‘Molly Dempster, do you think she knows more than she’s saying?’
‘I would have thought so.’
***
Ralph realised that with his sister he had to play it by the book. With her, he would act honourably, but he still had the issue with Gary Frost and that little man who appeared at regular intervals. If he was to assist his sister, he needed Frost off his back. He needed to meet with the man.
Ralph had spent most of his adult life in the shadows between legal and illegal, and it wasn’t the first time that someone had been after him. He’d seen the man watching him outside the restaurant where he had met Caroline, and then at the bank, and the last time in the foyer of the hotel where he was now staying.
‘I’m not about to take a runner,’ Ralph said as he sat down next to Ted Samson on the seat in the hotel foyer.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Samson said.
‘Tell Frost I want to meet with him in public. I don’t fancy my chances with his heavies.’
‘When, where?’
‘Here, two this afternoon. I could do with his help.’
With that, the little man walked out of the front door of the hotel and melded into the crowd outside. Ralph walked up to the bar and ordered a whisky. He knew he was taking a risk, but he and Caroline needed help. They needed to understand what Dundas was up to, and they needed to follow up on the trail of deception he had created.
Caroline had attended one of the meetings with Dundas; her voting rights were not needed. All Dundas and his daughter had spoken of were taxation liabilities for the current year, rental increases, and maintenance issues. It had been a smokescreen to confuse her, Caroline knew that, with superfluous nonsense, and yet the full extent of her father’s assets still eluded her.
She had signed at the end of the will reading, agreed to take no further action to contest it. It had to be Ralph who would contest the will, and he had little credibility. It was a narrow line that they walked, Caroline and him. It was all or nothing. The thought of her mother propped up in her bed still gave her occasional sleepless nights.
***
Leonard Dundas knew the truth, having spent more time with the reclusive man than anyone else, and now Ralph was threatening to cause trouble.
‘Father, we cannot let this collapse. All that you have built up, gone in an instant,’ Jill Dundas said.
‘How can it? You know the subterfuge that we have created, the false trails, the hidden bank accounts.’
‘Admittedly it will be difficult, and we are open to criminal investigation.’
‘We are open to legal challenges, that is all. It will take them more than my lifetime, probably more than yours, to get to the truth, and then it will only be what we allow them to see.’
‘Caroline Dickson?’
‘We’ll ensure she has the sweeteners that we have agreed on. She’ll not want for money.’
‘Ralph?’
‘An idiot, dangerous though. The man’s savvier than his sister. He could cause us trouble.’
‘Are you suggesting…?’
‘Not yet. We have enough to deal with at this time,’ Leonard said. He knew that he had schooled his daughter well. Gilbert Lawrence may well have made a fortune, but that did not mean that it belonged to his offspring. It was a dog-eat-dog world, and he, Leonard, had been tutored by the best, by Gilbert Lawrence. When he had been at his peak he had been unassailable, and many had fallen foul of him, forced to sell their properties below their true value.
Sometimes it had been Gilbert who had created the situation, sometimes it was the economy, but the man had profited at the expense of others, not caring as to their fate. Why should he, Leonard Dundas, a man who had put up with that dishevelled man of few words for the last thirty years, care if the man’s children were deprived of their inheritance? Caroline, he knew he could deal with. Ralph, he was not so sure. He would wait and see, but not for too long.
Chapter 12
Gary Frost did not appreciate being summoned to a meeting by someone he considered of little worth. ‘Lawrence, what is it?’ he said disparagingly once the two men were seated in chairs close to the hotel bar.
‘I believe the situation has changed, don’t you?’ Ralph said. ‘It is no longer me that needs you, it is you that needs me.’ Caroline would not approve of what he was doing, but then she was naïve in so many ways. Too many years of affluence had weakened her ability to see what they were up against.
‘I don’t see how,’ Frost said.
‘The money I owe you is unimportant,’ Ralph said with bravado. It was a habitual error on his part that had got him into trouble on a few occasions. He should have remembered Spain and what had happened there. But there he had been giving the spiel about how investing in Spain was low-risk, an easy way to secure a financial nest egg at a discount price, not knowing that the couple attentively listening to his advice were English civil servants, and not only that, from the inland revenue. Bob and Deidre Marshall, a couple in their forties, had considered buying a small house in Spain, not far from Barcelona. Deidre had the money from a favourite aunt who had just died, and they had researched the subject thoroughly. They understood the legal aspects of a foreign purchase, the taxation implications, and above all, the real cost, not what the man with the smooth tongue was telling them.
It was they who had reported Ralph and his partner to the English authorities,
