Dying for Millions Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Judith Cutler

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Judith Cutler

  The Lina Townend Series

  DRAWING THE LINE

  SILVER GUILT *

  RING OF GUILT *

  GUILTY PLEASURES *

  GUILT TRIP *

  GUILT EDGED *

  The Frances Harman Series

  LIFE SENTENCE

  COLD PURSUIT

  STILL WATERS

  BURYING THE PAST *

  DOUBLE FAULT *

  The Jodie Welsh Series

  DEATH IN ELYSIUM *

  The Sophie Rivers Series

  DYING FALL

  DYING TO WRITE

  DYING ON PRINCIPLE

  DYING FOR MILLIONS

  The Katie Powers Series

  POWER GAMES

  WILL POWER

  HIDDEN POWER

  * available from Severn House

  DYING FOR MILLIONS

  Judith Cutler

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which is was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicably copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This title first published in Great Britain in 1997 by

  Judy Piatkus (Publishers) Ltd

  5 Windmill Street

  London W1

  eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 1997 by Judith Cutler.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0145-4 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  For Robert

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the following for so generously giving me their time and expertise: Viv Oliver, who showed me round Coventry Airport on one of the coldest nights of the winter; Steve Smith, who proved that life as a roadie isn’t all glamour; Graham Townshend, who would have sorted out Sophie’s stomach as readily as he helped me with poisons; the Bee Gees, for all their years of music making.

  Chapter One

  One thing you can guarantee about Birmingham’s Five Ways is the wind. With roads coming from five different directions I suppose it’s likely that one of them will funnel any available breeze on to the car park, which is on top of a small shopping centre. In general I never have to park there: I leave my car – a new second-hand one – in the college car park and walk to the shops. Today, however, I had a double excuse: I had to collect my lap-top from Morgan’s, where it was having its screen repaired; and I’d promised to drop Karen, a William Murdock student, as close as possible to the city centre, and her bus route. I’d been out to see her at her work experience placement, so it was natural for me to offer her a lift.

  It would have been just as natural to throttle her, actually.

  I’m not sure whether it was what she was saying or how she was saying it. Whatever configuration of the nasal passages – or is it the chest cavity? – that produce the voice’s timbre had given Karen a particularly irritating squeak, and she’d grafted on to her native Brummie accent an Australian-sounding lift at the end of each sentence, which made even the simplest statement a fierce interrogation. Too much ‘Neighbours’ and ‘Home and Away’, I suppose.

  ‘We’re having exams at the end of this term? Right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Was I supposed to justify the college’s unreasonable evaluation methods or simply give her the dates?

  ‘But it’s so close to Easter?’

  ‘We always have end-of-term exams. Ah!’ I spotted a space.

  ‘You can get in there?’

  To be honest, there aren’t many spaces into which I can’t persuade my little Renault. But this one was big enough to take a small bus, and there was no likelihood of her having to climb out through the sun-roof.

  It was easier simply to reverse in than to explain. In normal circumstances my rear bumper would have ended up no more than two inches from the armco barrier. But Karen had insisted on putting her surprisingly large bag in the boot, so I had to allow enough room for the tailgate to swing. I could understand perfectly why her temporary employers should have decided that they could release her an hour early today.

  There! Beautifully parallel to and equidistant from the white lines. Satisfied with that at least, I was out and opening the tailgate before I realised just how gusty it was. ‘Just stay there a moment, Karen,’ I said, suddenly aware of the pile of vulnerable papers on the back seat. There were employers’ reports on students and – more inflammatory – students’ reports on employers; those especially were highly confidential. ‘No! Don’t try to get out yet!’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right?’

  But it wasn’t.

  A malicious flourish of wind swirled the lot out through her door, my frantic efforts to slam the tailgate making matters even worse.

  There they were, spreading themselves thinly across the tarmac, darting away from me like minnows from a pike. Karen thought it best behoved her to stand and watch. Perhaps she was right. I told myself I was fielding to save a Test Match and darted and ducked, despite my thirty-six years, snatching from the jaws of disaster. But one page headed purposefully, inexorably, for the shelter of a regrettable piece of American automobile engineering – parked with scant respect, incidentally, for the recognised parking order. It claimed sanctuary near the rear axle and regarded me balefully as I half-knelt in entreaty.

  Karen eventually joined me, out of breath after no more then a light jog. She’d picked up a few papers, and thrust them at me.

  ‘I’ve got to catch my bus? I’ve got to get home early this avvo?’

  Did she mean ‘afternoon’? ‘Right,’ I said. ‘You get your bus and I’ll stay and grovel to the owner of this monstrosity.’

  ‘Why d’you have to grovel to me?’ asked a voice, produced by entirely congenial nasal passages and a wonderful chest cavity.

  It would have been poetic if I could have turned, got up and thrown myself into his arms in one eloquent movement. But it was not to be. My knee seized halfway up, and all I could do was flail awkwardly until
he shot out a hand to steady me and haul me to my feet. But I ended up in his arms.

  No, this was no Mills and Boon encounter. Just the return of my cousin Andy to his native city.

  I hugged him, laughing, then pushed him away. ‘What the hell are you doing driving a gas-guzzler like this?’

  ‘It’s Tobe’s. What the hell were you doing kneeling worshipping it?’

  ‘And what are you doing in Brum without letting me know? The gig isn’t till the end of the week.’

  ‘Been checking out the Music Centre,’ he said.

  That didn’t quite explain his presence at Five Ways, but no doubt he had his reasons. And the more you asked Andy, the less he was likely to tell. You had to wait for the moment when he chose to be expansive.

  ‘Where’s Ruth?’ I asked. Ruth was his new wife, something of a surprise to many. Andy had been going out with an air-head with big hair, but had suddenly and completely fallen in love with her aunt, a headmistress of about forty.

  ‘Back home in Devon. She picked up a nasty bug in Vienna. Wonderful – she swans round the worst refugee camps in Africa as if there were no such things as germs and when she gets back to civilisation she gets the first thing on offer.’

  ‘So where are you staying?’ By rights it should be with me. Andy always stays with me, but usually has the grace to fix it before he arrives in Birmingham.

  ‘With you?’

  There seemed to be a slight note of doubt in his voice; or perhaps I was just too sensitive today.

  ‘I should bloody hope so!’

  ‘Look – I’ve got a couple of things to see to first. Would it mess you up if I turned up later – say, ten? Could you book us in somewhere?’ It was unlike Andy to concern himself with such trivialities as my convenience: Ruth was undoubtedly house-training him. This business of checking out a venue suggested a new punctiliousness too.

  ‘There’s a new restaurant attached to the Indian take-away,’ I said promptly. If he could be efficient, so could I. ‘Now, what about that report?’

  I stepped back to let him open the car door and trod hard on a foot. Karen’s. I’d had no idea she was still there; I’d vaguely assumed she had gone off for her bus. I turned to apologise profusely but from the glazed look on her face she might have been one of those religious fanatics who are above pain. Disregarding a temptation to stamp on the other one to test this theory, I realised I had another apology to make. I hadn’t introduced her to Andy.

  I slapped the car’s flank, and gestured. Obligingly, he got out with a smile – slightly cooler from the one he’d given me, but perhaps she wouldn’t notice. I introduced them, and he chatted easily: suspecting, I suppose, from long experience of dealing with teenage fans, that she’d be tongue-tied. Then, before she noticed, he’d retrieved the paper and given it to me, bidden her a cheery farewell, and driven off.

  Poor kid. She was blushing so hard she was almost in tears.

  ‘Oh, Sophie,’ she said at last, ‘wasn’t he lovely? I mean, his hands? Hasn’t he got lovely hands? And those eyes? Did you ever see such lovely blue eyes? And his teeth?’

  I let her ramble on: she wasn’t particularly discerning in her list. I think Andy would have done better to have had a brace when I had mine, and although he was now as anti-smoking as my friend George had been, the years of tobacco fumes had undoubtedly aged his skin; other, less legal, substances had also taken their toll. Certainly he now looked older than me rather than nine months younger. His hair was thinning, too, but was at last beginning to respond to Ruth’s regimen of kinder colouring and more conditioner. His cheekbones, though, I did envy. Andy had the sort of face that would age down to fine bones and interesting angles.

  ‘… photograph?’ Karen was saying.

  ‘Photograph? Of you together?’

  ‘Oh, Sophie! Could you? Would he?’ She was ready to cry.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. Perhaps when he’s back in Brum for his gig. I didn’t realise you were a fan of his.’ Surely she was the wrong age for Andy Rivers: I’d have expected her to be worshipping Oasis, or whoever.

  ‘My mum always has been. She says his music has tunes? And – I mean, he’s just so good-looking! He’s bad – absolutely wicked.’ This time she sighed on the last word in each sentence of what I assumed was the highest praise.

  I considered. To me he’d always been just Andy, someone to tease and teach alternately. My father, who coached me at cricket, had always refused to pass on to Andy the secrets of good slow bowling, on the grounds that he was too idle to learn, so it was from me that Andy had acquired a leg-break so devilish that Warwickshire had selected him for the Colts team. They’d been talking about apprenticeships and professional contracts before he whizzed off to Spain at the age of seventeen. Since the family had insisted that he should become a plumber, I suppose it was his way of cutting a Gordian knot.

  ‘Don’t you think he’s gorgeous?’ she prompted me, irate.

  ‘But he’s my cousin, you see,’ I said inadequately.

  ‘You’re his cousin?’ Her disbelief was so exquisitely unflattering I couldn’t help laughing. ‘But what are you doing – I mean—’

  ‘What am I doing being a college lecturer when he’s doing something so very much more exciting? That’s how it is, in real life.’

  ‘But shouldn’t you – you know, be working for him?’

  I shook my head, laughing. ‘Oh, Karen – Andy’s got everything! How could I possibly do anything to help him?’ If anyone needed help, it was clearly me. I was kneeling on my living room floor, trying to match sets of mud-stained sheets of paper. One, which contained well-documented allegations of racist and sexist behaviour by a well-known city firm of solicitors, bore a large thumb-print which might well have been Andy’s. I put it to one side; clearly I’d need to talk to my boss about the contents, and discuss them at length with the student, which would mean yet another lunch-hour consumed by college business. I was beginning to see this job in terms of missed meal-breaks; indeed, missed meals. I had to make my visits at times convenient to the employers but also without disrupting any of my own classes. Since the number of hours a week all the college staff were required to teach had suddenly and mysteriously gone up by ten per cent, this made balancing the two factors extremely tricky unless I was prepared to discount my own needs entirely. I certainly couldn’t have done it at all without a car, a form of transport I’d managed to eschew for several years, preferring a combination of cycle and public transport. But I’d been forced to make a virtue of necessity.

  Nine-thirty: time to gather the whole lot up. There didn’t seem to be anything missing.

  The doorbell rang.

  It took me longer to struggle to my feet than I liked. My right knee, affronted by an injury last Easter, occasionally chose to lock if it thought I was maltreating it, and it was beginning to regard sitting on the floor with disfavour. The bell rang again.

  ‘Andy! Why didn’t you let yourself in?’ He usually rang and unlocked the door at the same time.

  ‘Thought you’d got company.’ He gestured: his thumb curled towards my car.

  ‘My new toy,’ I said proudly.

  He stepped past me to dump an overnight case in the hall, and then turned. ‘Show me.’

  Huddling against the cold night air, I led the way down the drive. I’d extolled the virtues of half the key features when I dwindled to a halt; this was a man who drove a BMW when he wasn’t borrowing his wife’s Mercedes.

  ‘Why did you buy this model?’ he asked.

  I’d have been tempted, with any other multi-millionaire, to snap that it was because I was bored with my Rolls. But to Andy I told the truth. ‘D’you remember Aggie?’ I began.

  ‘You don’t forget the Aggies of this world,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought her some genuine Devon clotted cream: I’ll take it round in a minute.’

  ‘Well, Aggie’s daughter had just bought it. Then she won a better model in a competition – she wins things all the time,
holidays, hampers, and this is the second time she’s won a car – so I bought it from her.’

  He nodded as if impressed.

  ‘I thought we’d take it to the restaurant,’ I said. ‘Less obtrusive than that thing of yours.’

  ‘Tobe’s,’ he said.

  ‘Tobe’s,’ I agreed. ‘Why not your own?’

  ‘Had a bit of a scrape,’ he said. ‘How long’s that house been empty?’

  I blinked at the snub; it was unlike Andy to be edgy. ‘The one opposite? Six months or so. They cut their losses and left. Aggie reckons someone’s going to rent it. The couple in the next house’ll be glad of some company – they’re pretty frail … Are you all right?’

  ‘Feeling the cold in these northern climes.’ He grinned reassuringly. ‘Let’s go back in. Then I’ll have a pee and we’ll go and eat.’

  The restaurant wasn’t licensed so I fished a four-pack of lager out from the pantry. Andy eyed it. ‘Why don’t I drive your car so you can drink?’

  ‘You’re off booze?’

  ‘For a bit. Until I – for a bit.’

  I looked at him sharply, but he had already picked up his case and was heading towards his bedroom.

  It took him a few minutes to deliver the cream to my next-door neighbour and then we set off. He was in vegetarian mode again, after a summer as a carnivore. I didn’t comment: after a stint working at the African hospital financed by his trust fund, he often ate frugally. He wasn’t ostentatious about it, or about giving up alcohol, which he also did from time to time – no one could ever tell from his behaviour at parties that he wasn’t genuinely tipsy on nothing stronger than mineral water.

  ‘Channa’s excellent,’ he said, gesturing with a piece of garlic nan.

  ‘So’s my biryani,’ I replied, spearing a prawn.

  We both smiled at Ahmed, the waiter, who had come not to be sycophantic but to enquire, as he always did, how we were getting on. It was my approval, not Andy’s, he was seeking; I was a valued regular, a customer long before the take-away spawned the restaurant, and Andy was valuable as a friend of mine, not as an international megastar – even if he recognised him as such. Ahmed smiled on us almost equally and withdrew. He soon returned with a jug of water.