needed some details.’ She grinned and helped herself to a spoonful of tarka daal.
‘You’re very devious. I’d never have thought of that.’
Carol raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re one to talk. I’ve seen you be more twisted than a corkscrew in the interview room. I’d never come up with some of the stuff that comes second nature to you when you’re trying to get inside someone else’s skin.’
He tipped his head in acknowledgement of her accuracy. ‘True. Well, thanks for that. You’re right, it’s not the end of the world to know this.’
‘There is more. You up for it?’
Again he felt wariness rising, a constriction in his gut. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘I don’t think there’s anything in what I’ve found out that could cause you a problem,’ Carol said carefully. ‘I wouldn’t be pushing you so hard if I thought it was going to fuck you up.’
He looked across the restaurant at the crammed tables. Judging by the faces of the diners, all human life was here. Romance, business, disagreement, friendship, joy, sadness, family ties, first dates. Everyone in the room had the potential for all of these aspects of relationships. What was he so afraid of? What could hurt him about a dead man who’d known nothing about him when he’d been alive? He turned back to Carol. Her eyes seemed not to have left his face. He was, he thought, lucky to have her in his life, even if her persistence sometimes drove him crazy. ‘OK,’ he said.
‘He was a smart bloke, your father—’
‘Not my father,’ Tony interrupted, instantly angered. ‘Please, Carol. No amount of pushing’s going to make that acceptable.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to be a push. I just wasn’t thinking, that’s all. What do you want me to call him?’
Tony shrugged. ‘Edmund? Blythe?’
‘His friends called him Arthur.’
‘Then Arthur will do.’ He glared at his food. ‘I’m sorry I snapped at you. But I can’t think of him that way. I really can’t. I’ve said it before: “father” implies a relationship. Good or bad, honest or dishonest, loving or hating. But we didn’t have any kind of relationship.’
Carol’s expression was apology enough. ‘Arthur was a smart bloke. He set up his company, Surginc, a couple of years after you were born. I’m not sure what he was doing before that. The woman I spoke to at Surginc has worked there for thirty-odd years, but she didn’t know anything about Arthur’s life before he came to Worcester except that he came from up north somewhere.’
A twist of a smile. ‘That would be Halifax, we assume, since that’s where my mother was living at the time. So what does this Surginc do?’
‘It’s all a bit technical, but the gist of it is that they make disposable surgical instruments. Where Arthur was ahead of the game was that he developed a series of recyclable disposable instruments made from a combination of plastics and metal. So instead of them being single use, the materials could be reclaimed and reused. Don’t ask me what’s so special about the process they use, but it’s apparently unique. He had a patent on it. One of several he held, apparently.’ Her smile softened the lines of her face, reminding him of why people often underestimated her toughness. ‘Turns out you’re not the first innovative thinker in your bloodline.’
Against all his determination, Tony couldn’t help feeling pleased at Carol’s news. ‘For all her faults, so’s my mother. It’s good to know I don’t get all my creativity from her.’
Carol’s expression tightened at the mention of his mother. Tony wasn’t surprised. The antagonism between the two women had sparked on first meeting. Tony had been in hospital, recovering from a brutal attack at the hands of a Bradfield Moor patient. He’d been in no fit state to act as a buffer between the two women, and the fact that Carol had intervened to stop Vanessa ripping him off over Arthur Blythe’s estate had cemented their mutual loathing. ‘Well, there’s one big difference between Arthur and Vanessa,’ she said. ‘From all accounts, Arthur was one of the good guys. As well as being smart, he was apparently a good employer - his firm even had a profit- sharing system with the workers. He was very sociable, good company, generous. He employed about twenty-five people, but he knew all about their families. Always remembered their kids’ names, that sort of thing. When he sold the company two years ago, he took the entire staff and their partners off to a country-house hotel for a weekend break. No expense spared.’ Carol paused, expectant.
Tony summoned up an anodyne response. ‘No wonder they liked him.’
‘The one thing none of them could work out was why he stayed single. In all the years this woman worked for him, he never turned up at an office event with a woman on his arm. One or two of them thought he was gay, but she didn’t think so. He appreciated women too much, she thought. She wondered if maybe he’d been widowed or divorced when he was really young. So I checked out the records at the Family Records Centre. He never married.’
Tony gave a laugh. ‘Sounds like he was as good at relationships with women as me.’
As if reading his thoughts, Carol said, ‘Well, there is a common factor there.’
Tony reached for his beer. ‘Vanessa’s toxic. But I can’t blame her for everything.’
Carol looked as if she didn’t agree. ‘Well, one thing we can say is that, once Arthur moved out of her orbit, he really made something of his life. I know you can’t set aside the fact that he ignored your existence while he was alive, but from what I’ve learned about him . . . I don’t know, it feels like there must have been a good reason for his absence. And if anyone knows what that is, it must be Vanessa.’
‘In that case, it can stay a mystery. I’ve no plans to talk to her in the foreseeable future.’ Tony pushed his plate to one side and signalled to the waiter. He hoped Carol would read his desire to change the subject. ‘You want another beer?’
‘Why not? When are you going down to Worcester?’
‘Probably tomorrow or the day after. I need to talk to DI Patterson again in the morning, once I’ve taken another pass through the stuff he sent me. I don’t imagine I’ll be gone for more than a couple of days. Nobody’s got any budget for luxuries like me any more,’ he added drily.
