The Loyal Servant (21 page)

‘You think that’s definitely him?’

‘In the photos I saw this morning he had more hair and more flesh on his face.’ She picked up the picture again. ‘If I was a betting woman, I’d put a monkey on it.’

Frank whistled.

‘But I don’t remember anyone getting anywhere near the Larsons – God knows you were chased away swiftly enough by his henchmen when you got too close.’

‘Do the pair of them not get on then?’

Angela shrugged. ‘Not sure. According to the first Mrs Larson…’ She smiled a wry smile. ‘You may not believe this… but according to Betty, Sir Fred’s been paying for his son’s drug rehab treatment.’

‘No! This story just gets better and better. I’m surprised you’re not doing cartwheels. I thought you weren’t getting anywhere. This is dynamite stuff.’

‘Don’t get too excited, Frank. I’ve still got to find the heroin-addled waster.’

‘Ah.’

‘Can you run me off a few copies of his picture, and any others you might have taken of him?’

‘Sure.’ Frank looked at the other groupings of photos and cards. ‘You reckon he never made contact with his old man at the funeral?’

‘Not as far as I remember.’

‘So assuming this is Frederick Larson the second, why would he be at the funeral at all, if he wasn’t with his dad?’

‘That’s what I’ve just been wondering. The only other explanation is that he was paying his last respects to Fox.’

‘How likely is that?’

‘Freddie would have to have been pretty close to Fox to get through the security checks.’

‘We found a way in.’

‘But not as far as the graveside.’ She gathered up the photographs and hurried back to her desk.

‘What’s happening now?’ Frank followed her across the office.

‘I’m off to the library. I could spend days trawling the internet and Lexis Nexus looking for a connection between Fox and Freddie Larson. I haven’t got days. It’s time to call in the cavalry.’

‘I thought the powers that be ditched the librarians years back.’

‘Last time I checked, Rita was still ruling the roost with an iron fist on the second floor.’

‘Rita?’

Angela nodded.

‘Alberta Einstein still works here?’

‘You should try calling her that to her face.’

‘She’d love it.’

The landline on Angela’s desk started ringing. She glanced at her watch – it was nearly 6pm, going home time for civilians. She’d have to hurry to catch Rita still at her desk. She snatched up the receiver.

‘Tate!’

‘This is Aleesha in IT – you left some files with us.’

‘It’s OK – I know the score. I’ve got days to wait—’

‘That’s why I’m calling. We’ve opened them.’

‘You have?’

‘I took on the job personally. I’ll email them to you now.’

‘Thank you – I’ll put in a good word with your boss.’

‘I am the boss.’

‘Oh… well done you.’ She put the phone down.

‘Progress?’ Frank said.

‘Maybe.’

Angela took the stairs down to the second floor, the stone steps cold under her stockinged feet. She reached the library and spotted Rita standing over her desk at the other end of the room.

‘Just the woman I’m looking for,’ she shouted.

Rita stared over her half-moon glasses and narrowed her eyes as she watched Angela approach, and glanced down at Angela’s shoeless feet. She plucked her coat from a stand and threaded her thin arms into the sleeves.

‘How do you fancy the role of superhero?’ Angela reached the desk.

‘Superhero I do every day between nine and six. You can even find me wielding my superpowers most lunchtimes.’ She tapped the slim gold watch on her wrist. ‘Six-oh-one. I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘That’s the thing Rita – time is a key factor here.’

Rita pursed her lips. Recently applied lipstick had seeped into the lines around her mouth. She started to button her coat.

‘It’s Evans. He’s really putting me under pressure. Making it almost impossible for me to do my job.’ She exhaled a defeated breath. ‘He’s looking for any excuse to get rid of me. If I don’t get this story to him first thing tomorrow… well, that could be it.’

Rita stopped buttoning.

‘You must know what it’s like at the moment. They’re pushing out the old guard as quickly and as cheaply as possible.’

Rita didn’t respond. Angela soldiered on anyway.

‘Which means trying to make my life as uncomfortable as they possibly can. That way they make it my decision to leave.’

Rita was nodding her head now, almost imperceptibly.

‘Saves a lot of money if I jump.’

‘What does any of this have to do with me?’

Come on, Rita, where’s your sense of comradeship?

‘Tomorrow morning is an impossible deadline. I can’t do it alone. Evans has made it quite clear if I don’t deliver I’ll be writing the horoscopes and compiling the quick crossword this time next week.’

Rita picked her spectacles from her nose and tucked them away in a case, shutting it with a crocodile snap.

‘Believe me, I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t so critical. My career is literally hanging in the balance.’

‘Not
literally
.’

Oh come on, you pedantic old witch!

‘You know what I mean. You’ve lost how many staff in the last couple of years?’

Rita glanced around the office let out a quiet groan. ‘Tomorrow morning?’

Angela nodded. ‘First thing.’

Rita unbuttoned her coat and wearily hooked it back over the hat stand. ‘I can’t make a habit of this.’

‘Of course not.’ Angela wanted desperately to smile but managed to keep her face straight.

‘What exactly do you need?’

‘To establish a connection. Between two people who on paper at least shouldn’t even know one another.’

‘What kind of connection?’

‘That’s just it – I’m not sure.’

Rita handed Angela a notepad and pen. ‘Names, ages, professions, education, spouses, children. Places of birth, current location.’

‘Anything else?’ Angela regretted the slightly sarcastic tone as soon as she saw Rita’s expression.

‘I’ll let you know.’

She wrote down all the concrete facts she had and gave Rita a quick summary of everything she’d discovered about Freddie Larson. Then, after a few minutes watching the librarian trawl through God knew how many records, public and otherwise, she decided her time would be better spent making enquiries of her own. Rita was quick, but there were only so many pages one woman could scan in 60 seconds.

Angela logged onto the computer at the next desk, fired up Entourage and found the email the lovely girl in IT had sent her. She opened the first attachment – an Excel document – and quickly scanned the single worksheet. It didn’t look like the sort of information anyone would bother protecting.

‘Rita?’

The rattle of rapid typing ceased for a moment.

‘Do the following categories, grouped together, mean anything to you?’ She leaned back from the screen to stop the words swimming into one another. If only she’d found her glasses. ‘
Name
,
Severity
,
User Error
.’

‘Severity of what?’

Angela shrugged. ‘It’s a number between one and ten.’

‘Ten being the most severe?’

‘Not sure.’

‘Are there any 1s?’

Angela scrolled through the spreadsheet. ‘No – the lowest is seven.’

‘What options are there in the
User Error
category?’

‘Yes or no. They’re all yeses.’

‘So a name, then a measure of how serious something is, then whether or not it was their own stupid bloody fault.’

‘Could be…’

‘Any other categories?’

‘Company name, name of an academy and a figure in thousands of pounds.’

Rita pushed her spectacles up her nose. ‘Haven’t a clue.’

‘How’s it going with you? Made any progress?’

‘Are you sure Frederick Joseph Larson actually still exists?’

‘That bad, is it?’

‘Unsurprisingly, I’ve unearthed plenty of info on the honourable member for Cambridge East.’

‘But nothing on Freddie?’

‘Could Larson be one of Fox’s constituents?’

‘I doubt it. As far as I know he lives in London.’

‘Has he always lived here?’

‘I would presume so. Certainly born in London and most probably living here now.’

‘He didn’t go away to university?’

‘University?’ She thought about the photographs Frank had taken at the funeral. Going away to prison was a more likely scenario. ‘Given his current recreational activities, I’d guess he’s always been a bit of a waster. I certainly can’t see him sticking a three-year degree course.’

‘So he could have dropped out?’

Angela shrugged and once Rita went back to her typing, she returned to the spreadsheet. Without expecting any positive results, she entered all the column headings from the spreadsheet into Google. The first page that came up offered a list of health and safety links. She changed the search criteria to include the name of a company from the first column and the words ‘health and safety’.

‘Hah!’ Rita said.

Angela looked up to see the librarian’s face had cracked into a smile. In fact, it looked to Angela suspiciously like a self-satisfied grin.

‘As you suspected,’ Rita said, ‘Freddie Larson doesn’t seem to have excelled academically.’

‘Shame – it was definitely worth a try, though.’

‘I’ll say – as
I
suspected, he dropped out after only a year of study.’

‘You’ve found a record of him?’

‘The lists of alumni usually include all students enrolled at a university, not just the ones who graduated.’

‘Right… OK.’ Not having set foot within the hallowed halls of higher education until she doorstepped a lecherous lecturer at Southbank Poly in 1984, this was news to Angela. ‘But how did you find him so quickly? There must be thousands of Unis to check.’

Rita was smiling again. It was unnerving. ‘But only one college attended by Martin Fox.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘Deadly. Frederick Joseph Larson attended Newton College, Cambridge during the academic year 78/79.’

‘And was that the same time as Martin Fox?’

‘There would have been an overlap – yes. Fox completed his History of Art MPhil in 1980.’

Angela jumped up and ran to Rita. She was just about to throw her arms around the librarian’s neck when she saw the look of horror on Rita’s face. ‘That’s brilliant Rita.’ She punched her gently on the shoulder.

‘Don’t get too excited. We only know they were at the same place at the same time. It doesn’t mean they actually knew one another.’

‘What was Larson studying?’

‘Oh you’ll love it. Can you guess?’

‘History of art, same as Fox?’

‘Try again.’

‘Really – I give up.’

‘Something dear to Fox’s heart.’

‘Just tell me, Rita, for God’s sake.’

Rita pursed her lips and tilted her head.

Oh go on – make me beg
. ‘Sorry.’

‘Politics.’ There was a triumphant ring to her voice.

‘Who would have thought? Are there any contact details?’

‘Not without a user account.’ Rita turned off her computer.

‘We can’t stop now!’

‘You wanted a connection – I found you one. I do have a home to go to.’

‘Yes – sorry… thanks Rita. I do really appreciate it.’

As Rita put on her coat, Angela returned to her page of search results. She clicked on a link for the website of a West Midlands newspaper and quickly scanned the story. A labourer had died on the construction site of a new academy. To avoid a court appearance the company in question had agreed to a ‘substantial but undisclosed’ sum in compensation. She searched again, changing the company name for the next one on the spreadsheet. The top result was another newspaper link, this publication based in Suffolk. Again, the story was about an accident at an academy building project, but this time the case never made it to court because the charges were dropped.

‘I’ll say goodbye then.’ Rita was standing over her. Angela had forgotten she was still there.

‘Yes – goodnight. And thanks again,’ she said without taking her eyes from the screen.

She repeated the search procedure with all the other companies listed on the spreadsheet. When she’d finally finished, 14 deaths, 11 maimings, 32 severe injuries and 117 serious injuries later, she reached for the phone.