Design for Murder (11 page)

It was several days before Eric was able to arrange a meeting with Sharon Owen: she had been working on yet another case at the Court of Appeal in London and although they had spoken a few times on the phone, he had been unable to obtain her signature to the documents he was holding on her behalf.

The wait gave him opportunity to spend more time on the file. Strictly speaking, all that really concerned him was the agreement that Strudmore had raised on behalf of the trust with Sharon’s cousin Coleen. He had checked them carefully against the trust documents and all seemed in order, but he was a little curious as to why Sharon’s cousin Coleen
Chivers seemed to have insisted on receiving the lion’s share of the trust funds. Of course, it was Sharon’s father, the solicitor James Owen, who had caused the value of the trust to be diminished – and that was the main reason, he guessed, why Coleen Chivers had been so insistent in the negotiations. Even so, it was a family matter, and he hoped it could be resolved without too much bitterness.

Back at his apartment he opened up his laptop. He poured himself a drink and trawled the internet: he quickly turned up the website for Chivers Properties Limited. The company had been formed by Coleen’s father Peter when he was in his early forties, financed no doubt by the money he had obtained at the death of his father George Chivers. As Eric recalled, after the death of George’s wife Flora, the estate had been divided between Peter and his sister Anne, Sharon’s mother. While some of Anne’s share had been frittered away by her husband’s depredations, Peter Chivers had put his share to good use. Chivers Properties Limited had grown significantly during the last forty years and held an extensive range of real estate, ranging from office blocks to industrial premises. It was now headed by Coleen Chivers, as chief executive.

Curiously, Eric switched his way through the links on the website until he came to a profile of Coleen Chivers. There was a series of photographs displayed. One of them showed her at a reception in the Mandarin Hotel in Singapore: a tall, confident, blonde woman in a low-cut evening dress, standing with some Asian men in dinner jackets. Another had been taken recently: her wind-blown hair floated about her cheeks and she was laughing, one hand on the tiller of a yacht. Eric looked carefully at the background: from the architecture of the blocks of flats he could see behind her he guessed the photograph had been taken at the marina at
Royal Quays. So she would have a boat moored on the Tyne. Something expensive, no doubt. He studied her features. She bore no resemblance to Sharon Owen, her cousin, but she was a beautiful woman. And a successful one, chief executive of a big company, wealthy … and hard, if the negotiations over the trust money were anything to go by. Eric sipped his drink, thinking about it. Maybe it had been her lawyers. But he had no doubt Coleen Chivers was a formidable businesswoman. She’d have to be, to hold her empire together.

Legal advisers, pushing her to screw the last penny out of the trust, or maybe it had been her own toughness, based on resentment, perhaps. A family feud? They could give rise to the worst kind of battles.

He followed through on the links on the website. There was a description of the holdings of the company, the names of board members, including a titled non-executive director, and details of Coleen Chivers herself. She was thirty-six years old, he read, almost a decade older than Sharon. She had moved straight from a finishing school in Switzerland to work for her father in Chivers Properties Limited and after successfully managing a subsidiary company had been taken on to the main board under her father’s chairmanship. On his death she had become chief executive and also taken his chair. The company had continued to grow, not least with some overseas acquisitions and partners.

Eric switched to the financial reports filed by the company. He scanned the figures thoughtfully. They were impressive. He wondered what the off-balance sheet figures might disclose, but certainly it seemed that the audited accounts disclosed a healthy series of operations and a steady growth of capital and revenue.

There was another photograph of Coleen Chivers
attached to the annual report. He studied it for a little while. It was quite different from the carefree shot of her on the yacht at Royal Quays. She was staring at the camera with a certain intensity. She looked older, there were lines around her eyes and mouth, and he felt it demonstrated a certain hardness about her. The jut of the jaw suggested determination; the glance held a hint of steel. It might have been a deliberate attempt to show her as the strong-minded executive she clearly was; it might, on the other hand, expose her real self, in a way the smiling images at the Singapore dinner and the yacht did not.

It was interesting, but not really relevant, after all. The negotiations had been concluded, Sharon and her cousin had agreed upon the disbursements to be made under the trust set up by George Chivers all those years ago, and all that was required was that the final documents be signed.

‘So have you ever met your cousin?’ Eric asked, when he finally managed to get to see Sharon.

On her return to the north, after the successful prosecution of the case to the Court of Appeal, Eric had invited Sharon to call at the flat. He had brought in some excellent Montepulciano, spent some time in the kitchen cooking a simple meal, rouget and salmon with potatoes in a cream sauce, and persuaded her that it would be a good idea if she stayed the night. She took little persuading: they had not seen each other for over a week. Then, seated side by side on the settee, with a bottle of brandy on the low table in front of them, Eric brought up the matter of the documentation to be signed, and the nature of Coleen Chivers.

‘Met her?’ Sharon shook her head. ‘My mother was never very close to her brother Peter – Coleen’s father. I think there was a certain tension between them.’

‘Because of your father’s handling of the trust funds?’ Eric queried.

Sharon sipped at her brandy and nestled against Eric’s arm. ‘
Mishandling
, you mean. No, I think it predated all that affair. My mother never explained in any kind of detail what it was all about, but the two of them had fallen out before my grandfather died.’

‘George Chivers.’

‘That’s right. The source of the family’s wealth. In fact, the only hint I ever got from my mother was that it was something to do with George that had caused her and her brother Peter to have a quarrel.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘She told me once or twice that Peter was a bit of a tightwad. You know, he wasn’t kindly inclined towards charitable causes. But I suppose that’s how he became a successful businessman.’

‘And was followed along that track by his own daughter, Coleen.’

Sharon glanced at him and smiled. ‘You think I’ve given up too easily on my share of the trust fund, don’t you?’

Eric shrugged. ‘Not my business,’ he replied. ‘But had I been Strudmore, had I been advising you, I’d have held out for a fairer distribution of the proceeds of the trust. The conditions were quite clear—’

‘But it was my father who had dipped his sticky fingers into trust money,’ she reminded him.

‘And you feel a moral obligation to recognize that in the distribution of the trust funds.’

‘Exactly.’ Sharon was silent for a little while, then she murmured, ‘It’s also a case of trying to deny my genes, I suppose.’

Eric was puzzled. ‘I don’t follow.’

She sighed, leaned a little closer to him. ‘Look, I’m old
enough to be able to see things in a clear light, unaffected by sentimentality. Let’s look at facts. Take my mother, Anne Chivers. She had a ruthless streak in her. She insisted on marrying my father James Owen in spite of parental opposition. And it was she who was determined that I should become a lawyer, read for the bar. As for my father’s depredations into trust funds, I have a strong suspicion my mother knew about it, did nothing to prevent him, indeed may have supported his activities at least tacitly because she saw it as a way of getting something over her brother Peter. I suspect also she was encouraging my wayward father so that I would end up with a larger part of the trust funds, though in that she was frustrated because my father frittered away the money he had embezzled. Unsound investments.’

‘Like the race track.’

She grunted in acquiescence. ‘Among other things. Anyway, there’s my mother. And then there was her brother Peter, the founder of Chivers Properties Limited. According to my mother he was as tight-fisted as could be. And ruthless in his pursuit of money. And women also, it seems. But, of course, in that he wasn’t so far different from his father, my grandfather, old George.’

Eric shifted in his seat and stroked her hair. ‘Your grandfather played around? How do you know that?’

‘Family gossip,’ Sharon replied, smiling. ‘And, well, there’s some documentation also. You’ve been through all the papers in the file Strudmore handed to you?’

Eric shrugged. ‘Relating to the trust fund, yes. I didn’t plough through the earlier papers, however, involving the years before the establishment of the trust fund.’

Sharon giggled a little guiltily. ‘Well, let’s take a look and you’ll see what I mean. After all, you used the documents as an excuse to bring me here and have your wicked way with
me, didn’t you? So let’s at least play fair and look at them, before you take me to bed.’

‘All unwillingly.’

‘But of course. And more than a little sloshed.’

Eric removed his arm, set down his brandy glass and walked across to the desk in the corner of the sitting room. He extracted the file from the drawer, glanced at it briefly and then brought it across to the settee. As he sat down beside Sharon once more she said, ‘By the way, I had an odd letter waiting for me when I got back from London.’

‘About this file?’ he asked.

‘No, no, nothing to do with that. It was about Raymond Conroy.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, I’m happy to see the back of him,’ Eric muttered.

‘You’re not alone in that. But this letter … it was a request for an interview. From a journalist. He wants to discuss Raymond Conroy. I haven’t replied to it yet because I’m not sure I even want to think about that cold-hearted bastard, but it was such an odd proposal—’

‘Was it written by a guy called Tony Fraser?’ Eric asked, after a moment’s thought.

‘You’ve had one too?’ Sharon queried in surprise.

Eric shook his head. ‘No, I actually had a visit from the man.’

‘So what’s it all about? Is he some kind of ghoul, or what?’

Eric thought about it for a few moments before he answered. ‘It’s difficult to say, really. Fraser spoke to me at the end of Conroy’s trial, and then later, while you were in London, he visited me at my office. He wanted me to tell him what I thought about Conroy, what in my view made the man tick … and, I suppose, he was leading up to asking me directly whether I thought Raymond Conroy really was
the Zodiac Killer. I gave him little satisfaction. I imagine that’s why he then wrote to you.’

‘So what’s he after?’

Eric sipped thoughtfully at his brandy. ‘Well, as I said, as far as I could make out he wanted me to provide him with a kind of inside story on Raymond Conroy. He wanted to know what I could tell him about the man himself, his drives, his psychological make-up, how he had reacted to the charges against him. I sent him away with a flea in his ear. Told him the rules about lawyer-client relationships. As no doubt you’ll do if you write to him.’

‘I certainly shan’t agree to meet him,’ Sharon said fervently. ‘But I wonder why this man Fraser would want such information anyway.’

‘I got the impression,’ Eric said slowly, ‘that Fraser sees Conroy as a kind of lifeline, or a ladder, an opportunity that might turn out to be golden.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

Eric sighed. ‘If you saw him, you might understand. He seems to me to be sort of … unfulfilled, if you know what I mean. He told me he’s a journalist, but when I questioned him about that he sort of hedged. He said he was mainly freelance; admitted to writing for the
Metro
, which is a free newspaper and hardly in the top flight of daily newssheets, and other local journals. I gathered that he was probably scratching a living at journalism, little more. He would be unhappy about that. I think he’s the kind of man who would feel he deserved more recognition, and was hungering to get into the big time. Make a reputation for himself. Perhaps on the back of Raymond Conroy … who, you have to admit, is a prime case for investigative reporting.’

‘Whether he’s the Zodiac Killer or not.’ Sharon shivered, leaned closer to Eric. ‘He’s a cold-hearted, unemotional
bastard, that’s for sure. And you think Fraser wants to use him as a study, for an article or something? But what makes Fraser think he would be able to get close enough to Conroy to be able to produce something worthwhile?’

Eric caressed her hair with his free hand, then sipped at his brandy. ‘He also told me that he himself has spent time inside, so he has some fellow-feeling for Conroy, knows the kinds of pressure that can be felt by an innocent man banged up in jail. Maybe he believes that would be enough to get close to him. But first he had to find out where Conroy was staying. That’s where I came in.’

‘So what are you trying to say?’ she asked curiously. ‘This man Fraser is a nutcase?’

Eric nodded. ‘I got the impression Tony Fraser is a failure as a journalist. Maybe he’s always been a failure, I don’t know. But he’s a sad, needy character who thinks life has treated him badly and now believes he’s found a way to haul himself up by his boot straps.’

‘By way of Raymond Conroy?’

‘Looks like it,’ Eric suggested. ‘He seems to feel that if he can get inside the mind of Raymond Conroy, or at least discover what our views of the man might be—’

‘As confidential counsel,’ Sharon murmured.

‘Then he might produce a worthwhile piece of writing, make his name as a journalist, come up with sensational discoveries, become a new Truman Capote—’

‘Who?’

Eric smiled. ‘You’ve had a sadly neglected literary experience. I’m talking about
In Cold Blood
. Never mind. But there have been hugely successful pieces of docufiction written in collaboration with killers. People have a fascination about learning the ins and outs of a killer’s mind.’