There was quite a crowd at Raymond’s flat that Friday night. It was his birthday and, although George hadn’t advertised the fact, word had got around. Josie was present, unsurprisingly, as she’d driven him there. But then Michael Swift arrived with Alice. Josie was thrilled to see her, having not had a chance to talk to her in court, and wrapped her arms round her protégée, as she liked to think of her. Christine disappeared into the kitchen to make tea. George then tried to create some order in the living room by sending everyone else into the kitchen, as he needed to do Raymond’s speech therapy exercises with him.
George was taking his duties as speech and acuity therapist very seriously. He had purchased several mental mathematics books designed for ten-year-olds. The idea was to do various sums in your head, not write anything down, and time how long each batch of ten questions took to answer. You then competed against your own times when you returned to the same exercise. Raymond enjoyed this immensely and was enormously competitive with himself. There had, though, between a dispute between father and son as to how the timings should be calculated. This was because, much to his frustration, Raymond often had the answer in his head but was then unable to articulate it. He argued, in vain, that the time should be adjudged at the moment he thought of the answer. But his son turned out to be quite the hard taskmaster. Raymond had to say the answer out loud in an understandable, coherent manner and the timing would be taken from that. That was the whole point of the exercise.
Raymond’s other objection to his son’s totalitarian recovery regime, which he actually succeeded in getting by his son, was that he didn’t want to do speech therapy reading children’s books. It was dreary, boring and insulting.
‘I’m… not… a bloody… child,’ he told George, hesitantly. They settled on reading the Bristol Post every evening.
George’s attempts to keep his father’s unexpected and uninvited birthday guests, essentially his colleagues, out of the living room was finally thwarted by the arrival of Stephen bearing a huge birthday cake he’d baked the previous day. Thursday was his baking day in the parish. The priest was accompanied by one of his latest congregants who treated him like he was a living saint. This was Raymond’s cleaner, Marina. A Catholic, she had become besotted with the young priest the first time she met him. The effect of this was to miraculously restore her faith which had lain dormant for several years. She was now a devoted member of Stephen’s flock whose monthly highlight was what she called her ‘alone time’ with the priest in the confessional box. His cakes were enormously popular, and George probably wasn’t entirely mistaken in thinking that the large increase in Stephen’s congregation numbers had more to do with his salted caramel cupcakes than his wise words from the pulpit. His cake that night was an elaborate chocolate creation, swathed in roughly applied chocolate icing. A number of lit candles were swiftly applied, and Raymond managed to blow them all out. An enthusiastic chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ was sung by all, with one obvious exception. Something was bothering George and he couldn’t hold back when the cake was being cut and shared out. As Raymond was passed a plate, George swooped and, in one deft motion, confiscated it.
‘Too much sugar, cream and butter,’ he proclaimed parsimoniously to his crestfallen father, who groaned. Marina immediately took the plate back off George.
‘It’s vegan,’ she told him defiantly, as if she’d baked the cake herself.
‘That is not vegan,’ the detective informed her.
‘Of course it is, George. Do you honestly think I would bring a cake laden with saturated fats and dairy products to someone who has recently suffered a stroke?’ Stephen asked, offended.
‘Seriously? This is vegan?’ asked Josie, through a mouthful of cake.
‘It most definitely is,’ replied Stephen.
‘Bloody hell. You’d never know. Any chance of the recipe?’ she asked.
‘It could be arranged,’ replied the priest loftily, as Marina returned the slice of cake to Raymond, under George’s suspicious glare.
George answered the door about an hour later to find Xiao Bao, the proprietor of their favourite Chinese takeaway, standing there, holding two large heat protective bags.
‘Xiao Bao, what are you doing here?’ asked George.
‘Birthday dinner,’ he replied, holding up the bags.
‘But it’s not Wednesday,’ George informed him.
‘No, that was the day before yesterday. Was everything okay?’ he asked a little anxiously.
George had to think about this for a moment.
‘Yes, it was,’ he said finally.
‘Today is Friday and Raymond’s birthday, Christine called me,’ Xiao Bao informed him, edging past George, who showed no inclination to get out of the way. Once he’d decanted the food, which was bountiful, sufficient for at least eight people, Xiao Bao disappeared. Not before having a slice of cake, though, and adding to the chorus of disbelief that such a luxurious cake could be vegan.
They ate in silence, as if it was an innately understood house rule. Then Christine and Josie got out of their seats to clear up. Alice kicked Michael as discreetly as she could, which resulted in him yelling, ‘What are you kicking me for?’
‘Let us do this, Christine,’ she said, as Michael then realised what the shin-cracking social nudge had been about.
‘No!’ declared an outraged Marina. ‘It is my job.’ She said this with such territorial fervour that they all sat down and let her get on with it.
A few minutes later Josie and Alice topped up everyone’s wine glasses. The wine, George noticed, had mysteriously appeared shortly after the young couple’s arrival. The group sat in complete and awkward silence until Stephen broke the ice.
‘So, Raymond, your party – what would you like to talk about?’ he asked.
Raymond thought about this for a moment.
‘Ed,’ he finally muttered.
‘Ed?’ asked Stephen.
‘Squire,’ Raymond clarified.
‘It’s the case we’re working on,’ Josie explained.
‘I’m not sure that’s appropriate,’ said George, unhelpfully.
‘I’m not sure your opinion matters,’ replied Josie mischievously.
‘Yes! Such a great idea,’ exclaimed Alice, perhaps giving away how much she missed working with them all. She took centre stage. ‘So, let’s look at what we’ve got,’ she began.
‘We?’ asked George, confused. She didn’t work with them any longer.
‘A bookseller murdered. Dispatched with the nearest available murder weapon – a letter opener,’ she continued, ignoring him with the relish of an amateur Agatha Christie sleuth holding a post-dinner murder mystery game. ‘We have a witness, Persephone Hartwell, who saw the likely murderer, a man, running down the stairs. The victim’s father, Torquil, then discovers the body. George finds Persephone, who has locked herself in the bathroom upstairs.
‘Ed Squire’s business wasn’t doing particularly well, but the recent sale of a stolen copy of the fifteenth-century Columbus letters has made things only worse and, what is more, has possibly put him in the sights of his buyer, who has done the decent thing and returned the letters to the library it was stolen from. Meaning he possibly has two million reasons to kill Squire. The Russian buyer has subsequently slipped out of the country. Squire’s sale of a first edition Tolkien, inscribed by the great man himself, without sharing the proceeds with the family he acquired the book from, is no longer of interest to the enquiry as Torquil Squire then came to an agreeable resolution with them. Correct so far?’ she asked George. But didn’t wait for an answer.
‘The Squire family history is complicated. Going back a while, Torquil and his erstwhile business partner, Denholm Simpson, married a pair of sisters. When Torquil left the business through a bequest from a grateful customer, Simpson was furious. But that was a long time ago and perhaps irrelevant. However, the connection passes onto the next generation as Simpson’s son became a bookseller at a big firm in London who our victim was at loggerheads with over an alleged price-fixing scam in the rare book world. He attempted to assuage Ed Squire by securing a rare book for one of his best clients, the aforementioned Russian. This backfired, ended up with Simpson losing his job. Did he, now unemployed as he was, lose his rag and stab him several times in the chest? So Simpson needs another interview. And the murder weapon needs finding. Have I left anything out?’ she concluded.
‘Oh, I do miss you!’ said Josie, as Michael looked on with pride.
George had gone very quiet during Alice’s exposition.
‘Everything all right, George?’ Stephen asked.
‘The family,’ he replied. Alice had left out the family in her summation. This omission led him to realise that they, also, had ignored the family as potential suspects.
‘What makes you think they had anything to do with this?’ asked Ottey.
‘I didn’t say that. I was merely answering her question. Had she left anything out? And the answer is, yes. She left out the family. Victoria, her children, her niece and Sarah, the niece’s mother,’ he replied thoughtfully.
‘Well, for that matter, there is also Sam Taylor,’ Swift offered up. He then turned to Raymond. ‘He works in the bookshop.’
‘Correct,’ said Cross, who was beginning to remonstrate with himself silently for becoming too one-tracked and closed off in the investigation; something he always tried to avoid.
‘I got the sense that Taylor was a Torquil Squire man – an Ed man, not so much. Taken for granted, resentful of Persephone’s arrival and her incursion, as he saw it, of his territory,’ Michael continued.
Raymond was writing something down on a piece of paper. He handed it to his son.
‘No notes, Dad,’ said George, handing it back. ‘Say what it is you want to say.’
‘A lot… to… go on,’ Raymond muttered.
This was true and it was possibly something Cross had lost sight of in recent days. He’d been feeling a little deflated of late. It often happened. Surprisingly, Raymond’s impromptu birthday party and his father’s response had given him just the encouragement he needed.
They ended with a final rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’. Raymond was by now quite fatigued.
‘That was fun. I miss you guys,’ said Alice as they walked to their respective cars.
‘We miss you too,’ replied Ottey. ‘Particularly George.’
He was about to object.
‘Of course he does,’ said Alice, in such a way that he decided it was meant to be a joke. ‘Let’s do this again, soon,’ she pleaded. The very thought of which caused George to shudder.
‘I thought you did great at the trial,’ said Ottey as she and Alice hugged goodbye.
‘Thanks.’
‘Word is, everything’s pretty much stacked up against him,’ Ottey went on.
‘Sure, but juries are curious creatures at times.’
‘True. When are closing statements likely to be, do you know?’
‘I hear maybe end of next week,’ replied Alice.
‘Will you go?’
‘No. Probably for the verdict. Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘Well, I’ll be there for sure,’ Ottey said.
*
Stephen drove George home.
‘Raymond seems to be doing very well. Vast improvement,’ he commented.
‘Do you think so?’ asked George. ‘It’s hard to tell, seeing him every day.’
‘Oh, definitely. You and Christine are doing marvels. As well as my prayers. Obviously.’ He smiled. Another joke, possibly, George thought. He wasn’t sure, he just knew he really needed his bed.