Chameleon - A City of London Thriller (40 page)

“
As you
failed to conduct proper and fulsome enquiries, I have taken up the
cudgels, as I think you say, and have made enquiries
myself.

The car in
question is a hire car, available to anyone with a driving licence.
It has been hired out regularly since it was delivered some seven
months ago. The car hire firm are able to say, with some precision,
that they have rented out that car fourteen times for varying
periods. Obviously, at any one of these junctures my client could
have lost her contact lens. However, in an effort to assist the
police, and to defray any accusations that her silence may be the
equivalent to guilt, my client asked her former company to search
their database to see if she had ever travelled in the said
car.”

“
Are you
saying that she can’t remember travelling in an armoured car? Come
on!” Scott interjected impatiently. The lawyer looked at Scott with
an equally impatient glare.

“
No, son, my
client is saying she does not know if she had travelled in this
particular car. She has travelled in many protected vehicles. Now,
if I may proceed without further interruption.”

Dee and Steve
were deeply unhappy. The interview was swinging in the suspect’s
favour, and they were concerned that worse was to come. The lawyer
hadn’t finished yet.

“
Here we have
a print out of the Celebrato accounts database. It shows that they
hired a specialist vehicle from Exotic Cars of Longford for a
business awards dinner. The tags – sorry, the licence plate - read
X14 ECL, the very same car in which you found my client’s contact
lens. Now, my client says she was a little the worse for wear the
night of the awards dinner, and so she cannot swear that she lost
her contact lens that night, but it does seem likely.” The lawyer
pushed across the Celebrato Database record.

“
Obviously as
an attorney I am aware that a suspicious policeman might think that
Celebrato have made this whole story up to allay suspicion, so I
dug a little deeper.” He handed over three more pieces of
paper.

“
Sheet 1
shows a photograph of my client, on the night of the awards dinner,
the same night the car was hired. Sheet 2 shows the Exotic Cars of
Longford Hire Record Database for the period, clearly showing the
hire to Celebrato. Sheet 3 is a sworn deposition from the manager
of Exotic Cars that this is a proper extract from the said
database, and a statement saying that, whilst the cars are
thoroughly cleaned after each hirer, he cannot swear that a single
contact lens would be discovered.”

DCI Coombes
glared at DS Scott, whose mouth gaped open.

“
Shit!” Pete
shouted almost in Dee’s ear. Steve Post was already typing rapidly
and accessing the CJIS database. After a moment the screen cleared
and a pop up window appeared. The words, ‘This is Special Agent
Connor Williams. May I help you?’ appeared in the dialogue box.
Steve typed rapidly. The dialogue box flickered and Connor typed,
‘I will come back to you in a few minutes.’

Seeing the
total disarray in the opposing ranks, Pat Monaghan suggested a
short break, with the parties reconvening in an hour. He requested
into the microphone the use of a quiet room, and some coffee and
sandwiches. Gillian Davis and her counsel walked out of the
interview room, to be met by the young FBI man who would lead them
to their private room.

Chapter
5
9

FBI Field
Office, Richmond, Virginia. Thursday 1pm.

Four glum
faces sat around the table, ignoring the sandwiches that had been
provided. Nobody had an appetite for them any more. DCI Coombes and
DS Scott were not speaking and Pete was shaking his head slowly. He
looked defeated. The thought passing through all of their minds
was, ‘How could we have missed that?’

Dee, however,
was not as downhearted as the rest of the team. She had spoken to
Steve Post before they broke for lunch, and he had suggested
pursuing a sequence of enquiries that had crossed her mind, too.
They were still sitting in silence when Steve Post returned with a
sheaf of papers in his hand.

“
OK, listen
up, everyone. It’s already 6pm in London and so not everything is
buttoned down yet but here is what Dee and I think has happened.
Steve sat at the head of the table and began his
narrative.

“
Gillian
Davis has been a paid killer for ten years. Who knows how many
people she might have killed in the service of Queen and country?
Maybe she doesn’t even know the exact number. However, one thing is
certain; she has never been caught. Gillian Davis is one clever
girl. My guess is that, like most covert operatives, she is adept
at misdirection, creating false alibis and manipulating evidence.
If she wasn’t she wouldn’t be much of an assassin.

Psychologically we all know that witnesses are suggestible.
They can often be manipulated into remembering things that did not
actually happen. In the FBI manuals we have study after study that
discusses witness behaviour. We regularly encounter witnesses who
are sure they have seen something but, when it is put to them, by a
clever attorney, that what they saw was not possible, their
recollection suddenly changes and they revise their memories to
incorporate the new
facts
. The truth is that once they
have changed their story their testimony is useless. The profilers
call this cognitive dissonance; if what we see doesn’t make sense,
we create a new memory that does make sense. Psychologists say that
if we humans behave that way, we would have continual internal
conflicts and mental anguish.”

“
In our view,
the manager at Longford Exotic Cars was in just such a position. I
just got off the phone to him. It seems that, whilst he has no
recollection of that car being hired by Celebrato, he checked the
records as requested and they showed that a hire had been arranged
on that date. He has persuaded himself that he must have been busy
elsewhere and so it had slipped his mind. Invited to do so by their
investigator, he printed off relevant pages of the hire database
and signed off on it. As for his testimony on the cleanliness of
the car, I think a jury could foresee the possibility of a tiny,
clear contact lens escaping the attention of a minimum wage car
cleaner.

Given our
conviction that you’re right about Gillian Davis being the
murderer, Dee and I drew up a list of three questions for the
manager that we felt might clarify the matter once and for
all.

Question one -
is there an invoice in the system for the hire, or did it appear
only on the database?

Two - are
Celebrato on Exotic Cars customer contact list? If so, when were
they entered onto it?

Three - have
their accounts department ever received a cheque for that
hire?

In answer to
those questions the manager has confirmed that there is an invoice,
but it’s a little puzzling. It seems that the invoices are usually
generated automatically by the computer software and are
automatically given the next available number in sequence. That
means that any invoice slipped in later will not fit into the
numbering system in the order it should. Exotic Cars have confirmed
that the invoice to Celebrato is not numbered in
sequence.

Further
enquiries have shown that no-one at the company has Celebrato on
their customer contact list, which is very odd for a business that
thrives on repeat business.

Finally,
according to the book-keeper, no payment has ever been received by
Exotic Cars for the Celebrato hire. The lady we spoke to appeared
very professional and she also noted that the invoice did not
appear on the VAT records, whatever they are. My contact at CJIS
tells me that VAT comes with an onerous tax recording system that
is strictly enforced. Conclusions?”

The gathering
considered the new information, and slowly the frigid stares
passing between the two policemen began to thaw.

“
Someone
hacked into the database and altered it. They created a fake
invoice electronically, which never existed in reality, and then
they directed the investigator to enquire about the non-existent
hire,” DCI Coombes responded, clear admiration in his
voice.

“
Then the
manager, confused by the conflict between his own imperfect
recollection and a convincing paper trail that showed a hire had
taken place, he subconsciously chose to accept the fake paper
trail. Clever bastards!” DS Scott swore.

Steve Post
looked at Dee.

“
Dee and I
both had the same thought and so a colleague of mine, who must
remain anonymous, tried hacking into the databases of both
Celebrato and Exotic Cars. He was able to obtain administrator’s
access in less than a minute. Administrators can edit or alter
records.

Dee,
gentlemen, we have destroyed their rebuttal evidence but at the
same time we have clouded the issue. In their favour, they have
made a valid argument that undermines our key piece of evidence. A
court is likely to accept, at least in principle, that one way or
another the contact lens could have been in the hire car when
Vastrick hired it. Unless you have anything else to offer, there is
no prospect at all that the US Courts will grant an extradition
warrant. The case is way too fragile at present, and that is before
she wheels out the big guns who owe her father a favour or
two.”

***

The interview
reconvened, and DCI Coombes outlined their findings and suggested
that the manager at Exotic Cars vacillated to such a degree that
Davis’ reliance on his depositions was unwise.

“
Bravo, DCI
Coombes,” Pat Monaghan enthused, “you have confirmed exactly what
we have been saying. No-one can have any confidence that the
contact lens was dropped on the day of the murder. Now, I am quite
certain that if we check carefully enough we will find that Ms
Davis has an alibi for the time of the crime. After all, she is a
busy woman, running a multimillion dollar business. My guess is
that when we check her records back in London, those will also give
rise to some argument.”

“
You mean
you’ll construct an alibi, whatever it takes,” Coombes
snapped.

“
DCI Coombes,
we are here voluntarily. We were hoping to keep everything
amicable, but you are becoming antagonistic. Please let me calm
matters down a little.

Off the
record, I believe we all know that you have no case against my
client. An extradition warrant based on your alleged evidence will
not even reach the court. It will be sent back for ‘want of cause’.
The purpose of this meeting has been to confirm this reality to you
and the persons sitting behind the glass.

Now, I am in
the happy position of being able to assist you in the resolution of
this terrible crime. I can confirm that my client knows who did
kill the Hokobus.”

If Steve Post
hadn’t given up swearing along with alcohol and coffee when he
found religion, this would have been an occasion when he would have
let rip a stream of profanity. Instead, his words were
measured.

“
Here we go.
The SODDIT defence.”

“
Sorry?” Pete
asked, puzzled.

“
Some Other
Dude Did it,” Steve answered without humour.

***

“
I am
reliably informed that you will be receiving an encrypted email
from the UK, specifically from the Home Office, which will contain
a redacted version of a statement my client has made and which has
been accepted by your superiors,” Monaghan stated. “Her statement
will clearly say that another person committed the murders and that
your own security services are aware of the killer’s past murderous
history. Fortunately for us all, and perhaps by way of justice for
the murdered couple, the murderer is himself dead and conclusive
evidence of his demise has kindly been furnished by my cooperative
client.

When you see
the statement, you will see that my client is not attempting to
hide her shameful involvement. On the contrary, she is shoring up
your rather woeful case. No, my client is placing herself in the
hands of the US authorities, who will consider the degree of her
culpability, and she trusts that they and their UK counterparts
will give her credit for her honesty and cooperation.”

When the
lawyer stopped talking, DCI Coombs was almost speechless, but he
soon found his voice.

“
Why stop
there? You lot can give her a medal, and on our side of the
Atlantic we’ll see if we can rustle up an OBE. Hell’s teeth, your
client is a hero.” He slammed his closed fist down on the metal
table.

“
Come on,
Gillian, we’ve done all we can here,” the attorney said as he rose
to leave, and on that note Gillian Davis and her counsel left the
room and the building.

Chapter
60

MI5 HQ, Thames
House, London. Thursday 7pm.

The conference
room was already buzzing when the Director walked in. Dame Monica
Stewart-Smith sat down and the room fell silent.

“
Gentlemen,
this has been the worst day for MI5 for a generation, and by God we
have seen some bad ones before. So, I want to get this out of the
way, and quickly.