New Directions (13)

With Dev hanging on to the door handle with one hand and thumping the window with the other I couldn’t drive away without injuring him. Before the glass was halfway down his head poked into the car.

‘Terence there’s no need to go off like this, we haven’t finished.’

‘Well since you’ve all covered your arses I reckon I have.’

‘No Terence, you don’t understand we think we know who took the cheques from Celia, we were coming on to that but you—‘

I finished the sentence for him, ‘walked out.’ I could almost hear my blood pressure drop. ‘Okay so now what?’

‘Well that’s the point, we want to discuss that with you.’ Dev waited while I reversed back to the parking space.

As we walked over to the office I said, ’Might’ve been a good idea to mention that before telling me how you’re going to cover it all up,’ hoping it would hide my embarrassment.

Margaret’s glare followed me right across the reception area. As I passed her desk I held my phone out, it almost touched her ugly nose. ‘Forgot my baby, Maggs.’ I didn’t bother to look at her.

Another awkward silence filled the room while I returned to the semi-circle of chairs. Slightly breathless Dev said, ’Mr James misunderstood what we were saying.’ After a self-conscious chuckle he added, ‘he had the impression we wanted to push everything under the carpet. As you know this is not the case.’ A mumble of agreement came from the two sitting beside me. ‘Christine perhaps you could explain to Terence what we have found?’

Flicking hair away from her face, Christine Holmes opened the folder resting on her lap. She was one of the new breed of women executives around now. Slim, thirty going on twenty-five with wavy blonde hinted hair, dressed in a fashionable high wasted loose dress not too short and a neckline not too low. Elegantly formal I’d call it.

Looking directly at me she said, ‘The only thing we had to go on was the signed receipt you gave to Mr. Mullar. I checked the signatures of all the people working in this office and found no matching handwriting. Since we work closely with the estate agent division in the same building I managed to get to see the handwriting of the people in there.’ Looking up from the notes she shot a piercing look at me. ‘Your “friend” Margaret was very helpful. The Sales manager is her son.’

‘Yeah OK, but you drew a blank, I thought you—‘

‘Just a minute Mr. James, I haven’t finished.’ I shrugged an apology. ‘I had a look at the records of employees who have left in the last two years. I found nothing at first, but in a file covering the move of the office in Towcester to Northampton, I found this.’ She passed me a letter on Daniels headed paper and the fake receipt.

The letter was very short, just a few lines confirming that the person who wrote it did not want to join the company on the office move to Northampton and would leave when the Towcester office closed. It was signed, Andrew Mercer, assistant letting advisor. The scrawled signatures were identical except for the names.

I mumbled shit under my breath. ‘Towcester was the place where I first went to ask about letting my properties. I must have met this guy or at least seen him.’

I handed the papers back to Christine. ‘I can see you’ve both have been working very hard to come up with this so fast, but why didn’t you just show me this when I first arrived instead of spinning me this saga?’ I shouldn’t have said it, but I could not help myself. I suppose I was as pissed off at being put right about Maggs as Christine was about me calling her colleague a Hyena.