‘He’s visited Michael on a couple of occasions. On the third, he was ejected after making a scene about his right to see his friend whenever he wanted without visiting hours.’
‘Quoting the anarchist bible?’
‘According to the person I spoke to,’ Bridget said, ‘he made a fool of himself, spoke about the upcoming revolution when he and his people would take over, and he would remember those who had removed him from the building.’
‘If he took Wilde’s tests, what do you reckon?’ Isaac said.
‘He’d pass.’
***
Leonard Dundas, almost as old as Gilbert Lawrence, knew that his days as a solicitor were numbered, even his days on earth. Not a spiritual man, he could only reflect on what he had achieved. The son of a minor civil servant, a man who punched the time clock at work every morning, a newspaper under his arm. And then at the end of the day, he punched out and took the bus to his council house in a nondescript suburb, with a non-descript wife, only to sit by the radio of an evening smoking his pipe.
Dundas remembered it only too well: the sheer drudgery, the infinite boredom of a father who every year took his two-week holiday and booked into the same boarding house in the same seaside resort. And there would be the man with his wife and children, strolling up and down the promenade, sitting on the beach in rented deck chairs, and then, for a treat, fish and chips.
The one positive, Leonard Dundas realised as he sat at his desk, that his father had been a disciplined man, a trait inherited by the son. His father was a creature of circumstance, the son was as well, but he had had the benefit of an education and the chance to see some of the world. His mind was not closed to the opportunities, and a chance encounter with a young man about town by the name of Gilbert Lawrence had been opportune for both of them. To Dundas, Gilbert was a friend, as was his wife, but the children, Caroline and Ralph, were of little consequence.
He judged Caroline to be competent, although financially not astute. Ralph had been the bane of Gilbert’s life, and neither father nor son had much in common apart from a mutual disdain for each other, not like his daughter, Jill. To Leonard, his daughter was a person of great worth, even to Gilbert who had expressed his admiration for her. And now, Leonard knew, as he sat calmly in an attempt to slow the shaking of his hand, to ease the aching in his back and the throbbing in his chest, he had complete confidence that Jill would maintain Gilbert’s legacy, and his as well.
‘What is it, Father?’ Jill said as she came into his office. She had seen the glazed look in the man’s eyes, and him sitting motionless, almost like a statue. She also knew that he had pushed himself too hard in the last month securing Gilbert Lawrence’s fortune, making sure that the loose ends were tied up, and that his daughter had signing rights to all the accounts around the world, and that her name had been given on any proxies needed.
‘I’ve done what I can,’ Dundas said. And with that, his head fell forward. Ten minutes later, Leonard Dundas was in the back of an ambulance and on the way to the hospital, a mere formality, as he had been declared dead by the medic who had arrived with the ambulance.
The first that Homicide heard was a phone call from Caroline Dickson. ‘Leonard Dundas has suffered a heart attack. He’s dead,’ she said. It had been just five minutes after he had left for the hospital that she had arrived at his office for another of the scheduled meetings.
Bridget contacted the hospital to confirm it and then informed Pathology that they had another body to check.
***
With Leonard Dundas dead, the scheduled meeting at his office was cancelled indefinitely. Not that either the man’s death or deferring the meeting concerned Caroline. To her, he had been the devil incarnate, the man who had engineered himself into her father’s confidence and then stolen everything he could lay his hands on. She knew how Dundas and his daughter lived, very well in fact. A house in town, better than hers, and a place in the country.
With the senior Dundas out of the way, Caroline met with Ralph and Desmond to discuss the way forward. Desmond had to admit that his brother-in-law had changed. No more the flamboyance, the endless patter of the ‘what I can do for you’ and ‘to our mutual benefit’ jargon that he was usually only too keen to roll out.
‘It’s Michael,’ Ralph said. ‘He’s getting out in a few days.’
‘A problem?’ Desmond said.
‘You know it is. He needs somewhere to stay, and I don’t think that he and I should share, do you?’
‘Not here, if that’s what you are suggesting.’
‘We need Michael the way he is now. I went and saw him a couple of days ago. He’s straightened himself out, and he’s sure got my gift of the gab. He was charming one of the young nurses. I wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them haven’t got a thing going on when the lights are low.’
‘I thought there were rules about fraternising with the patients,’ Caroline said.
‘It’s not a hospital. More like a hotel with rules, that’s all. Good luck to him if he is. She was a cracker to look at.’
‘Has he said that he wants to stay with you?’
‘It’s either me or he’ll be back with Helmsley. He was back out there again, and this time they let him in.’
‘Why?’
‘He played their game, apologised for his previous outburst. Even gave them
