Straight. Part 16

CHAPTER NINE.

From noon on, when I closed the last box-lid unproductively on the softly changing colours of rainbow opal from Oregon, I sat in Greville's office reading June's print-out of a crash course in business studies, beginning to see the pattern of a cash flow that ended on the side of the angels. Annette, who as a matter of routine had been banking the receipts daily, produced a sheaf of cheques for me to sign, which I did, feeling that it was the wrong name on the line, and she brought the day's post for decisions, which I strugglingly made.

Several people in the jewellery business telephoned in response to the notices of Greville's death which had appeared in the papers that morning. Annette, rea.s.suring them that the show would go on, sounded more confident than she looked. 'They all say Ipswich is too far, but they'll be there in spirit,' she reported.

At four there was a phone call from Elliot Trelawney, who said he'd cracked the number of the lady who didn't want Greville's name spoken in her house.

'It's sad, really,' he said with a chuckle. 'I suppose I shouldn't laugh. That lady can't and won't forgive Greville because he sent her upper-crust daughter to jail for three months for selling cocaine to a friend. The mother was in court, I remember her, and she talked to the press afterwards. She couldn't believe that selling cocaine to a friend was an offence. Drug peddlers were despicable, of course, but that wasn't the same as selling to a friend.'

If a law is inconvenient, ignore it, it doesn't apply to you.'

'What?'

'Something Greville wrote in his notebook.'

'Oh yes. IT seems Greville got the mother's phone number to suggest ways of rehabilitation for the daughter, but mother wouldn't listen. Look,' he hesitated.

'Keep in touch now and then, would you? Have a drink in The Rook and Castle occasionally?'

'All right.'

'And let me know as soon as you find those notes.'

'Sure,' I said.

'We want to stop Vaccaro, you know.'

'I'll look everywhere,' I promised.

When I put the phone down I asked Annette.

'Notes about his cases?' she said. 'Oh no, he never brought those to the office.'

Like he never bought diamonds, I thought dryly. And there wasn't a trace of them in the spreadsheets or the ledgers.

The small insistent alarm went off again, m.u.f.fLed inside the desk. Twenty past four, my watch said. I reached over and pulled open the drawer and the alarm stopped, as it had before.

'Looking for something?' June said, breezing in.

'Something with an alarm like a digital watch.'

'It's bound to be the world clock,' she said. 'Mr Franklin used to set it to remind himself to phone suppliers in Tokyo, and so on.'

I reflected that as I wouldn't know what to say to suppliers in Tokyo I hardly needed the alarm.

'Do you want me to send a fax to Tokyo to say the pearls arrived OK?' she said.

'Do you usually?'

She nodded. 'They worry.'

'Then please do.'

When she'd gone Jason with his orange hair appeared through the doorway and without any trace of insolence told me he'd taken the stuff to Prospero Jenks and brought back a cheque, which he'd given to Annette.

'Thank you,' I said neutrally.

He gave me an unreadable glance, said, 'Annette said to tell you,' and took himself off. An amazing improvement, I thought.

I stayed behind that evening after they'd all left and went slowly round Greville's domain looking for hiding places that were guileful and devious and full of misdirection.

It was impossible to search the hundreds of shallow drawers in the stock-rooms and I concluded he wouldn't have used them because Lily or any of the others might easily have found what they weren't meant to. That was the trouble with the whole place, I decided in the end.

Greville's own policy of not encouraging private territories had extended also to himself, as all of his staff seemed to pop in and out of his office familiarly whenever the need arose.

Hovering always was the uncomfortable thought that if any pointer to the diamonds' whereabouts had been left by Greville in his office, it could have vanished with the break-in "artist, leaving nothing for me to find; and indeed I found nothing of any use. After a fruitless hour I locked everything that locked and went down to the yard to find Brad and go home.

The day of Greville's funeral dawned cold and clear and we were heading east when the sun came up. The run to Ipswich taking three hours altogether, we came into the town with generous time to search for Greville's car.

Enquiries from the police had been negative. They hadn't towed, clamped or ticketed any ancient Rover.

They hadn't spotted its number in any public road or car-park, but that wasn't conclusive, they'd a.s.sured me.

FINding the car had no priority with them as it hadn't been stolen but they would let me know if, if.

I explained the car-finder to Brad en route, producing a street map to go with it.

'Apparently when you press this red b.u.t.ton the car's lights switch on and a whistle blows,' I said. 'So you drive and I'll press, OK?'

He nodded, seeming amused, and we began to search in this slightly bizarre fashion, starting in the town centre near to where Greville had died and very slowly rolling up and down the streets, first to the north, then to the south, checking them off on the map. In many of the residential streets there were cars parked nose to tail outside houses, but nowhere did we get a whistle.

There were public car-parks and shop car-parks and the station car-park, but nowhere did we turn lights on.

Rover 3500s in any case were spa.r.s.e: when we saw one we stopped to look at the plates, even if the paint wasn't grey, but none of them was Greville's Disappointment settled heavily. I'd seriously intended to find that car. As lunchtime dragged towards two o'clock I began to believe that I shouldn't have left it so long, that I should have started looking as soon as Greville died. But last Sunday, I thought, I hadn't been in any shape to, and anyway it wasn't until Tuesday that I knew there was anything valuable to look for. Even now I was sure that he wouldn't have left the diamonds themselves vulnerable, but some reason for being in Ipswich at all . . . given luck, why not?

The crematorium was set in a garden with neatly planted rose trees: Brad dropped me at the door and drove away to find some food. I was met by two blacksuited men, both with suitable expressions, who introduced themselves as the undertaker I'd engaged and one of the crematorium's officials. A lot of flowers had arrived, they said, and which did I want on the coffin.

In some bemus.e.m.e.nt I let them show me where the flowers were, which was in a long covered cloister beside the building, where one or two weeping groups were Looking at wreaths of their own.

'These are Mr Franklin's,' the offIcial said, indicating two long rows of bright bouquets blazing with colourful life in that place of death.

'All of these?' I said, astonished.

'They've been arriving all morning. Which do you want inside, on the cofffin?'

There were cards on the bunches, I saw.

'I sent some from myself and our sisters,' I said doubtfully. 'The card has Susan, Miranda and Derek on it. I'll have that.'

The official and the undertaker took pity on the crutches and helped me find the right flowers; and I came first not to the card I was looking for but to another that shortened my breath.

'I will think of you every day at four-twenty. Love, C.'

The flowers that went with it were velvety red roses arranged with ferns in a dark green bowl. Twelve sweetsmelling blooms. Dozen Roses, I thought. Heavens above.

'I've found them,' the undertaker called, picking up a large display of pink and bronze chrysanthemums.

'Here you are.'

'Great. Well, we'll have these roses as well, and this wreath next to them, which is from the staff in his office.

Is that all right?'

It appeared to be. Annette and June had decided on all-white flowers after agonizing and phoning from the office, and they'd made me promise to notice and tell them that they were pretty. We had decided that all the staff should stay behind and keep the office open as trade was so heavy, though I'd thought from her downcast expression that June would have liked to have made the journey.

I asked the official where all the other flowers had come from: from businesses, he said, and he would collect all the cards afterwards and give them to me.

I supposed for the first time that perhaps I should have taken Greville back to London to be seen off by colleagues and friends, but during the very quiet halfhour that followed had no single regret. The clergyman engaged by the undertakers asked if I wanted the whole service read as I appeared to be the only mourner, and I said yes, go ahead, it was fitting.

His voice droned a bit. I half listened and half watched the way the sunshine fell onto the flowers on the coffin from the high windows along one wall and thought mostly not of Greville as he'd been alive but what he had become to me during the past week.

His life had settled on my shoulders like a mantle.

Through Monday, TUesday, Wednesday and Thursday I'd learned enough of his business never to forget it.

People who'd relied on him had transferred their reliance onto me, including in a way his friend Elliot Trelawney who wanted me as a Greville subst.i.tute to drink with. Clarissa Williams had sent her flowers knowing I would see them, wanting me to be aware of her, as if I weren't already. Nicholas Loder aimed to manipulate me for his own stable's ends. Prospero Jenks would soon be pressing hard for the diamonds for his fantasy, and the bank loan hung like a thundercloud in my mind.

Greville, Lying cold in the coffin, hadn't meant any of it to happen.

A man of Honour, I thought. I mentally repeated his own prayer for him, as it seemed a good time for it. May I deal with honour. May I act with courage. May I achieve humility. I didn't know if he'd managed that last one; I knew that I couldn't.

The clergyman droned to a halt. The official removed the three lots of flowers from the coffin tO put them on the floor and, with a whirring and creaking of machinery that sounded loud in the silence, the coffin slid away forward, out of sight, heading for fire.

Goodbye, pal, I said silently. Goodbye, except that you are with me now more than ever before.

I went outside into the cold fresh air and thanked everyone and paid them and arranged for all of the flowers to go to St Catherine's Hospital, which seemed to be no problem. The official gave me the severed cards and asked what I wanted to do with my brother's ashes, and I had a ridiculous urge to laugh, which I saw from his hushed face would be wildly inappropriate. The business of ashes had always seemed to me an embarra.s.sment.

He waited patiently for a decision. 'If you have any tall red rose trees,' I said finally, 'I daresay that would do, if you plant one along there with the others. Put the ashes there.'

I paid for the rose tree and thanked him again, and waited for a while for Brad to return, which he did looking smug and sporting a definite grin.

'I found it,' he said.

'What?' I was still thinking of Greville.

'Your brother's wheels'

'You didn't!'

He nodded, highly pleased with himself.

'Where?'

He wouldn't say. He waited for me to sit and drove off in triumph into the centre of town, drawing up barely three hundred yards from where the scaffolding had fallen. Then, with his normal economy, he pointed to the forecourt of a used car sales business where under strips of fluttering pennants rows of offerings stood with large white prices painted on their windscreens.

'One of those?' I asked in disbelief.

Brad gurgled; no other word for the delight in his throat. 'Round the back,' he said.

He drove into the forecourt, then along behind the cars, and TuRNed a corner, and we found ourselves outside the wide-open doors of a garage advertising repairs, oil changes, MOT tests and Ladies and Gents.

Brad held the car-finder out of his open window and pressed the red b.u.t.ton, and somewhere in the shadowy depths of the garage a pair of headlights began flashing on and off and a piercing whistle shrieked.

A. cross-looking mechanic in oily overalls came hurrying out. He told me he was the foreman in charge and he'd be glad to see the back of the Rover 3500, and I owed him a week's parking besides the cleaning of the sparking plugs of the V.8 engine, plus a surcharge for inconvenience.

'What inconvenience?'

tTaking up s.p.a.ce for a week when it was meant to be for an hour, and having that whistle blast my eardrums three times today.'

'Three times?' I said, surprised.

'Once this morning, twice this afternoon. This man Came here earlier, you know. He said he'd bring the Rover's new owner.'

Brad gave me a bright glance. The car-finder had done its best for us early on in the morning, it seemed: it was our own eyes and ears that had missed it, out of sight as the car had been.

I asked the foreman to make out a bill and, getting out of my own car, swung over to Greville's. The Rover's doors would open, I found, but the boot was locked.

'Here,' said the foreman, coming over with the account and the ignition keys. 'The boot won't open.

Some sort of fancy lock. Custom made. It's been a b.l.o.o.d.y nuisance.'

I mollifyingly gave him a credit card in settlement and he took it off to his cubby-hole of an office.

I looked at the Rover. 'Can you drive that?' I asked Brad.

'Yerss,' he said gloomily.

I smiled and pulled Greville's keys out of my pocket to see if any of them would unlock the boot; and one did, to my relief, though not a key one would normally have a.s.sociated with cars. More like the keys to a safe, I thought; and the lock revealed was intricate and steel.

Its installation was typically Greville, ultra security-conscious after his experiences with the Porsche.

The treasure so well guarded included an expensivelooking set of golf clubs, with a trolley and a new box of golf b.a.l.l.s, a large brown envelope, an overnight bag with pyjamas, clean shirt, toothbrush and a scarlet can of shaving cream, a portable telephone like my own, a personal computer, a portable fax machine, aN opened carton of spare fax paper, a polished wooden box containing a beautiful set of bra.s.s scales with featherlight weights, an anti-thief device for locking onto the steering wheel, a huge torch, and a heavy complicatedlooking orange metal contraption that I recognized from Greville'S enthusiastic description as a device for sliding under flat tyres so that one could drive to a garage on it instead of changing a wheel by the roadside.