Charlie by Lesley Pearse Page A

They left then and Wyatt came back downstairs into the kitchen looking extremely worried.
    He sat down at the table again.
    ‘What is it?’ she asked after what seemed to be an interminable silence. ‘Did the police find something else?’
    He looked at her, and his eyes dropped from her firm gaze. ‘Yes, Charlie,’ he said at length. ‘Something I hadn’t anticipated and it’s very serious. The last thing I want to do now when you already have so much anxiety is add to it. But as your family lawyer I would be derelict in my duties if I kept you and your mother in the dark about what is happening. What the police have just found was a registered letter. It was signed for by your mother, but unopened amongst a batch of others. It was from the Inland Revenue, warning your father that a bankruptcy order would be issued against him unless they received what he owed them within ten days.’
    Charlie didn’t understand. Bankruptcy was a word she’d read occasionally in the papers but she didn’t know its real meaning.
    Seeing her bewilderment, Wyatt explained it in simple terms. He also stated they had found other demands for this amount earlier in the day.
    ‘I don’t suppose he imagined they would press him for it so quickly,’ he went on. ‘I expect this deal he had up his sleeve was intended to sort everything out. Unfortunately the Inland Revenue do not wait indefinitely. As far as they are concerned, when the ten days are up and no payment is on their desk, that’s it. That ten days passed some time ago.’
    ‘But surely if we explain to them that my dad didn’t see it and that we don’t know where he is, they’ll understand?’
    James Wyatt was moved by the girl’s naivety. Just one look at her was enough to know all she’d ever had to do was ask and she received it. From her stylishly cut hair, trendy mini-dress, confident manner and cultured voice, everything about her said ‘money’. But if the money was gone, she had some hard knocks coming to her.
    James Wyatt was just a family lawyer, he handled wills, divorces, trusts and house purchases in the main, bankruptcy or criminal law wasn’t his bag. What he’d stumbled on here now was well out of his sphere, and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t want any part of it.
    When the police called on him immediately after Sylvia’s attack and asked for his assistance, he’d steadfastly refused to believe Jin’s disappearance was anything other than a coincidence. Jin was something of a dark horse, he rarely spoke about his business and never about his personal life, but in Wyatt’s book those were admirable qualities, he had no time for men who boasted about their wealth and success.
    Yet as the days had passed and disquieting facts surfaced, so he’d begun to have his doubts about the man he’d always trusted implicitly.
    It looked very much as if Jin was an unscrupulous bounder. He might not have anticipated the Inland Revenue would take such action so soon, but he had known the tax was well overdue, and that he hadn’t met the mortgage payments and other bills. Why, then, had he drawn out all that money in cash and disappeared?
    To the police it had begun to look as if he’d hired those men to hurt his wife, perhaps hoping it would lead them to believe he’d been murdered by the same gang and his body disposed of. As they had said so succinctly, Jin wouldn’t be the first man to go to such lengths to start a new life, with a new identity.
    On top of his anxiety about becoming embroiled in a case which might affect his own standing in the community, Wyatt was very puzzled by Sylvia Weish’s attitude. Her anger and distress at being crippled were understandable enough, but why wouldn’t she speak out about what she knew of her husband’s business, unless she knew for certain that to do so might precipitate more trouble and hurt for herself? She was such a difficult woman to read, on one hand she seemed entirely self-centred,