The Ardmore Inheritance Read online

  'Any idea what this is about boss?' he asked, shooting her a smile. 'Although to be honest, I don't really care. It'll just be great to be back in the saddle again.'

  He was right, because it had been a while since they'd had a nice big juicy one to get their teeth into. Her little firm was doing ok now, their reputation having spread as a result of cracking a couple of very high-profile investigations in the past year, but much of the recent work had been pretty dull and routine. This one however had every prospect of being anything but.

  'Not much. It's a complicated inheritance matter I think, with a ton of money involved. Not exactly sure what it is she wants us to do, but you can imagine it won't be a walk in the park.'

  Asvina's PA Mary had met them in the reception atrium where they had been issued with passes then escorted to the high-speed lift that delivered them up to Miss Rani's glass-walled corner office, an impressive south-west facing suite on the second-highest floor, commanding a view in one direction over the river to the picturesque Royal Borough of Greenwich, and towards St Paul's and the City in the other.

  She greeted them warmly, embracing Maggie in a suffocating hug then shaking Jimmy's hand.

  'Thanks for coming in guys,' she said. 'Mary will be in with the drinks in a moment. But I'm a bit pushed for time so I'll get straight on with it if you don't mind.'

  Maggie gave a wry smile. Her best friend was so ridiculously successful that for her, time literally was money. One occasion during an idle moment she and Jimmy had done a rough back-of-a-fag-packet calculation, revealing that Asvina was bringing in not far off a pound a second. So it was understandable she didn't like to waste any of those seconds on non-billable small-talk.

  'I don't know if either of you remember the Macallan incident? About six months ago. Up in your neck of the woods Jimmy I think it was.'

  'How could I forget?' Jimmy said. 'The Ardmore mystery, that's what the media called it. The father blew his son's head off and then shot himself, but no-one's ever worked out why. So it's that, is it? That's what we're going to be working on?'

  Maggie caught the look of disquiet on his face, and she could hear it in his voice too. It seemed he knew something of this matter, although she was puzzled as to what it might be.

  'Yes, that's it, and it was the most dreadful family tragedy, wasn't it?' Asvina said. 'And now of course, there's the horribly mundane matter of sorting out the estate, which as you may now have guessed has fallen to our firm, in our role as executors. And hence on to me personally.'

  'Well of course we'll be happy to help in any way we can,' Maggie said, at the same time wondering what they were letting themselves in for. 'But I think you said it was a rather complicated matter?'

  Asvina nodded. 'Well, yes you could say that. First of all, there was the little matter of establishing whether the document that was vested with us was still valid.'

  'There was some doubt about that?' Maggie asked.

  'Only in so much that the father, that's Commodore Roderick Macallan, had been having some correspondence with a local solicitor about changing the terms of his will in the months before he took his own life. But in the end, we concluded those discussions were only exploratory, and since they had never been formally written up or witnessed, we took the view that they could be ignored.'

  'And that was the complication?' Maggie asked.

  Asvina shook her head. 'I wish I could say it was only that. The fact is, there are some peculiarities in the provisions of the existing will that makes it rather a bugger to execute, not to put too fine a point on it. Although it's not a particularly large estate in terms of absolute value.'

  Maggie shot Jimmy a half-smile, who returned a look suggesting he was thinking the same thing as she was. Not a particularly large estate. In Asvina Rani terms, that probably meant no more than nine or ten million pounds.

  'And who benefits from the will?' she asked. 'There are twin daughters I seem to remember?'

  'Yes there are,' Asvina said. 'And they're identical twins too. Pixie and Posy. Not their given names by the way, but ones they adopted several years ago when they began their careers in the public eye.'

  'Elspeth and Kirsty,' Jimmy said, his voice signalling disapproval. 'That's their real names.'

  'Do you know them then?' Maggie asked him, surprised.

  'I've met them,' he said. 'Once.' By his expression, it was evident he didn't mean to give anything else away.

  'That might prove useful,' Asvina said brightly, not giving Maggie the chance to ask the obvious question, being how he knew them. 'There is also Roderick Macallan's estranged wife to be considered too.'

  'That's the twins' mother?' she asked.

  'No,' Asvina said, 'Alison Macallan is the Commodore's second wife. I should have said that his first wife, the mother of his three children, died in very tragic circumstances. But I guess you'll know all about this Jimmy?'

  'Aye, I do,' he said. 'Although it's pretty much in the public domain, courtesy of the twins. They mention it a lot on their channels.' From his tone, Maggie guessed that once again he didn't approve.

  'Their mother died in child birth,' Asvina explained. 'This was in Canada, where their father was on secondment at the time, somewhere over on the West coast, Vancouver I think. So as I understand it, the first twin was delivered perfectly normally. But then there were terrible last-minute complications with the second baby, something about how she was lying in the womb I believe. So as a result, the doctors had to do an emergency Caesarean, but the mother had already lost a lot of blood and they were terribly worried about the outcome. I think in the end it may have come down to them choosing between saving mother or baby. Whatever the truth of the situation, they managed to deliver the second twin about half an hour later, but sadly Phillipa Macallan died on the operating table.'

  'God, how horrible,' Maggie said. 'But you say his second wife Alison is estranged from the Commodore? Does that mean they're not divorced?'

  'Not yet. The break-up was acrimonious, let's put it this way, and we had only recently started with the formal proceedings before he died. Which of course, just adds to the complexity of the matter, as I've eluded to already.'

  'It does sound very interesting,' Maggie said. 'So you mentioned some peculiarities in the will. What are they all about?'

  Asvina smiled. 'Yes, as I said, it's all rather complicated. In fact it goes back to late Victorian times, when one of Roderick Macallan's ancestors built the Ardmore estate. Sir Archibald made his fortune in shipbuilding and more or less invested all of it in building the house and laying out the grounds. I think it was true to say it became the love of his life. Which brings us to the covenant in the will.'

  'A restricted one I'm guessing?' Maggie said, nodding sagely. In her days as a trainee solicitor, immersed in the mundane conveyancing work that was the lot of the junior, she'd come across many of these clauses and knew what a pain in the backside they could be. Which was of course the intention when they were drawn up in the first place. They weren't called restricted for nothing.

  'Yes, exactly,' Asvina said. 'As I said, it had been the love of Sir Archie's life and so he took precautions to ensure it could not be sold off and broken up once he'd passed away.'

  'And that's what the covenant tries to enforce?'

  'Yes, it does. It lays out that in the event of the death of the current incumbent, it must pass, intact, to the oldest offspring- the oldest surviving issue in lawyer-speak. Specifically, it states that the estate must not be sold off in order to split the proceeds between the surviving beneficiaries. Over the years of course there have been attempts by the family to have the covenant overturned, but the courts have always held firm. And as the house and grounds have been listed for several decades now, it makes it even more unlikely that it could ever be successfully challenged.'

  'I understand,' Maggie said, thinking out loud. 'So I think I begin to see the complication. Because this time, the next in line to inherit happens to be twins, and I'm gue
ssing that eventuality was never considered in the original provisions.'

  'Well no, it wasn't,' Asvina said, 'that's true, but in fact that in itself isn't a problem. Legally speaking, the estate would be inherited by whichever of the twins was first-born. And it's that which is providing our current little complication.'

  'How do you mean?' Maggie asked.

  Asvina gave a wry smile. 'Each of the twins is claiming it is she who is the first-born, and we are finding it impossible to verify the truth one way or the other.'

  'What?' Maggie said, puzzled. 'But surely there must be records? You know, birth certificates and the like? Particularly since they were born about half an hour apart, which must be unusual for twins.'

  'Well yes I guess it is, and yes there are records of course. But in Canada at that time, the register of births only stated the date of birth, not the time. We checked that.'

  'But what about family?' Maggie asked, then remembering that both their parents and their older brother were dead, she realised it was quite conceivable that the truth had died with them. Changing tack, she asked. 'Are there no aunts or grandparents who might know?'

  'Roderick had an elder sister, and we were able to get in touch with her but she didn't know. She's nearly ninety and said she had always been confused over which girl was which. As I said, Elspeth and Kirsty are identical twins so I suppose you can understand that. And Roderick and Phillipa were both the children of older parents, so it's not surprising that both sets of grandparents are now dead.'

  Maggie gave Asvina a sympathetic smile. 'Yes, I think I can see now what you meant when you said it was a complicated matter.'

  'And that's not the half of it,' Asvina replied. 'You see, Alison Macallan has now formally decided to contest the will too.'

  'Can she do that?' Jimmy asked, breaking his silence, a silence that Maggie had noted with some anxiety.

  'Yes, of course,' Asvina said, 'although whether she will be successful is another matter altogether. When they split up you see, the Commodore changed the terms of his will rather rapidly to exclude her from inheriting anything. But it's normal for a spouse to have rights over the estate of their deceased partner whatever the state of the relationship at the time of death, so a family court may feel that the will is very unfair to her. That's just my opinion, but it wouldn't surprise me if they looked at her case with some sympathy.'

  'And do you think it's harsh?' Maggie asked Asvina.

  'I think so, and it's made more complicated by the fact that since she and the Commodore split up, she's been living in a gate cottage owned by the estate, near the village.'

  'Lochmorehead,' Jimmy said morosely.

  Maggie gave him a quizzical look but made no comment. Instead she said, 'So don't tell me Asvina. Mrs Macallan could be evicted, if whichever twin inherits the place doesn't want her around?'

  Asvina nodded. 'Yes, that's a distinct possibility. So as you can imagine, she's rather sore about the whole thing. That's understating it actually. In fact, she's absolutely livid, mad as hell. The whole thing's a bit of a mess.'

  'And you want us to sort it all out is what I'm guessing?'

  'Yes please,' Asvina said, laughing. 'Shouldn't be too difficult. No seriously, I know it's going to be quite a challenge to say the least. But I think the mission is quite straightforward to define if not execute. You either need to somehow find out which of the twins was born first- and god knows how you're going to do that - or you need to broker some sort of a settlement between them, which will probably have to include the estranged wife too.'

  Maggie raised an eyebrow. 'Bloody hell Asvina, even by your standards this is a challenging one. But of course, we'll do our best, won't we Jimmy?'

  'What?'

  She shot him an admonishing glance. He was staring at the floor, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

  'We'll do our best, won't we Jimmy?'

  'Aye, sorry boss,' he said, forcing a half-smile. 'Aye we will.'

  'Great,' Asvina said briskly. 'That's it all arranged then. Brilliant.' Furrowing her brow, she gave her watch an extended look, a look Maggie calculated had cost her friend about thirty quid. 'So if you don't mind guys, I've got some folks coming to see me in a couple of minutes.' Politely but firmly, she ushered them towards the door. 'Keep me informed of progress if you would.'

  In the lift on the way down, Maggie had tried to make conversation with Jimmy, which shouldn't have been exactly difficult given how much they now had to talk about. But he seemed distracted and disengaged, his mind elsewhere, his answers terse to the point of rudeness. And it was so completely unlike the Jimmy she had come to love that she now knew, if she hadn't before, that there was something badly wrong.

  'Jimmy,' she said quietly. 'What is it? Is there something you're not telling me?'

  He gave her a half-smile. 'Look, I'm sorry Maggie, it's just all come as a bit of a shock. You see those twins, Elspeth and Kirsty Macallan. My wife Flora was at school with them, and with that woman who was murdered four years ago too, Morag Robertson. The damn place is cursed I tell you. And now it seems I'm bloody well going back there.'

  Chapter 3

  DI Frank Stewart smiled as the high-tech vending machine delivered him, as ordered, a steaming Americano fortified with double Espresso. He picked it up and then with a jaunty step schlepped over to the adjacent machine, swiped his debit card across the contactless reader, then punched in the code number he knew off by heart. Six-one-six, sending a Twix King-size tumbling into the receptacle below. Things were looking decidedly up at this moment in time, that was his opinion, mainly because his sleepy wee department had, much to his surprise, gone viral. At least, that was the term his mate Eleanor Campbell had used to describe the sudden and unexpected explosion of interest from across the whole UK policing community. And it was all down to his boss Jill Smart, who had recently spoken at a national police leadership conference up in Birmingham.

  'We've got this small department,' she had told an assembly of a couple of hundred of her Detective Chief Inspector colleagues, 'hidden away in a dump of an office just off the Uxbridge Road. We call it 12B, I've no idea where that name came from, but that's what it's called. It's been up and running for a couple of years now, and we in the Met find it's a very handy facility for the sort of matter that doesn't quite fit into our conventional teams. Cold cases, early-stage investigations and the like.' Very handy for tidying away big embarrassing screw-ups too, was what she hadn't gone on to say, although everyone in the room took it as read. And since every force in the country had a ton of them, Department 12B was suddenly in demand.

  The first one he was turning his attention to had come in from Greater Manchester Police. We think it's probably some sad geeky teenager. Take a quick look, see if there's anything to worry about. That was the terse instruction that got Frank onto what would become known, obviously, as the Geordie case. And when Jill Smart had fleshed out the detail, he could see why they were so keen to get it all wrapped up and locked away out of sight.

  He found Eleanor at her adopted desk, and surprisingly for once, the forensic officer wasn't on the phone to her on-off boyfriend.

  'How's Lloyd?' he asked guilelessly.

  'He's a pig.'

  Resisting the temptation to ask for further explanation, he shrugged and said, 'Aye, all men are. Comes with the territory. Anyway, work to do, let's get on.'

  Generally speaking, there would be a bout of tense negotiation required before she consented to do even the most trivial of tasks, principally because Eleanor Campbell was a stickler for doing things by the book. Meaning in practical terms she always wanted to see a bloody case number, whereas Frank would go to any length to avoid having to attach that bureaucratic limpet to anything he was working on. The reason being that once an investigation got a case number, it became visible to the brass, who had a nasty habit of asking awkward questions, like why are we spending so much on this stupid case, and worst of all, when are we going to solve it?

&n
bsp; But this time he didn't have to worry about any of that, because Eleanor was fully on board with the project.

  'You got it then I hear? You got DCS Barker's phone?'

  'I got it,' she said, 'at least I got WPC Green to get it for me. She hates him way more than I do.'

  'Aye, not surprising that, because she has to work with the arse five days a week. But anyway, nice work wee Eleanor. So anyway, just run it past me again, what are we going to do?'

  She gave him a look of mock disgust. 'I've explained two-factor authentication to you a million times.'

  'Three times I think you'll find, if we're being strictly accurate, and that was quite a while ago to be fair. But that's what this guy Geordie's doing, do you think? The two-factor stuff?'

  'Defo. That's why he breaks in and steals their phones. And by the way it might not be a guy, in like a man.'

  'You mean it could be like a woman?' He found it hard to resist a spot of gentle mockery of the way she spoke, and he knew he usually didn't have to worry about causing offence because generally she never noticed. Evidently she assumed that everyone spoke that way, even oldies like him. But she hadn't missed it this time.

  'Are you taking the piss?'

  'No no,' he said hurriedly. 'When I say this guy Geordie, I mean it in a strictly gender-neutral sense of course.' Gender neutral. That was a phrase he'd learnt on a course, and he'd found it went down well with millennials like her.

  It seemed to satisfy her. 'Cool. So how did we get on to this dude in the first place?'

  That was a question he wasn't fully at liberty to answer. Because it was an Assistant Chief Constable, the high-profile high-flying Katherine Frost of the Greater Manchester Police, who in desperation had brought it to the attention of Jill Smart after learning of Department 12B from one of her DCIs. 'This will ruin my entire career and reputation if it gets out, you must understand that,' she had said to Jill, 'I need to know I can count on you. On your absolute discretion and that of your team.' And afterwards he could see why she was so exercised about it. Because if like her you were on a career fast-track, with every prospect of making Chief Constable before you were fifty, but you also liked to be chained to your bed by the wrists whilst being orally pleasured by another woman, and you liked to take a video as a souvenir too, then you would, quite naturally, insist on discretion. So Smart had given her the assurances she needed before passing it on, smirking, to Frank Stewart, who had laughed uncontrollably and promised to guard the secret with his life. But he had to tell Eleanor something.