Double Entry

скачать книгу бесплатно


‘They’ll be asking questions and no doubt someone will give a description of him,’ Rees said. He shifted on the chair and John realized that his uncle was ill at ease in these surroundings, or perhaps he was just irritated by the need to be there at all. John felt the usual twinge of guilt, that somehow he’d interrupted Rees’s plans for the day and that now his uncle was counting the lost minutes. Probably he was entirely wrong, but for as long as he could remember he’d never been able to read his uncle’s mind because the man was so private. To make amends, he tried to be constructive.

‘Rachel,’ he said. ‘She must have seen the man.’

Then the curtains were pushed back and a young Chinese lady doctor moved to take his pulse.

‘I’m Dr Wu. Your X-ray is all right, no fractures, no need for stitches.’ She smiled slightly as if she could hear her own fractured English. ‘And you can go as long as you promise to take it easy for a day or two. Head injuries are not to be taken lightly and there is a degree of concussion.’

John assured her that he wouldn’t do anything too energetic.

‘I’m visiting my sister for a lazy weekend.’

‘That would be sensible, but before you leave a policeman wants a word with you.’

And Rees immediately stood up. ‘I’ll go and see if I can find out anything about Tracy,’ he said, and moved smartly through the curtains.

There were two policemen. One looked John over while the other reached into his pocket for a notebook; they both looked as if they did this sort of interview regularly and the questions were perfunctory and a repeat of those John had already answered at his office.

‘No, I didn’t see the man’s face,’ he told them. ‘And there’s nothing worth stealing in my office.’

‘Your wallet?’ the man asked and John struggled to pat his pockets, then reached in to produce it.

‘I don’t think there’s anything missing,’ he said, flicking through the compartments. ‘That’s strange, surely?’

But the policeman with the notebook snapped it shut and tucked it back into his pocket.

‘He was disturbed by your young lady and both she and the cleaning woman got a good look at him.’

Relief flooded through John. ‘Tracy’s all right, then?’

The man nodded. ‘A bump on the head. She’ll be fine. She says he was bent over you when she came from the back room and he lashed out at her. She probably scared the shit out of him and he acted without thinking, but she was very lucky to get off so lightly. Even so, they’re keeping her in overnight. We got the best description from the old girl, the cleaner.’ And now the policemen exchanged amused glances. ‘She said he had a big bum, that it “caught your eye because the rest of him wasn’t fat”. Actually, that’s the sort of detail that is really helpful … now we just have to find a five-foot-ten villain with a big bum.’ And they left with a promise to let him know what developed, but John thought they didn’t sound too hopeful.

Rees came back after the constables had left. ‘The girl’s going to be all right. Look, why go to Gwen’s? Come to Elmwood for the weekend.’

‘Because I promised David I’d be there for his birthday,’ John said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ His legs felt shaky as he went with Rees to the car, and his head felt as if it would be easily disconnected from his neck, so he didn’t argue when Rees drove to the High Street, to the rear of the Kramer building where there was private parking for the staff. They took the lift to the small flat that Rees had on the top floor which they both used quite often. There was only a large bedroom with a double bed, a small sitting-room, a kitchen and a bathroom, but Rees had furnished it with nice pieces and the décor was discreet, in Rees’s style. The carpets were thick and the flat was so high above the street that the traffic sounds were hardly noticeable. It was a haven that Rees often used when he decided not to go home to Elmwood, his country house, and John kept spare clothes there so that he could change if he was going out for the evening and didn’t want to rush home.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ Rees said.

‘And I’ll get changed—the blood has dried on the back of this shirt and it’s rubbing my neck.’

‘Do you always dress like that for work?’ Rees wore a slight frown which was a distinct mark of disapproval, and John shrugged and looked down at his jeans.

‘It’s comfortable and makes the clients feel comfortable.’

Rees sniffed.

John took the time to shower too, and as he dried himself he noticed how gloomy the room was. He walked to the window that was several floors above the busy street below, looked at the sky and wondered if David would be disappointed if he couldn’t get out with his birthday camera.

‘Coffee’s ready,’ Rees said from the doorway. ‘How’s your head?’

He was a tall man with an erect carriage, in his early sixties, and had the pink complexion that went well with his short silver hair. He had an air of success about him, but the expensive suits that sat well on his shoulders had nothing to do with the aura that Rees had. It was something that oozed out of the man, an elusive trait of character that spelled confidence in himself and inspired it in others. He wore his wealth like an overcoat but never made a show of it. He had great charm with clients but also had a rigid reserve that masked the inner core of the man.

John respected him as the man who had not shirked his duty when John’s parents disappeared on a sailing holiday. There was never any question that Rees should be given due respect, but love was a different matter. It had not been easy for a ten-year-old boy because Rees had never pretended to be fatherly, had never attempted to be any more than a caring guardian. There had always been an unspoken agreement that Rees had his own life, valued his privacy, but would provide material comforts, and that he’d done generously. There had never been any great feeling of closeness between them although they’d shared the same house for ten years.

‘My neck’s stiff, that’s all,’ John assured him as he reached for the strong black coffee. ‘It’ll be a bit uncomfortable driving but it’s not bad enough to cancel my weekend.’

Rees nodded. ‘Then you’d better get something to eat—we’ve missed our lunch. Tollis and I were going to meet for a pub lunch and they’ll still be serving—I’ll phone and see if he’s in his office.’

The Sentinel Agency was the other half of Rees’s business, situated in the same building, although clients used a separate door leading in from the High Street. Tollis managed it now that Rees was cutting back on work, ‘semiretired’ he said, although he seemed as busy as ever.

‘He says he’s busy but he’ll come,’ Rees grunted. ‘You can tell him exactly what happened.’

Tollis ran his side of the business with only a little interference from Rees and the three of them discussed the intruder at John’s office as they ate.

Tollis, taciturn as usual, said, ‘These opportunist crimes are on the increase in the city. Drugs. Addicts take chances out of desperation, when other criminals wouldn’t risk it. Your man chanced his luck, John—he wanted anything of value that he could carry easily and he would hit anyone in his way. And they don’t bother to wait for darkness any more. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Put it out of your mind.’

He spoke as if he knew what he was talking about, but John, who had grown up knowing that Rees owned Sentinel, had never been interested enough to ask what Sentinel did.

Tollis was a man of the same height as Rees but was much heavier, dark in colouring and entirely different in nature.

He was a man of few words who had none of Rees’s charm; a loner who seemed to shun close friendships, and although it had registered, John hadn’t given much thought to why he’d never heard the man’s first name, not even from Rees. It was always just Tollis.

And as if to prove that he couldn’t waste time on something that only the police could solve, Tollis was impatient to get back to work.

‘We’ve got a bit of an emergency on and I must be there when the men come in.’

Rees’s head jerked up at that, but Tollis laid a restraining hand on his partner’s shoulder.

‘Nothing for you to bother about, Rees,’ he said bluntly.

‘And I think I should get on the road,’ John said. ‘The food has helped shift the headache and I don’t want to get caught up in rush-hour traffic.’

‘That reminds me,’ Rees said, reaching down to pick up his briefcase. ‘I want you to take a look at some clients’ files—you could entertain them over the next few weeks, perhaps. If you’ve time over the weekend … ?’

He opened the case and handed John some slim folders as they left the pub. The one on top said Mr H. Carrick.

‘Carrick?’ John had heard Rees mention the name but he couldn’t connect it with any land deal.

Rees looked annoyed for a moment. ‘I told the girl to take that one out … there’s some sort of hold-up and it’s not likely to go ahead.’

John had never seen Rees so uncomfortable, so he flipped through the other files, recognizing some of the names. It was one of the perks of having a wealthy uncle that sometimes he got to entertain the clients because Rees hated one-to-one contact over a dinner table—another of his foibles.

They were walking three abreast along the pavement when Trollis paused, his brow puckered with a frown.

‘Carrick … didn’t he get the Sinclair estate by marrying the widow?’

‘That’s him,’ Rees agreed dourly. ‘John won’t remember the weekends I used to spend there when Graham Sinclair was alive …’

Tollis interrupted again as he remembered something. ‘I got one of the men to collect your car, by the way, John. It’s round the back.’

It wasn’t really John’s car because he didn’t own one, but simply used any of the Kramer cars that was free. He made his way around the rear of the building to collect it and he didn’t notice the two men in the car parked across the street who had been watching and were now ready to follow him when he left.