скачать книгу бесплатно
Double Entry
Margaret McKinlay
John Leith is an easy-going Edinburgh accountant, a widower with a young son, and a long-standing relationship with an attractive woman which neither wants to turn into marriage.Suddenly his life is disturbed when he is attacked in his office, his flat searched and vandalised, and his sister’s home broken into. John can discern no reason for the incidents but as the violence against him steps up he begins to feel like a tethered goat and is drawn willy-nilly into the activities of his uncle’s detective agency, which seems to offer his best hope of protection, to say nothing of discovering what lies behind these unprovoked attacks.But when his unknown enemies turn their attention to those who matter most to him, John Leith discovers that he too can use violence when necessary, and Margaret McKinlay’s first novel reaches a shattering climax as the identity of the villains and their true motive are finally unmasked.
MARGARET McKINLAY
Double Entry
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_7a1e5689-0df3-5b14-ba6a-06b1375dff5e)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperFiction
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
Copyright © Margaret McKinlay 1992
First published in Great Britain in 1992 by The Crime Club
Margaret McKinlay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780002323819
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2017 ISBN: 9780008252731
Version: 2017-04-18
DEDICATION (#ulink_cde3450b-5874-58b1-81fa-323f30a28573)
For my husband Patrick, my children
Frances, Patricia, John, and for James
CONTENTS
Cover (#u59e80fe0-2bf3-5e4a-a1e0-fd8cfcb19359)
Title Page (#u2e4c9cba-ceb9-5a0f-939c-d02a94f34854)
Copyright (#ulink_327ae2da-ab89-5df3-9fc8-c6b450497abc)
Dedication (#ulink_c30f22e4-4b03-526e-b677-3ed588d0193d)
Prologue (#ulink_d6911f24-021f-52fb-8ea3-e87936834062)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_0bec6ab1-646d-578a-9202-dae6b6fa14ee)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_1712df85-1a7f-521a-8344-8f808f38be72)
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE (#ulink_925de379-f90a-54a5-817a-63f127e3a931)
He was hungry. Hands deep in the pockets of his black bomber jacket, the young man hunched his shoulders against the chill wind and looked around for a café, but it was too early in the morning and nothing was open.
The narrow winding street of the Edinburgh suburb was clogged with slow-moving traffic; he envied the drivers who had spent the night in warm beds, had eaten breakfasts and were now on their way to work. Then he brightened as he saw a familiar face and he darted between cars to cross the street. It was the perfect answer, he wouldn’t need to go right across town now. Instead he could head for home, shave and eat, before going to work.
Thirty yards back, a silver BMW had pulled into the kerb and the occupants, hidden from view by smoked glass windows, watched the young man’s progress. They noted who he spoke to and then the man in the back seat issued precise orders in a flat tone.
‘Pick him up and get the other car to follow that one.’
The young man in the bomber jacket, cheerful now, was not to eat breakfast that day, nor any other day.
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_8c557c02-f9ed-5849-8010-dfcfdc8066a5)
Friday began, deceptively, like any other day. John Leith looked from the window of his flat at a grey sky, at litter being blown into shop doorways by a cold November wind, and almost decided not to bother going to work. However, there was young Tracy, already on her way in from Rose-burn, a five-minute bus ride away from his office, so he really had no choice.
He didn’t hurry over breakfast—being his own boss, he had no need to reach the office at a certain time. Young Tracy would arrive before him and open the mail, make fresh coffee, and they might discuss her latest boyfriend while she added more gel to support her new spiky hair-do. He’d keep her there for as long as he could, to put off the moment when he had his own day to face, before she collected up any typing he needed done.
Then she went on to her real job in Kramer Property, the office block in the High Street, owned by his uncle, Rees Kramer. It was a convenient arrangement—John didn’t have to employ an assistant and Tracy enjoyed her late start to her own day at Kramer’s.
She was sixteen, bright and talkative and totally unconcerned by the fact that he was her boss’s nephew. Sometimes she made him feel old as she told him about her latest romance while they had coffee. She perched on his desk, swinging her legs, and then with a final smoothing down of her mini-skirt, a manœuvre that gave the morning its sparkle, she would leave around ten—depending on when he got there in the first place.
It was a good way to start any day. It set the tone for the rest of the hours he felt obliged to put in and if he had no appointments he might even drive her to Kramer’s and loiter there for an hour or so. But today was to be slightly different because he was to spend the weekend with his sister who looked after his son David. He had a vague plan to leave around lunch-time, arriving at Gwen’s home in Biggar in time for afternoon tea.
He switched on the radio in the hope of catching the weather forecast while he gathered up the bits and pieces that he was taking with him, David’s birthday present, Gwen’s favourite chocolates, his briefcase and suitcase.
‘… central Scotland down to the Borders may have snow flurries. Drivers are warned to watch out for ice on the the roads …’ More or less what he’d expected.
Outside it was freezing and he slipped on the icy pavement, scattering his armload of smaller items. As usual, the gritters had not listened to the forecast and the pavements were treacherous.
Everything was slowed down that morning, mainly because he’d caught the worst of the traffic coming in from the Forth Bridge and as always, if the roads to the north were bad, the commuters would be crawling into town. The minutes ticked by as he got stuck in a jam on the steep cobbled street out of Stockbridge, but it didn’t bother him because he wasn’t on a strict timetable. The car was warming up and he was enjoying a Rush tape—one of Tracy’s—and he didn’t have a twinge of premonition that anything unusual was about to alter his plans for the day.
He parked in the private space reserved for permit holders outside the elegant Georgian terrace where most of the houses had been converted into offices, then said good morning to the elderly cleaning lady who was polishing the brass plate on the wall of the building. Minutes ticked by as Rachel discussed the weather.
‘Too cold for snow, do you think?’ she asked, straightening up with one hand supporting her back.
She was long past retiring age but said her little job was all that kept her from stagnating.
‘Is it this weekend you visit your boy?’
‘Mm. Leaving around lunch-time. It’s his birthday tomorrow.’
Rachel had been cleaning the offices for years and she knew the history and habits of every person who worked in the converted Georgian building.
‘I’ve bought him a camera.’
She nodded approvingly. ‘Well, you watch yourself, Mr Leith. It’s a nasty old road in bad weather.’
And she went back to giving the brass a further polish. There were several names on the plate, including his own which read ‘John Leith, accountant’, and beside it there was an entry-phone system. He went in through the open glass door, up one flight of carpeted stairs, past two other company offices where people were already at work, then reached his own half-glazed door. He could smell the coffee perking on the small stove in the back room but Tracy was playing one of her favourite heavy metal tapes loudly and she didn’t hear him come in, so he stood at his desk and looked through the morning’s mail which she had already opened.
He didn’t hear the glass door open behind him, nor did he see the intruder who held a short heavy wooden club.
The man didn’t hesitate: he brought the weapon down hard on the back of John’s head, but some instinct made John move just enough for the blow to be a glancing one. He was still conscious as he fell, long enough to see the frayed ends of jeans and a pair of dirty white trainers and then he sank into a dark painful pit.
His face was deep in carpet pile when he came round and he could smell the stale dustiness of it. There was fluff in his mouth and the taste of the blood that had trickled from the back of his head.
He couldn’t understand what had happened and he lay there for some time trying to work it out but in the end he was forced to move because of the acrid smell from the dried-out coffee pot. He lurched towards the small back room that was little more than a cloakroom and bumped against the door frame as his vision blurred. The handle of the pot was hot and he dropped it, but all the liquid had evaporated and the dregs had congealed into a foul mess. Where was Tracy? Close to passing out again, he staggered back into the other room and leaned against his desk, and that was when he saw her lying behind it, sprawled beside his one expensive item of furniture, a soft leather reclining chair.
She was on her back, one arm flung up beside her head, and she was deathly pale.
A red swelling over one eye was pulling her eyebrow upwards and a tiny line of blood had run into her eye socket to create a dark puddle. At first he thought the eye itself was gone and a wave of nausea brought bile into his mouth, but after he’d moved around the desk, leaning on it for support like a drunk, he saw it was not as bad as that. Bad enough, though.
Her mini-skirt had risen up to reveal brief panties under her patterned black tights. Illogically his first instinct was to bend to pull down the skirt, because although the young girl liked to give the impression of being trendy, he knew that she would have been embarrassed by the almost obscene position in which she was lying. But he knew he couldn’t possibly bend down without passing out again, so instead he reached for the phone.
The ambulance came almost at the same time as the police and he was again sitting on the floor with his back against the desk when the first uniformed man came through the door.
‘Please see to Tracy first. I’m all right,’ he said but the words were so carefully pronounced, with lips and tongue like rubber, that now he even sounded like an elegant drunk.
They were very good, both sets of uniforms, and in no time he had given a statement of sorts, had been examined, and was on his way to the Royal Infirmary.
From there someone phoned Rees Kramer, who arrived to find his nephew on a bed in the casualty department, waiting for the results of a head X-ray.
The back of John’s neck felt as if it was being pierced by a red-hot shaft of steel but he knew it wouldn’t do to let Rees see how badly he felt. Rees wouldn’t want to know those details anyway.
‘See if you can find out how Tracy is,’ he asked his uncle. ‘I’ve asked, but they keep telling me to wait.’
Rees, as usual, looked immaculate in a dark suit and white shirt, regimental tie. His moustache was neatly trimmed and he looked as if he’d just shaved, yet John knew that no real effort was needed to present this image to the world; Rees was just that sort of person.
‘I’ve already asked,’ Rees said, lowering himself on to the edge of a moulded plastic chair.
He kept his spine very straight as if to avoid contact with the cheap material. ‘They’ve managed to get hold of her mother, who is on her way here, but a nurse says the girl doesn’t appear to be seriously hurt.’
He looked through a gap in the green curtains around the cubicle. ‘The doctors are too busy to see anyone, apparently.’ Then he turned back to John. ‘Did you see the man who hit you?’
The question sounded polite, but it was evident from the sharp expression in his eyes that he was intensely interested.
‘I didn’t see his face, just his feet,’ John murmured as his neck throbbed viciously again. ‘I’m not going to stay in here, Rees.’
‘You’ll do whatever the doctors think best,’ his uncle said stiffly and John realized that they were both whispering, as if unseen ears were listening on the other side of the surrounding curtains. Someone was groaning quite close by and hurrying feet in soft-soled shoes squeaked on polished floor tiles; instruments clattered into a steel tray and trolleys swished by, while all around were the soft tones of nurses and doctors in other cubicles and the usual hospital smells.
‘I hate bloody hospitals,’ John muttered, trying to stop the questions that were zipping through his mind. ‘Who hit me and how the hell did he get into the building?’ he muttered, trying to lift himself up higher on the pillows. ‘And why would anyone want to get into my office?—I don’t have anything worth stealing.’
‘The police think he slipped in behind you. The cleaning woman was outside apparently and she’d left the doors open. All those offices get visitors and she wasn’t to know what he was up to.’
‘So much for the security of an entry phone,’ John said, resting his head back gingerly on pillows that seemed to be lined with stiff water-proofed material.
