He had planned to go to the airport and get on whatever plane would take him west, or, hell, east, it didn’t make much difference. He was on the wrong side of the world and both directions led home. A concierge, or whatever they called them in Tokyo, stopped him in the lobby of the hotel and told him there was a phone call for him, said it was from England, the daft bugger. Not England, Scotland. Challaid. Home.
Harold Sutherland stepped into the small office behind the front desk and closed the door on the young woman trying to follow him in. He was twenty-six and used to paying for what his charm couldn’t earn. He picked up the phone on the table.
“It’s Harold,” he said.
A couple of seconds’ delay and a voice said, “Harold? At last. I didn’t think that stupid girl had understood me. Don’t go to the airport yet, we’re getting a plane especially for you and it’ll be ready in a couple of hours. How are you?”
The voice sounded far away but it was recognizable and the lack of true concern was familiar. It was Rodrick Sutherland, a first cousin and managing executive of the bank whose primary role was to put out any fires that threatened to scorch the family business. He was forty-four, a cold and unpleasant person, but he was ruthlessly effective in a crisis.
“I’m okay,” Harold said, knowing Rodrick wouldn’t care about the lie. “What about Beathan?”
Another delay. “Beathan? They’ll keep the body for a few days but we already have people on that. The report will say what it needs to say and we’ll get the body back here for burial. Take longer to bury than is traditional but nothing we can do about that. No point you staying with it.”
“Shit, the meetings with Marutake.”
“Forget about that, the chairman called them an hour ago to explain everything. What time is it where you are? They told me your plane would be ready at four o’clock.”
“Ten past one.”
“Get there with time to spare. It’ll just be you on board.”
They had left the airport two days before and been chauffeur-driven to the hotel. Harold and Beathan Sutherland, the two brightest young stars of the family bank, brothers here to do business with a long-standing financial partner. It was the first time they had been sent abroad alone, just twenty-six and twenty-five. They had both been determined to enjoy the trip. On the first night they went out into the city and got lost among neon and noise, drinking it in, walking into strange-looking bars and spending what might have been a lot or a little, they had no idea or care. They went into a place they thought was a bar and turned out to be a small seafood restaurant so they ate and had a tortuous conversation with a waiter about where to find one of the hostess clubs they’d heard so much innuendo about.
By the time they reached the place they were sure the taxi driver had ripped them off but didn’t care much. They were here to have fun and had more than enough money to cover the cost of someone else’s enterprise. The club turned out to be a real disappointment, ear-clawing music and flailing attempts at polite conversation with pretty girls who weren’t interested in anything more. They did meet a man there who assured them he could provide what they really wanted, and an hour later they were back in the two-bedroom suite on the top floor in the center of Tokyo with a young woman each.
“Do you think this is how they all do foreign trips?” Beathan asked his older brother.
“Probably. I mean, they’re almost human, most of them. Even chairman grump must want to have fun now and again.”
Beathan shook his head. “Nah, fun would kill that old bastard, he’s allergic.”
* * *
The plane taking him home was luxury, but Harold barely glanced at it. The crew, Japanese, seemed to know enough to leave him alone, telling him only what food and drink was available and how quickly they would be taking off. If it was a commercial plane this one could have held over a hundred people, but instead had fewer than twenty seats. Harold sat and stared out of the window as he thought about the conversation they had had the previous morning. Thought about the letter in his pocket. He remained stony-faced.
After the girls had gone they had sat at the table in the kitchen of the suite having breakfast. Brothers with all of life’s gifts, far from the constraints of home.
“Daisy wants to have another baby,” Beathan said, speaking of his wife.
Harold felt his brother had married much too soon, rushed into something he had convinced himself couldn’t wait. Daisy was a striking young woman who occasionally bordered on terrifying and she had already produced one son, Simon, to guarantee their branch of the family would carry on beyond them.
“You don’t want another one?”
“I didn’t really want the first one,” Beathan admitted for the first time.
It wasn’t a surprise to hear and Harold didn’t react. “Tell her you’re not ready for another one yet, put her off, not like she can get the job done without you. I mean, she can, but she gets kicked off the gravy train if she does.”
“It should be a good thing, though,” Beathan said with that familiar faraway look. “I should want it but I don’t. That’s not right.”
“Jesus, Beathan, you’re a young man, that’s why you don’t want it yet. Don’t worry, you’re young and she’s younger so you have plenty of time to wait and pick your moment. Your moment, not hers.”
Harold didn’t eat until they were more than halfway home. As he did his mind went back to that morning, what he had seen. They’d had a first meeting with the people from Marutake Financial Group that day, an introductory thing that had lasted a couple of hours. Then some sightseeing for which Marutake provided a cheerful guide and an expensive dinner with a couple of executives. They were both in good spirits when they got back to the hotel and went to bed.
Harold had woken with a start at six o’clock in the morning. He knew. Some instinct deep inside him screamed that something was wrong and told him to get out of bed and check. He grabbed his glasses and went out of the room, across the corridor to Beathan’s door, knocking on it. No answer. He tried the handle and the door wasn’t locked, Harold realized later, because his brother wanted to make this as easy for him as possible. Beathan was lying on the bed, on his back, head propped up on the pillows. His eyes were shut and when Harold spoke his words seemed impossibly loud in the room. Beathan didn’t stir. He shook him and there was no response. His brother was dead.
Harold knew what had happened before he switched the light on. Beathan must have brought the bottle of pills with him because he hadn’t had the chance to go out and get them here. A look at the label confirmed they had come from a pharmacy in Cnocaid. There was a note on the table opposite the foot of the bed. Harold read it, folded it carefully and kept it on him at all times thereafter.
He had gone back to his room and dressed, putting the letter in his pocket, and everything else he did had been an automatic reaction. He knew what the family would want him to do, the protection he had to provide. They would all say it was to safeguard Beathan’s name, and his wife and child, from the unpleasant headlines that the truth might provide. Harold knew the first priority of any Sutherland was to protect the bank. The family had always been careful to hide the struggles some of its members had.
At Challaid International Airport he stepped off the plane and into a car waiting on the tarmac. He knew the driver worked for the chairman, Nathair Sutherland, their great-uncle and the man who ran the bank and so ran the family. The driver said nothing as they went down around the loch and up the west side to Barton, stopping at Cruinn Pier where a boat took Harold across to Eilean Seud. He felt as though he hadn’t slept for days and he was hungry again, but he had to do this. He had to show he had the mental strength to perform a horrifying task. The family would be judging.
There were fewer than he expected in the high-ceilinged drawing room of the chairman’s mansion. Nathair and his wife, newly widowed Daisy, Harold’s mother Marcail, and Rodrick, who had organized his return.
“Harold,” the chairman said, “sit down. You look ready to drop.”
That was, he knew, an invitation to talk, to tell them everything that had happened, so he did. He omitted nothing but the girls they had picked up, telling anything that might be relevant. He told of the bottle of pills, the few he had picked off the sheets and put back in the bottle, the bottle now in his bag, unseen by anyone else. Rodrick would make sure the cause of death was put down as natural causes, the family untouched by the shame of suicide. He took the note from his pocket.
“It was lying on the table in his room. There was no envelope, so I’ve read it,” he said, passing it to the chairman.
Nathair didn’t even glance at it, passing it instead to Daisy who read it quickly. She looked as if she had just stopped crying and was determined never to start again. When she was finished she passed the note back to the chairman.
I have to do this. It’s not that I want to, this isn’t a choice, it’s something forced on me. I understand the burden this will place on the family, especially Daisy and Simon who will have to carry this for the rest of their lives, and if there was another way I would take it. I have always, deep in my heart, known that father’s death was what he wanted, and I think I understand why he chose it, because there were no other options. He was right. I’m sorry.
Beathan Sutherland.