Bryant & May - The Burning Man (20 page)

The bank was under siege for the sixth day. This morning bricks had been thrown through the windows. The ground floor was now boarded up, so the phones had been put on direct lines and the receptionists had been moved upstairs. No public callers were being admitted, so Renfield and DuCaine were forced to enter via a maritime insurance building at the rear of the premises, crossing the Victorian alleyway that linked the two properties. They were admitted by a harassed-looking security guard who showed them up to the third-floor meeting room.

Alice French was a slender Anglo-West Indian woman with silver-painted nails and a tight-fitting grey suit who looked as if she was counting every second she spent away from her computer terminal. Her partner, a handsome German named Gunther Lange, sat beside her, ready to take notes. If it weren’t for the steady cutting of helicopter blades outside, the calm, unruffled pair might have succeeded in pretending that it was business as usual in the world of high finance. Renfield noted that they had been briefed with answers; their notepads were already smothered in handwriting.

‘You know we have to distance ourselves from anything Mr Hall might have got himself into,’ French began, ‘so let’s see if we can wrap this up quickly.’

‘Mr Hall “got himself into” being murdered,’ said Renfield. ‘We’re not interested in the bank’s position. Did he have enemies here?’

French glanced at her colleague as if obtaining permission to speak. ‘He put together funding packages for start-ups, and he had to pull the plug on some of them when they failed to return, so yes, of course he antagonized people. But in a purely fiscal sense. You can’t run any business without making enemies.’

‘Who would you regard as an enemy, then?’

‘Anyone who impedes progress.’

‘Like us?’ asked Renfield. ‘We’re delaying you from your work.’

Lange missed the irony in his voice. ‘Yes, like you.’

‘I’d like a list of all the enemies you think Mr Hall might have made.’

‘That wouldn’t be possible,’ said French sharply. ‘All trading is strictly confidential.’

‘Oddly enough, it’s not when it comes to the police.’ Renfield was growing angrier by the moment. ‘We can sequester your files and confiscate your hard drives while we eliminate you from our inquiries. Did he bring his personal life to work?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked French, as if the concept of a personal life was too alien to appreciate.

‘Did he talk about what went on at home?’

‘Nothing went on at home, so far as I know,’ said French. ‘He put in his hours.’

‘No steady girlfriend, then?’

‘No, of course not. He was gay.’

‘All right, boyfriend?’

‘Nobody that I know of.’

‘So you’re telling me that nobody here knew anything about his life outside of work?’

‘We don’t discuss our personal lives with each other; it’s not professional.’

‘He was with the bank for how long?’

‘Seven years.’

‘I’m sorry, but you can’t have shared an open-plan office with someone for seven years and not have gleaned a single bloody thing about them.’

‘I did hear he had a nice flat,’ said Lange. He had a peculiarly strangled voice that operated in a register beyond any listener’s normal expectations, which was probably why French did most of the talking. ‘But he was never there much. We don’t keep EU-regulated hours.’

‘What about Dexter Cornell?’ asked Renfield. ‘Did he—?’

‘You know we can’t answer questions about him,’ interrupted French.

‘Let’s keep to public knowledge, then,’ said Renfield, determined to get some sort of an answer. ‘I only know what I’ve read in the papers. Didn’t he have some kind of big hotel deal going on with Chinese property developers based in East Africa? What happened there? Just as a matter of background interest.’

Gunther Lange laid a placatory hand on his colleague’s arm. ‘You’re right, it’s public knowledge that the deal collapsed after the Africans turned down the construction of a port,’ he said. ‘It put us in an exposed position.’

‘All documentation has gone to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau,’ said French. ‘It’s best to ask them if you need any further information.’

‘And I think that concludes our conversation,’ said Lange. ‘We’ll be happy to answer any further questions you may have by email.’

‘Well, that was like pulling bloody teeth,’ said Renfield as they left. ‘If Hall had a boyfriend, could you find something out?’

‘Why me?’ asked DuCaine. ‘It’s not like being members of a classic-car club, you know. We don’t all wave to each other as we pass on the road. I’m no better placed to find out anything about his private life than you are.’

‘Yeah, but you could ask around in clubs and that.’

DuCaine raised his eyes to heaven. ‘It’s not the 1970s. Nobody over twenty-five goes clubbing any more; they’re online just like you and me and everyone else.’

‘All right,’ said Renfield, ‘keep your hair on, I just thought I’d ask, that’s all.’

Janice Longbright found herself in an expansive Arabic vision of what the designer thought an English drawing room might look like, with polished marble instead of floorboards and a backlit atrium substituted for a plaster ceiling. The Palmeira Hampton was blandly glamorous in the way of all global hotel chains, and therefore not very English or anything specific at all. At least the red velvet armchairs were comfortable, and she remained silent while the waiter finished pouring tea into Lena De Vere’s cup, feeling that the interview was going to be more awkward than she had expected.

‘First of all, I’m sorry that I had to find you so quickly, but you’ll appreciate that time is of the essence. I’d like to offer my sincere—’

Mrs De Vere waved her condolences aside. She was blonde and attractive in a way that would prevent any real personality from showing in her face for a few more years. ‘I understand. I suppose it hasn’t really sunk in yet, so now’s probably a good time to talk. I’m very tired and would rather get this over with as soon as possible.’

‘Of course. I have to tell you that at the moment we have no suspects in this case, so I must ask who was closest to your husband, and if he had enemies.’

‘Enemies?’ Lena gave a sharp little laugh. ‘No, he didn’t have enemies. He was too busy changing people’s lives. I suppose you could say the banks were his enemies, generally speaking; Jonathan prided himself on his anti-capitalist credentials. When he was still at school he tried to take his local building society to court, but he quickly discovered that didn’t work. So he looked for ways of doing good through business. Jonathan worked very long hours. He didn’t have much time left over to be with friends or family.’

‘That couldn’t have been easy for you.’

‘Let’s just say that we weren’t first in the receiving line when it came to getting his full attention.’ She unconsciously touched her stomach, and Longbright remembered that she was pregnant. Her clothes were tailored so that she barely showed.

‘This is a delicate matter, but I have to ask you who you were with in Amsterdam.’

‘I was attending a seminar at the Rijksmuseum.’

‘So I understand. But who were you with?’

‘I wasn’t with—’

‘Before you answer, you should know that I called your hotel and they had no record of your booking.’

‘Oh, God.’ Lena De Vere folded and refolded her napkin. ‘Do we really have to go through this?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘I was there, but I wasn’t staying under my name. My husband is well known to the press and I was thinking about his reputation. You don’t expect something like this to happen. I wasn’t prepared.’

‘Can I ask once again who you were with?’

‘A friend of mine. He makes jewellery; he’s a metallurgist. If it’s possible, I’d like to leave him out of this. Jonathan and I – we’ve been having difficulties for some time.’

‘You mean your relationship.’

She caught Janice’s glance at her stomach. ‘To save you the awkwardness of asking, the child is not my husband’s. Jonathan was on antidepressants, plus being a heavy smoker – he was impotent. We’ve been … privately separate … for a while. I do want to keep this out of the press.’

‘I’m not in a position to promise that,’ said Longbright.

Lena De Vere’s face betrayed no emotion. ‘I understand,’ she said quietly.

‘I need you to think carefully about who your husband knew and saw regularly. I’m afraid we’ll have to take his laptop, phones and all his passwords. Did he ever have anything to do with the Findersbury Bank?’

‘Well, yes, of course.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m sorry, I thought you knew. Jonathan was brought in by the board to set up a charitable trust for them. He was in the middle of organizing it when that idiot Cornell set the cat among the pigeons.’

‘The connection hadn’t been made clear to me,’ Longbright admitted, surprised. ‘What kind of trust?’

‘It involves supplying preloaded computers for schoolchildren in India.’

‘So your husband dealt with the directors?’

‘I believe so. He never told me any details. As far as I know, they were still being hammered out.’ Mrs De Vere winced as the baby kicked.

‘When are you due?’ Longbright asked.

‘In about nine weeks. I’m – My husband was a very good man. Things will be – awful without him. It’s just that this – right now – the timing, I mean. I don’t know what to do first.’

‘I can put you in touch with an appropriate support group if you need one.’

‘What I’d like is a drink.’ She stepped aside from the thought. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Wouldn’t I?’

‘If you dig into my past I’m sure you’ll turn up enough about me to counterbalance my husband’s well-publicized goodness. I suppose I was one of his improvement projects. After you’ve done some research, perhaps you’ll feel that it didn’t take as well as the others.’

‘It’s not my job to judge,’ said Longbright gently. ‘If you—’

Mrs De Vere looked away to the window. There seemed to be some kind of commotion outside, a shifting crowd pushing one way and another, like a rugby scrum. An arm was raised and there came an explosion of glass. The window of the lounge bar was shattered by a chunk of concrete. The entire room rose to its feet in a single motion. One teacup dropped to a thick rug and rolled in a circle.

‘I think you’d better go,’ said Longbright, shepherding Mrs De Vere to the lobby even as the waiters mobilized to usher out the guests.

Longbright ran to the entrance and found an angry horde armed with placards that read ‘BASH THE RICH’. The cards were printed in the same sans-serif typeface that Jonathan De Vere used for his CharityMob app.

She looked up the street. A great dark sea of protestors had filled the space between the buildings, flooding down from Hyde Park. She called Renfield. ‘Jack, what’s going on? I’m still in Knightsbridge. There’s trouble breaking out here now.’

‘There was a rally in Hyde Park,’ he told her. ‘They tore down the enclosure fences in protest at the heavy police presence, and it looks like all hell’s breaking loose. You should get out of there before they lock the stations down.’

‘OK, I’m on my way.’ As she headed out, she realized that the rioters were almost at the gates of Buckingham Palace. How much longer would it be before the police decided to raise the stakes and turn its newly purchased water cannons on the crowds?

‘He’s going to go bananas if he finds out where we’ve gone,’ remarked May.

‘Then he won’t find out,’ Bryant promised. ‘This is our stop.’

The Paddington train deposited the detectives at Burford, where they were able to find a taxi that would take them to Oakley Manor House. They passed over a sluggish meandering river and through a pretty street of stone the colour of Shropshire blue cheese. The town lay in a dip fringed with hawthorn, dogwood and poplars, surrounded by damp emerald hills.

‘Blimey, this is depressing,’ said Bryant, peering from the taxi window with a grimace.

‘What are you talking about? It’s beautiful. This is the Cotswolds.’

‘I know.’ Bryant sniffed disapprovingly. ‘Coachloads of Chinese tourists creeping around antique shops photographing everything from teapots to toilet seats so that they can make exact reproductions when they get home. But it’s all fake to begin with, mocked up for the tourist trade, so they’re just getting copies of copies.’

‘What a dreadful old cynic you are,’ said May. ‘This is an area of outstanding natural beauty. You’d be happier if there were a few more pound shops and some gang-related crime, wouldn’t you?’

‘Oh, there’s crime, all right. Everyone’s busily peddling the family plate to anyone gullible enough to think they’re buying a bit of Ye Olde Englande. And all those charity shops selling dead people’s rubbish just to dodge paying taxes. Have you ever seen people in charity shops? It’s like watching tropical fish move about. And why is there always a cake stand? Who uses cake stands? Look out there: it’s not right to have so many trees. And it smells funny.’

‘It’s the countryside. What do you expect? Do you want me to chuck some plastic bags out of the window to make you feel more at home?’