I feel like giving up. I just want to go home. Is it the right decision?

The story hasn’t concluded yet. You must remain strong if you want to discover the truth.

As ambiguous as the message was, it was just enough to change my mind. I called Kim and told her I’d meet her when I got discharged from the hospital. James was right. I needed to discover the truth.

It took a few days to track down Harry’s old boss, Geoff. It wasn’t immediately apparent from the outside, but the financial services company that Harry worked for had been shut down. Apparently, Geoff had moved to Leeds to escape the hordes of people constantly banging on the doors, wanting to know why their pensions had been illicitly tampered with. Word on the street was that Geoff was the main suspect, and there was a fraud case mounting against him and his business. Harry had always spoken very highly of Geoff, and I didn’t think he was capable of something like pension fraud. I just hoped, for once, that Harry wasn’t involved in any way, and I could just go home. But from what I’d learned about my husband since his death, it bore all the hallmarks of something he would have done. Geoff had been quite slippery once we had made contact, and he was extremely careful not to incriminate himself. He wanted to meet us at a pub in Castleford on the outskirts of Leeds. Kim and I were heading up there in the car when he called Kim’s phone.

“Geoff, I’ve told you a hundred times. We aren’t interested in anything illegal you may have done. We just want to talk about Harry’s part in this,” Kim said on the phone.

“Tell him to make sure he is there,” I instructed.

“Please, just meet us. We aren’t going to the police. Amelia just wants to find out what happened to her husband,” Kim said to Geoff.

“He had better be there when he said he would be. Tell him. Or we’ll find him,” I threatened.

“No, she isn’t threatening you,” Kim explained, with a finger on her lip, indicating that I should be quiet. “Please just be there. It will take five minutes of your time, that’s all,” she said.

Kim pulled away from the phone and sighed. The phone made a beep as the call disconnected.

“Has he hung up on you?” I asked.

“Yes, you should have left it to me. I think you’ve scared him off.”

“He’s a coward.”

“I agree. Which is why we needed to be gentle with him.”

“We are only five minutes away. We might catch him as he’s leaving.”

I put my foot down, and we pulled into the car park of the pub we’d agreed to meet at. I had no idea what Geoff looked like, but Kim pointed him out as he walked to his car. We started to follow him, and he seemed to be unaware we were a few cars behind him.

“Where is he going?” I asked.

“Home, I guess,” Kim responded.

“Fantastic. If he doesn’t talk, we’ll have leverage. We can always go and have a chat with his wife afterwards, depending on how it goes.”

“Amelia, you are scaring me today. What has gotten into you?”

“I’m just tired of this, Kim. Every time we find out something new about Harry, it makes me feel sick.”

“He might’ve not had anything to do with this.”

“We’ll see.”

Geoff had pulled into a housing estate just near Woodlesford Train Station, and we slowed right down so as to not spook him. He stopped at a semi-detached house and pulled onto the driveway. I put my foot down again and blocked the driveway behind him and any hope he had of running. I got out of the car and started charging towards him.

“Geoff?” I asked.

“Oh God. Not here, please,” Geoff begged, looking up at the neighbour’s windows.

“Amelia, calm down,” Kim suggested.

“I will not calm down. My husband is dead, and apparently, Geoff here has information about that, but he’s holding it back,” I shouted.

“Listen, just come in. I’ll tell you everything I know. Please,” Geoff conceded, trying to defuse the situation.

I gave Kim a victorious smile, and she rolled her eyes at me for a change. Geoff nervously led us into his house, and it didn’t seem like anybody else was home. We were shown to the sitting room; it was incredibly old-fashioned. Decorative plates were hung on every free space on the walls, dotted with family photographs and the occasional clock. Kim and I sat down on one of the plastic-covered couches, and Geoff sat on the one across from us. This place didn’t look like he had money to burn; it already felt like this could have been Harry’s fault. Geoff’s hands were shaking violently.

“Calm down, Geoff. We just want to talk about Harry,” Kim said softly.

“I know you aren’t meant to speak ill of the dead, but that lad has left me up shit creek,” Geoff announced.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He was a fiddler! He had his hand in the till!”

“Geoff, honestly. Just breathe and keep it simple. What are you talking about?”

“Fraud. He was taking money out of our client’s accounts and putting it in his own. Is that simple enough?”

I didn’t need to ask for evidence. I believed him. It was probably the only way that Harry thought of, and would allow him to pay the Broadheads back and pay off the supposed mother of his long-lost child. Not to mention all the bills from the IVF clinic and the new house. The sheer pressure he must have been under just to keep our heads above water must have been astounding. I wish he’d just come to me and told me about it; maybe we could have worked it out together. But I made that impossible for him, didn’t I? He was terrified that any misstep would end in me beating him up or trying to strangle him. I’d stopped seeing this as Harry’s mess, and instead, it was a mess of my own making. If I hadn’t treated him so poorly, he might have been comfortable enough to come and speak to me about all these issues. Instead, he buried them and continued the lie until it was too big to even look at.

“Why haven’t you gone to the police?” I asked.

“Are you kidding?” Geoff laughed, “Like they are going to believe me. It was my business; all the transactions were approved by me.”

“Why did you approve them if they were dodgy?” Kim asked.

“Because I trusted him,” Geoff said bitterly.

“Where was he sending the money?” I asked.

“A string of accounts. I tracked most of them down to a small bank in Leeds called Sterling and Fishwick.”

Because Harry never had a will, and I had to apply for probate, it’s sometimes difficult to find all the accounts that someone holds. I’d never seen an account registered to that bank on any of the paperwork. He must have been keeping it secret. I let out a huge sigh. Secret phones and bank accounts, I wasn’t even shocked anymore. The farther I went down this path, the more it just felt never-ending.

“Do you have an account number or something?” I asked.

“Yes. But you didn’t get this from me.”

“Fine.”

Geoff copied some numbers from a piece of paper and handed it to me. I put the scrap paper in my handbag and stood up, and Kim followed me up a second later.

“Unless there is anything else, we’ll leave you to it,” I said.

“No, nothing else,” Geoff said anxiously.