He’d just got dressed and was heading outside to clear the minty taste of toothpaste from his mouth with the first cigarette of the day when Perry Jordan rang.
‘Morning, Cass. Up and at ’em.’
‘Already am.’ He clicked the lighter and inhaled before opening the car door and getting in. The kid sounded cocky. That was a good sign. ‘What have you got for me?’
‘Mate,’ the laugh in his ear was throaty, ‘you’re gonna love me.’
‘Go on.’ His gut tingled.
‘Both families were fucked financially. And I mean majorly fucked. They were a mess. Miller was four months behind on the mortgage and Jackson was three. And that was after remortgaging.’ A lighter clicked at the other end and he could hear as Jordan sucked in hard before continuing, ‘Looks like they’d both had a major run of luck, then a series of dud investments, some of them even more major. Their salaries have been cut too - I figure it was that or redundancy. From what I can see they’ve both had holes in their boats for quite a while, but this year was when they started sinking.’
‘Great metaphor, mate.’
‘I aim to please.’
‘So if they’ve been screwed for cash for that long then how have they been able to keep up their lifestyles?’ Cass wondered.
‘They sold some assets: private sales of paintings and jewellery. Bits and pieces here and there. Some of it was pretty pricey, according to payments I traced back to the auction houses.’
Cass remembered the picture hanging at a slight angle in the Jackson house. Recently rehung? A fake, maybe?
‘Do you think the wives know?’ he asked. His skin tingled, and it had nothing to do with the nicotine.
‘You’re ahead of me.’ He laughed again, clearly enjoying himself. ‘My guess is no. Both families have two lots of bank accounts, with money being transferred from the main one held in only the husband’s name to a joint one, which is where the women do their spending from. And boy, do those women spend. Their luxury items come to more than my salary and that’s considerably better than it was before you lot did me a favour and kicked me out. They’ve got health spas, central London gym memberships, top hairdressers - and don’t even get me started on the clothes.
‘They haven’t reined, not one bit, since their husbands fucked up, so every month they’ve been adding a couple of grand to the problem. Both families were right on the edge of losing everything. I’d love to have heard
that
conversation. ’ He laughed drily.
‘So they’re broke.’
‘No. They
were
broke.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This is where it gets interesting. Six months ago Miller and Jackson each received three payments of fifty thousand pounds over the space of one month.’
‘How much?’ His back stiffened against the seat. ‘A hundred and fifty each? Where from?’
‘That’s the fun bit. I can’t trace the money. Not fully. But that alone tells us plenty.’
‘How could that amount of money suddenly appearing in someone’s back account not flag up any enquiries?’
‘These days the banks are so glad to have any money coming in that they don’t look far. And banking’s a nanny state now anyway. The Big Brother of all banks does the regulating, so if the money’s coming from The Bank itself, who’s going to dare to run secondary checks?’
‘The money came from The Bank?’
‘Well, it was transferred
out
of there, at any rate. Each transfer came from a separate account there. The info cost me, which in turn means it’ll cost you, but I got the details. Neither of the two accounts had ever been used for any other banking - basically, they were a tunnel to get this money into the Jackson and Miller private accounts without raising any eyebrows.’
‘Explain.’
‘The Bank has layers of accounts. It would have to, being as big as it is. It operates as many subsections, as well as a whole. But it has to run one numbers system so it can audit itself. It uses different sequences of account numbers that can be recognised quickly, both in-house and in the wider financial sector, and they’re allocated on importance, or priority, or however you want to put that. Some of those account sequences make people jump higher than others. These two tunnel accounts started with the digits 251, and that’s considered pretty high-up in the system.’
‘How the hell do you know this shit?’ Cass took a deep breath. His jigsaw was finally coming together.
‘I told you: it cost me. I’m like you, Cass, I’ve got friends in lots of places, and they’re not all the kind to get themselves nicked on a DUI charge either. Anyway, my contact did some probing for me, and he got the number of the accounts that transferred the money into the 251 accounts. And this is where you’re now on your own.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The accounts started 7777. No one I know, not in the banking or the financial sectors, has ever heard of a 7777 account. Not inside The Bank, not in whatever’s left of the economy outside of it. And trying to trace it from within
The Bank caused my mate’s computer to crash. More than once.’
‘What were the account numbers?’ Cass’s heart was thumping as he dragged his small notebook out of his pocket. ‘Have you got them on you?’
‘Sure. Hang on.’
The rustling of paper at the other end matched his own as he flicked through the pages to find the numbers he’d scribbled down from the moleskin book they’d found under the bed at Solomon’s bedsit. His blood chilled and then raced as Jordan read the numbers aloud. Both were listed on the page, and both had
failed
written next to them. He grinned. Bingo.
‘Perry Jordan, you’re a genius.’
‘They mean something to you?’ He sounded surprised.
‘Yes, they do. Send your bill and a copy of everything you got over to me at the station, will you?’
‘Already on it, mate. The courier’s on his way.’
‘I’ll see him there. And Perry, mate, I owe you.’
Cass could almost hear the grin.
‘Yep, you do!’
The DCI sat behind his desk and stared at Cass. ‘But what about Macintyre? I thought this was done and dusted yesterday? ’
Cass didn’t glance at Bowman, who was leaning against the back wall trying to look nonchalant. Cass knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to say that Bowman didn’t have the balls or brains he was born with, that he was so fucking ambitious that he’d just wanted a quick result and the glory of closing the high-profile case. He wanted to say he’d opted for the easy way, as he always did. He wanted to say that he thought that Bowman and his flash suits and flash lifestyle was a Grade-A cunt. He didn’t say any of that, though. For once he toed the party line.
‘Maybe Macintyre
has
got some shit going down - it would be hard for him not to imagine that this had something to do with him. Maybe his boys gave up the Chechens because they wanted them out of the way.’
DCI Morgan nodded. Cass knew what he was thinking; he’d be mentally wading through the damage and looking for ways to limit it. As things stood, their position was okay: the press hadn’t been informed yet, and the parents were out of the loop. If it did come out that Bowman had got it completely wrong, well, it wouldn’t look too terrible for the DCI with the Commissioner, not as long as he’d been the one who encouraged the discovery of the truth.
Cass slid the open moleskin notebook across the desk so that it sat next to the bank account information Perry Jordan had traced. The DCI looked from one to the other.
‘But this notebook came from Bowman’s case? The serial killer ?’
‘Yes, but we’ve known for a while the two cases have links. Solomon used to work at The Bank, we’ve got proof of that, and this money definitely passed through The Bank, even if we don’t know exactly where it came from. Plus there’s the man who sent in the film of the shootings from the same flat Carla Rae died in. This Mr Bright, who apparently doesn’t exist and couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this, but who Solomon had definitely heard of when I asked him on the phone.’
He paused and was pleased to see that the DCI at least had the good grace to look awkward. After a moment he went on, ‘The way I see it is this: if we don’t pull Jackson and Miller in and this all comes out later, which it probably will because if Perry Jordan could find this stuff out then the press can pay someone like him too, then it’s going to be another fiasco of police incompetence. And these are dead children we’re talking about here. The newspapers love that shit. They’ll follow the family and they’ll dig. You know how it is. Build ’em up and then burn ’em down.’
‘What do you think, Bowman?’ Morgan looked at his other DI .
Bowman shrugged, his shoulders stiff. ‘We should probably talk to them,’ he mumbled.
Cass hadn’t expected anything like good grace. He’d had to agree, of course. On the way up to Morgan’s office, Cass had casually asked about the interview times with Macintyre, and after a moment said he must have got the time wrong when Claire rang, though he thought he’d checked his watch. Bowman had said nothing. He hadn’t needed to. Cass could see he’d got the message from the blanched look on his already pale face. Cass wondered if it was forgivable to wish the hospital had found some trace of actual poisoning in Bowman’s blood, instead of the vague suggestions of unidentifiable abnormalities. At least that way he’d be confined to a hospital bed and out of Cass’s way.
‘Okay, I agree.’ Morgan brought his attention back to Cass. ‘Bring them in. But tread carefully. These people have lost
children
.’
Cass was already out of the door by the time his boss shouted those last few words. The boys’
mothers
had lost children. What these fathers had done with them, he wasn’t so sure.
It was quiet down on the basement levels of Paddington Green Station, away from the noise and bustle of the offices and main holding cells above them. These interview rooms were rarely used except by the Anti-Terror Division for overflow or by the Murder Squad in extremely high-profile cases.
If they were lucky enough to catch Solomon, they’d interview him down here. Cass figured that while Isaac Jackson and Paul Miller might not be serial killers, they could use the quiet space. He was pretty sure these men hadn’t had any since their children had died, and there was nothing like feeling cut off from the world to make you reassess your inner demons. Cass understood that.
He peered through the small hatch. Isaac Jackson sat perfectly still in his seat, staring ahead. Like Paul Miller, two doors down, he seemed much smaller than he had the last time Cass had seen him, standing stoically behind the plush white sofa. Without the grand house and the beautiful wife and the luxurious furnishings surrounding him he looked like just a broken man weighed down with guilt. That had been clear when Jackson had opened the door to the grim-faced officers and the waiting police car. Cass had seen that look before: a mixture of relief and expectation. It was the expression of the ordinary man who’d done a terrible thing and was ready to pay for it. On Jackson it had been as clear as day. Jackson would break first.
The wives, distraught and uncomprehending, had immediately called their solicitors. Paul Miller had his man in with him, but Jackson had refused to see his. Cass reckoned he was having five minutes with his conscience, and weighing up how much he could still keep secret. He was pretty certain once Jackson started talking, he wouldn’t be able to stop. He wouldn’t know then that talking about it just created a second version of the horror. It couldn’t get rid of the story etched on your soul. Cass knew that. Your stories always stayed on the inside.
Cass took a moment to enjoy the quiet himself while Claire fetched coffee. Upstairs, the front desk would be manic while the Incident Room staff fielded continuous phone calls. The press were gathering outside the station, starting to bay for information, for blood. There was nothing his team had been able to do about that. There was no way they could take the men from their homes without bringing the pack back with them - they’d been camped outside since the boys had died. Even though the men - the
fathers
- hadn’t technically been arrested, that tired old cliché of ‘helping the police with their enquiries’ was fooling no one. Across the city, newspaper editors were putting together instant spreads, covering both sides, one tearing the families apart, the other vilifying the police for their brutality in the face of tragedy. They’d wait to see the outcome before deciding which way to run: good guys hard done by, or evildoers destined to rot in Hell, that’s how they’d be portrayed, regardless of the fact that most people were somewhere in between.
Claire appeared with a tray. ‘Sorry. Had to go upstairs.’ She looked over at the door. ‘You ready to go in?’
Cass nodded. He was more than ready.
Isaac Jackson looked up when Claire placed the hot coffee in front of him and then turned on the audio recorder and gave the time and date. She spoke clearly. This was one interview that was not going to be fucked up on a technicality.
‘Have you spoken to Paul yet?’ Jackson’s voice was hollow.
‘I thought I’d start with you,’ Cass said. ‘Mr Miller is talking to his solicitor.’
He nodded, moving like an old man trying to pretend he’s still young. Life had taken its toll on Isaac Jackson.
‘I want to make it clear for the record that you are speaking to us without your solicitor and of your own free will. That is correct, isn’t it?’
He nodded again and Cass looked at him. He cleared his throat and said, ‘Yes.’ His voice was dull, defeated.
‘And you understand the implications such a decision may have on any subsequent trial?’
‘Yes.’ He would be aware of what the outcome might be. The death penalty had been reinstated for first-degree murder cases two years previously, but with the chronic overcrowding in prisons and the massive rise in lesser crimes, there were movements within government to shift the boundaries further still, adding second-degree, man-slaughter and accessory after the fact to the roster. If Jackson and Miller
had
had anything to do with their boys’ deaths, they’d be a gist to that group.