A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(169)

“What utter nonsense,” Margaret scoffed. “That absolutely flies in the face of everything that...You know i t does, Ruth. You damn well know it.” She stopped as if to steady herself and to marshal her thoughts, as if she believed there was something she could actually base a case upon, one that would force change upon a circumstance that was fixed in concrete.

“Ruth,” she said with an obvious effort at calm, “the whole point of building a life is to give your children more than you yourself had. It’s not to place them in the same position you had to struggle up from. Why would anyone try to have a future better than his present if he knew it was all to be for nothing?”

“It’s not for nothing. It’s learning. It’s growing. It’s facing challenges and getting through them. Guy believed it builds character to build your own life. He did that and was the better man for it. And that’s what he wanted for his children. He didn’t want them to be in a position where they would never have to work again. He didn’t want them to contend with the temptation to do nothing with their lives.”

“Ah. But that didn’t apply to the other two. It’s fine to tempt them, because for some reason they aren’t supposed to struggle. Is that it?”

“JoAnna’s girls are in the same position that Adrian’s in.”

“I’m not talking about Guy’s daughters, and you know it,” Margaret said. “I’m talking about the other two. Fielder and Moullin. Considering their circumstances, they’re being left a fortune. Each of them. What’ve you to say about that?”

“They’re special cases. They’re different. They haven’t had the advantages—”

“Oh no. They haven’t. But they’re snatching at them now, aren’t they, Ruthie?” Margaret laughed and walked over to the open wardrobe. She fingered a pile of the cashmere sweaters Guy favoured in lieu of shirts and ties.

“They were special to him,” Ruth said. “Foster grandchildren, I suppose you could call them. He was something of a mentor to them and they were—”

“Little thieves,” Margaret said. “But let’s make sure they have their rewards despite their sticky fingers.”

Ruth frowned. “Thieves? What’re you talking about?”

“This: I caught Guy’s protégé—or shall I continue to think of him as his grandchild, Ruth?—stealing from this house. Yesterday morning, this was. In the kitchen.”

“Paul was probably hungry. Valerie sometimes feeds him. He’ll have taken a biscuit.”

“And shoved it into his rucksack? And set his mongrel on me when I tried to see what he’d squirreled away? You go ahead and let him walk off with the silver, Ruth. Or one of Guy’s little antiques. Or a piece of jewellery. Or whatever the hell it was that he had. He ran off when he saw us—Adrian and I—and if you don’t think he’s guilty of something, then you might ask him why he grabbed that rucksack and fought us both when we tried to get it away.”

“I don’t believe you,” Ruth said. “Paul wouldn’t take a thing from us.”

“Wouldn’t he? Then I suggest we ask the police to have a rummage round his rucksack themselves.”

Margaret walked to the bedside table and picked up the telephone receiver. She held it provocatively to her sister-in-law. “Shall I ring them or will you do it, Ruth? If that boy’s innocent, he’s got nothing to fear.”

Guy Brouard’s bank was in Le Pollet, a narrow extension of the High Street that paralleled the lower North Esplanade. A relatively short thoroughfare largely cast in shadow, it was nonetheless faced on either side with buildings that spanned nearly three hundred years. It served as a reminder of the changeable nature of towns everywhere: A former grand townhouse of the eighteenth century—replete with dressed granite and quoined corners—had been refashioned during the twentieth century into a hotel while nearby a pair of nineteenth-century houses of random stone now served as clothing shops. The curved glass windows of Edwardian shop fronts so short a distance from the townhouse spoke of the life of trade that had burgeoned in this area in the days preceding World War I, while behind them loomed a completely modern extension to a London financial institution.

The bank that Le Gallez and St. James were seeking stood at the end of Le Pollet, not far from a taxi rank that gave way to the quayside. They walked there in the company of DS Marsh of the Fraud Department, a youngish man with antiquated mutton-chop sideburns, who commented,

“Bit of overkill here, wouldn’t you say, sir?” to the DCI. Le Gallez responded acerbically. “Dick, I like to give ’em a reason to cooperate from the start. Saves time that way.”

“I’d say a call from the FIS’d do that, sir,” Marsh pointed out.

“Hedging my bets is a habit, lad. And I’m not a man to ignore my habits. Financial Intelligence might loosen their tongues, to be sure. But a visit from Fraud...? That’ll loosen their bowels.”

DS Marsh smiled and rolled his eyes. He said, “You blokes in Homicide don’t get enough entertainment.”

“We take it where we can find it, Dick.” He drew open the heavy glass door of the bank and ushered St. James inside.

The managing director was a man called Robilliard, and as it turned out, Le Gallez was already well known to him. When they walked into his office, the managing director rose from his chair, said, “Louis, how are you?” and extended his hand to the DCI. He went on with “We’ve missed you at football. How’s the ankle?”