The Sunshine Cruise Company (7 page)

‘Well, I didn’t know! Barry dealt with all the money! He was a bloody accountant for Christ’s sake! He was always “restructuring” our finances! He’d put things in front of me to sign now and then and I’d just –’

‘Oh shit …’ Roger moaned.

‘I didn’t know about any of this stuff!’

‘Oh God …’ Roger whispered, beads of perspiration visible on his forehead now.

‘“Oh God”? What does “Oh God” mean?’

He looked at her. ‘It means, Susan, from what I’ve worked out so far, that you’re personally liable for around half a million pounds’ worth of debt.’

Susan felt her blood turning to antifreeze, sludging up in her veins.

Just then there was the sound of a key in the lock, the front door opening and bags being dumped down in the hall. A second later Tom stood in the doorway to the dining room, Clare behind him. He took in his mother, Roger, the paperwork on the table. ‘Oh, Mum,’ he said, his lip already quivering, ‘I can’t believe he’s gone.’

Susan smashed her fists down onto the table as she stood up to face her son and daughter-in-law and screamed, ‘HE’S A LYING, SWINDLING BASTARD SEX PERVERT!’

Then she ran out of the room crying.

Tom looked at Roger.

‘It’s been a difficult morning,’ Roger said.

BOSCOMBE KNOCKED ON
the door, just below the brass plate bearing the name ‘CHIEF INSPECTOR D. WILSON’. A second passed and he heard the muffled ‘Come!’ from inside.

He entered. There was CI Wilson, behind his desk, in full uniform, all that scrambled egg on his epaulettes. The desk itself – not so much as a stray paper clip on it. Boscombe thought of his own demented haystack two floors down. ‘Ah, Boscombe, good morning.’

‘Sir.’

‘Please, take a pew.’ Boscombe lowered himself into the chair feeling, as ever in here, the chill of someone being called to the headmaster’s study. ‘How is everything?’

‘Fine, sir, fine. Busy.’

‘I’m sure.’ Wilson wasn’t looking at him. He had his half-moon specs on and was already leafing through a few stapled pages of paper. What was the old bastard after this time? ‘Now, Boscombe, do you know what I wanted to see you about?’ He’d taken the glasses off now and was chewing thoughtfully on one of the stems.

‘Er, can’t say I do, sir, no.’

‘Mmm. That rather alarms me.’

Oh fuck. ‘Really, sir?’

‘I’ve just been going through your report on that rather unfortunate, what would you call it, auto-erotic death we had the other day?’ Wilson held up the stapled pages.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Including the transcript of your interview with the late man’s widow, a Mrs Susan Frobisher.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The interview that seems to climax with you calling Mrs Frobisher – who, bear in mind, had only been widowed in fairly horrific circumstances hours earlier – a “swinger”. Quote, unquote.’

‘Well, it was more of an implication really, sir.’

Wilson sighed and held up the transcript gingerly, as though it were something sordid and unclean, and turned a couple of pages. He slipped his glasses back on, cleared his throat and read aloud. ‘DS Boscombe: “Swingers, were you, you and Barry?”’ He took his glasses off again and faced Boscombe. ‘Seems a fairly strong “implication” to me, Sergeant.’

‘Well, I just felt … In an interview situation, sometimes you have to …’

Wilson leaned forward across the desk. He picked up a letter opener, a vicious-looking blade, and started testing the edge of it against his thumb. ‘Why, Boscombe?’

‘Like I say, sir, I just had a … a …’

‘Be warned, Boscombe, if the words “a hunch” are thundering towards this conversation I shall force this letter opener through your testicles to form a crude sort of kebab.’

Boscombe swallowed. ‘Well, sir, with all due respect, her signature was on a lot of documents found at the scene. Documents pointing towards substantial fraud. I felt, feel, that’s it’s unlikely he could have led this kind of double life without her knowing, and I believed that by exerting a little press—’

Wilson waved a hand, cutting him off. ‘Yes, Boscombe. And do you feel – just
feel
, mind you – that it’s also entirely possible that she knew nothing about the whole thing?’

‘Well,’ Boscombe said, shifting in his seat, ‘I suppose it’s
possible.
’

‘Yes. In which case it might have been better to think a little more carefully before accusing the poor, bereaved woman of being some kind of crazed sexual deviant. No?’

‘Sir, I was just trying to –’

‘Here’s what you
are
going to do, Boscombe. When forensics are finished with the late Mr Frobisher’s personal effects you’re going to return them to Mrs Frobisher and you’re going to be very, very nice to her so that when she comes out of mourning she doesn’t immediately set about suing us for harassment. With me?’

‘Well, I –’ Wilson stared straight into Boscombe, forcing him to rethink. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said quietly.

‘Excellent. Thank you. You may go, Boscombe.’ Chief Inspector Wilson took a fresh document from his in-tray and began reading.

Boscombe had taken three steps towards the door when a frown crossed his face and he turned back. ‘Sir?’

‘Mmmm?’

‘By “personal effects”, do you mean all the videotapes and photos and whatnot too?’

Wilson spoke without looking up from his reading. ‘Do you think Mrs Frobisher will have much use for a mountain of pornographic material featuring her late husband and a succession of prostitutes, Boscombe?’

‘Umm. No. I expect not, sir.’

A knock at the door.

‘There you are then. Run along now, Boscombe. COME!’

Fucking pompous old wanker, Boscombe thought as the door opened and Sergeant Tarrant entered with a sheaf of paperwork under his arm.

‘Hugh,’ Tarrant said.

‘Bob,’ Boscombe replied, nodding as he left, closing the door behind him.

‘These all need your signature, sir,’ Tarrant said, placing the paperwork in front of Wilson, who began to sign. ‘He’s a piece of work, old Hugh Boscombe, eh, sir?’ Tarrant added, nodding towards the door.

‘That’s one way of putting it, Tarrant,’ Wilson said, signing one form then turning to the next. ‘Another way would be to say he’s a crapulent buffoon with the IQ of a tampon.’

THE SAD NOTES
of the organist drifted across the crematorium, masking the soft chatter of the mourners. In the front pew Tom and Clare gazed sadly at the polished pine coffin, at the thick purple drapes behind it, which would soon be parting to swallow it up, to commit the remains of Barry J. Frobisher (CA, BSC Hons) to fiery memory. Tom sat doing an unlikely thing for a man at his father’s funeral – struggling to square the image of his safe, dull,
Daily Mail
-reading father with the crazed sex monster he’d been learning about for the past week. A two-foot … Jesus. There was an empty space next to Tom, for his mother who was standing off to the side, greeting faces she had not seen in a long time. Susan smiled as she saw Jill coming towards her. ‘Jill, thanks for coming.’

They embraced. Susan was grateful for Jill being there – she could think of no one less likely to engage with the topic of
how
Barry had died than Jill Worth. Jill, who couldn’t even say ‘shit’. Susan felt … she felt lovely actually. Lovely and warm and kind of floaty.

‘Oh, Susan, I’m so sorry for … goodness. Just everything you’re going through right now.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s all just … horrible.’ She blew her nose. Susan noticed Jill’s eyes were already red from crying.

In truth, being here was costing Jill a great deal more than anyone knew. As she looked around the sad room, her ears full of the music of death, it was such a tiny hop for her imagination to place her here again, in the very near future, in far, far worse circumstances:
the tiny coffin. ‘Jamie was with us for such a short time, and yet he filled our hearts with such love.’ Her daughter, breaking. Broken.

‘Excuse me, sorry.’ Jill headed for the toilets to get it out of her system. Susan looked across the room and saw Julie and Ethel in a pew towards the back – back-of-the-bus kind of girls, both of them. She smiled and Julie broke off from whispering something to Ethel to give her a tiny thumbs up. Susan nodded. The Valium Julie had given her to get through the day was working very well indeed. She’d never taken Valium before.
Floaty.

Over in the pew Julie went back to whispering. ‘It’s a nightmare. I mean, Barry and I never got on but still, I –’

‘Yeah,’ Ethel said. ‘Not how you’d choose to go, is it? A vibrator the size of a fire hydrant exploding up your bum?’

‘Ethel!’ Julie hissed. ‘Not that. I mean I never thought he’d leave her in this mess. Barry. Mr Money Manager. Roger, their solicitor, thinks there’s a chance she’ll lose the house!’

Was Julie experiencing a vague kind of thrill at the thought of her friend falling this far, as far as she had? No.
No, definitely not.

‘Poor cow,’ Ethel said, scanning the room, her eyes settling on a new arrival, a tall, tanned lean man in his early sixties, with a head of thick silver hair and a matching moustache. He was wearing a well-cut dark suit as he wove through the throng purposefully, craning his neck, clearly looking for someone. ‘Hold the phone,’ Ethel said, licking her lips, ‘who’s the sex machine?’ An elderly woman in the pew in front shifted uncomfortably, turning a little to glare in Ethel’s direction. Ethel returned her gaze evenly with her patented ‘Can I help you?’ expression.

‘Ethel!
’ Julie squinted across the room.
Bloody hell
, she thought. ‘Terry bloody Russell,’ she whispered.

‘Who hell he?’ Ethel said.

‘We were at school together. Haven’t seen him in years. He was a handsome bugger.’

‘I wouldn’t kick it out of bed now,’ Ethel whispered.

‘Well, yeah,’ Julie said. He’d aged well, Terry, no doubt about it. ‘He lived abroad for years. Did something fairly dubious in import/export. Made lots of money too, I heard. A real shagger in his day. What’s
he
doing here?’

‘Ooh, handsome, rich and mysterious?’ Ethel said. ‘You reckon he’d let me sit on his face for an hour or so?’

Across the room Susan was gazing at the light coming softly through a high stained-glass window, thinking how pretty it looked. Yes, Valium and plenty of it – that might be the way to go. She wasn’t even thinking about the second meeting she’d had with Roger last night, the meeting where Roger had told her they’d have to go into the bank for another meeting. All these ‘meetings’. Susan had gone through most of her adult life not really doing that much of anything and now all she seemed to do was have meetings all day. Roger. The undertaker. The caterers. The bank. Roger thought there was ‘a chance’ she could keep the house. It was the only asset she had, and in itself not worth quite enough to pay off the bank, the credit card companies, the loans, the revenue, the VAT man and the client accounts Barry had ‘borrowed’ from, but if she could borrow against the house, get some capital to allow her to … what had Barry always called it? Restructure her finances. Besides – it wouldn’t look very good from a PR point of view, Roger thought, for the Lanchester Bank to kick a poor widow (
almost
a pensioner) out of her home for something she knew nothing about. Of course the onus would be on Roger and Susan to prove she knew nothing about all Barry’s dealings. They’d just have to count on her good character. (But hadn’t Barry had a ‘good character’ too? Susan heard a tiny voice saying this, somewhere at the back of her head, trying to break through the warm candyfloss mist of the Valium.)

Suddenly she heard another voice – real, much closer – saying, ‘Susan? Susan, I’m so sorry for your loss.’

She turned to see a handsome, tanned face. A moustache. It took her a moment. ‘Terry? Terry Russell? It’s been …’

‘Don’t even say it,’ he said, leaning in to kiss her lightly on the cheek. His aftershave was subtle, just there. Expensive.

‘How have you been?’ Susan asked.

‘Oh, fine, fine.’

‘You’ve heard the whole sorry tale, I assume?’

‘Well,’ Terry said, ‘the old jungle drums have been pounding, yes. I subtracted about 70 per cent of what I heard, but it still sounds pretty bad. How are you bearing up?’

‘I … I don’t really know. I know it sounds like the worst cliché but … I keep thinking I’m going to wake up.’

The vicar was walking towards the front now, the last of the mourners taking their seats. ‘Look,’ Terry was saying, pressing something into her palm, ‘I’ll probably shoot off straight after, I’m not much good at these things. But if you ever fancy taking your mind off things, I’ve got a yacht down at Sands these days. The sea can be very … calming. Come over and I’ll take you out sometime.’

Susan looked down at the card –
‘Terry Russell, CEO, Russell Shipping
’ – and then back up at Terry. He smiled, almost apologetically. ‘Terry Russell,’ Susan said. ‘If I didn’t know better I’d say you were hitting on someone at their husband’s funeral.’

‘Just trying to offer a little comfort.’ He grinned. Great teeth.

‘Ever the good Samaritan, eh?’

‘That’s me. Look, I’ll see you later. OK?’

Susan watched him go – scandalised and amused in equal measure. She tucked the business card into the folds of her purse. And then the vicar was placing his Prayer Book on the pulpit and it was time for it all to begin.

Or end, rather.

She wondered if Julie would let her have another Valium.

Later that night, after everyone had gone home, Susan walked through the house, turning off lights, picking up empty glasses, straightening cushions. She hadn’t had very many people back after the service. Julie and Ethel, the Robertsons, Roger, Tom and Clare obviously, who were now upstairs in the spare bedroom. She paused in the downstairs hallway, next to what used to be the ‘telephone table’, way back when, before cordless, before mobiles. There was a framed photograph – her and Barry and Tom, on the beach in … St Ives was it? Tom was about five or six, so, the late eighties. They were all smiling but Barry’s smile, it seemed to Susan now, was more of a sneer, a sly, mocking grin.