The Vital Chain Read online

****

  It was mid-afternoon when the nurse told me I should expect a visitor.

  ‘He’s a policeman,’ she said. ‘A chief inspector someone-or-other. He wants to talk to you about the crash, but if you don’t feel strong enough you’ve only to tell me and I’ll do my level best to keep him away from you.’

  ‘I think I can handle it,’ I said.

  But as I was dozing off, I did wonder why a chief inspector would concern himself with a simple traffic accident.

  ****

  Dusk was falling when the policeman finally came to see me. He was a tall, thin man of about my age, with a drooping moustache and a slightly mournful expression. My first impression was that he seemed vaguely familiar – though there was no reason at all why I should know a policeman stationed a couple of hundred miles from my home – but it was not until he stopped, halfway between the door and my bed, to take a bag of boiled sweets out of his pocket, that recognition hit me.

  ‘In the children’s home where I was brought up, sweets were only distributed on Saturdays – and then only to those inmates who were deemed to have deserved them,’ he had once told me. ‘They were the currency in our little prison. No, they were more than that – they were the source of power and survival. A Fry’s Turkish Delight could make a bully go away. A couple of chunks of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut would be enough to persuade one of the prettier boys to jerk you off, if you were that way inclined. We craved sweets, but we never ate them until they were about to turn musty – because magic should never be needlessly squandered.’

  ‘Owen?’ I said. ‘Owen Flint?’

  He grinned, self-consciously. ‘I wasn’t sure that you’d remember me.’

  I wondered how he ever imagined I’d have been able to forget him. Even though by the time we went up Oxford had become a little more egalitarian than it had been, he still stuck out like a sore thumb – a skinny Welsh boy totally lost outside the confines of a charitable institution.

  ‘I thought you were going to be a poet,’ I said.

  ‘So did I,’ he said, picking up a chair and placing it down next to my bed. ‘And maybe I am. Poetry’s about imposing order and making sense of the world, and being a copper fulfils at least half of that requirement.’

  He unwrapped a boiled sweet and popped it into his mouth. He didn’t offer me one – the smirks he had received in college had cured him of that habit.

  ‘You’ve done well for yourself, Rob,’ he continued. ‘You’re a successful publisher – the man who discovered Andy McBride.’

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ I admitted. ‘Sometimes I think that’s what I’ll always be – the man who discovered Andy.’

  Owen crossed one spindly leg over the other. ‘You want to tell me what you were doing on my patch, Rob?’ he asked.

  ‘We were down here on business.’

  Owen used his tongue to transfer the boiled sweet from one hollow cheek to the other. ‘Would you care to be more specific?’

  ‘Yesterday we were in Bristol, buying a company called Western Haulage. Today we were supposed to travel up to Swansea.’

  ‘To buy more businesses?’

  ‘No, to persuade some of Western Haulage’s more dissatisfied clients in the steel industry that they should stick with the company now that it’s under new management.’

  ‘So publishing isn’t the only thing you’re interested in? You have your finger in more than one pie?’

  I sighed. I didn’t want to go into complex explanations, but if Owen was to understand the situation, I didn’t see how I could avoid it.

  ‘All the companies – the furniture factories, the hauliers, the garages, the catering firm and the publishing house – are controlled by my grandfather,’ I said. ‘He set each member of the family up in a different business, but he never lets us forget we’re working for him.’

  I caught the slight flicker in Owen’s eye. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I think I do now. He already knew that Grandfather was dead, and it was plain from the way I was talking that I didn’t.

  ‘I don’t see what advantage there was in having a publisher in on this particular deal,’ he said.

  ‘My father and I opposed my uncle’s plan to take over Western Haulage,’ I explained. ‘We thought he was stretching the company’s resources too thinly. We thought there was a danger he could bankrupt us all.’

  Owen’s eyes narrowed, and I reminded myself that he was no longer an uncertain undergraduate, but a chief inspector in the South Wales police. ‘How could he bankrupt you all?’ he asked.

  ‘In order to raise the money he needed for this deal, he would have to mortgage all the other companies, including Cormorant Publishing.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why that necessitated you being on this trip.’

  I sighed again. It was so difficult to explain my grandfather’s philosophy – and the lifetime I had lived in the shadow of it – in a few words.

  ‘Grandfather agreed to allow the deal with Western Haulage to go through as a way of proclaiming my uncle his heir apparent,’ I said. ‘But he wanted his other subjects to go along with it, too, and he hoped that by involving us all in this project, it might generate some enthusiasm for the new regime.’

  ‘And did it?’

  I shook my head. ‘All I care about is Cormorant. Anything which threatens that is an enemy.’

  ‘If I’m not mistaken, there’s another director of the company – your cousin Philip,’ Owen said.

  ‘How would you know that?’ I asked. ‘And how can that possibly be relevant to the crash?’

  ‘If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll ask the questions,’ Owen said.

  He infused the word “sir” with humour as if, as old friends, it was no more than a joke we were sharing, but behind the levity was the weight of determined authority.

  ‘Yes, my cousin Philip is also a director,’ I agreed.

  ‘So why wasn’t he in on this particular junket?’

  I laughed, perhaps a little bitterly. ‘Philip didn’t need his enthusiasm firing up. As the son of the crown prince, why should he? Besides, someone had to stay behind and manage the shop.’

  Owen nodded. ‘You were all travelling in one car,’ he said, almost as if he were making a casual observation. ‘It must have been a bit cramped.’

  ‘It was – but we didn’t have much choice.’

  ‘Oh? And why was that?’

  ‘We flew down to Bristol and hired two cars from Bristol Airport. We got a Jag for Uncle Tony and his assistant—’

  ‘Your father didn’t take his assistant,’ Owen interrupted. ‘That would be … Mr Paul Taylor … wouldn’t it?’

  Again I wondered what that had to do with anything, but I was tired by then and just wanted to get the interview over with as soon as possible.

  ‘Yes, Paul is … Paul was … my father’s personal assistant,’ I said, ‘but he’s away on a leave of absence.’

  ‘With all these takeovers going on, it seems a strange time for your dad to allow him to go off on holiday,’ Owen said. ‘Still, I know nothing about business, do I?’ He rustled his bag and pulled out another sweet. ‘Anyway, let’s get back to the cars. You hired two of them, the Jag for your uncle—’

  ‘And the BMW for the rest of us. We stayed the night in the Mountjoy Hotel in Bristol. We knew we had to make an early start this morning, and we all went to bed early.’

  At least, my father, brother and I did, I thought. Knowing Uncle Tony, he probably got very drunk and then went off in search of a brassy blonde with flexible morals.

  ‘We went down to the garage at seven o’clock this morning,’ I continued. ‘That was when we discovered the Jag wouldn’t start. We asked the man on duty how long it would take us to get a mechanic, and he said at least an hour. We didn’t have time to wait for that, or for the car hire companies to open up either. So we decided we’d all cram into the BMW.’

  Owen nodded again. ‘Would it be too painful to describe the crash to me?’
/>
  I told him about the narrow country lane and seeing the lorry, and about how the brakes on the BMW failed.

  ‘Have you found out yet why the brakes failed?’ I asked. ‘Was it something to do with the rain?’

  A look of indecision crossed Owen’s face. ‘How strong are you feeling, Rob?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve just lost three members of my family, so I’ve felt better,’ I replied. ‘But if there’s something you think I ought to know about, then I want to know about it now.’

  Owen shrugged. ‘If I don’t tell you, you’d probably hear it soon enough anyway, from somebody else or on the television,’ he said.

  ‘Hear what?’ I asked, exasperatedly.

  ‘It wasn’t an accident,’ Owen said. ‘Some time last night the hand brake cable was sawn through. Not completely – just far enough so that it would snap eventually. And a hole had been drilled in the hydraulic braking system so that fluid would be lost – slowly initially, then faster. According to the police mechanic, it was a very professional job.’

  ‘You mean it was a deliberate attempt to …?’ I gasped.

  Owen nodded. ‘Someone out there must hate one of you very much,’ he said.

  Chapter Three

  There was an early morning nip in the air as Chief Inspector Owen Flint surveyed the large car park which lay hidden beneath the Mountjoy Hotel, Bristol.

  ‘How many cars could you cram into here, Sergeant Matthews?’ he asked his bagman, who was standing next to him.

  ‘There are spaces marked out for 220 vehicles, sir,’ Matthews replied.

  Flint frowned. He imagined he would be doing a lot of frowning before this particular investigation was over.

  It wasn’t like any other case he’d ever been assigned, he would admit to me later, when he told me about the investigation. With most murders, he’d explain, the victim was found where he’d been killed. Even if the body had been moved, it was safe to assume – except in the case of poisonings – that the murderer had been with his victim at the time of death. But here, neither of those things applied. The murders, strictly speaking, had been carried out some hours before the actual deaths, and in a place over 60 miles from the scene of the crime.

  There was the sound of footsteps from the other end of the garage, and a man wearing a blue boiler suit appeared.

  ‘I’m Harry Thorpe, the garage supervisor,’ he said. ‘You wanted to see me.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Flint agreed. ‘Is this garage permanently manned?’

  ‘Does this have anything to do with the Jag the local cops towed away earlier?’ Thorpe countered.

  ‘It might,’ Flint conceded. Then, with a harsher edge to his voice, he repeated his original question.

  ‘Is it permanently manned? No,’ Thorpe said. ‘But there’s always somebody here between the hours of six in the morning, and ten in the evening.’

  ‘What happens if guests need to use their cars outside those hours – if they’ve gone out for a late dinner, for example?’

  ‘Guests who tell us they’ll be getting back late are given a remote control to open the garage door. They’ve already been allocated a space of their own, so there’s no trouble with the parking.’

  ‘And what do they do once they’re inside the garage?’

  Thorpe pointed to a set of lift doors. ‘That takes them straight up to the lobby.’

  ‘So if guests can get from the garage to the hotel, then anyone inside the hotel could get to the garage,’ Flint said. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, you can access the garage from the hotel,’ Thorpe admitted. ‘But what would be the point? The guests are advised to remove all their valuables, so there’s nothing to steal. And if someone wanted to boost a car, they couldn’t – because without one of the remote controls, which are very strictly monitored, they wouldn’t be able to open the door.’ He paused. ‘You see what I’m saying? There’s no reason at all for anybody to come down here.’

  No, there wasn’t, Flint agreed silently – unless, of course, they were embarking on what was beginning to look like a very carefully planned homicide.

  ****

  Lying in bed with nothing to do is hell, especially for someone who has spent years devoting most of his waking hours to his business. I tried to watch the television, but the daytime soaps and quiz shows failed to grip me. I attempted to read, but found my mind constantly wandering back to her.

  She still hadn’t called me! More than 24 hours after the accident – which I now knew was not an accident at all – Marie hadn’t been able to find the time to pick up the phone and ask me how I was!

  ****

  Marie O’Hara had first come into my life at a student theatre performance in the grounds of St John’s College.

  The play was Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and was being performed, so I thought, with rather more dramatic emphasis than the intellectual Norwegian author would have felt comfortable with. Still, it was a pleasant evening to be outdoors, and even a bad theatrical performance seems somewhat better when you have a bowl of strawberries and cream in one hand and a glass of Pimm’s No. 1 Cup in the other. So all in all, I had decided, it wasn’t a bad way to kill some of the free time which Andy McBride’s increasing self-reliance had given me.

  It was towards the end of the interval that I noticed Marie. She was chatting to a group of male students and making animated gestures with her right hand, which also held a burning cigarette. What first attracted me to her, I think, was that she didn't look the least like Jill. Perhaps that sounds awful, but it made a lot of sense to me then – and still does. I was terrified, you must understand, that if I ever fell in love again, it would be with a girl who resembled Jill, and worse, that I would try to turn my new love into Jill – which wouldn’t have been good for either of us.

  This girl, then, was as unlike Jill as it was possible to be. Jill had straight blonde hair; hers was reddish and curly. Where Jill had been slender without being flat-chested, Marie was ever so slightly on the heavy side. The eyes were green, not blue. Her nose was larger, and her lips were fuller than my late fiancée’s. I wouldn’t have said she was my type, yet I felt an attraction towards her that I’d thought I would never feel again.

  She saw me looking at her, and smiled encouragingly.

  I was at a loss for what to do next.

  Should I force myself onto a group of people I didn’t know?

  Should I wait to see if she detached herself from them – and, if she did, home in on her then?

  As it happened, the bell to announce the second half of the play obviated the need for either of these actions.

  Back in my seat, I tried to concentrate on Ibsen’s dialogue, but to no avail. It was crazy to feel these sudden, unexpected flutterings in my heart, I told myself. I wasn’t a kid any more – so I should stop behaving like one. Yet I caught myself looking around the audience, hoping to see that mane of red hair.

  She wasn’t there. Maybe she had found the first half as tediously overdone as I had and decided to call it a night.

  I felt bitterly disappointed. In many ways academic Oxford is little more than a village, yet it is possible to go for months – or even years – without bumping into someone you know quite well.

  So what were my chances of bumping into her again? She might not even live in Oxford – might, already, be on the train to London.

  Or Bristol.

  Or wherever else she’d come from.

  It was only when I heard the audience applauding that I realised the play had come to an end. I joined in the applause half-heartedly, then rose heavily to my feet. The girl had unsettled me, had opened old wounds which I’d convinced myself were healed forever. I decided that, instead of going back to my flat, I would call in at the office and catch up with some work.

  It was as I got to the main gate that I saw her again. She was leaning against the wall, a fresh cigarette in her hand, and looking towards the Banbury Road.

  Waiting for someone, I won
dered?

  Very probably, I answered myself.

  I had determined not to bother her, and was already heading down St Giles’ when I heard a voice behind me, with just the hint of an Irish accent in it, say ‘Good night, Mr Conroy.’

  I turned around. She was smiling at me again.

  ‘Do I know you?’ I asked.

  She shook her head, and her hair cascaded enticingly. ‘No, you don’t,’ she said. ‘But then I’m not a famous publisher, am I?’

  I laughed, self-deprecatingly. ‘Famous? Is that what I am?’

  ‘Maybe famous is too strong a word,’ she admitted. ‘But you’re certainly well-known. You’re the sort of person other people point out. “That’s Robert Conroy,” they say. “He’s the one who discovered that new author everyone’s talking about”.’

  I felt my heart sink. So that was what this was all about – another would-be author with a manuscript to peddle.

  ‘You don’t happen to be a writer yourself, do you?’ I asked, expecting the almost inevitable reply.

  ‘A writer!’ Marie repeated. ‘Not a chance. I tried being chained to a desk for a while and it’s not an experience I ever want to repeat.’

  I breathed a sigh of relief, then just stood there – like a fool – saying absolutely nothing.

  Marie glanced at her watch. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better be going.’

  ‘You’re not meeting anyone, then?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  Here’s your chance, I told myself. Grab it while it’s there.

  ‘You wouldn’t let me buy you a drink, would you?’ I asked.

  ‘I never drink on an empty stomach,’ she told me. ‘But if you’re game for a meal, I wouldn’t say no. But you don’t get to buy it – we split the bill right down the middle.’

  ‘Whatever you say,’ I agreed.

  I took her to the Italian restaurant just across the road from the college – and tried not to look too pleased with myself when the waiters greeted me warmly.

  It was ridiculous, I thought, to find myself trying to impress this woman I’d only just met.

  Yet I really wanted to.

  When the menu arrived, she brushed it aside. ‘What’s the house speciality?’ she asked me.