Victoria Squire was out supermarket shopping when the two detectives arrived. This gave Ottey an immediate feeling of guilt as she remembered she hadn’t emailed Cherish, her mother, with the supermarket shop for the week, as she’d promised. Charlotte opened the door and let them into the front room, to speak to Torquil. She then disappeared into the kitchen to make them all tea; ‘If there’s any milk, that is. Sebastian always finishes it and not only doesn’t replace it, but neglects to tell anyone there isn’t any left. It’s so bloody annoying.’
Torquil was sitting in the front room. He didn’t seem to be doing anything. Neither the Roberts radio nor the television were on. There was a copy of The Times unopened on a side table next to his chair. He looked like he was simply existing, for no other reason than that his breathing made it so. There was no will, no purpose.
‘Hello, Torquil, DS Ottey and Cross,’ she began, out of habit.
‘DI Ottey,’ Cross quickly corrected her.
The old man conjured up an empty smile.
‘We went to see Denholm Simpson,’ Cross informed him. Torquil seemed taken aback by this.
‘Really? Why?’
‘We’re talking to anyone with any connection to you and Ed,’ explained Ottey.
‘But he didn’t have any,’ Torquil objected.
‘Well, not any more, admittedly. But he very much did in the past,’ she went on.
‘That was so long ago,’ he pointed out.
‘You certainly don’t get that impression when you talk to him,’ she replied.
‘Still bitter?’ he asked unnecessarily.
‘Why didn’t you bring him and the business as a whole over to Berkeley Square?’ asked Cross.
‘The partnership, such as it was, well, more like a marriage of convenience to be honest, had run its course by then,’ the old man answered.
‘Mr Simpson doesn’t seem to think so,’ replied Cross.
Torquil thought about this for a moment and then seemed to answer a question he hadn’t been asked but had thought about a lot.
‘He’s not a bookseller. Never was. He’s an opportunist. Buying the bookshop was just an opportunity to get out of a life he’d already started to regret. Yes, he’d been interested in books, but not really. It wasn’t his calling.’
‘Was it yours?’ asked Cross.
‘Not at the beginning. But it became so, yes. It’s the only way you can be a success at it.’
‘Denholm Simpson is still pretty resentful about you and the way things ended. Angry even,’ said Ottey.
‘Really?’ he said. ‘I suppose I could’ve handled it a little better. But I’ve never been one for confrontation.’
‘Is that why you took away half of the stock overnight?’ asked Cross.
‘Not my finest moment. We’d always been quite close until that point.’
‘He was Ed’s godfather,’ Cross observed.
‘That’s right, and I’m Nigel’s godfather. Not that either of us has been much use. Hardly surprising, I suppose, in the circumstances.’
‘Nigel?’ asked Ottey.
‘Denholm and Eliza’s boy. Only child. Used to be best friends with Ed. They went to nursery together,’ he said.
‘And school?’ asked Ottey.
‘No, they went to separate schools when they were older. They’re almost identical in age. We both met our wives when we came to Bristol,’ he said with a glint of warm nostalgia in his eyes. As if thinking of better, easier times.
‘Is Eliza still alive?’ asked Ottey.
‘No, neither of them are. They were sisters.’ He laughed as if that fact still amused him.
‘Really?’ asked Ottey.
‘Yes, my Sylvie and Eliza. Bristol girls born and bred.’ He smiled again.
‘Did that make the dissolution of the business even more difficult?’ asked Cross.
‘Well, what do you think? It’s the one thing, the main thing, I regret about the whole affair,’ he said ruefully.
‘What?’ asked Cross.
‘Us, driving those two apart. They were so close before we appeared on the scene. Inseparable even. Sylvie was much younger than me. Denny used to joke that I’d only got to go out with her because of him and Eliza. That it happened only because the four of us always went out to the pictures or dinner together. I think he was probably right.’
‘How did they die?’ asked Ottey.
‘Breast cancer. Both of them. Within a couple of years of each other. Eliza first, she was the younger of the two as well. Sylvie went to her funeral…’ At this the old man started to weep quietly. Ottey gave him time to recover, then started again.
‘What drove them apart?’ she asked.
‘We did. Denny and I. He and Eliza came to resent our life,’ he said.
‘A life given to you by Cynthia Sumner,’ Cross suggested.
‘Yes and no. I mean, I’ve worked really hard to get the shop where it is. And Ed did too. But our success wasn’t automatic. That wasn’t given to us. We can stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the big establishments in London,’ he said. ‘She wanted me to have the house and expand the business. She didn’t want Denny involved. I told him that.’
‘Was it a condition of the will?’ asked Cross.
‘No,’ came the quiet reply.
‘So you didn’t have to abide by it.’
‘I didn’t, no. But Cynthia was my client, not Denny’s. He had nothing to do with her. Only met her when she came into the shop to see me. I cultivated her as a client. We even went on purchasing trips together over in Ireland and Europe,’ he pointed out.
‘Just the two of you?’ asked Ottey.
‘She was in her late seventies, Sergeant, before you leap to any conclusions. There was nothing going on there, if you know what I mean,’ he said defensively.
‘I don’t,’ replied Cross.
‘Romantically.’ Torquil spelled it out.
‘So, you saw an opportunity and took it?’ suggested Ottey.
‘There was more to it than that.’
‘Did you know she was going to leave you the house and her library?’ asked Cross.
‘I did not. She’d often asked my opinion of what she should do with it. I offered no opinion on the house, obviously, but said I would be happy to catalogue and sell the library at auction and divest the proceeds to a charity, or wherever she wanted her money to go.’
‘So it must’ve come as a shock,’ said Ottey.
‘It was, yes. I had no idea. Truly,’ he replied.
‘What made you decide to go it alone?’ Ottey asked.
‘We’d had a tough patch in the eighties. Very tough. It was really my side of the business, rare and antiquarian, that kept us afloat. My expertise. I’d felt for some time that the partnership had become too one-sided, and I began to resent it a little,’ he explained.
‘Had you discussed it with Denholm?’ asked Cross.
‘Oh yes, frequently. The atmosphere at the shop was terrible, for both of us. It seemed an opportune moment when Cynthia’s legacy fell into my lap,’ he said. Cross noticed him look to the ground. He was holding something back.
‘Had something else happened with your business partner to prompt you to go your separate ways?’ Cross pushed. The ensuing pause indicated that Cross’s observation might have something to it.
‘As you probably know, Denny worked as a graphic artist and occasional signwriter before we went into business. No call for the latter these days and demand was wearing thin even then. Then his father died, rather unexpectedly. Well, you know the rest. It’s true that his money enabled us to set up the business and I don’t deny that. Denny still owned the freehold. I left him with half of the stock, some of which I considered to be mine – rare, modern first editions, that kind of thing…’ He faltered.
‘What happened to that stock?’ Cross asked, suspecting this might pertinent.
‘Do you know much about the book trade, Sergeant?’
‘I do not,’ Cross replied. He’d learned that concealing any knowledge he might have on certain subjects was often more conducive to interviewees not leaving anything out, in case they felt it was too obvious for someone who had knowledge, however paltry. Relevant minutiae that for him was often the unobvious key to a case, might therefore be left unmentioned.
‘The price and value of rare books can vary enormously, even if the two books in question are the same edition. Their condition is important, obviously. The presence of a perfect dust cover, for example, can all add to value. A signed edition can also add value. An edition with a personal inscription from one author to another famous figure can make the value rise enormously. As soon as he realised this, Denny started forging inscriptions in some of our stock and sending them out to auction, or selling them privately using my client list. I was furious. These were clients I had cultivated over years. Who trusted me. Some were even friends. I confronted him and he said he’d stopped. He didn’t use my stock any more because he knew I’d notice. He started going on trips to London. I found out because I had many more contacts in the London book trade than he did. He was now forging Graham Greene, Virginia Woolf, Dickens.’
‘Were you unaware of this? After you confronted him did you think he’d stopped?’ asked Cross.
‘Absolutely. It was my reputation at stake. Not just his. But after we parted company he started again, forging Auden, T.S. Eliot, Winston Churchill. But he came unstuck. A dealer friend of mine had sold him a first edition of Orwell’s 1984. Good condition, great dust cover, but with a small annotation from the original owner who had come across a typo, a comma in the wrong place, I think it was. This had passed Denny by, and he duly inscribed the book from Orwell to Aldous Huxley. This made it extremely rare as Orwell died shortly after, in January 1950. The interest at auction was understandably huge. But unfortunately for Denny it was bought at auction by the same dealer who had sold it to him only a few months before. When he examined it, he realised it was fake and called the police,’ Torquil explained.
‘He didn’t call you?’ asked Cross.
‘No. He knew we were no longer in business together. So why would he? We did discuss it sometime later. I told him he’d done the right thing. Honesty and trust are absolute pillars of our trade. Once that has gone, everything has gone.’
‘What happened to Denholm?’ asked Cross.
‘He was arrested. The police found dozens of autographed books ready for sale and several exercise books filled with practice signatures. He was sentenced to two years in prison for eight counts of forgery. His main market had become the US,’ he added.
‘How did they know that?’ asked Cross, always interested in the detail in case he could learn something from it.
‘He kept an inventory, for God’s sake! I mean, who does that if they’re defrauding people?’ he sighed.
‘What happened to the shop while he was inside?’ asked Ottey.
‘Eliza ran it. That’s when Sylvie encouraged me to try and buy it. To help out in a bad situation.’
‘That’s not the way he sees it,’ added Cross.
‘Oh no. The whole thing was a conspiracy on my part to put him out of business. He even went as far as to tell Eliza that it was me who informed on him.’
‘So that’s why you left? The forged inscriptions?’ asked Cross, trying to steer the conversation back to the original question.
‘Of course. Rumours had started when I first discovered what he was up to and put a stop to it. I was tarred with the same brush. For all people knew, I was involved. I’d worked for years to gain a good reputation. I wasn’t going to let him ruin it. In the end he paid the price. When he got out, his career in the rare-book trade was in tatters. He had to make do with being a run-of-the-mill second-hand bookseller.’
‘Grandpa, you sound like such a snob when you say that,’ said Charlotte who had appeared with a tray of tea and biscuits. Cross was happy to see that there was a strainer next to the teapot. This meant there was every chance of a decent cup of tea.
‘I didn’t mean to be. I’m sorry, I just find all of this so hard to accept,’ he replied. In that instant he shrank further back into the chair as if he’d just remembered why the two people opposite him were there. His son had been murdered. ‘It seems so unreal. I just want to go to bed and sleep. But when I do, I can’t. I just lie awake wondering how this has happened. If it has happened at all. But it has. It really has.’
‘Have you had any dealings with Denholm Simpson recently?’ asked Cross.
‘No, we haven’t spoken since the trial.’
‘Did you go?’ asked Ottey.
‘I was summoned,’ he replied.
‘As a character witness?’ suggested Ottey.
‘No.’ He paused. ‘As a witness for the prosecution. Needless to say Denholm perceived it as the final betrayal,’ he said ruefully.
‘Understandably,’ said Cross.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Torquil spluttered indignantly.
‘He was just observing how it might have seemed from Denholm’s point of view,’ Ottey interjected.
‘He called the house yesterday,’ Charlotte commented.
‘Did your grandfather speak with him?’ asked Ottey.
‘I am still here,’ exclaimed Squire. ‘No, I did not. Victoria put him off. No doubt he’ll make an appearance at the funeral.’
‘Will that be welcome?’ asked Cross.
‘I have no opinion on the matter.’
‘Mr Squire, as absurd as this might seem, can you think of any reason why your ex-partner might have anything to do with your son’s death?’ Ottey asked.
‘What? No. He was his godfather. Why after all this time and why Ed?’ he asked. Two pertinent questions in Cross’s opinion.
‘Had Ed been in touch with him or vice versa?’ asked Ottey.
‘Not as far as I know,’ he answered.
The arrival of Victoria and her brother Ian was announced by the rustle of carrier bags in the kitchen. They had come through the back door. When they appeared in the living room Victoria looked put out at the police officers’ presence. This wasn’t, by any means, an unusual reaction for them to experience. But it was normally on the faces of suspects they had come to interview. Not the relative of the deceased, whose killer they were trying to find.
‘Everything all right?’ she asked, with no interest in the answer. She was simply making a statement that their presence there, without her knowledge, was a surprise, and not a welcome one at that. Cross thought it an odd phrasing. Things were patently not all right. Her husband had been murdered, hence their presence in the house. But he resisted the impulse to say so.
‘We’ve been talking about Denholm Simpson,’ Ottey replied.
‘Uncle Denny? What’s he done now?’ she asked. It was odd to hear him referred to as such after what Torquil had said. But of course it was factually correct. ‘No, you can’t think…’
‘We’re simply investigating, Mrs Squire. We don’t as yet think anything. When we do, I can assure you, you will be among the first to know,’ said Cross, before going on, ‘“Uncle”, are you in touch with him?’
‘No,’ she said, after a momentary glance at Torquil. ‘No, of course not. Too much bad blood there, I’m afraid.’
‘Was your husband?’ asked Cross.
‘No. Why would he be?’ she asked.
‘Well, two booksellers in the same city, less than a mile from each other. It wouldn’t be unusual,’ Cross pointed out.
‘They were hardly the same kinds of bookseller,’ she replied. ‘Even so, I don’t think Ed had been in touch.’
The detectives went to leave. When Cross got to the door of the living room he turned, looked back and asked Torquil, ‘What did Mr Simpson mean when he talked about Ed’s recent troubles?’ he asked.
‘I have no idea,’ replied Torquil.
‘He alluded to them, but when we asked him to elaborate he wouldn’t and told us to speak to you,’ Cross went on.
‘He’s just making trouble, Sergeant. Even at a time like this. He always was a mischief maker. Isn’t that right, Pa?’ Victoria said. But her father-in-law wasn’t listening. His mind was somewhere else. Completely.
*
‘She was lying,’ said Ottey as they walked to her car parked in the street.
‘I was wondering about that,’ said Cross. ‘Interesting you confirm it.’
*
The day ended with Ottey driving Cross to the BRI and dropping him off. He hadn’t asked her to do this and indeed it wasn’t something they ever discussed. It was one of those telepathic understandings close colleagues often have with each other where they are almost on autopilot, doing things without the need to speak. She didn’t go in and just left him be. Another, unspoken, tacit agreement.