The Ardmore Inheritance, Rob Wyllie [best novels for students TXT] 📗

modern purpose-built apartment block, the sort that were snapped up for stupid money by young professionals. Young professionals like the over-confident Geordie, whose goose was now going to be well and truly cooked.

'Well well well,' Frank said, smiling. 'This is a result, isn't it? Very well done you three, very well done.' He doubted if Ronnie French had had much to do with any of it, but then again, it was Frenchie that had procured the services of Jayden Henry of MI5, so maybe he was being a bit harsh. He was just about to sit down again when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. Another green dot, fainter this time, but it was the location that interested him. Very much.

'Jayden mate, see that one there? Can you zoom in on it please? Aye, that one.'

Bloody hell. Bloody hell.

'Can we get a date Jayden, when he was there?'

'Sure.' He clicked again on the menu, and a table of dates and times popped up.

'There it is. About six months ago. He was there from about eleven at night until two in the morning, there or thereabouts.'

Bloody hell. Frank didn't need to check the date because he'd long ago committed it to memory. It was the night up in Ardmore House when Commodore Macallan had murdered his son then turned the gun on himself. And if Jayden Henry's cool software was to be believed, their boy Geordie had been there too.

Now that was something that was going to take some explaining.

Chapter 22

Maggie wasn't really sure why she was feeling so bad about the Macallan case. No-one could deny they they'd tried their best, and after all it wasn't really their fault if the potential beneficiaries were refusing to play ball. But when she thought about it a bit more, she began to realise what it was that was bugging her. Simply put, she just didn't like to let Asvina down after the faith her best friend had continued to show in her little detective agency. It wasn't a matter of money, and in fact Ms Rani was likely to do very well out of the matter if the whole horrible mess ended up in court, as seemed increasingly likely. It was more a matter of reputation. As executors, Asvina and her firm had a duty to discharge the provisions of the will in as economical manner as possible. If it got round that they had raked in tens of thousands of pounds in fees in the process, people might start to ask how hard they had really tried, and that was something that might very well lose them business in the future. That above all was the reason why Maggie wasn't going to give up on the matter without one final attempt to reach a settlement.

The problem was Kirsty Macallan and her husband had now imposed a strict radio silence, refusing to respond to any of her phone calls, emails or messages. So there was nothing for it but to turn up on their doorstep and hope they were in, which explained why she was driving around Fulham, semi-lost, early on this Saturday evening. And with her son Ollie in the back of the old Golf, this being the day their nanny had off. He'd thrown a minor strop because she'd insisted on taking the car rather than the tube, but now, glancing in the mirror, she could see that peace had been restored. It was just that Ollie loved trains and it would have been a rare treat for him, but it had been raining and it was a ten-minute walk from their home to the nearest station.

Suddenly he shouted, 'I saw the sign mummy. Clonmel Road. You missed it.'

'Thank you darling,' she said, smiling into the mirror. Now, unfortunately, she was going to have to do a three-point-turn in this narrow suburban street and three-point-turns weren't exactly her speciality. She'd punched the address into Google maps on her phone but following its directions wasn't her speciality either. It was lying on the passenger seat and seemed to be giving her the option of carrying straight on, which was a whole lot better. That was if she'd read the arrow symbol correctly. So maybe she could just go round the block again and this time she wouldn't miss the turn-off. Both suppositions turned out to be true, and a few minutes later she was squeezing into a parking space alongside the Overton's mid-terrace home. She noted the sign that warned it was residents parking only, but what she needed to say was only going to take five minutes. They jumped out of the car and made their way up the short path. And there it was, just to the left of the door, painted on the wall in defiance of Frank Stewart's law of coincidences. The latest Geordie mural.

The scene depicted an old house by a lake, surrounded by tall pine trees and with a setting sun reflecting off the surface. And beneath the painting, the ornate signature of the artist. She was no expert, but the image was captivating and all the more so because it had been executed in monochrome, and evidently with just a few sweeps of an aerosol can.

'It's really nice isn't it?' she said to her son, then remembering she was a lawyer added, 'He must be a very clever man although we shouldn't really approve of painting on the walls of people's houses.'

'S'all right I suppose,' Ollie shrugged. She knew he wouldn't be impressed, since the subject matter was neither a fast car nor a footballer.

The door was answered by Rory Overton, as in her previous visit holding his daughter in his arms. By his expression, she gathered he wasn't pleased to see them.

'What do you want? I thought we made it plain we don't want anything to do with you.'

She nodded towards the painting. 'It's rather good isn't it? Reminds me a bit of Loch More when I