Every few days in the paper she would read about an employee in a solicitor’s office, or a hedge fund, or a bank, or any other kind of place which big sums passed through, who had been siphoning off money. Often, it had been going on for years. Millions taken, without anyone noticing.
All she needed was a lousy £175,000. Peanuts, by Denarii’s standards.
But how could she
borrow
the money from here without anyone knowing? There were all kinds of controls and procedures in place.
Suddenly she saw a light flashing on her phone. Her direct line.
She answered it, thinking it might be Caitlin. But, to her dismay, it was her least favourite client of all, the ghastly Reg Okuma.
‘Lynn Beckett?’ he said, in his lugubrious voice.
‘Yes,’ she said stiffly.
‘You are working late, beautiful one. I am privileged to have connected to you.’
The pleasure’s all mine
, she nearly said. But instead she answered, ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘here is the situation. I applied yesterday to buy myself a new motor car. I need wheels, you know, for my work, for my new company I am setting up, which will revolutionize the Internet.’
She said nothing.
‘Are you hearing me?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I would still like to make beautiful sex with you. I would like to make love with you, Lynn.’
‘Do you understand that this call is being recorded for training and monitoring purposes?’
‘I understand that.’
‘Good. If you are calling to tell me you want to make a payment plan, I will listen. Otherwise I’m going to hang up, OK?’
‘No, please, listen. I was turned down, rejected, for the hire purchase yesterday. When I asked why they told me it was because Experian gave me a bad credit rating.’
‘Are you surprised?’ she retorted. Experian was one of the leading companies in the UK for providing credit ratings. All of the banks and finance houses used these companies to check out customers. ‘You don’t pay your debts – so what kind of credit rating do you expect?’
‘Well, listen, hear me out. I contacted Experian – I have rights under the Data Protection Act – and they have informed me it is your company that is responsible for this bad rating I have.’
‘There’s a simple solution, Mr Okuma. Enter into a payment plan with us and I can get that amended.’
‘Well, yes, of course, but it is not that simple.’
‘I think it is. What part of that do you not understand?’
‘Do you need to be so hostile to me?’
‘I’m very tired, Mr Okuma. If you would like to come back to me with a payment plan, then I will see what I can do with Experian. Until then, thank you and goodnight.’
She hung up.
Moments later, the light was flashing again. She ignored it and left the office to go home. But as she stepped out of the lift on the ground floor, she suddenly had the glimmer of an idea.
73
Roy Grace sat alone in his office, with the rising south-westerly wind shaking the windowpanes and rain falling. It was going to be another stormy night, he thought, with even the street lighting and the glow from the ASDA car-park lights dimmer than usual. It was cold too, as if the damp draught was blowing through the walls and into his bones. His watch told him it was five past eight.
He had excused Glenn Branson from this evening’s briefing. The DCs wife had agreed that he could come over and help bathe the kids and put them to bed – no doubt on the advice of her solicitor, he thought cynically.
He read carefully through the notes he had jotted down during the meeting, then glanced through the typed Lines of Enquiry notes. A phone line was winking, but it wasn’t his direct line so he left it for someone else to pick up – if there was anyone else in the building other than the ever-cheerful Duncan, one of the security guards downstairs on the front desk. It felt like the Marie Céleste up here, although he knew several of his team would be working long into the night in MIR One – in particular two typists and Juliet Jones, the HOLMES analyst.
Juliet was still occupied with her scoping exercise of all potentially relevant crimes, solved and unsolved, committed in the UK. It was an arduous, but essential task, comparable to fishing, Grace sometimes thought. Typing endless key words and phrases, searching for similar victims turning up elsewhere in the UK, or for any instances of organ theft. As of this evening, her trawl, which had been going on since Saturday, had yielded nothing.
During the past nine years, Grace had had many solitary hours to fill with just his own company, and he had been through one phase of educating himself on the history of detection and forensics. One man he particularly admired was a French medic, Dr Edmond Locard, who was born in 1877 and became known as the Sherlock Holmes of France. It was Locard who established the founding principle of forensic science, which was that every contact leaves a trace. It became known as Locard’s Exchange Principle.
What, Roy Grace wondered, was he missing in the contact that had taken place with these three bodies? Where were the surgical instruments that had come into contact with the bodies? All sterilized now, for sure. Maybe there would be enough microscopic traces to get a match – but first they had to find them. Where? Similarly, it was likely that whoever had removed the organs of the teenagers – unless again it was a lone madman – had been surgically gowned up. Those clothes, their rubber gloves, especially, would carry traces. But they still had no clue where to start looking, and sifting through the waste bins and laundry carts of every hospital and clinic in the south of England was not an option at this stage.
If the fingerprint department successfully pulled prints off the outboard motor with the new technology they were trying out, then perhaps they could get them off the plastic sheeting that had wrapped the bodies?
He made another note, then quickly read through the three typed pages of the
Lines of Enquiry
document, of which every member of his team had a copy. It needed updating, and he had some important additions to make. But he also had a deep longing to see Cleo. He could do what he had to do now just as easily at her place as in his cold, lonely office.
*
The temperature was dropping and the wind was rising to a gale again, as he parked the Ford on a yellow line outside an antiques shop. Hurrying across the street, through hard pellets of rain, he caught a snatched, raucous strain of ‘God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen’ being sung, badly, somewhere nearby. Early carol singers, he wondered, or just a drunken office party?
He still had not got his head around the fact that Christmas was looming. He didn’t know what to buy Cleo – other than a ring, of course, but that wasn’t a Christmas present – and he wanted to get her something special.
It had been so long since he had bought presents for a woman he loved, he was at a loss what to get. A handbag? Another piece of jewellery, in addition to the ring? He would ask his sister for advice. She was practical and would know. So would DI Mantle.
Quite apart from the issue of presents, he had decisions to make about where to spend Christmas. He had been with his sister every year since Sandy’s disappearance, but Cleo had suggested they go to her family in Surrey. For sure, he wanted to be with Cleo over the Christmas holidays, but he had not yet met her parents. He knew his sister would be happy to hear they were engaged – she had been urging him to move on for years – but he needed to work out the logistics. And if Operation Neptune was not resolved by then, it was likely to be a short Christmas for him, in any event.
Lugging his heavy briefcase across the cobbled courtyard, he fumbled in his pocket for the key, then let himself in Cleo’s front door. Instantly, his spirits soared as he entered the warm, open-plan living area and saw Cleo’s huge, happy smile. There was a tantalizing, garlicky cooking smell, and rousing opera music filled the room – the Overture from Bizet’s
Carmen
, he thought, pleased he was able to recognize it. Cleo had tasked herself with broadening his musical tastes and, to his surprise, he was developing a real liking for opera.
Humphrey came bounding towards him, towing several yards of loo paper behind him, then leapt up, yapping loudly.
Grace knelt and stroked his face. ‘Hey, fellow!’
Still jumping up and down with excitement, Humphrey licked his chin.
Cleo was curled up on one of the huge sofas, surrounded by paperwork and holding a book – no doubt one of the tomes on philosophy she was studying for her Open University degree.
‘Look, Humphrey!’ she said, with a puppy-dog squeal in her voice. ‘Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is home! Your master! Somebody’s pleased to see you, Roy!’
‘Only the dog?’ he said, in mock disappointment, standing up and walking across to her, with Humphrey tugging at his trouser legs.
‘He’s been a very good boy today!’
‘Well, that’s a first!’
‘But I’m even more pleased to see you than he is!’ she said, putting down the book, which was entitled Existentialism and Humanism and had several pages tagged with yellow Post-it notes.
Her hair was clipped up and she was wearing a thigh-length, loose-knit brown top and black leggings. For an instant he just stood and stared down at her in utter joy.
He felt the music soaring into his soul, he savoured the cooking smells again and he was overwhelmed by happiness, by a sense of belonging. A sense that he had finally, after so many nightmare years, arrived in a place – a place in his life – where he felt truly contented.
‘I love you,’ he said, lowering himself, putting his arms around her neck and kissing her longingly on the lips. He pulled back briefly and said, ‘Like, I really love you.’
Then they kissed again, for even longer.
When they finally broke away from each other she said, ‘Yeah, I quite like you too.’
‘You do?’
She screwed up her face in thought, looked very pensive for some moments, as if performing some massive mental calculation, then nodded. ‘Uh huh. Yep!’
‘I’m going to buy you a ring, this weekend.’
She looked at him, with her big round eyes, like an excited schoolgirl. Then she grinned and nodded.
‘Yes, I want a big, fuck-off bling thing, covered in rocks!’
‘I’ll buy you the biggest, most fuck-off bling thing in the world. If the Queen ever sees you, she’ll eat her heart out!’
‘Talking of eating, Detective Super, I’m cooking you stir-fried scallops.’
That was just his favourite dish. ‘You’re amazing.’
She raised a finger. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Never forget that!’
‘And so modest.’
‘That too.’
He glanced down at the tome beside her and read the author’s name. Jean-Paul Sartre.
‘Good book?’
‘Actually yes. I just read something he wrote that could apply to both of us – before we met.’
‘Uh huh?’
Cleo picked the book up and flicked back to one of the tagged pages.
‘Tell me.’
‘It was something about if someone is lonely when they are on their own, then they’re keeping bad company.’ She looked at him. ‘Yes?’
He nodded. ‘Very true. I was. I was in totally crap company!’
‘So,’ she said, ‘at what time does my darling fiancé want to eat?’
He pointed at his briefcase. ‘Somewhere this side of midnight?’
‘I’m feeling rather horny. I had in mind a bit of an early night…’
‘Half an hour?’
Pouting her lips seductively, she stopped at one of the tagged pages. ‘Did you read this passage, about satiating desires? Apparently if you refuse to satisfy them, then your soul can become infected.’ She put the book down. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t like me to have an infected soul, would you, Detective Superintendent?’
‘No, I really wouldn’t want you to have one of those at all.’
‘I’m glad we’re on the same page.’
Reluctantly dragging himself away from her, Roy lugged his bag up the wooden stairs and went into Cleo’s den, which he had now more or less seconded as his office-away-from-the-office. On the desk sat a City Books plastic carrier. Stuck to it was a Post-it note with his name scrawled on in Cleo’s writing. He removed a book with a picture of a racehorse on the cover. It was entitled
Eclipse
.
He remembered Cleo telling him her father was mad on horseracing and she was ordering a book for him to give as a present.
He put it carefully to one side, then from his bag he took out a wodge of papers, the first of which bore the Sussex Police shield and the wording, beneath, SUSSEX POLICE. HQ CID. MAJOR CRIME BRANCH. OPERATION NEPTUNE. LINES OF ENQUIRY. Next he took out his red ring-binder Strategy File, followed by his pale blue, A4-sized INVESTIGATOR’S NOTEBOOK, in which he had written up his notes from all the briefing meetings on
Operation Neptune
, including this evening’s.
Five minutes later, Cleo came silently into the room, kissed him on the back of his neck and placed a cocktail glass, filled to the brim with a vodka martini, on the desk beside him.
‘Kalashnikov,’ she said. ‘It will make you very fiery.’
‘I already am! How’s your soul?’ he whispered.
‘Fighting off infection.’ She kissed him again, in the same place, and went out.
‘This book,
Eclipse -
is it the one I’m giving to your father for Christmas?’ he called after her.
She came back in. ‘Yes. It will get you about a thousand brownie points with him.
Eclipse
was the most famous racehorse ever. He’ll think you’re very smart knowing that.’
‘You’d better brief me some more.’
She smiled. ‘Why not read the book?’
‘Duh!’ he said, slapping his forehead. ‘Hadn’t thought of that!’ He peered more closely at the cover, at the author’s name. ‘Nicholas Clee. Was he a famous jockey?’