Jack and Dominic sat in front of
Stephen Miles’ enormous desk, coffee in hand, while the lawyer himself stood
against the tall window, playing with his lower lip between first finger and
thumb. He was middle aged and respectably overweight, the cut of his clothes
expensively designed to tone down the girth around his middle. Jack wanted to
ask questions but there seemed to be an etiquette at work that he wasn’t
familiar with.
“I’m sorry to say that your uncle,
Robert Catholic, died in the United States several months ago, just outside of San
Francisco in California,” said Miles.
“How did he die?” asked Jack. “I
don’t even know how old he was. Was he ill?”
Miles rotated his seat away from the
window behind his desk and sat down, giving a brief sympathetic smile. “He was
killed when he lost control of his car. It ran off the road.”
Jack’s imagination created a vague series
of images of a car accident: a blue BMW on a cliff-side road being knocked by a
little sports car and sailing off the cliff edge into the sea.
“The services of this firm were
retained by your uncle’s solicitors in San Francisco with the aim of contacting
your father to enable distribution of his share of the inheritance.
Unfortunately—”
“My father died recently too.”
“Indeed Mr Catholic. May I offer my
condolences.”
Jack nodded and gave a weak smile.
“Thanks.”
Miles made a steeple of his fingers and
laid it horizontally across the desk in front of him. He paused, either to
gather his thoughts or allow Jack a moment of reflection. “How much do you know
about your uncle Mr Catholic?”
“Almost nothing: he worked in the
film business but wasn’t ever that successful; got married more than twice. I
remember that because my mum thought it was disgusting.” He chuckled. “She said
a man should work at a marriage, not just keep trying new wives out for size.”
Miles chuckled too, politely. “That’s about it. He and my father had fallen out;
or I always assumed they had. They didn’t seem very close.”
“Robert Catholic was married three
times, however he had severed all ties with his first and second wives and his
first wife’s family,” said Miles. “His third wife died recently. He had no
other close family in America Mr Catholic. Your father, his brother, aside from
a small number of staff, was his only beneficiary.”
“Like I said; my father is dead. My
mother too.”
“Yes,” replied Miles, stepping
daintily again. “This leaves you the sole beneficiary.”
Jack wasn’t sure what to say. He
glanced at Dominic who had remained, so far, completely silent. Dominic glanced
at Jack but made no other response. “Beneficiary to what?”
Miles appeared nervous. He
straightened several items on his desk, again playing for time. “Your uncle did
indeed work in the film business; he had done all his life from what I’ve
heard. But he… was not a failure. On the contrary.”
“You’re saying—“
“He was a very successful film
director Mr Catholic. You may not have heard of him. I hadn’t when I was first
contacted. But he has done a lot of work; directed over a dozen major films in
the last fifteen years. He was… an incredibly rich man.”
“You mean…”
Miles smiled, calculating the scope
of it visibly behind his eyes. “Yes Mr Catholic. That makes... you… an
incredibly rich man.”
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