Hot Money [antikvár]

One I intensely disliked my father's fifth wife, but not to the point of murder. I, the fruit of his second ill-considered gallop up the aisle, had gone dutifully to the next two of his subsequent nuptials, the changes of 'mother' punctuating my life at six and fourteen. At thirty however I'd revolted: wild horses couldn't have dragged me to witness his wedding to the sharp-eyed honey-tongued Moira, his fifth choice. Moira had been the subject of the bitterest quarrel my father and I ever had and the direct cause of a non-speaking wilderness which had lasted three years. After Moira was murdered, the police came bristling with suspicion to my door, and it was by the merest fluke that I could prove I'd been geographically elsewhere when her grasping little soul had left her carefully tended body. I didn't go to her funeral, but I wasn't alone in that. My father didn't go either. A month after her death he telephoned me, and it was so long since I'd heard his voice that it seemed that of a stranger. 'Ian?' 'Yes,' I said. 'Malcolm.' 'Hello,' I said. 'Are you doing anything?' 'Reading the price of gold.' 'No, dammit,' he said testily. 'In general, are you busy?' 'In general,' I said, 'fairly.' The newspaper lay on my lap, an empty wine glass at my elbow. It was late evening, after eleven, growing cold. I had that day quit my job and put on idleness like a comfortable coat. He sighed down the line. 'I suppose you know about Moira?'