Lady's Well: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 20) by Ross LJ

Author:Ross, LJ
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23

Bernicia Energy LLP held offices around the United Kingdom, with strongholds in London, Aberdeen and Newcastle. The latter was its original base and, over a hundred years after it was first built, the Farquhar family still retained their impressive four-storey headquarters on Newcastle’s Quayside, which bore the family’s crest above its columned entrance alongside a Latin inscription loosely translated as ‘He Who Dares, Wins’.

A motto shared by one Derek Trotter, if Phillips’ memory of classic British comedy served him correctly.

Hector Farquhar Sr. wasn’t wholly unlike Del Boy in attitude or temperament but, as the family’s patriarch and Chairman of the Board of Directors at Bernicia, Farquhar bore more of a physical resemblance to Donald Trump, though his tan was slightly less pronounced. When Ryan and Phillips were shown into his sprawling office by an attractive young woman, hot on the spiked stiletto heels of two other attractive young women seated at the front desk, Ryan and Phillips could only assume that Hector liked the ladies in his office to fit a certain mould, which told them a lot about the old man’s mindset long before he opened his mouth.

“Tea and coffee, Kelly,” he ordered his personal assistant, without any additional niceties.

Phillips held open the door for the young woman, who looked at him as though he was some sort of unicorn, before vanishing down the corridor towards the kitchen.

“Thank you for finding the time to see us,” Ryan said, having judged it best to approach the man with a certain deference he might not otherwise have shown, but for the generational gap and their need to elicit information from him. “We’ll try not to take up too much of it.”

Farquhar nodded, and shooed them both towards a couple of visitors’ chairs arranged beside a long leather sofa set against one wall of the office.

“Might as well sit down,” he said, and heaved himself out of his desk chair to join them. “I’ve only got twenty minutes. What’s he done, this time?”

“Who?” Ryan wondered.

“Don’t play games with me,” Farquhar said, pointing an imperious finger at them both. “I’m in no mood for it. Just tell me what the blighter’s been up to, and we can agree an appropriate slap on the wrist…”

Ryan held up a hand. “Mr Farquhar, I think there’s been some misunderstanding,” he said, crossing one leg over the other. “Sergeant Phillips and I are here in connection with two murders committed in Holystone, and to discuss the proposal put forward by your company to the Holystone Parish Council and individual members of the community for the acquisition of land for the purpose of fracking in that area.”

Ryan held out his warrant card and, after a quick inspection, Farquhar relaxed back into the buttery leather armchair he occupied.

“CID, eh?” he said. “I s’pose you’re looking into the water contamination deaths everyone’s been rabbiting on about. Last I heard, it was that young lad, Zachary White, who was responsible for all that, and he’s no longer with us—sadly,” he tagged on.

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