Too Short Read online

  “I want to know about the murders. Why does a mostly respectable business man dirty his hands by murdering three people close to him? You have the money and connections to purchase a murder with no comeback on you, yet you didn’t.” I made sure the recorder was on and picked up my pen.

  Daniel didn’t speak for minute. He sat perfectly still and I took the chance, as I had during the trial, to get a good look into his eyes. I was struck, then as now, by the sadness in them. I heard him sigh and watched as his long ring finger brushed the tablet screen. The pictures changed. Now they all showed the same picture, that of his daughter, Sarah. She must have been about fourteen in the picture, dressed in her school uniform with satchel over her shoulder and smiling at the camera. Her eyes were the same colour as her father’s but her hair was blond and long.

  “Miss Courtenay, do you mind if I call you Jessica?” I nodded, intrigued. His daughter died when she was seventeen but I’d never found anyone, or anything, to suggest that she was one of his victims. “I only had one child, my daughter Sarah. You know she died in an accident, but you won’t have seen the link between her death, my business, and the three people you are convinced I killed. If you’ll permit me, I can link all three and give you some information that no other biographer has managed to discover.”

  I sat absolutely still, nonplussed. “Really? I find it hard to believe that you’ll confess all to me.”

  “I promise to tell you the truth. I have drawn up documents to give you as much proof as possible. And, if everything goes as I hope, you are welcome to take them with you when you leave.” Daniel paused. “I’ll pour us a cup of tea and then we can get started.”

  True to his word, Daniel poured the dark and aromatic tea into the two bone china cups. At his question, I agreed to milk and two sugars. He took his black, no sugar. I took a Bourbon.

  “You’ll find this hard to believe, at first,” he began, “but, please, listen and then you can ask your questions.”

  I nodded in agreement and took a sip of the tea. It was just the right temperature, hot enough to burn but cool enough to taste every nuance. A perfect cup of tea. I disliked him even more.

  “Mum and Dad weren’t rich. A two up, two down, in Swindon, not far from the town centre. Dad worked for one of the insurance companies in town. They were doing ok. I was born, grew up and went to school. No different to any other child. Things changed when I was about fifteen though. Exams were approaching and Dad lost his job. Benefit kept us in the house but he couldn’t find more work. Any plans I had to go on to A levels and University were gone, there was no way we could afford it. Exams stopped having much meaning at that point. You’ve seen my school reports. I only passed one exam, Maths, and that with an A grade. I failed all the others. I was always good at Maths, it came easy. I didn’t have time for study. I was too busy working in the evenings and weekends. I didn’t even turn up to most of the exams. The builder I worked for paid cash in hand. Money now was better than money later on.”

  He drank some of his tea, placing the cup down with the delicate chime of china on china. “I found something out, though, on that building job. The builder, when he was sizing up and quoting on a job, would ask himself how many bricks, or how much cement or time it would take. The answers would just pop into my head as soon he asked. Took me a few weeks, a few quotes seen through to completion, to get the confidence to answer. I think it took him longer to believe me but after a few months I took over the quotes and ordering.”

  “I worked for him about a year, maybe a little more. Then I didn’t need to work at all. You see, people always ask that type of question; how much will this cost, what will the score be, how much will I win if, how many minutes until the train arrives? Those sorts. The world of conversation is full of them. I discovered that if I listened hard enough, I knew the answers straight away even if the event hadn’t happened yet, as long as it only involved numbers.”

  “What?” I felt my forehead furrow. He’d invited me here to listen to a fairy story?

  “I understand your scepticism but it is true.” His voice was steady and earnest. But then, in the trials, he had always sounded believable. Bloody shame those Jurors bought it.

  I dropped my pen onto the pad. “If this is the best you have for me then I’m wasting my time. You haven’t changed my mind. I still think you killed those three.”

  “Then let me prove it to you. Ask me any question you like. The answer must be expressible as a number, though. If it hasn’t happened yet you’ll have to wait for the proof and we don’t really have time for that.”

  “Anything?” I leaned my head slightly to one side, trying to read from his eyes the trick he was about to play.

  “Anything at all. Pick something I couldn’t possibly know or find out. Pick something personal, if you want.” He returned my questioning stare without blinking. “Anything.”

  “How much do I get paid?” I started with an easy one. It shouldn’t be too hard for him to make a call and find that out. I mean, Daniel Swanton was connected to everyone and everything in some way. He is that rich. I picked up my warm tea and prepared to wait a few minutes whilst he made a phone call or checked the screen of his tablet.

  He did neither, he answered after barely five seconds and was gracious enough to comment that it didn’t seem enough. From there on, I asked him more and more difficult questions. Just as he had asked, I went from professional to personal, from present, past and into the future (he was right, I would have to wait for those answers), and as far as I could tell he got everyone right.

  “It’s a trick,” I stated.

  “It’s not. Can you accept, for now, that it might just be possible. If you do, the next part of my story makes a lot more sense.”

  “Whatever.” I waved my pen at him; more than a little surprised I’d picked it up again.

  “Good. Well, being able to do this ‘trick’ meant that money wasn’t an issue anymore. I used my wages to place bets on football matches, who scored first, how long till the first goal; that kind of thing. At first, the builder would place the bets for me. Then, when he saw I didn’t lose, he joined in. By the time I was eighteen and able to place my own bets the builder had retired a rich man and been banned from every bookies in town. They banned me as well. I had to go further afield to place my bets and then the internet came along with online betting sites. I made a fortune, only to have the tax man take most of it away. I got to keep the new house. When I tried to make more bets online I found, like the bookies, that I was blacklisted. My source of money was gone. But, it did teach me a lesson. Follow the rules, pay tax.”

  “So the tax man got you. So what? And, I saw the court order that banned you from ever gambling again. The bookies and internet sites didn’t blacklist you. They simply complied with the Judge’s decision, and the law. ‘For your own protection’ the Judge said. He feared you were addicted to gambling.” I crunched down on the Bourbon biscuit to prove my point.

  “Well, whatever the Judge decided, I still had enough money to start something else. You’ve seen those detective shows where the murderer takes out life insurance on someone then bumps them off to collect the payment?”

  “Which was the motive for your first two murders, I believe,” I said around the chocolatey crumbs in my mouth.

  “Hmmm… Anyway, the simple question; how long will this person live for? Was my next route to wealth and, as you say, I ended up in court, twice, having to clear my name. It was a somewhat ghoulish phase in my life but the pay-outs compensated. I would go to parties, meet people, and find out how long they had left. Less than two years and I’d take out an insurance policy in their name with me as the beneficiary. Some of them I only met once or twice but it provided a steady income and they all died on time, to the day,” Daniel said.

  “A sick way to make money, gambling with people’s lives.” I scribbled a few notes on my pad. Only two had gone to court but there must have been many more that should have done. Then the
jury wouldn’t have made such a god-awful mistake.

  “It wasn’t gambling.” He took another sip of tea. “I could not be connected with any of them and, as I said, I barely knew them.”

  “Miles David and Karen Morely?” I popped the stub of Bourbon biscuit into my mouth.

  “Yes, well, those two I did know. And, they brought the house down onto my head didn’t they. I got greedy and started insuring people who were too close. By then, I’d become so used to knowing how long people had left, so used to the insurance company cheques landing on my mat, it no longer seemed real. That court case brought me up short. All the police had was motive. No means, no opportunity, but they still pressed ahead with the case and I was found innocent. I am innocent.”

  “So you say.” I made a few quick notes on my pad; questions to ask later.

  “So the courts say,” he chewed on his own biscuit. “Back to Sarah. She was seventeen when she died. I knew that she would be. Can you imagine that? To know the date of your own child’s death. I asked the question when she was born, I couldn’t stop myself. I was with her when she died, you know that? I tried to protect her, didn’t let her out of my sight that day. God, she was angry with me. ‘I’m seventeen, Dad, I’ll be fine,’ ended up in, ‘leave me alone.’ After that, it got worse. I couldn’t tell her why I was hanging round her, I couldn’t. She wouldn’t have believed me if I had told her anyway. We were still arguing when she turned around and ran away from me. Straight into the road and into the path of that delivery truck. I held her in my arms as she slipped away and couldn’t do a thing to save her.”

  He drew a shuddering breath and looked down at the table. I watched his fingers trace the grain of the wood.

  “Sarah’s ashes were scattered beneath this tree,” he said patting the table. “When the council were going to cut it down to make way for the bypass I bought it off of them. Had a carpenter make it into the tables, chairs, even the frame of my bed.”

  He stroked the table whilst I wrote ‘fruitcake!’ on my notepad. I let him sit in silence for a few minutes.

  “So, Sarah died and you couldn’t save her. You must feel enormous guilt,” I said whilst thinking that he may actually have pushed her. “The last murder charge was for the death of Alan Dryden, another of your close friends.”

  “The coroners court ruled that a suicide. It was only the reports in the press, your reports, that forced the police to re-open the case and bring charges against me. This time, they didn’t even have a motive let alone any evidence.” Daniel looked up from the table. “I was even advised to stay away from his funeral.”

  “Alan was the VP of your company. He was as close a friend as you were known to have. You were seen with him; even your diary says you met with him just two hours before he was pronounced dead in A&E,” I said, stabbing the pen down onto the page of my pad. “It took the pathologist two weeks to identify the poison in his system. It was engineered in a lab you owned and had visited the day before. That seems pretty conclusive to me.”

  “But not to the judge or the jury. It doesn’t matter though, I didn’t kill him. He took his own life.” Daniel’s voice had an edge to it. “You forget to mention that the pathologist report also mentioned he had a brain tumour and severe liver damage.”

  “And you forget that both were operable with a reasonable chance of surviving. Also, he didn’t know about the tumour. He hadn’t been to a doctor in years, not even the company one.” I leant forward, both palms flat on the table.

  “Yet the ambulance was called to his home and the police found a note. He took his own life.” I watched him take a deep breath and release it slowly. Then he said, “More tea?”

  He poured two more cups of tea from the pot, added the milk and sugar to mine without asking. I took another biscuit.

  “I’ve admired your writing, by the way.” My eyes widened at that comment. “Unlike some of the other reporters you at least try to get to the truth of things. It is quite refreshing to have your life and business dealings reflected in different manner to how you perceive them. It keeps me on my toes. Your writing bias is well known. Everyone takes your words with pinch of salt. I would be interested to see the biography.”

  “Oh no, you don’t. Is that the real reason I’m here? So you can weasel a look at the book and have your lawyers challenge it before it is even in print? That’s not going to work.”

  “Jessica, if I wanted to stop the publication I could tangle you up in court for the next ten years or just buy the publishing house and stop it that way. I haven’t and I won’t. I am simply interested. As I said, you cannot hurt me.” He waved his biscuit as he spoke.

  “You seem very certain.” I raised the tea to my mouth and took a drink. It was cooler now and the delicate flavours tickled my nose and taste buds.

  “Jessica, I have told you my most important secret. I’ve told you how certain I am of many things that occur and will occur. Phrase the question the right way and there is very little I cannot uncover.” Daniel touched the tablet screen and the picture on the wall changed to that of Karen Morely. He took his own cup in both hands, treating it more like a mug than fine china. “I wasn’t completely honest with you a little earlier but then you too have kept a little secret from your readers. Karen was related to you, a cousin my researchers tell me.”

  “I barely knew her.” I clenched my fist around the pen.

  “Maybe not, but it explains some of your bias. Brought up in family where I was the devil. Charged for her murder, found innocent and getting richer because of it. I don’t blame them, it’s only natural.” Daniel looked incredibly calm as he lent back, for the first time, in his chair. “I said that you were the first one I had told about my gift.”

  “You told Karen?” I gasped.

  “No. As I said, I barely knew her. Certainly, not well enough to tell her my secret.” He put the cup back on its saucer. “You want to know what scares me about my gift? It’s not death itself but the manner of it. There is a good scene in ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’, if you’ve seen it, where the soldiers discuss it; better to go straight away and not know than be torn to pieces by shrapnel and lay there, bleeding to death, in agony.”

  “So,” I tried to pull my ragged thoughts back together, made a note on my pad, “you are scared to die.”

  “Me?” He actually laughed then. Not loud and raucous, but soft and gently mocking. “No, I am not afraid of death for the very simple reason that I will not die.”

  “What? So, now you’re immortal. You find the Elixir of life or the fountain of youth?”

  “No, of course not, but science is progressing at a rate that should mean that, within the next twenty years, we will have a reliable anti-aging treatment. I intend to be the first to have it. Money has its privileges,” he said.

  “If you live that long,” I snapped back.

  “You forget, I know exactly when I will die and, I’m very sure, I’ll be able to outlast that too.” He sat forward, looked me right in the eye, and said cryptically, “Heisenberg showed me the way.”

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What does matter is my little lie earlier. I told one other person. I told Alan.” He hadn’t looked away from my eyes and then realisation dawned on me.

  “You told him he was going to die, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I explained everything to him, just as I have to you. He left the meeting alive. I didn’t know what he would do though I wasn’t surprised when the police called to tell me he had committed suicide. I imagine that choosing the time, place and manner is infinitely more desirable than waiting and not knowing. He was a brave man.”

  “Oh my God. You convinced him to commit suicide.” I felt my heart lurch, stomach heave and gagged on the rising bile.

  “There is toilet over there.” He touched the tablet and part of the wall clicked open revealing a bright white bathroom.

  I staggered out of my chair and to the toilet before throwing up. My throat burn
ed as the acid liquid splashed against the pristine porcelain. Once I had no more to give, I washed my face, swilled water around my mouth and spat it out. How dangerous was a man that could convince a close friend to commit suicide, I thought, and how stupid he is to admit on tape. I have him now; all I have to do is leave, if he’ll let me. I sat on the toilet and planned. I just needed to get my notes, my recorder and then leave. But, I was sure I was missing something. I chewed on two more Rennies to settle my stomach whilst I tried to think it all through.

  When I came out, the butler was clearing away the tea platter.

  “Miss,” he nodded to me as he picked up the tray. I caught the pointed look he gave Daniel on the way out.

  I sat back down and began to pack away my things. “I think it is best if I go now.”

  “Of course, I’ll have Edward call you a cab. However, don’t you want to know why I finally caved in and gave you an interview? Why would I tell you all of these things, implicate myself in a murder I didn’t commit but give you enough to take to the police so that they can start a new investigation?”

  “No, I’m not.” But I was, and am I sure he knew it.

  “Trading on the market is an easy use of my gift; it is how I made my fortune. How much will this stock be worth tomorrow, next week, next year? Easy questions, easy answers and with the money left over from the gambling and insurance pay-outs I played the markets. It didn’t take long to make a fortune which I’ve spent on research and other things. But I still can’t help being a little ghoulish occasionally, especially when someone gets under my skin. I like to know how long they have left. I asked about you.”

  “Oh no, I’m not falling for that. You may have got your friend that way but if you wanted me gone then this was a stupid way to do it. You’re right. You’ve given me everything I need. I can bring you down now. Make people see what a dangerous nutcase you really are.” I shot up from the chair. “You are finished, Mr Swanton.”

  “That is your choice but I give you another anyway. Tomorrow you will die, I don’t know how or exactly when but be assured you will die. I knew for all those people, for Karen and for Sarah. I knew for Alan and told him. It didn’t change things but it gave him a choice. I offer the same to you.” Daniel didn’t move from the chair but he did raise his eyes to mine.