Books

Time's up!- A synopsis

‘Times Up’ tells the story of a Cheshire family who’s head of the family and of Walls Civil Engineering apparently commits suicide on the morning of the first day of the new millennium. The suicide is quite brutal and unusual involving decapitation by a wire rope one end tied round an oak tree the other around Peter Walls neck and he sets off in his open top Land Rover down the hill, with the obvious consequences.

The farm has outbuildings which have been made into two flats for the daughters. Sandra 29 a solicitor, and Sienna 27 a Chartered Surveyor who works in Chester.

Their mother Ann understandably is distraught at the commencement of the New Year with the trauma of her husband’s brutal death; she has mood swings between grief and anger at the thought of Peter leaving her and the girls to sort out his affairs. Peter was in debt and his company was being fined by HM Customs for VAT irregularities in connection with the conversion of the farm by his own company.

Peter’s business partner and minority shareholder was not an easy man to get on with Roger Whiteside was responsible for ensuring the work Peter Wall secured was properly and efficiently executed. The two men had a shareholders agreement with an unusual clause that allowed them to buy the others shares when one or the other dies. The valuation of the shares used a novel approach. The company had key man insurance of £500,000 for the benefit of the firm and £1m for the benefit of the remaining shareholder should one or the other die. Sienna unwittingly as a surveyor working in Chester had let out one of her fathers houses to a crook who defrauded the Halifax of £100,000 by perpetrating a fraud not only on the Halifax but also on the Land Registry and Peter Wall.

There was an argument when Wall discovered this and the police suspect this man is the killer of Wall. The old retainer Fred Appleyard who worked not only at the farm but also as sexton for the local church saw a car racing out of Long Acre Lane first thing on New Years Day morning and he was positive it was Roger Whiteside. This was not possible as Roger was on holiday in Austria for the whole two weeks over Christmas and New Year. Fred Appleyard was run over in mid January 2000 and it was decided by the Police that this hit and run was in fact murder. The main culprit was thought to be Duggie the previous driver of the car and former employee of Walls that hit Appleyard.

During all this there was the legal and financial issues to sort out and the family decided to use a new local solicitor. Sandy knew of one and he turned out to be a charmer. John England who ended up being romantically involved with Sienna. The police were going nowhere and the thinking was that Peter Wall had committed suicide and that meant that some of his insurance policies could not be claimed against.

The police sought an adjournment of the inquest into the death of Peter Wall, as last minute evidence gave them the clue to the fact Peter was in fact murdered, and they had a very good idea who the murderer was. Their investigations continued until they were certain, and issued a warrant for the murderer’s arrest. He had gone to ground and were unable to interview the person they thought was responsible for the death of peter Wall and Fred Appleyard.

--------------- The next novel in the series continues the story of the Wall family – “England’s Wall”.

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