‘The what?’
O’Grady raised his eyebrows. ‘The money, you dumb fuck.’
‘Here and there,’ said Carter.
‘Listen, motherfucker,’ said Fernandez, banging the table with the flat of his hand. ‘If you want our help, you’re going to have to give us something.’
‘It’s in offshore accounts in different parts of the world. We moved the cash around between the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Lichtenstein, Dubai and Belize.’ Carter shrugged. ‘I don’t even know myself where it is right now.’
‘Are you telling me you ran this operation, but you never kept a handle on where the green stuff went?’ Fernandez didn’t believe him and his face and the tone of his voice registered that disbelief.
‘Certainly I did. But I relied on Eberhardt, Schmidt and Adekunle. They knew better than to play fast and loose with me. But now they’re dead, I don’t know where the money’s gone. They kept moving it and informed me whenever they did, but if they’d moved it just before they were murdered, there’s no telling where it is now.’
O’Grady thought that Carter was probably right about that, but it didn’t help him to answer Joe Daly’s questions. He stood up and hammered on the interview room door.
A corrections officer appeared immediately. ‘You guys finished in here?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ said Fernandez. ‘Take this useless bozo back to his nice warm cell and make him comfortable. He’s likely to be there for the next hundred years.’ And with that empty threat he and O’Grady left Carter to the tender ministrations of the Rikers guards.
Once back at Federal Plaza, O’Grady sat down and composed a report for Joe Daly in London.
Next day, I tried to put aside Gail’s suggestion of moving in with her. It wasn’t that I was averse to the idea, but the complications were too much for me to cope with while I was dealing with the three murders that I was attempting to solve. Added to which were the complexities of the international fraud that we’d discovered as a result.
I spent an hour or two reading and rereading all the statements that had been taken in the hope that they might throw up something that I’d missed. They didn’t. Allowing for the time difference, I left it until the afternoon before attempting to speak to the Bahamian police.
Colin Wilberforce interrogated his computer and came up with the name and telephone number of the officer in charge of the Central Detective Unit of the Royal Bahamas Police Force in Nassau.
I went back to my office to make the call.
‘Good afternoon. This is Detective Chief Inspector Harry Brock of the London Metropolitan Police, phoning from New Scotland Yard,’ I began. ‘Is that Superintendent Duncan Gould?’
‘Yes, it is, and a very good morning to you, Mr Brock,’ said Gould with a chuckle. ‘How’s your weather over there?’ He had a rich voice that made me think of mahogany.
‘This afternoon it’s a fine sunny day with temperatures in the seventies, sir.’
‘Is that all? Must be damn’ chilly over there, old sport. It’s ninety-two here and raining like hell.’ Gould emitted another throaty chuckle. ‘Are you an Old Bramshillian by any chance?’
‘A what?’
‘Have you been to the Police College at Bramshill?’
‘Oh, Bramshill. Yes, I was there a few years ago, sir.’ I’d wasted a few months in the depths of Hampshire and spent most of my time listening to classroom coppers lecturing me on things I knew already. And drinking in the local pubs, of which there were far too many for the good of my liver. But I did forge a friendship with Jock Ferguson, now a detective superintendent in the Hampshire Constabulary. Being a local he knew the best hostelries in the area and since then had proved to be a useful contact on more than one occasion.
‘I was there too, a year or so back,’ said Gould. ‘Great fun and good pubs, but I didn’t learn much. Now, Harry, how may I help you?’
‘It’s a long story, sir.’
‘I like long stories, Harry, and call me Duncan, why don’t you?’
‘Right, Duncan.’ I explained, as succinctly as possible, about our complex investigation, the scam we’d uncovered and the possible link between Lucien Carter and the Bahamas. Just for good measure I threw in the names of the three murder victims and that of Wilhelm Weber. I included Weber because he’d told Horst Fischer about Eberhardt’s trips to the Bahamas. And the Essen police still hadn’t discovered whether he knew more than he was telling. ‘Carter was recently arrested by the FBI in New York, and is currently being held in Rikers prison pending further enquiries,’ I said. ‘But I wondered if he had come to the notice of the Royal Bahamas Police Force. Or, for that matter, whether any of my victims had.’
‘I can’t tell you immediately, Harry, old boy. These islands are full of crooks. Remind me to tell you about the murder of Sir Harry Oakes one day, the one the Duke of Windsor interfered with.’ Gould paused to laugh uproariously. ‘I’ll have to search the records. Give me your phone number and I’ll get back to you.’
‘Thanks, Duncan, I appreciate it.’
I’d no sooner replaced the receiver than a call came in from Henri Deshayes. Things were certainly humming today.
‘
Bonjour
, ’Arry.’
‘And good day to you, Henry. Have you got something for me?’
‘Not directly, ’Arry, but we’ve had reports of dozens of share frauds involving this same Buenos Aires information technology company. We’ve also received complaints from about twenty people who’ve lost a total of some three million euros between them, but there are bound to be others who are too ashamed to come forward.’
This was always the problem with boiler-room scams, so called because of the high pressure salesmanship that went with the fraud. People who have been defrauded will often stay quiet for fear of what other people, including the police, will think of their stupidity at falling for a silver-tongued con man at the other end of a telephone.
‘It sounds as though Lucien Carter is at the back of it, Henry,’ I said.
‘Maybe. The
brigade financière
– our fraud department – followed up the address in Paris that the letters purported to come from, but it was no surprise that the address didn’t exist. Their investigators also found out that the funds could not be traced, and that was no surprise either. A lot of wire transfers all over the place, it seems, but they couldn’t tell where the money finished up. I’ve put Lucien Carter’s name into our central computer. If his name comes up anywhere, I’ll let you know. Can you give me the telephone number of the FBI office dealing with him?’
‘It’s the New York office of the FBI, Henry,’ I said, and gave him the details. ‘The special agent in charge there has been in touch with Joe Daly, the FBI agent at the American Embassy in London. I’ve also made contact with the police in the Bahamas.’
‘
D’accord
. I’ll come back to you if I get anything else, ’Arry.’
Once again the enquiry had ground to a standstill pending information from sources beyond my control.
I had no sooner finished my conversation with Henri Deshayes when Kate Ebdon appeared in my office doorway. ‘I’ve spoken to the Border Agency, guv,’ she said. ‘They have no record of a Samson Adekunle having entered the UK.’
‘As I thought, he’s an illegal immigrant. Either that or their records aren’t reliable.’
‘Surely not,’ said Kate, with mock disbelief. ‘But the Border Agency wants to know what we’re doing about it.’
‘What
we’re
doing about it? Bloody sauce. What did you tell them, Kate?’
‘I said they could have his body once we’d finished with it.’
‘Joking aside, Kate, what does happen to him, once the coroner releases the body?’
‘As I understand it, the local authority is responsible for burying him. At the taxpayers’ expense, of course.’
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘but don’t tell Dave. That sort of thing gets him all hot and bothered.’
‘I also had a word with the Nigerian High Commission, but they didn’t know anything and didn’t want to know.’
‘And that, Kate, is par for the course,’ I said. ‘Nigeria is the centre of the scam world.’
No sooner had Kate disappeared than Tom Challis appeared in my office clutching an open stationery book.
‘I’ve tracked down the Deacon family, guv.’
‘Who the hell are they, Tom?’ I was becoming totally confused with the ever increasing number of names that continued to crop up in our enquiry.
‘You remember asking me to track down William Rivers’s relatives?’
‘Right, I’m with you. What about them?’
‘George Deacon is William Rivers’s great nephew and the grandson of Rivers’s sister Gladys. As he’s aged twenty-five, I thought he might be a likely runner for the toppings. I can’t see his parents getting involved in a triple murder, and the grandparents are both dead.’
‘Have you got an address for him?’ I never ceased to be amazed at the detective skills of my younger officers. In common with other coppers of my generation, we misguidedly thought that we were the best detectives there were or ever had been.
‘Yes, guv, he’s living at Ealing.’
‘I’d better have a word with him, I suppose. Thanks, Tom.’
‘D’you want to go now, guv?’ asked Dave.
‘No, we’ll leave it till this evening. He’s probably at work.’
It was about half past three that afternoon when Joe Daly strolled into my office.
‘Joe, what brings you here?’ I asked.
‘I’ve just been across at the Yard enjoying one of your senior officers’ lunches,’ said Daly.
‘Is “enjoy” the right word, Joe?’
‘The food was fine, but your commander sure knows how to shoot the breeze. I reckon he went on for about twenty minutes or more.’
‘Is that all?’ I said. ‘That’s quite brief for him.’ I’d wisely pleaded pressure of work to avoid joining the commander’s audience.
‘At least I was sitting next to Alan Cleaver,’ Daly continued. ‘He’s got a few good stories to tell.’
Dave, having been alerted to Joe Daly’s presence, appeared in my office with three cups of coffee. ‘Not as good as your embassy coffee, Joe,’ he said, ‘but we’re an impoverished nation now.’
‘Remind me to send you a food parcel, Dave.’ Daly took a sip of coffee and grimaced. ‘Yeah, I see what you mean.’ He put his cup and saucer on the corner of my desk and didn’t touch it again. ‘The reason I’ve called in, Harry,’ he said, ‘is that a couple of agents from the New York office interviewed Carter this morning in Rikers.’ He took an email from his pocket and handed it to me.
‘And you’ve got it already?’ I queried, as I began to read O’Grady’s report.
‘New York is five hours behind us, sir,’ said Dave smugly, the ‘sir’ implying that I should have been aware of this widely known fact.
‘I reckon your sergeant’s a wise-ass, Harry,’ said Daly, treating Dave to a high-five.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ I said, skimming through the email. ‘This report doesn’t say much that we didn’t know already,’ I added, returning the brief report to Daly. ‘I reckon Carter knows exactly where the money is, but isn’t saying.’
‘That was my take on it, Harry. After all, what’s he got to lose? He probably thinks he’s going to spend the next twenty years in a federal facility, so why give anything away. In fact, Fernandez probably gave Carter his usual spiel about shaping up for twenty-five to life. I know Fernandez and he’s got a big mouth, and sometimes he’s too smart at making comments of that sort. One of these days he’ll come up against a defence attorney who’ll take him to pieces on the stand.’
George Deacon’s apartment was in a modern block in Ealing, and Dave and I arrived there at a little after six o’clock that evening.
The barefooted well-endowed girl who opened the door of the flat looked to be no older than twenty, if that. She was wearing a pair of white shorts and a tee shirt that bore the single word ‘YES’ followed by an exclamation mark.
‘Mrs Deacon?’ I asked, being fairly sure that she was not.
The girl laughed. ‘Not yet. I’m Tricia Hardy, George’s fiancée. Did you want to see him?’ She spoke with what I thought was, and was later confirmed as, a Canadian accent.
‘If he’s in,’ I said.
‘Sure. Come on through.’ Tricia Hardy seemed quite happy to admit two complete strangers into the apartment without querying who we were or why we were there. No wonder crime in London is rife.
‘Hey, Deacon, get off your butt. There’s a couple of guys here to see you,’ said Tricia, addressing a young man reclining on a sofa. He too was attired in shorts and a tee shirt, although his bore ‘CALGARY’ in large letters.
‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded George Deacon, tossing aside the book he’d been reading. Slowly and apparently in some pain, he stood up and gazed suspiciously at Dave and me. I thought I sensed an element of fear in his appraisal. Either that or he was more aware of crime in the capital than was his fiancée.
‘We’re police officers, Mr Deacon,’ I said, and effected introductions.
‘From Scotland Yard, you say?’
‘That’s correct, sir,’ said Dave.
‘Well, I haven’t got a car, if that’s what you’re here about. I go everywhere on a bicycle.’
Funny
,’ I thought,
how people always assume that a visit from the police has something to do with an infraction of traffic law.
‘How very green of you, sir,’ said Dave.
‘What’s this about?’ Deacon asked. He waved at the sofa. ‘Take a pew.’ He squatted on a beanbag and Tricia sat on the floor with her legs crossed. She moved with enviable suppleness and looked as though she might be good at yoga.
Dave picked up the book that Deacon had been reading and glanced at the title. ‘
Crime and
Punishment
. Good luck! I always found Dostoevsky a bit heavy going.’
‘So do I,’ said Deacon, apparently unsure what to make of a detective sergeant with a knowledge of Russian literature, ‘but I’m doing an Open University degree.’
‘I understand that you’re related to William Rivers, Mr Deacon,’ I said, steering the conversation back to the purpose of our visit.
‘Who?’
‘William Rivers. I believe he’s your great uncle. He lived in Pinner.’
‘Oh, him. I never met him. Bit of a recluse according to my mother. From what she told me, he was a bloody-minded old soldier. I gather that he didn’t have much to do with the rest of the family. I heard that my Auntie Stella had a blazing row with him, all because she married some Indian guy. Anyway, why have you come to see me about him?’