Margaret McKinlay - Double Entry

‘My neck’s stiff, that’s all,’ John assured him as he reached for the strong black coffee. ‘It’ll be a bit uncomfortable driving but it’s not bad enough to cancel my weekend.’

Rees nodded. ‘Then you’d better get something to eat—we’ve missed our lunch. Tollis and I were going to meet for a pub lunch and they’ll still be serving—I’ll phone and see if he’s in his office.’

The Sentinel Agency was the other half of Rees’s business, situated in the same building, although clients used a separate door leading in from the High Street. Tollis managed it now that Rees was cutting back on work, ‘semiretired’ he said, although he seemed as busy as ever.

‘He says he’s busy but he’ll come,’ Rees grunted. ‘You can tell him exactly what happened.’

Tollis ran his side of the business with only a little interference from Rees and the three of them discussed the intruder at John’s office as they ate.

Tollis, taciturn as usual, said, ‘These opportunist crimes are on the increase in the city. Drugs. Addicts take chances out of desperation, when other criminals wouldn’t risk it. Your man chanced his luck, John—he wanted anything of value that he could carry easily and he would hit anyone in his way. And they don’t bother to wait for darkness any more. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Put it out of your mind.’

He spoke as if he knew what he was talking about, but John, who had grown up knowing that Rees owned Sentinel, had never been interested enough to ask what Sentinel did.

Tollis was a man of the same height as Rees but was much heavier, dark in colouring and entirely different in nature.

He was a man of few words who had none of Rees’s charm; a loner who seemed to shun close friendships, and although it had registered, John hadn’t given much thought to why he’d never heard the man’s first name, not even from Rees. It was always just Tollis.

And as if to prove that he couldn’t waste time on something that only the police could solve, Tollis was impatient to get back to work.

‘We’ve got a bit of an emergency on and I must be there when the men come in.’

Rees’s head jerked up at that, but Tollis laid a restraining hand on his partner’s shoulder.

‘Nothing for you to bother about, Rees,’ he said bluntly.

‘And I think I should get on the road,’ John said. ‘The food has helped shift the headache and I don’t want to get caught up in rush-hour traffic.’

‘That reminds me,’ Rees said, reaching down to pick up his briefcase. ‘I want you to take a look at some clients’ files—you could entertain them over the next few weeks, perhaps. If you’ve time over the weekend … ?’

He opened the case and handed John some slim folders as they left the pub. The one on top said Mr H. Carrick.

‘Carrick?’ John had heard Rees mention the name but he couldn’t connect it with any land deal.

Rees looked annoyed for a moment. ‘I told the girl to take that one out … there’s some sort of hold-up and it’s not likely to go ahead.’

John had never seen Rees so uncomfortable, so he flipped through the other files, recognizing some of the names. It was one of the perks of having a wealthy uncle that sometimes he got to entertain the clients because Rees hated one-to-one contact over a dinner table—another of his foibles.

They were walking three abreast along the pavement when Trollis paused, his brow puckered with a frown.

‘Carrick … didn’t he get the Sinclair estate by marrying the widow?’

‘That’s him,’ Rees agreed dourly. ‘John won’t remember the weekends I used to spend there when Graham Sinclair was alive …’

Tollis interrupted again as he remembered something. ‘I got one of the men to collect your car, by the way, John. It’s round the back.’

It wasn’t really John’s car because he didn’t own one, but simply used any of the Kramer cars that was free. He made his way around the rear of the building to collect it and he didn’t notice the two men in the car parked across the street who had been watching and were now ready to follow him when he left.

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