrange private purchasers for the statuary. The statuary would be removed, and we would file a claim. Mr Ward would approve the insurance payout. The eight thousand pounds from the insurance was to be added to whatever he got from the sale of the statuary, and everything was to be divided between us. Tell me, now’ he said, ‘was that part of his job?’

Angela looked appalled. I was pretty stunned myself.

I said, ‘He offered to go partners in an insurance scam?’

But before White could answer, Angela said, ‘I don’t believe it.’

White said to me, ‘When those Lloyd’s losses started coming in, I took a more active interest in where our money was disappearing to. When I found out that Sebastian Ward was a Lloyd’s broker, well -  I told my agent to get me out.’

‘Sebastian wasn’t running a syndicate,’ I said.

‘He was there. Lloyd’s let him in, the barrel was rotten.’

Angela asked why he hadn't reported Ward. White said he wished he had done now, but at the time it happened he was harvesting, rushed off his feet. ‘In the end I just sent him packing with a flea in his ear.’

Angela said, ‘You’ve got no evidence for this accusation then, have you.’

‘Are you suggesting I made this up?’ White asked, bristling. ‘It happened in just the way I said.'

She told me, ‘I’ll see you back at the car.’

‘You are an impertinent woman,’ White said.

Beneath her breath she muttered, ‘Bloody old fool.’

His hand shot up, flinging the bunch of flowers in Angela’s face. Surprised, she stepped back, and then stumbled, falling heavily against the gatepost. But she grabbed at the gate and stayed on her feet. It was all over in a second. I stepped between her and White.

His eyes clouded. I thought it was anger, but then he said, ‘Sorry,’ and reached out to help her. ‘I’m so sorry.’

He was close to tears.

‘I’m okay,’ Angela said, brushing my hand off. She touched the back of her elbow, wincing, but there was no sign of blood. ‘Let’s just go.’ She pushed away from the gate and started up the hill. White called out another apology, but Angela was just too pissed off to answer.

He still seemed to be trying to figure it out, why he’d done it. He said quietly, ‘She called me a liar.’ Finally he bent, leaning on his stick, but he couldn’t quite reach the flowers. It really was pathetic. I gathered them up and handed them to him, and he picked bits of dirt off the petals.

I watched Angela marching up the hill. I wondered what the hell had gotten into her, provoking the old bugger like that.

‘There’s nothing wrong with my memory,’ he said now, turning to the churchyard gate. ‘Ward made that offer.’

I opened the gate for him, he went through and immediately stepped off the path by a gravestone. It gave me a queasy feeling deep in my gut when I realized what he was doing. He carefully put down the flowers. He'd come down to visit his wife.

‘You will tell Mrs Mortlake I’m sorry,’ he said.

Angela was leaning against the bonnet when I got up there, inspecting the back of her arm.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’ll live.’

‘I think he’s telling the truth about Sebastian.'

She scoffed.

‘Seriously,’ I said.

She reminded me that White had been wiped out by Lloyds. And she reminded me of that note. ‘He just wants revenge, Ian.’

‘Against a dead man?’

‘You invited him to tramp all over Sebastian’s reputation. What was he going to do, pass up the opportunity?’ 

While she rubbed her arm, I looked down the hill. White was still in the churchyard. What he’d said about Sebastian — and that photo in my pocket, and Nigel telling me Sebastian was involved with the Ottoman slip — well, I was starting to see a few things in a different light. But how to tell Angela?

I said, ‘Remember when Sebastian took me to lunch that time? It was just before you went into hospital. Did he mention anything about it to you and Allen later?’

No, she said. She asked me what I was driving at.

‘I’m not sure.' What I really wasn’t sure about was how to say it. Because during that lunch Sebastian had asked me some pretty strange questions. Hypotheticals, like, Say if this proposition was put to you, how would you react? At the time I’d thought he was testing me out for Allen, giving my integrity the once-over in the lead-up to my promotion. But now, having heard White — and having seen that photo — I just wasn’t sure any more. Couldn’t all those strange questions have been testing me out for something else?

'Angela, if Sebastian did pull this scam with statues, what’s to say he hadn’t graduated to planes?’

‘Oh, come on. Some twisted old so-and-so spins you a line, and you’re just going to buy it, Ian? It’s preposterous. You’re acting like you never knew Sebastian.'

‘I’m not sure that I did.’

‘What?’

‘Nigel Chambers reckons WardSure was already in trouble business-wise before Sebastian died.’

'And this wouldn’t have anything to do with getting the police off your back, would it?’

‘No.’

‘If they thought Sebastian was in the habit of defrauding people, they’d have a list of murder suspects as long as your arm.’

‘We didn’t know Sebastian. Either of us,' I said, making a real effort to stay calm. ‘I thought I did, but I don’t think so now.’

‘I knew him.’

‘I don’t think so, Angela.’

She looked down to the churchyard. She remarked that she couldn't believe I'd take the word of 'that old sod.’

It was an instinctive thing, what I did then, just like when old man White chucked the flowers in her face. I took the photo out of my pocket and flicked it across the bonnet. It landed picture-side upward. She glanced at it, and before she’d properly seen what it was, she picked it up. And then she saw. Her mouth opened like she was struggling for air.

‘Angela,’ I said, going round the car. I reached for the photo, but she put out a hand, holding me off.

She studied the thing, the photo, a few seconds more, then she stepped away from the car. Sheep scattered up the hill.

‘Angela,’ I said feebly, ‘I’m sorry.’