The Family Remains(76)

Her father was in the garden shed, clearing it out entirely as he would no longer have a garden when he left this place. She gathered the papers together and headed out. ‘Dad?’ She tapped lightly on the wall of the shed.

He turned and beamed at her. ‘Yes, darling!’

‘Erm, can I talk to you? About something sensitive?’

‘Oh.’ Her father put down a box of tomato seedlings held in his hands. ‘Yes. Of course.’

He followed her towards the garden table and they sat opposite each other.

‘Dad,’ she said. ‘What is PMX?’

‘PMX? That’s what ladies get? Isn’t it?’ He flushed as he said this, as if he were eight years old and being asked in front of his class.

‘No. No, that’s PMS. PMX. It’s on your bank statements. Look.’ She spread the statements out on the table between them. ‘It’s a company and you’ve paid them six hundred thousand pounds over the past three months.’

‘What? No. Surely not?’ He slipped on his reading glasses and cleared his throat. Then he scanned the bank statements blankly before tapping them with two fingers and removing his reading glasses and saying, ‘Ah, yes. Just some investments. My financial adviser told me to put my cash there. Make it grow.’

‘But, Dad, you’ve put all your cash there. I mean, you only have twelve grand left.’

‘Well, yes. In that account. But I have more money in other accounts. And obviously a whole lot more once this house is sold.’

‘Dad, that’s so much money! Who are these people? What’s the name of the company? So I can check them over?’

‘Oh, I can’t remember.’

‘Well, can you give me the number for your financial adviser so I can speak to him and find out more about them, because I’m worried that this might be something dodgy. These don’t look like investments, Dad, they look like straight-out payments. And why would you leave yourself with so little cash?’

‘I told you, I have other accounts.’

‘Where? Please, Dad, show me the other accounts. I want to see them. Do you have an app? On your phone?’

‘Well, yes—’

‘Can you get into it, please, and show me?’

‘Well, not now. No, darling.’

‘Please, Dad, please. I want to make sure you’re all right. I want to make sure that nobody’s taking advantage of you. Let me see.’

Her father’s head collapsed into his chest and then he looked up at her and sighed and he said, ‘I have a little. I have enough. Don’t worry about me.’

‘I am worried about you! You’re thin and you’re not yourself. You’re doing things that are out of character. Please just let me talk to your financial adviser. Let me check this out with him. Because I’m pretty sure that there’s no IFA in the world who would advise you to put virtually every penny you have into investments. Please, Dad, let me talk to him.’

‘No, darling, I don’t want you to do that.’ His voice had become hard. ‘I want you to … to … back off. I really do. Just back off. Please.’

And then her father, her lovely soft father who had never once raised his voice to her in all of her thirty-four years, forced back his chair and strode angrily away from her without a backward glance.

Rachel ran back into her father’s office. She hunted through his desk until she found his Rolodex and then she spun it round until she got to a name she found familiar. Fred Kleinberg. She remembered her father talking about him in the past. She called him and she asked him about her father, about a company called PMX who had taken receipt of ￡600,000 of her father’s money since April and, as she had so very strongly suspected, Fred Kleinberg knew nothing about it.

‘I have not spoken to your father for a couple of years,’ he said.

‘Do you think it’s possible that he found a new adviser, maybe?’

‘It’s possible. Yes. But I would be surprised. Your father, he never really wanted to invest. Especially once he stopped earning an income. He wanted to keep his money safe, he said, safe where he could see it. I started him a little pension, but that’s as far as it went. I’m really sorry, Rachel. I truly hope you find out what’s going on.’

Rachel thanked him and hung up. And then she called Jonno.





53




June 2019


Samuel


Donal’s face appears framed within my doorway, his hand over the receiver of his phone. ‘Boss. I have a woman on the line. Claims she has something for you on the Birdie case?’

My gut fills with joy. This – I can feel it – this is it. This is not a case that has brought about the usual rash of crazies and fantasists and time-wasters. Cold cases don’t tend to attract these types. The crazies and the time-wasters like to dance in the burning flames of the moment, when things are fresh and hot and volatile, when every second counts. So this call will mean something, I just know it.

‘Put her through please.’

I clear my throat and pick up a pencil. ‘Good morning. This is Detective Inspector Samuel Owusu. How can I help you?’

‘Oh, good morning, my name is Cath Manwaring. I’m calling from near Cowbridge. In Wales. It’s about the body you found. The young woman from the pop band. Birdie …?’ I can hear paper rustling as she consults her notes.