Faraday 02 Network Virus (34 page)

“
Huh!” The solicitor rolled his eyes. “Let’s see this so-called evidence.”

“
OK. Over to you, Stafford.”

Paulson laid a copy of the list of transactions in front of Bostock. These had been e-mailed to him and he had only removed the identity of the sender. “Can you confirm that this is a correct record of the transactions passed through your Swiss bank account” (and he recited the number) “during the last thirteen or so years?”

“
Where’d you get this?” asked the man. “This is private information.”

“
Let me see that.” Simpson reached forward and picked up the list.

“
If you check with your bank,” said Paulson, “you will find that Swiss law now requires them to release information regarding bank accounts where there is evidence that the transactions are related to crimes carried out by the account holder.”

“
I want the interview to be suspended while I discuss this with my client,” said the solicitor who appeared to have known nothing about Bostock’s Swiss bank account.

Paulson said, “We have copies of the account holder’s signature and can confirm that they are the same as Mr Bostock’s.”

“
Oh, don’t waste time,” said Bostock. “Course it’s my account.”

“
Thank you,” said Paulson. “You will note the first deposit opening the account is for fifty thousand pounds sterling. We can trace that payment as coming from a Mr Alfred de Billiere. Is that for your agreeing to marry Marion Philips as she then was?”

“
So what?” demanded Bostock. “That ain’t a crime.”

“
I’m establishing a pattern. Do you agree about that first payment?”

“
Yes - yes.”

“
After that there are a number of other payments, initially in the five thousand to eight thousand range and gradually increasing to twenty thousand. We presume these are the payments you mentioned yesterday which Alfred made to you in return for your agreeing to him spending periods of time having sex with your wife.”

“
This is the sort of comment I object to,” said Simpson.

Paulson ignored him. “These payments ceased nearly three years ago. However then there came a group of three payments in a period of approximately six weeks for much larger amounts - just over a quarter of a million in total. These occurred at about the time that Alfred’s wife Joanne drowned. Can you explain what these payments were for?”

Bostock looked at his solicitor. “Do I have to?”

“
Er -.” It seemed this was all new information as far as Simpson was concerned - information that his client had failed to mention in their earlier meeting. “We will not reply to that question at the moment but we are not necessarily refusing to reply when you have presented us with the rest of your evidence.”

“
Very well,” Paulson continued. “The fact is that you have satisfactorily explained all the previous payments. However you admit that Alfred had stopped seeing Marion well before the last three payments were made and this is confirmed by your wife. These payments totalled a quarter of a million pounds, which is a lot more than he was paying you for the luxury of a few days sex with your wife. They were obviously for a much more important service which you carried out for him. We believe he was giving you this money to get rid of his wife for him. Do you admit you carried out this service for him?”

“
We will not reply to that at present,” said the solicitor.

“
OK. When you met de Billiere last Wednesday to ask for more money it is our contention that you threatened to expose your part in the death of his first wife. You said that unless he agreed to pay you a substantial additional annual sum you would disclose the fact that you were paid by him to do it. Faced with this possibility, he agreed to pay you fifty thousand a year and you cooked up this plan between you to kidnap his daughter to provide a cover for these payments. You agreed that, after a few years in gaol on the less serious charge of kidnapping with the reduction for good behaviour, you would be able to come out and be set up for life. Is that correct?”

“
Please continue,” said Simpson.

Paulson coughed and took a sip of water. “However we have evidence that places you on the
Sarah Jane
very close to the time of Joanne de Billiere’s death.”

“
A bloody fag-end,” burst out Bostock.

“
We will be able to show that the serious probability exists that the Gauloises cigarette end places you on that boat on the day of her death. We are confident that a jury will agree, with all the other evidence, that you almost certainly murdered Joanne de Billiere.”

“
What other evidence?”

“
The most damaging piece came into my possession this morning,” interposed Charlotte. “I was discussing this matter with your wife when she recalled receiving a telephone call from you asking her to drive your car, which she didn’t normally drive, to pick you up in the car park on Slapton Sands which is only a few hundred yards from where you beached the
Sarah Jane
after disposing of Joanne de Billiere at sea the previous night.”

There was a complete silence while this latest piece of information was digested by everybody. Even DI Paulson hadn’t been aware of the bombshell that Charlotte was about to release.

Paul Simpson was the first to recover. “Before my client answers any of these accusations I would like to have a further private consultation with him.”

“
Very well.” Charlotte rose to her feet. “DI Paulson and I will withdraw, the recording machine will be switched off and you may use this room. The door will be locked but we will post a police constable outside the door and you can knock on it when you are ready for the interview to continue. However I would like to remind you of two points. One is that a satisfactory admission of guilt may be more successful in the court than a denial. A second is that the man who conspired to arrange the death of his wife, Alfred de Billiere, should not be allowed to escape scot free because your client fails to provide the information which would convict him.” She tapped her colleague on the shoulder. “Come on, Stafford. Let’s have a cup of tea.”

She also bore in mind that she had to apologise to him for inadvertently keeping him in the dark about Marion’s information.

It was nearly half an hour later that they were asked to return to the interview room. Everybody took their seats and the recording machine was switched on again.

“
Right,” began Simpson, “I have explained to Mr Bostock what his
alternative courses of action are and where they are likely to end up. As a result he has decided to make a clean breast of what actually happened on the
Sarah Jane
that night. Carry on, Gary.”

Bostock put on a look of sincerity. “Yeah, well I admit I was asked by Alfred de Billiere to dispose of his wife. He offered me a quarter of a million to do it - a hundred grand up front and the rest when her death was confirmed. I was seriously short of cash at the time, not having had anything from him for more than a year, and I owed a lot to some men in Hong Kong who were becoming restless, if you know what I mean. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of them blokes. They can be a right lousy bunch of sods.”

“
Did de Billiere suggest to you how you might ‘dispose’ of his wife, as you so delicately put it?” asked Charlotte.

“
He told me Joanne spent a lot of time on the
Sarah Jane.
He said he’d been having her watched and she’d got a fancy man. What he said was that this guy often turned up in the late afternoon and they went below and had sex in one of the cabins. He told me how I could get there first and take her out and drop her off, like.”

“
Do you mean that Alfred de Billiere actually proposed the way you should do it - that you should go on board the
Sarah Jane,
overpower Joanne, take the boat out to sea and throw her body overboard when you were well out to sea?”

“
Yeah, something like that. He said she wasn’t much of a swimmer so she wouldn’t be able to get back to the shore if I went out a mile or so. He said it would be best to wait till it was dark before I did it, so nobody would notice.”

“
And is that what you actually did?” asked Paulson.

“
No.” He shook his head vigorously. “It didn’t work out like that at all.”

“
So how did it work out?”

“
Well, what I did first was go up on the pier above the marina and find a place where I could watch the boat.”

“
The
Sarah Jane
?”

“
That’s right. It was nice weather at the time and I could see the bird stretched out on the boat - the
Sarah Jane
- in a skimpy bikini with most of her tits showing. She was a tasty bird, I can tell you, even though she was going on fifty.”

“
So how long did you watch her for?”

“
Must have been about four days. Till the forecast said the weather was going to turn rough.”

“
And what did you see - other than Joanne in her bikini?”

“
Yeah, well.” He licked his lips. “Every evening about six this bloke turns up. At about ten to six our Joanne ups and disappears below. I suppose she was getting herself ready.” He grinned salaciously. “Well, when the bloke turns up he goes straight below and they obviously has it away for two or three hours. They’ve got some staying power, I’ll give them that.”

“
So what happened next?”

“
Sometimes the bloke comes out and goes off on his own and she tidies up a bit and locks up and goes home. Sometimes they goes off together - but not arm in arm or anything like that - just walking side by side. I followed the bloke on his own one night and he went into town to the council offices. I asked the bird at reception who he was and she said he was a councillor called Lionel Hillman.”

“
What was the purpose of following him?”

“
Well, the next day - the day before the weather broke - I went down to the boat where she was sunning herself and I told her, ever so polite like, that I was working for Lionel Hillman and he’d asked me to give her a message that he was coming earlier this evening - about five o’clock. That was because he had a special meeting and he could only stay an hour so could she be ready earlier.” He sniggered. “She swallowed it like a lamb. So I walked away and went up on the pier to watch her. Sure enough, at about ten to five she ups and disappears down below.”

He paused and looked round at the others with a degree of triumph on his face. “Of course it was easy after that. I went back to the boat and climbed on board. The keys were still stuck in the patio door to the main lounge. I went below and saw that she was stretched out on the bed with nothing on but one of them negligee things. I was tempted, I can tell you.”

“
So what happened then?” Stafford Paulson seemed fascinated by the tale.

“
When she saw me she said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘You’ll find out soon enough’. I shut the door on her and locked it and went up to the bridge. As I told you, I know how to operate these big cruisers. I put the key in the ignition and pressed the button and the engines started first thing. Alfred always kept his equipment in good nick.”

“
What was Joanne doing while you were up on the bridge?” asked Charlotte.

“
Oh, she started to get annoyed and bang on the door but none of the boats near us were manned and when the engines started up you couldn’t really hear much else. So I went down on the afterdeck, cast off the hawsers and pulled up the boarding ladder. Then I went back up on the bridge and started to gently motor out of the marina. Nobody took a scrap of notice.”

He paused and looked around. “I had plenty of time so I set a course to clear Berry Head by about a mile and then started to run parallel with the coast. We just trogged along and I waited for dark. After about three hours I judged it was dark enough to get her up on deck. As I said, she was a sexy bird and I fancied a bit of a try with her. So I switched over to auto and set a course to clear the Skerries. When I went down and opened her door I found she’d got herself dressed in a sweater and jeans. She was full of spunk - I’ll give her that. First of all she demanded that I took her back to Torquay. So I grinned and said I’d been given a quarter of a million to get rid of her. She asked how I was gonna do that and I said that was my business but she could come up on deck if she wanted.”

“
Go on,” urged Paulson.

“
By now we were well out into the channel and there was nobody about. After a while she came out on the afterdeck. She said she wanted to negotiate. So I cut the engines to idle and went back to talk to her. She’d taken off the jeans and she just had on this light sweater and her bikini bottoms. When I got close I could tell she’d put on some perfume and it made me feel randy.”

He moved his head from side to side. “She said she was willing to give me half a million if I set her ashore in Dartmouth. I said she hadn’t got half a million but she said she was divorcing Alfred and when the divorce came through she would have much more than that. She also said that if I accepted her offer I wouldn’t be breaking the law.” He pulled a face. “So I said how could I be sure she’d keep her word and she said I’d still be around afterwards to remind her. I said how did I know she wouldn’t shop me as soon as I let her go. Then she said what did I want as proof?” He swallowed. “I knew just what she meant by that.”

Simpson shook his head disapprovingly. “I don’t think we need all this detail, Mr Bostock.”