Inheritance Read online

  Edith took a deep breath. Indicated for longer than usual. Pulled into the other lane.

  The sharp beep of a horn. Now she looked. In the rear view mirror a silver car flashed its lights. A vain apology and acceleration to get out of the driver’s way.

  The red car was absent. Relax.

  The road bent and burrowed under another motorway through a concrete tunnel. It emerged suddenly with a lane joining on the left. Cars were directed into her path. Edith didn’t hesitate to check her mirror as she negotiated the junction.

  “Fucker.” The red car was back. She had lost it for no more than a few minutes.

  She glanced at the mirror again. And again. Restrain faltered. Every opportunity she checked.

  The car was still there at Junction 3. And it was still there at Junction 4. Over eight miles in total and it hadn’t passed or turned, content simply to follow.

  The sign for Junction 5 ahead read, ‘Wigan’. Her exit. It would be ten miles since she first spotted the red car. Long enough. If the car exited the motorway with her then the line had been crossed. She would do something decisive. Whatever that might be.

  Edith indicated to leave the motorway. The red car indicated too.

  “Game on.” Edith wrinkled her nose at words which almost certainly belonged more to her father than to her. ‘Fucker,’ she swore her native response again under her breath.

  Why was the car even following her? Something to do with the investigation for sure. What they hoped to gain wasn’t clear. Unless the goal was simply to frighten her. In which case they were doing well enough.

  It wasn’t like the discomfort of somebody driving too near behind. The constant threat of an accident, the endless vigilance that you didn’t brake too sharply. This was menace. The invasion of privacy. Whoever it was wanted Edith to know she was being watched, to be aware that she was known to them. Whatever secret there might be around Thomas Faircote’s death somebody clearly had an interest in it not being uncovered.

  Edith figured that there were only two ways out: confront them or lose them. The first was easy to discount. Not knowing who might be confronted put her at a serious disadvantage. They were almost certainly better prepared than her. There was also still the possibility that the car wasn’t following. Confronting an innocent stranger would be a great way to meet the local police.

  It had to be the latter option: lose them.

  At the top of the slip road she indicated to turn left on the junction’s roundabout.

  The car behind indicated left.

  Instead of taking the left exit Edith swooped past on the wrong side of the road and continued round. The car behind hesitated for a moment. Ultimately it committed to the left exit and peeled away. Edith circled the roundabout as slow as was reasonable and came back round to the Wigan exit she had eschewed a moment before.

  She congratulated herself on the manoeuvre.

  Now the red car was in front rather than behind. She had control. She could lose it whenever she chose. All that remained was making the right choice.

  Leaving the main road lowered the chance of being caught again. Edith scanned ahead for possible turnings. Anything which might lead north by some back road to the cemetery. The only options were residential roads which likely looped round or were even dead ends. No good. If the read car knew the local road it could head her off easily.

  A second roundabout interrupted the search. Each exit was a tempting escape. Her limited knowledge of the local area prevented a decision. She wanted to stop, check the map on her phone. It was impossible.

  She took the exit to Wigan, following the red car. Still three miles to go. A better opportunity would present itself.

  Immediately the houses closed in and the traffic slowed. Vehicles lined the road, parked half on the pavement. It was impossible to glimpse the red car ahead.

  Edith passed a parked van. A movement caught her eye.

  In the rear view mirror the red car pulled out to take up its former position.

  ‘Fucker.’

  Through the outlying towns the car kept its distance though always visible. Traffic moved predictably along the narrow, single carriageway road. Innumerable turns, right and left, were open. Taking one in full view of her pursuer was pointless. It was too easy for them to see her and adjust accordingly. More traffic, more complexity, was needed before she could contemplate escaping again.

  The road passed in and out of the suburbs of Wigan, alternating between streets tightly enclosed by red brick houses and lanes nearly open to country fields. The traffic thickened, the fabric of the surrounding town solidified as buildings grew in height and number. Then, almost without warning her satnav instructed her to bear right.

  The edge of the town centre. There was no more forward. Only a right lane for all parts north of the town and a left lane for all parts south. Another chance.

  She took up her position in the queue to turn right. The red car closed the gap, stopping immediately behind her. Edith studied her mirrors. Though she had the best view of the whole journey she could only just work out that the driver was almost certainly a man. Any other detail escaped her.

  The lights turned green. The first car peeled away. Then the second. Then the third.

  Edith put her car into gear and crawled forward, watching all the time that the red car was behind her. As she crossed into the junction she drifted slightly to the right.

  Then she swung violently left without indicating.

  The red car braked. She dived into the traffic turning south in the left lane. Cars jolted to a halt. A chorus of beeps rose from their angry drivers. Edith raised her speed and quickly passed a dozen cars.

  A glimpse in the mirror. Then another. And another. The red car hadn’t followed her. It couldn’t. It was already out of sight. The road blocked by interrupted cars trying to regain their positions.

  The tail had been lost.

  The route round the south of the town centre was longer than expected. Edith hardly cared. The longer it took the further away the other car would be. Let them waste time trying to figure out where she went.

  It was fifteen minutes before she reached the main road heading north toward the cemetery. The suburb here was spacious. Houses sat back from the road. A scattering of trees along the streets added depth. It reminded her of Timperley. She had underestimated Wigan.

  The town gave way to countryside, with glimpses of fields between and beyond the houses. The satnav announced that the destination had been reached. Edith pulled over, uncertain that the announcement was correct. A small unmarked opening to the left was the only possibility.

  A drive led through a small wood planted to enclose the cemetery. It could have been the drive to a stately home. Edith imagined the imposing facade which lay at the end of the drive. She fancied servants might be waiting to receive her at the door. A dutiful butler would whisk her into the main hall and introduce her to some lord or lady. After a few minutes of her reverie she remembered that she was driving a Punto and wearing a parka. Everybody else was dead. A grand reception should not be expected.

  The woodland opened up into a great expanse of headstones in white, black, and grey. The graves were grouped in squares of hundreds, divided by drives and neatly tended hedges. The whole cemetery lay encircled by a ring of trees, cutting the dead off from the living. Dividing mourning from everyday life.

  Edith slowed and surveyed the grounds. All the headstones were relatively new. There were no areas of obviously ancient use where a recent burial could not be placed. In some areas there were gaps, unused plots, or grave awaiting headstones, where the latest burials might be. A large open area on the right, where a few graves were marked only with wooden crosses, marked the present limit of the cemetery’s inevitable and inexorable growth. She drove toward it.

  As she neared the open area Edith spotted a red car parked up alongside the final row of headstones. Her heart jumped. It was her tail.

  A man sat on the bonnet of th
e car facing away, his attention buried in his phone. He had known she was coming here all along. He wasn’t following, only checking that she knew where she was going. There was never a chance she would escape him.

  Edith ran through the two options she had considered earlier. Having failed to lose him, there was nothing now except to confront him.

  She parked the Punto behind the red car. She exited and slammed her door as loud as she could to gain his attention. He seemed to flinch but didn’t turn. He was ignoring her. She stood frozen, unsure how best to approach. He hadn’t threatened her with his driving, and he wasn’t threatening her now. Maybe unnerving her had been his only goal.

  Edith strode up to the man from behind. She grabbed his arm and, as he finally turned to face her, she took an angry intake of breath.

  “Excuse me! Why have you followed me?”

  The lawyer grinned. “I wanted to be sure you came. That you figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?”

  “Go to his grave and see.” The solicitor nodded to the last line of headstones. “You want to know where his money went, don’t you? Who the trust is for?”

  Edith span round to look at the graves. Immediately she turned back to the solicitor. “You knew he was buried here, didn’t you?”

  James laughed. “Of course I bloody did! I bought the plot. I arranged the funeral that his relatives attended for all of fifteen minutes, just enough to see him in the ground. I bought the headstone weeks later when they failed to do so themselves. Next time they ask me where his money went, I might tell them I spent it all on his grave.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I’m fed up answering your questions. That’s why I let you know about the trust.”

  “You said the family had sent others. Why didn’t you let them know?”

  “They were all lawyers. They could have wrung me out for improper disclosure. Taken the trust out of my control. So I’m glad you came in a way.” James pointed down the row of graves, jabbing his finger. “Nobody’s ever been here to see for themselves. None of them cared. None of them thought it important. You’re the first, so well done. Go on, claim your prize. It’ll be over in a minute if you just damn well look. ”

  Edith paced down the graves. Black marble with gold letters. White marbles with black letters. All of the occupants dead within the last year, mostly old people, beloved nanas and grandads now finally at rest.

  Up ahead stood a gravestone taller than the rest. A thin slab of dark grey slate, elegantly incongruous. A Rolls Royce in a supermarket car park. Even in death the distinctiveness, the nonconformity, that drew admiration.

  Edith read the inscription. Flourished letters traced in white, ‘Thomas Faircote, aged 35 years’.

  Wilting flowers spoilt the gravestone’s dignity and presence. She knelt down. A photograph wrapped in a plastic sleeve. The faces of a woman and a baby. A little grey teddy bear beside it. Edith wept as she read the lone word emblazoned on the teddy’s jumper.

  ‘Daddy.’

  Day 4: Saturday 4 November

  “The sly bugger!” Ben chuckled.

  “It’s not funny, Dad,” Edith pouted in the darkness, “Sam can’t have known. He didn’t mention anything about an illegitimate child.”

  “How do you know the child is illegitimate?”

  “James Moxon, the solicitor, gave me the story. He said that once I had seen it for myself he could tell me the rest. He was glad to anyway. It turns out the woman is called Rachel and is a nurse at a Wigan hospital where Thomas was taken after being injured trying to disrupt hare coursing.”

  “Cor, a nurse on the side. Sounds alright to me.”

  “Dad!” Edith let her admonishment hang in the air while she paced. “Anyway, they were in a relationship for a few years. It wasn’t meant to be serious.

  “Rachel accidentally became pregnant and decided that now was her chance to start a family. Thomas never wanted that kind of relationship. He hadn’t even introduced her to his friends. He stepped up to take care of the child, at least when it came to money. Emily was born in February and Thomas promptly stuck most of his money in a trust for her benefit, to ensure she would have his money whatever happened. His will previously left everything to charity.”

  Ben scratched his stubble. “How much money, then?”

  “James wouldn’t say, exactly. He hinted that it would have been the best part of a million.”

  “Nice.”

  “Yeah. And his parents, of course, knew that he had that kind of money. They’ve spent the last few months harassing Thomas’s solicitor to tell them where it went.” Edith folded her arms at the conclusion. “So money can’t have been a motive.”

  “Why not? I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Ben shifted in his seat, “but tell me how you figure that.”

  “Well, if his family are rich then they don’t need his and hardly would have killed him for it. They might have disagreed with his life but that seems a little extreme. They only want it back now he’s dead. And if Rachel and her daughter Emily already had all his money devolved to them in a trust, they had nothing more to gain by his death.” Edith shrugged. “I mean, they lost a lot just by losing him. No partner, no dad.”

  “Okay, so what motive do we have? Remember that we’re still not certain he was killed.”

  “Of course...”

  “Only that the circumstances are not what they seem to be. A motive would help.”

  “Sam mentioned when I spoke to him about Thomas’s interest in the environment. Kath, who was his landlady and neighbour, said the same. That was the overriding interest in his life. He loved nature and fought for what he loved.”

  “Fine words. But so what?”

  “Maybe, it’s worth looking into, isn’t it? Maybe there’s something around...”

  “I’m leading this investigation!” Ben snapped.

  “Right.” Edith shook her head, hoping her father would hear.

  “But I think you should look into it, for me.”

  “Well, okay.” She blew out a breath. “Kath told me she had once attended a protest meeting, or something like that, with Thomas. They went to a cafe in Manchester. Thomas was a regular there. I got the address so I might as well see what I can find. Somebody there is bound to know him. Maybe I can fill in that side of his life.”

  Ben sniffed. She was getting beyond herself. Having ideas about how investigations actually worked. It was a silly little case, nothing like the actual work he used to do. He wouldn’t have taken it on but for the fact that the girl could manage it. At least until he was ready.

  “Well, leave me some dinner, won’t you? I don’t fancy starving.”

  The tram squealed round the corner from Moseley Street and into Piccadilly Gardens. To the left a vast Primark shop slid away as the tram turned. Streams of shoppers with brown bags stuffed with cheap clothes testified to the shop’s presence. Knots of pedestrians stood unreasonably near to the tram as it passed. A hoot warned the unwary and the incautious not to cross.

  Beyond lay a heaving swirl of buses. The biggest bus station in Manchester, open to the air and enveloped in chaos. Passengers stood stranded on an island of bus shelters while a shoal of buses swam round disgorging new arrivals. The traffic was relentless on any day of the week. Late morning Saturday was as bad as it got. A dozen buses, all double deckers, arrived every minute. Hundreds of people. A constant crowd always moving.

  Inside the tram was worse, pressed with strangers. Edith stood in the crook of a man’s arms while he spoke to his friend. She had been there when they boarded. It was impossible to move away.

  The tram’s female voice announced the next stop as Piccadilly Gardens. The gardens announced itself with a blank concrete wall stretching along half its southern edge. A giant portal, little more than a hole punched through the wall, let Edith pass to the other side away from the buses and trams.

  Beyond lay the ruins of an expensively–designed square. Cracked, rocking, paving stones, w
orn grass, scraped-up and half-rotten benches, a broken fountain, Piccadilly Gardens had everything—except gardens. It was rumoured that the designer had never visited Manchester before it was built. Nor had he ever visited afterward to view his handiwork.

  By late Saturday morning Piccadilly Gardens was more people than pavement. By dinner it would be standing room only. Young men smoked, young women chatted, old people sidled by, lost foreigners wandered around savouring and fearing the look and smell of unpolished England, children jumped up and down by the fountain, willing it to work even in late autumn.

  The rain came and went intermittently, each time scattering the square’s inhabitants. Five minutes of clear skies and it filled up once again. The wind and dropping temperature alone were not enough to budge a single soul.

  Edith strode a curving path to the far right corner, past the group of Kurds holding a memorial for a massacre the world had long forgotten, and straight by the playground where children wrung fifteen minutes of joy after being dragged around endless shops. A homeless man slept on a metal utility hatch, warmed by the heat from the electrical substation below. In another month he would have to fight all–comers for the privilege. The number of rough-sleepers had doubled since the winter before.

  To the left, between the fountain and the playground, Queen Victoria sat on her pedestal, silent in greened bronze, her back prudently to the gardens. The Duke of Wellington hid off to the right, almost out of sight behind an office block, in timid remembrance of the unwelcome that Manchester had given him in real life.

  Another, smaller, swirl of buses hemmed the northern edge of the square, guarding the entrance to the Northern Quarter.

  When Edith was a teen she came most Saturdays to waste her father’s money on Oldham Street. Hours spent poking round Affleck’s Palace for unmentionable clothes and tat to clutter her bedroom. She dreamt one day of having enough money to lounge around the overpriced cafes looking trendy during the day and hang out at bars in the evening. All the guys would be fashionably dressed, engagingly conversational, and very much into her.