Tracy Corbett - Secret Things and Highland Flings

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you saying that your husband forged your signature?’

‘I … I suppose I am.’ She shrugged. ‘All I really know is that I didn’t sign it.’

He scribbled something down in his notebook. A few seconds ticked by before he looked up.

‘Have you been in contact with your husband recently, Mrs Ald … err … Ms Ryan?’

Her left eye began twitching again. She moved away and tore off a wodge of kitchen roll, wrapping it around her finger, which had started to bleed again. ‘Marcus and I are divorced, Mr Falk. He’s with someone else now and currently residing in Spain. Thanks to his incompetent finances and illegal business ventures, I lost my home and suffered substantial financial hardship.’ She glanced around the office. ‘My business is all that I have left.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’ He watched her carefully. ‘I asked whether you’d been in contact with him recently.’

Her cheeks started to burn. She had two options. Deny all knowledge and be rid of him or admit that her ex-husband was currently rummaging around in her storage basement looking for a holdall containing twenty-seven thousand pounds.

A more pressing thought struck her. ‘How much was the insurance pay-out?’

He paused before answering. ‘Twenty-seven thousand pounds.’

Oh, cripes!

Time slowed … and then sped up, causing her stomach to dip.

So that’s where the money had come from … She’d assumed it had come from the sale of her Franz Gerste collection. Only it hadn’t.

A mixture of anger and dread filled her gut. Once again, Marcus had shafted her. But she was equally annoyed with herself. That single momentary lapse of judgement nine months ago was coming back to haunt her. And now she was paying the price.

But she’d been in such a desperate place. She was still reeling from discovering that Marcus was sleeping with his PA and had a gambling addiction. And then the court bailiffs had turned up at her home to seize goods. She’d had to endure a humiliating court hearing, employ an expensive solicitor to argue the gallery’s exclusion from the bankruptcy and borrow money from her sister Tasha to pay for it.

She’d won her case, but every other asset had been sold to pay off Marcus’s business debts, leaving her with a frozen bank account, a poor credit rating and no home. All because Marcus’s business hadn’t been a limited company, leaving them personally and jointly liable.

And she’d accepted her fate. Through it all she’d been stoic and honest – she’d even assisted the official receiver in complying fully with the insolvency regulations. But the discovery that Marcus had failed to bank the money from the sale of her Franz Gerste collection had sent her over the edge.

When she’d gone to the house to collect the last of her belongings before the enforced repossession, she’d stumbled across a black holdall containing twenty-seven thousand pounds. All the promises she’d made to be trustworthy and law-abiding evaporated. She took the money and didn’t declare it.

Despite her overwhelming guilt, she’d reasoned that the money had come from her paintings. Paintings that belonged to the gallery so weren’t a joint asset and therefore shouldn’t have been included in the bankruptcy. But getting the official receiver to agree to that would have involved another expensive court hearing, which she couldn’t afford.

She’d considered using the money to pay off her debts, especially the money she owed to her sister, which she’d now cleared. But she’d decided against it. Mainly because she was still within the twelve-month bankruptcy period and the official receiver was monitoring her personal finances. He would have wanted to know where the money had come from and she hadn’t wanted to drag Tasha into her mess.

So, instead of declaring what she’d found, she’d kept quiet and used it to purchase the Woman at the Window painting. It was supposed to be an investment, compensation for her suffering. But however much she tried to justify her actions, she’d still broken the law. Not to mention using her art dealer credentials to cover her tracks and avoid any suspicion of money laundering.

And now an investigator was threatening to expose the one tiny chink in her otherwise flawless existence.

She needed time to think. She also needed to throttle her scumbag, cheating liar of an ex-husband, who was currently in her basement.

‘In answer to your question, Mr Falk, I’ve not been in contact with my ex-husband.’ The twitch in her left eye increased.

‘Hmmm.’ He removed a business card from his pocket and stood up. ‘We’ll investigate your claims further, Ms Ryan. But perhaps you’d be good enough to contact me should you hear from him. We have several questions we’d like to ask Mr Aldridge.’

He wasn’t the only one.

He handed her the card. ‘Thank you for your time. Good day to you.’ He collected his briefcase. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

She followed him over to the door, trying to keep a neutral expression. ‘Good luck with your investigations.’

‘Luck has nothing to do with it, Ms Ryan. The truth will always out in the end.’

And that was what worried her.

She let him out, locking the door behind him. As fast as her heels would allow, she ran across the gallery showroom and charged downstairs. ‘Marcus? MARCUS! Did you forge my bloody signature?’

He was nowhere in sight.

He’d obviously been searching for the holdall, because his belongings were scattered on the floor, a trail of discarded clothes leading to the rear doors … which were left open. Bastard! She had a stack of valuable paintings stored down here, including a recent shipment from the Wentworth estate in Scotland, and Marcus had left the place unsecured. Arsehole!

And then she spotted his note next to the empty black holdall:

I WANT MY MONEY.

Tuesday 29th May

Oliver Wentworth took the opportunity of his sister’s phone ringing to take a breather from playing the dutiful carer. The distress at witnessing his pregnant sister being trampled on by an irate Shetland pony had sapped all of his energy. Thankfully, apart from a fractured fibula, she and the baby had escaped relatively intact.

As his sister answered her phone, he listened to her attempting to calm her distraught husband, reassuring him she was okay and relaying the story of how she’d toppled over the feeding trough when the aptly named Goliath had upended her. Having spent several years trying for a baby, he couldn’t imagine Harry taking the news of his wife’s injury too well. Poor bloke.

When the conversation switched from Louisa’s health to declarations of love, Olly tuned out. He adored his sister, but he didn’t need to hear about the intimate details of her marriage.

Instead, he gazed out of the taxi window and admired the scenery outside.

Medical services were few and far between in the Highlands, so they’d ended up at the Broadford Hospital on the Isle of Skye. The treatment had been first-rate, but it was a slow drive back to Shieldaig, the lanes winding and narrow. At least it allowed him time to recover from the trauma of Louisa’s accident and absorb the sight of his heritage passing by bathed in the May sunshine.

Shieldaig was sixty-eight miles west of Inverness in the Wester Ross region of Scotland, a quaint village with a miniscule population but with a huge influx of visitors during the summer months. It was both beautiful and brutal. Mountainous landscape dominated the view, framing the expanse of lochs and villages nestled between. It was the stuff of postcards, picturesque and enticing. But it was also challenging – as many an inexperienced walker had discovered when attempting to conquer Beinn Eighe ill-equipped. Even more so as the area had a poor phone signal.