14 - Stay of Execution

As always, Dorward’s team had been thorough. They had checked the sheets on both beds for any traces of bodily fluids, but had found only a trace of menstrual blood on those taken from the main bedroom. There was no indication anywhere that Alsina and Aurelia had been living as man and wife.

He was pondering this when his phone rang. He snapped to attention and snatched it up.

‘Front desk here, sir,’ said a woman officer. ‘There’s a gentleman to see you.’

‘Is there a free interview room?’ he asked at once, imagining that the general’s envoy might not like being paraded through the CID suite.

‘Number two.’

‘Okay, Briony, show him in there and I’ll be down. Did he give a name, by the way?’

‘Yes, sir. He said his name was Whetstone, Murphy Whetstone; he’s a great big lad.’

‘Shit,’ Steele exclaimed involuntarily. ‘That’s not who I was expecting. Scrub the interview room; bring him up here instead.’

A few heads turned, as the exceptionally tall young man was led through the CID room. ‘Hello, Murphy,’ the inspector greeted him, curiosity overcoming his earlier frustration. ‘What brings you here?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I guess it’s the way I was brought up.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I think I had a chance to get away with something that would have left me in blondes and Porsches till I got tired of them, but I just couldn’t do it.’ He reached into a pocket of his jacket and produced an envelope, a big one that had been folded over to make it fit. He laid it on the detective’s desk.

‘The company’s looking after me very well while I’m over here,’ he began. ‘Among other things, all my mail’s being couriered over to me, express delivery. I had a consignment first thing this morning. Take a look; you might think I’m crazy when you do.’

Steele picked up the envelope and shook out its contents: two smaller envelopes, one white, with UK stamps and an air-mail flash, the other brown, with US stamps. Each was addressed to Murphy, at what the inspector assumed was his home in Tennessee. He picked up the British envelope first, and shook out a letter. He unfolded it and saw that it was printed, on A4 paper.

Dear Murph [it began],

By the time you read this, you’ll know that I have gone to the great clubhouse in the sky. To cut a painful story short, a few days ago I was told by the sort of doctor who doesn’t make mistakes that there was a room in St Columba’s Hospice with my name on the door, and that it was ready for immediate occupancy.

I’ve never enjoyed sleeping in a strange bed, and although I’ve never had the experience, I’m sure I wouldn’t enjoy being ministered to by strange women either. So, since I’m a firm believer in one’s right to choose the time and manner of one’s passing, I’ve decided to exercise it. You may find my choice of method a bit melodramatic, but it seems the easiest way to do it, and a strange opportunity has arisen of doing the deed away from well-meaning interferers and most of all away from home. Your mother has always loved that house and I would not want to have her associate any gruesome memories with it.

This sudden turn of events has made a bit of a hash of my intentions for you, old son. Your mother is well provided for, worry not, but it was my plan to use the last years of my career, and the wholly unexpected earning power I have been given, to do something to help provide for your long-term future as well as my own. However, when the chips are down I have always been a resourceful type, as many of my golf companions will testify. I’m going to let you into a secret. I have always been an old-fashioned banker, always been the sort who likes looking ordinary people in the eye, giving them good news when I can, and helping them through crises when I can’t. It’s one of my proudest boasts that I’ve never foreclosed on any client in my life.

Even though I have proved to be remarkably good at the job I’m doing now, so good that in a few months I was able to rid myself of the strange ice-maiden whom they tried to make my boss and out-perform her in every way, I have to tell you that I hate, loathe and detest everything that the Scottish Farmers Bank has become under the people who are now shaping its policies, and generally making a balls of implementing them. So it is without any conscience whatsoever that I have made certain arrangements for your benefit. I have done this in a way that will even now be causing ructions in Lothian Road, and which will I hope result in a culling of the incompetents, whose names I need not list here. I have also done it through a route which is completely untraceable, based on a knowledge of international banking law and practice which my so-called superiors never suspected I possessed.

Today I confirmed to my complete satisfaction that all my arrangements are complete. Very soon, you’ll receive items in the US that will put all of this into context. You need have no fear about putting them to use in making what I hope and expect will be a bloody good life for yourself. The other letter I enclose with this is for your mother. I want you to give it to her yourself, when next you see her. I don’t want her getting it through the mail, and didn’t want to leave it for her in the office. It tells her why I’ve done this, how much I love her, what a privilege it has been to spend my adult life with her, and all that sort of stuff. I’ll say the same to you now, son. I wish we could have had a few more years to enjoy each other’s company, but none of us has the privilege, or rather the curse, of knowing the hour of our departure too long before the train is ready to leave the station.

Enjoy your legacy, and yourself. Drive straight and putt even straighter. Goodbye and God speed.

All my love,

Dad.

PS. I trust you’ll have the bloody sense to burn this letter.

To his considerable surprise, Stevie Steele felt a lump in his throat. He blinked, to keep his eyes clear. He folded the letter, replaced it in its envelope and picked up the other. He reached inside and withdrew its contents, an American Express card, holder M. Whetstone, and a green bank book. He opened it and saw that it was the key to an account in a Delaware bank. The amount on deposit was very slightly over one million eight hundred thousand US dollars.

‘You see the name?’ Murphy asked. ‘Bank of Piercetown; that’s “BP”, the initials on Dad’s note to himself. “AM” probably just meant morning.’

The detective looked across the desk at the young man. ‘He was right, you know,’ he told him as he held up the book. ‘We’d never have found this.’

He smiled back at him. ‘You mean I am crazy?’

‘That’s for you to work out. What did bring you here? You could have burned that letter as he says.’

‘I know. I’ve been trying to make sense of it since that lot arrived, Mr Steele. The best conclusion I can come to is that my father did this as one last gesture, just to show that he could, then he left the deciding to me. He wasn’t a flamboyant man, but he was a gamester inside. He taught me most of what I know, but one thing the course didn’t include was how to live my life on the basis of something like this.’ He shrugged the shoulders of his enormous jacket. ‘On top of that, it’s not my money.’

‘That’s the best answer.’

‘What should I do now?’

‘Nothing. Leave all this with me; I’ll give you a receipt.’ He looked through the glass wall of his cubicle, caught DC Singh’s eye and waved him inside. ‘Tarvil,’ he said, ‘I want you to find a typist . . . use the chief super’s if you have to; ask her nicely and it’ll be okay. Get me a formal receipt for one letter, an Amex card and a bank book . . .’ He read out the bank’s name and the account number. ‘. . . handed over by Mr Murphy Whetstone. It’s to be signed by Mr Whetstone and by me with you as a witness signatory.’

The young constable nodded; he returned a few minutes later, bearing two copies of the receipt. All three of them signed beside their printed names.

‘Have you given your mother her letter?’ Steele asked, as he walked Murphy to the top of the stairs.

‘Not yet. Will I have to tell her about the other one?’

‘I hope not. I’ll go and see the acting chief executive at the bank. If he has any sense he’ll just accept the return of the money. You may have to sign some form of legal document, but I hope that’ll be all there is to it. With