Read Online Dead Reckoning by Patricia Hall - Free Book Online

objected mildly.
    â€œWe’d not noticed,” the older Earnshaw added. “We’re a bit preoccupied at the minute. We’ve other problems to worry about. You’ll have heard about the financial difficulties we’ve run into. Simon’s whereabouts were the last thing on my mind this week, till he failed to turn up to meet his brother this evening.”
    â€œSo when did you last see Simon?” Thackeray asked.
    â€œWe’ve not seen him since Christmas, but I spoke to him on the phone on Sunday to arrange a meeting at the Clarendon today. There was some business stuff we needed to discuss,” Matthew said. The crisis appeared to have sobered him up.
    â€œSimon is a major shareholder in the company,” his father added dully.
    â€œBut he doesn’t work for you?” Thackeray asked.
    â€œNo, he used to, but not now. He did a management degree and I put him in charge of marketing and administration when he finished. He was very good. But then a year or so ago he had some sort of conversion to green politics and decided to go back to university to do a postgraduate degree. He said he wanted nothing to do with the company any more. Or the family, it seems. He’s kept himself very much to himself since.”
    â€œHe kept his bloody shares, though,” Matthew said. “He wasn’t so converted he didn’t know which side his bread was buttered.”

    â€œSo you wouldn’t have expected to see him regularly?”
    â€œWe speak to him on the phone if we need to. His mother meets him in town for lunch now and again, though she doesn’t think I know that,” Frank Earnshaw said, his bitterness overcoming the anxiety in his faded blues eyes.
    â€œHe knew how important it was to talk about the problems at the mill,” Matthew said. “We told him it was urgent and he didn’t object, just said he wasn’t keen to come up to the mill or out to Broadley. He suggested the Clarendon. I think he thought it was some sort of joke. It’s not the sort of place he goes these days.”
    â€œSo you wouldn’t normally expect him to be jogging on Broadley Moor?” Thackeray said. “Too close to home, maybe?”
    â€œI wouldn’t expect him to be jogging anywhere,” Matthew said sourly. “He’s not the type. Unless that’s another sort of conversion he’s gone through that we don’t know about.”
    â€œDo you happen to have a photograph of Simon with you?” Thackeray asked. “We could possibly eliminate this body quite quickly without any more distress …”
    â€œI brought this one from his flat,” Frank Earnshaw said. “I thought if we reported him missing you’d want one.”
    He reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a snapshot of a young man standing outside a substantial Victorian house beside Frank himself and a woman Thackeray guessed must be his wife.
    â€œIt was taken about three years ago, but he’s not changed much. Hair’s a bit longer, maybe.”
    Thackeray looked at the photograph carefully but his hopes of finding some distinguishing characteristic, such as dark hair or unusual stature, which could make it impossible that the body in the Infirmary freezer could be Simon Earnshaw, faded almost at once. Simon was about the right height, and as fair-haired as the unknown victim, and allowing
for three years, of around the same build. He sighed and handed the photograph back to Frank Earnshaw.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said. “It’s impossible to rule him out. I think you’d better have a look at the man who was found the other morning.”
    As the quartet walked the short distance across the city centre to the Infirmary and down into the basement where it had been arranged that a technician would retrieve the remains of the unknown jogger, Thackeray explained as gently as he could the nature of the injuries that had been