Chapter 5

It scared me that I was falling to sleep letting all the past memories of my life flow through my mind. Was that a premonition of death? If I had known the lethal consequences of my excursion, I should never have set out. I really wanted to stay hidden longer, but my wallet was getting emptier and emptier and there was little left but £500 I had determined should be allocated as a reserve.

It was a fortnight after my first foray that I was going to try to make contact with the lawyer, Saturday was chosen because I hoped that he would be home and not in London that day.

I tried not to let Charlie see how nervous I was. but she saw through my blustering and I finally disclosed why I was on the run. "I've been thinking, if you want to, take up the tent and make you own way to another campsite, pack up my rucksack and leave it under the trees where we were carving those wooden figures. If I'm successful I'll have enough money for another tent when I get back." I didn't dare suggest what might be the consequences if I didn't return.

"You want to get rid of me," she complained.

This, of course, led me to have to deal with a weepy girl all night. "Don't make a decision now, do it in the morning when you've thought about it. I would move away, if I were you. Of course, I didn't tell her that I was really scared for my own safety and hers too, come to that. The last thing I wanted to do was lead the gunman back here, where she might be caught up in the violence.

Finally I acquiesced and told Charlie, "I should be back by the last train into Beaulieu Road."

Her reply was, "If you're not back earlier, I'll walk all the way down on the main road and meet you."

"I'd rather you didn't," I protested. "I'm still scared that someone might want to get at me. Just be careful and stay out of sight if you do. But really, I would prefer it if you waited here: I'd be much happier."

In truth even as I set off I was regretting the fact I had not spent longer and dissuaded her from coming to meet me, but I was already cutting fine my trip to the station. In fact, half way down the road I realised I'd not told her that I was not taking the train into Southampton, the obvious route to my destination of Surrey.

I was all too aware that that any contact that I might make with lawyers could alert that bloody gunman. I was sure that he had feelers out with the police to try and trace me, but why, I had no idea. If he had any common sense he'd be monitoring the lawyer's office, and I wasn't so naïve as to ignore the fact that mobile phones could be tracked and hacked into.

Even if he was alerted to the fact I was in Surrey, I thought I was quite safe. Surely the search for me should be centred in the North and even, if by some means the gunman was alerted to my presence, I trusted that I'd be long gone by the time he reached south of London.

I had a great plan in mind, leaving no trace of my route. I knew he'd never backtrack me. To be sure of the complex return journey I travelled to Surrey the same way.

Was I being too cautious?

I thought not.

Using the train, again from Beaulieu Road, I went in the other direction, changing at Brockenhurst where I bought a local weekly paper to hide behind. I caught the next train just down a spur to Lymington Pier, where I caught the 8.45 ferry to Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. A bus journey with a change at Ryde got me to another IoW ferry that took me right back to the mainland twenty miles down the coast, the other side of Southampton Water. At Portsmouth Harbour Station, damn! I'd just missed a train and decided to walk up to the town station, leaving it almost impossible for someone to trace me if they should try.

Passing a charity shop, I went in and for a couple of pounds I got a very distinctive car coat in PURPLE. No wonder someone had seen fit to get rid of it. This served my purpose admirably. Anyone describing me would latch onto this idiosyncratic coat. On top of that, by wearing it over my red anorak I must have put on almost a hundred pounds to the eye. I hoped any casual observer would ignore my other features.

I was running late, the train was quite fast and Rake Lane was only a mile from the station. It was a bugger finding his house, they all had names. A few had numbers but I could make neither head nor tail of the numbering system. Finally after an hour, I identified his house and walked right past.

Fifty yards down I slipped into shrubbery and crept back, lest he or his house was being watched.

In peering from the foliage onto his driveway, I waited some considerable time and spotted no other watcher.

Finally, I was about to break cover and ring the doorbell, when a man of late middle-age emerged in what was clearly a golfing outfit. Backing his BMW from the garage, he closed the door automatically and was looking over his shoulder with the clear intention of turning the car around when he clearly changed his mind, putting on the handbrake.

Leaving the engine running, he patted his pockets and went back to the front door, letting himself in. This was when I chose to open the rear door, crouching low behind the front seats.

Of course I had kittens, scared that he was about to pick up a carful of passengers and that the back door would be opened, revealing my hidden presence.

It crossed my mind that these modern cars didn't normally have their back doors unlocked. I had been lucky mine had opened and, as we crunched over the gravel, I was sure he would hear my heavy breathing.

Just in case his house had been watched, I stayed hidden for a good five minutes. Gingerly raising my head to look out of the window I saw there were wide verges on the road. Taking a deep breath I made my presence known, "Don't do anything suddenly. I'm not here to hurt you. Whatever you do, don't use your mobile. Pull over on the verge ahead. As you're doing that check to see that there is no car following you." Then I added, "Is there?"

I'll say one thing for Emanuel, he kept his nerve. Quickly I had to identify myself before he did something stupid, "My name is Scott Crowther, you've been looking for me under the name of Scott Mather, and in doing that, you appear to have been setting somebody on to kill me."

"Kill you?"

"Ever since you've been looking for me I've suffered two near road accidents and almost been blown away by a gunman, not once but twice."

"The police, they never said..."

It was obvious he'd been in touch with our local police force.

"I represent a very respectable firm, we don't generally do criminal work. This is completely alien to me. You say you're Scott Mather... ?"

Surely by now the police should have found out why I had been looked for. They knew about the woman who had tracked me down and why. Surely they'd contacted this firm of lawyers. but no ... Were they dumbos?

God and police forces move in the most mysterious of ways!

"I've no idea what the police said, but I want to know why someone's after me. I've been on the run from this gunman. The last time he had a go at me I was being held 'safely' by the police." I emphasised the word 'safely' in as sarcastic a way I could. "Now I'm on my own, the trouble is that I have no money left at all. I want to know why you're trying to trace me, it can't be because of any inheritance. And I want to know why somebody's got it in his head to do away with me. Apart from that, you've put me to a great deal of expense and I hardly have enough money for my next dinner."

I laid it on a bit.

There was no hesitation. He reached into his wallet and took out a couple of fifties and some twenty pounds notes, "I'm sorry about that, we can rectify the money for your dinner. Look, I don't know why somebody has it in for you, are you sure it's because of our contact? You're not involved in anything..."

"I was happily, finishing my Master's degree, do you seriously think I'd have time for anything else?"

Put like that and where you are studying I see what you're saying. But an inheritance shouldn't arouse that for of interest."

"Inheritance? I have nobody to inherit money from. It must surely be a case of a mix up, mistaken identity."

"Well if you are Scott Mather, I can tell you that you there is no confusion in the matter, you are entitled to some funds. I don't know how much, but it must be quite substantial. I'm working for a very reputable Swiss lawyer with whom I've had extremely responsible business relationships in the past."

He started to reach for his mobile phone, "I can ring him, I have his cell number."

"No, I want to know a bit more. I'm not sure you can trust your mobile."

The man said nothing but considered his next move carefully, before he opened his mouth, an action I thought was just like a lawyer, "Would it be all right if I rang from the golf club, a landline?" Tentatively he offered, "I do recognise your face - I think - but have you got proof of your identity." He was twisting over his seat with difficulty to talk to me behind him.

I passed over the best ID I had. In the absence of never having taken a driving test I had no driving licence but my plasticised University Card which was complete with photo.

He studied it carefully and looked up.

"So the statue of that fox and cubs is still in the forecourt of your college?"

I chuckled, he was trying to determine if I were who I said I was, "Fox was the reformer at the turn of the Eighteen hundreds, and his statue still has a broken arm."

He looked at me, "Know how that happened?" The tone was ostensibly very level but there was a hint of a smile behind his spectacles.

I shrugged, "Lots of rumours, but it was in the Sixties or Seventies, Guy Fawkes' Night, that's all we know."

He chuckled quietly to himself and I was half sure he said something like "Seventy-two," but what was more important was that he appeared to be convinced of my identity, "I'm concerned: I'm due for a 1.15 tee off and if I'm not at the golf club they'll be sure to ring my wife. That'll put the cat amongst the pigeons. What I suggest is that we use the land line at the club. At the same time I'll make an excuse to drop out of this afternoon's round, Saturday afternoon there's sure to be someone who wants to make up a four."

He looked at me questioningly as if I had some physical control over him, "It's just up the road," he threw his hand over the windscreen to emphasise the closeness of his club.

Things never go as planned, but that appeared to be a sensible solution. I concurred, "Sounds like good idea."

We were fortunate that he had a small office there with access from the car park. I think I managed to slip into the door without anyone seeing us. He made quite sure to lock the external door and left the key in the lock to show that I was not locked in, "I must go and cancel. It's almost tee time."

Before I could raise a protest he had slipped out of another door and locked it. I began wondering if I was being far too trusting, as he disappeared through the door into the interior of the club.

Generously, I convinced myself that he had turned the key in my interests, purely to ensure that nobody barged in by accident and caught sight of my presence.

It must have been almost half an hour that I nervously waited before he returned, limping slightly. "I used the excuse of the turned ankle," he indicated with an exaggerated step. I managed to set up another player for the foursome, but then I was waylaid. I'm afraid I must apologise to you, but I didn't want to appear too much out of character by running quickly away."

There was a knock on the door. I believe that, without thinking, he turned around to open it as I turned my back, not wanting to be seen. It was a relief that a large club sandwich and a salad exchanged hands, and I'm sure the waiter received something for his trouble.

He placed a pint of beer on the table, "I'm afraid I've had my quota as a driver, but it's a nice draught." Indicating the steaming beef sandwich. I saw it came with condiments on the side and I couldn't help but smother it with what was evidently a very up-market horseradish sauce

"I must warn you, that's a bit hot," he offered with a smile.

Damn, it was, but it was delicious and so was the tender beef with flavour out of this world. These snobby golfers certainly knew what good food was.

My face dropped to the copy of the house bill he had signed: £53 for the sarnie* alone! I'd never known they came as highly priced as that. It crossed my mind to question why hadn't I taken Law?

"That's for you, I told them that I'd missed my lunch because of the ankle." There was a conspiratorial gleam in his eye as he said this. "Tell me, where are you staying?"

I shook my head, "Not one person knows, and it's staying that way. You only have to drop one word and..."

He raised his hand understandingly, "No, no, you're quite right. I was out of place in even thinking of asking. The police did drop hints that you were a probably an intended victim. but they were very vague. I didn't take it too seriously, undoubtedly you do."

He looked at me very carefully, "Yes, you do like your photograph."

"Photograph?"

"After you were identified the first agent went missing and we sent another enquiry agent up north to trace you. We managed to get a couple of photos of Scott McAlpine as a teenager from your school. Then we got your university ID,"

I was still considering the fact that he appeared to know nothing of M/s Strangelove's murder. What were the police doing? Bu then, I considered they may have their own motives for keeping things hidden from the general public and not making a connection between that and the other incidents.

Trying to take my mind back to his comment about my identity, I had come prepared and had already transferred everything from my anorak to the purple jacket's pockets. "This one?"

I produced my original plastic ID card. By this time I was devouring the beef sandwich.

He took it from me and again compared the photograph with my own appearance.

Casually he appeared to ask as if it were of no consequence, "Have you seen much of Caprice since you left the McAlpine's?"

I chortled, another little test, "I'm sure you didn't get muddled up, it was Candice," I corrected. "And no, she hardly ever returned after Mrs McAlpine #3 arrived."

"So I learned," he said with a gleam in his eye knowing I was aware of his ruse to trip me up.

"So, tell me, what did happen to her mother?"

I shook my head in wonderment. "I have no idea. I asked once and nothing was said. Even though I was only young, I understood the topic was closed. I always wanted to ask Candice but never had the courage. Oh!" I rummaged in my pocket and withdrew all the documentation I had, birth certificates, family death certificates, and Mum's marriage certificate in the name of Mather. "Are these any use?"

He perused them carefully and made a note in his diary of the registrar's numbers printed on each certificate, "Just to tie up at the office with the copies we obtained," he said, not that he disbelieved me. I'm sure he was just being cautious like any lawyer, dotting his i's and crossing the t's.

"Do you think this is an opportune moment I ring my Swiss counterpart?" he queried, reaching for the phone on his desk, at the same time making a note on his blotter to reimburse the club for the private international call.

I nodded, "Please keep the call short and let me have a number I can contact him on direct. I want to know what this money is and where it comes from."

"I can tell you it comes from your father's side of the family, but that's all I know, I've filled in quite a family tree."

I was none the wiser. Gran might have known if she were still alive. As far as I knew, all Dad's relatives were dead, it still sounded suspicious to me.

Herr Gustav was delighted to hear that Stirrupson was in contact with me, and the two lawyers exchanged details. He was shocked to discover there had been attempts on my life, but I later learnt that the size of the funds was 'quite considerable', a real lawyer's understatement, I was to discover.

A vague explanation was forthcoming, that if I had not been identified then the estate would have been distributed to a hotchpotch of relatives that were more distant, according to the inheritance laws of Switzerland.

Switzerland? That was where the bulk of the funds was located, and the jurisdiction under which the estate had been and was to be administered.

"And the other beneficiaries?" I enquired.

Mr Stirrupson elicited the answer: apart from two of them benefitting from specific bequests the residue was left to me.

"Why me?"

"Because all the other closer members of the family died."

"In fact, this is not just one bequest, but is the rather complex, being the sum of a number of family trusts and private fortunes."

I heard Mr Stirrupson query the amount of the inheritance, indicating that I was more than short of money as a result of trying to evade the gunman. I couldn't follow all he said, but it was clear that Stirrupson was going to forward me an advance. I hoped it was at least two thousand pounds.

Suddenly, as if it had just occurred to him, Mr Stirrupson switched the telephone onto speaker phone, my first question was, "Who died?

"It was the whole family of your third cousin..."

"I know of no third cousin I don't even know what a third cousin is," I argued.

The Swiss man spoke good English and clearly knew a lot about my family tree, "If we go back to your grandmother's maternal grandfather, then he had five sons and two daughters. Four of the sons were killed on the first day of the Somme in 1916. They were in the same regiment, the Manchester Pals. We've traced the fact that your grandmother's mother had issue, but the other daughter died of TB in the twenties, unmarried. The remaining son, Harry, went out to Australia. He was a solitary man who married in his fifties in 1946. He had been prospecting very successfully for years, and put his son Samuel through a mining course."

I tried to follow him as he detailed that the prospector had proved very successful and established a good financial base.

"His son led his father to invest in a mineral exploration company called Poseidon. Have you heard of it?"

The name rang a bell, but why, I had no idea.

Emanuel broke in then and accused me, "You're a poor student of business if you know nothing about the South Sea Bubble* and the Poseidon Bubble. Learn from history, it has a habit of repeating itself, there's nothing new under the sun."

"Then tell me," I requested

He chuckled, "I know that the equity of Poseidon stock in the mid Sixties was going for less than one Australian dollar per share, but before the bubble burst they were trading at up to A$260 or more."

"Why was that?"

"From what I can recollect, there was a restriction on the supply of nickel, the demand was high from the Americans for their war in Vietnam, and I think the Poseidon company was overestimating the value of the reserves."

Herr Gustav broke in at that point and took up the explanation. "Old Harry looked at their geology reports and his experience told him that they were fixed and he told his son to get out quickly. Sam was already selling some shares and had recouped all his investment but then the two of them sold almost a third of the company very quietly. I'm told they even sold futures on the shares they were that sure they would drop like a bomb."

"Wasn't that illegal?"

"Oh, it would have been in the UK at that time, and the company was later under investigation, but those two used a number of different trusts and nominee companies to avoid the limelight. That's when they first used Switzerland."

Herr Gustav went on to provide the information that Sam was a budding financial genius, and used the profits to invest very cleverly over the next forty years until his death.

"Wow!" was all I could say until I had taken it in, - I was working it out that if they invested a thousand pounds, they came out with a quarter of a million a year later. That was a big sum forty years ago, when a three hundred thousand pound house now cost only four thousand in the sixties. They were set up for life.

A thought occurred to me, "Then in the last forty years there must be more family members to inherit the money?"

"The whole family, the Australians and the American branch, all twenty six were killed when their jet was in collision with a private plane as they were coming into land in a small field in Nevada. A small private aircraft without a radio just took off over the grass, directly into the path of the landing jet."

I winced. "I never heard of that crash."

"There never is the same public interest because this was private charter, not a public passenger flight. Nevertheless, it made quite an impression in the States, where there was an unpopular move to tighten up the rules on aircraft without radios and those not using the runways on minor airfields."

I was still taking all this in as the phone call with Switzerland was ended. We must have been on for forty-five minutes: far too long.

Mr. Stirrupson let me ponder all this for a few moments. I'd already worked out that the family must have been very cagey with their money if they could afford a private jet. It looked as if the fortune could be in excess of a million, maybe even two if they could hire charter jets for the family.

My thoughts were interrupted, "Are you going over to Switzerland as Herr Gunter wants?"

"I reckon that might be a bit dangerous, I want to keep a low profile."

Pensively the lawyer suggested, "If this gunman is set out to kill you for the inheritance... ?" He stopped to give the matter some thought, "You are the beneficiary and without issue, but if you made a will in this country you could leave your money to any-one you wanted to. Then, you must let that fact be known to Switzerland and America, and wherever any other potential beneficiaries hang out."

"What's the advantage of that, I'd still be dead."

"But there would be no reason to seek your demise. They'd get nothing. The estate would pass to your estate and then onto your beneficiaries. And now we're aware of the possible reason for them doing away with you, they'd be examined with a fine toothcomb."