Nobody Salutes The Son-in-law

Chapter Seven: The Board Meeting

Lucinda Delancey took the chair at the head of the boardroom table as though it had been built around her.

The board of Delancey Freight had been summoned at a day's notice by her daughter, and Lucinda had decided on the drive in exactly what that meant. Elise had spent a week sulking over a signature. Now she had come to her senses and wanted to make peace with Hadley in front of witnesses, which was the right thing to do. Hadley had been loyal to this family for six years. He sat at Lucinda's right hand in a fresh grey suit, the bruise on his cheek faded to yellow and worn like a medal, and he gave Elise a small, forgiving smile as she walked in.

Seven directors filled the other chairs. Tarquin slouched at the far end with his phone face down on the table for once, and he didn't look up.

Elise didn't sit. She went to the screen at the end of the room with a remote in her hand.

"Thank you for coming at short notice," she said. "This won't take long."

She pressed the button, and a bank statement filled the screen.

It belonged to a private account in Hadley Garland's name, held at a small bank on the coast. For two years, Delancey Freight had paid money into it every month. The invoices called it consultancy, and every one of them had been approved by Hadley. Elise moved through them slowly, one slide after another, until the total sat at the bottom of the screen in bold type. One of the older directors took off his glasses, cleaned them, and put them back on as if the number might change.

"That's money taken from this company," Elise said. "Approved by Hadley, and paid to Hadley."

Hadley laughed. "Lucinda, this is absurd."

Lucinda didn't answer him. She was looking at the screen.

The next slide showed the cancellation of Edith Reid's care, with two signatures side by side. One was Elise's own. The other had been written in her name while she was somewhere over the ocean. Elise didn't comment on it. She let the directors compare the two for themselves.

Then she showed them Lowmoor General.

For years, the Delancey charitable fund had paid for hospital beds for people who couldn't afford them. Over the last two years, those patients had been cancelled one by one, every cancellation authorised by Hadley, and every time, within a week, a payment had arrived in his account on the coast. The sender was Dr. Pennington. He had paid Hadley a f*e for every patient moved out of a paid bed, so the bed could be sold again to someone richer.

"Edith Reid wasn't the first," Elise said. "She was the twelfth."

Halfway through, the company secretary slipped in with a printed email and handed it to the chair. Lucinda read it, then read it aloud, because every eye in the room was on her. Lowmoor General wished its largest donor to know that Dr. Pennington had resigned that morning, effective immediately.

Lucinda set the paper down and looked at the man beside her. She had defended him in her own hallway. She had believed him over her daughter and handed his story to the police. She looked at him now as if she had never seen him before.

"It's fabricated," Hadley said. He wasn't smiling any more. "All of it. She's had someone build this to protect that husband of hers. Lucinda, you know me."

"I thought I did," said Lucinda.

Nobody else spoke up for him. Not one director would meet his eye.

The vote took less than a minute. Hadley Garland was removed from every position he held in the company, and Lucinda herself picked up the phone and called for security. Two guards came up and stood on either side of his chair. When he finally rose, he looked down the length of the table at Tarquin, and Tarquin kept his eyes on the back of his phone.

Hadrian was waiting at the front door.

He had driven Elise in that morning and refused to wait in the car, and he stood on the top step in his plain jacket with his hands in his pockets as the guards brought Hadley across the lobby. Hadley saw him and slowed. For a second he looked as though he wanted to say something, and then he seemed to think better of it. The guards walked him out into the street.

Lucinda had followed them down. She stopped inside the glass doors and looked at her son-in-law, and then she did something she had never done in two years. She pushed the front door open and held it for him.

"Elise is upstairs," she said.

Hadrian looked at her for a moment. Then he nodded and walked through.

He found his wife alone in the boardroom, standing at the window with the remote still in her hand. The directors had gone.

"It isn't enough," she said, without turning around. "They took his job. They didn't hear a word about the rifles."

"You didn't tell them."

"Because I can't prove it." She rested her forehead against the glass for a moment. "The manifests show crates, not what's inside them. To prove the rifles, I need the shipping codes, and only two people have those. Hadley, and my brother."

Below them, a guard handed Hadley his briefcase at the kerb. An unmarked grey car pulled up beside him, and Detective Cobb got out and opened the back door for him like a chauffeur. They drove off together. At the end of the street, where the turn for the police station went left, the grey car turned right, toward the motorway.

Elise watched it until it was gone. "Where is he taking him?"

Hadrian didn't answer, because he didn't know.

That night, Dawes knocked on the door of the small room behind the kitchen. Elise was sitting cross-legged on the bed with the manifests spread around her again, and Dawes glanced at her before he spoke.

"I was under the car in the garage, sir, changing the oil. Mr. Tarquin came in to make a call. He didn't see me." Dawes paused, as if choosing his words with care. "He was frightened, sir. You could hear it in his voice. He kept telling whoever it was that he'd sort it, and then he said, 'I'll bring her myself.'"

Elise looked up from the papers. "Bring who?"

"He didn't say a name, ma'am."

Hadrian looked across the room at his wife.