A Murder of Magpies (21 page)

Gascoigne nodded. “But if he is, and he would like us to think he isn't, he's been very foolish to bring himself to our attention in this way.”

Conway put in: “Is he foolish?”

Gascoigne considered. “I wouldn't have thought so, no. He struck me as clever. And more than clever, as thoughtful.”

“And,” said Conway, thinking aloud, “thoughtful people don't make those kinds of mistakes. So for the moment we assume that he isn't involved himself, but is aware of what's going on.” He raised his eyebrows at me, and I made a what-do-I-know? gesture in response. “We need to talk to him. We can deal with him on that level. If he isn't straight, it can do no harm now for him to know we're investigating.” He turned to me. “What are we going to tell him about Lovell's plans?”

A lightbulb went on over my head.
This
was what they wanted me for. I could have wept with frustration. Kit's disappearance was so much on my mind that I hadn't remembered Conway's original approach.

I cleared my throat. “The police haven't spoken to any of you about Kit?”

Gascoigne and Conway stiffened in their seats. The other two just looked curious. Gascoigne spoke first: “What about Lovell?”

I saw no point in hiding the news. It was a murder investigation now, and the papers would get wind of it soon enough. I was surprised they hadn't already. “Kit's disappeared. Vanished. No one knows where. He's been gone for over a week, and the police are assuming it's murder.” I hated even saying the word. I couldn't bring myself to tell them about the body in the river. Saying it out loud might mean I had to believe it.

Conway sat back in his chair as if I'd hit him. “Vanished? What do you mean, vanished?”

Unhappiness was making me angry. “I've just told you. I don't know. No one knows.” I clenched my teeth so I wouldn't scream at him.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” He thought about it for a moment. “You knew this when I saw you two days ago?”

“I was astonished that you didn't. It hadn't occurred to me that it wasn't public knowledge.”

“Why didn't you say so then?”

“Because I didn't know what you wanted. I still don't, for that matter.” I ran my hands through my hair in frustration. “How is it relevant, anyway? If you didn't arrange to have him, well, ‘disappeared,' shall we say, and if you don't know who did, then your not knowing two days ago doesn't change things.”

Conway stood up so abruptly his chair fell over and banged back against the wall. He put his hands, curled into fists, on the table and leaned across at me. “If I didn't
what
? Just what the hell do you think I am? I ought to—” He shook off Gascoigne, who had quickly stood to put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Am I some sort of godfather who goes around rubbing out anyone who gets in my path? Is that it?” He was purple with rage, and his accent had totally vanished.

I felt curiously detached. I was sure his anger was real, and if I worked for him, I would have been afraid, but what did it matter to me? What did any of this matter? It was a shame that these people were having business problems, but they weren't my problems. I said wearily, “How should I know what you are, or what you do? I first laid eyes on you forty-eight hours ago. I know nothing about your ethics, and couldn't care less. I'm concerned that my author—that my
friend
—has gone missing and is probably dead. The police are assuming a body pulled out of the Thames yesterday is Kit. If it is, then I have no further interest in any of this.” I waved my arm tiredly toward the meeting room's luxurious austerity. “If it isn't, then I'll go on looking for him. If, in passing, I can help with your business problems, well and good, but that's not what I'm here for. I want to find out what happened to Kit Lovell. That's it. Beginning, middle, and end. Now why don't you stop shouting, sit down, and we can try and do something useful.”

I sounded like his nanny, and the others looked like they were going to go and find the nearest nuclear fallout shelter to hide in, but it worked. Conway took a deep breath and sat down. The man had style. He didn't even look behind him to see if the chair had been picked up—he just assumed it had and sat.

He didn't look at anyone else. “I'm sorry,” he said, holding out his hand.

I put mine in his. “So am I.” I was, too. I had thought he was straight when I'd met him. To accuse him in passing of murder was plain stupid and, worse than stupid, not helpful. “Let's start again. Kit vanished, probably last Wednesday. No one has seen him or heard from him since; according to the police his bank accounts and credit cards have not been used; no telephone calls have been made on any of his numbers; there has been no sign of him at all.” I took a breath. “He may be this body from the river. It's not—” I boggled. “It's not identifiable.”

Conway had stopped being angry, and was thinking constructively again. “When we spoke in Paris, you said I couldn't see the manuscript, and Lovell's sources, because it was a police matter. I thought you were referring to the money laundering. Instead, you were thinking about his disappearance.”

Conway and Gascoigne quickly looked at each other and away. I wondered if they would have called this meeting, and decided to share their information on money laundering with me, much less invite NCIS and the Revenue in, if they had known that the police weren't looking for corporate fraud, but for a fashion journalist. How much had they been pushed into their Good Citizen number by anxiety about what would be found out, and how much because they
knew
what would be found out?

To give Conway and Gascoigne needed time to digest the information about Kit, I recapped on the highlights of the last week, including my break-in.

There was a gleam of a smile on Conway's face. “Ah,” he said, tapping the corner of his own eye.

I didn't want to discuss it, so I ignored him and carried on. “Do you have any sense of where this, um, problem is coming from inside your company?” All four faces looked studiedly blank. I wasn't going to get anything there. I continued on to a more comfortable subject. “What can you ask Alemán that won't tell him more than he gives in return?”

“Let's have him in, and we'll see.” Conway was back to his urbane self, that out-of-control moment over as if it had never been. For now.

Dara ushered Alemán in. I was unreasonably touched to see that he wore what was plainly his “interview” suit. He looked much more vulnerable than he had when I'd seen him at the Stanleys. He was surprised to see me with the Lambert-Lorraine people, but he immediately wiped his face of all emotions.

“Sit down, sit down,” said Conway, at his most stage Irish.

Diego Alemán sat on the very edge of his chair and refused coffee.

Conway flicked a look at Gascoigne, who began the interview. “We're grateful to you for coming, Mr. Alemán.”

Diego cleared his throat nervously.

“We've been discussing your suggestions to me last week, and we thought it would be helpful if we could talk it through with you.”

Diego nodded. The only way he was going to say anything was by direct questioning.

Gascoigne recognized that. “You said last week that you feared that Ms. Clair thought you were ‘involved' with Intinvest. Would you like to elaborate?”

Diego slid a glance toward me, and then looked away quickly when our eyes met. He cleared his throat again. “I don't really know what more to say. It's just that she—you—were so obviously suspicious.”

Gascoigne was silky. “Suspicious of what, Mr. Alemán? What is there to be suspicious of?”

“Of? Of my brother's death, of course. I knew about the book she was publishing, and I wanted to know more. My family is very unhappy.”

“I understand.” Gascoigne's voice sharpened. “But family unhappiness about a book produced by an independent publisher is hardly likely to bring you to the office of Lambert-Lorraine's solicitors. Let's get to the point. What information, exactly, did you think Ms. Clair had, and what information do you want us to have?”

Diego thought for a moment. “I don't know what Ms. Clair had. That is a family matter, and not one I'm happy with, but it's separate. What I wanted to talk to you about was Intinvest. You know I worked in the IT department?” He looked around for confirmation and got a series of nods. “I regulated the system, made sure that the international units were coordinated.” Here he lapsed into technicalities that entirely passed me by, but I saw Michael Eliot start to scribble furiously. The others looked almost as glazed as I was. The two men began to talk exclusively to each other, jargon and abbreviations spilling out.

After ten minutes, Eliot stopped and turned to Conway. “Shall I sum up, sir?”

“I think you'd better.”

“What it boils down to is that there are two laundering systems running simultaneously, one working with the high-end items. The top-end is done through shell companies and false invoicing, the low-end through the usual route—understating cash sales.”

Everyone nodded. They all knew what was going on, and were not really surprised. Gascoigne must have seen that I had no idea what Eliot was talking about. “As well as the legitimate goods and services, phantom deliveries are being made, goods and services that are never supplied, things like software or consultancy services. Vernet is invoiced, and the money goes through as a legitimate payment for legitimate goods. That's the first route. The second is where inexpensive items, like makeup, which are often paid for in cash, are targeted. Vernet ships two million lipsticks retailing at £10 apiece to a Vernet subsidiary, but only invoices for one million at £5. The subsidiary pays £5 million on the books, and banks the difference offshore.”

Now I nodded, too, and Eliot continued. “Ordinarily, domestic and offshore are run through two separate systems, but a server failure meant that the disaster recovery plan ran all the data through a single person: Diego.”

Diego interposed. “At first I thought it was a blip, but as I recovered terabytes of data the pattern was clear. I was afraid to raise it internally, because I couldn't see who had been doing this, only that it had been done. So I created a snapshot covering all transactions over the past year and rsynced it to an encrypted cloud storage facility. It was all I could do without setting off alarm bells.”

Conway snapped, “And what are you expecting out of this?”

Diego flushed, and looked very young and vulnerable. He was hurt. “Nothing. Intinvest are selling armaments to both the governments and the insurgents in Chechnya, in South Sudan—anywhere civil war is a business opportunity. I've only had proof for a couple of months. It has taken me longer than it should to come to you, but I wasn't sure that anyone would listen.”

I believed him, but this was the material Kit had found, and for which he had evidence. What about the property deals? They had vanished into thin air.

Conway turned to me. “Have you anything to ask?”

I shook my head. I needed to talk to Helena.

*   *   *

At nine thirty I whispered to Gascoigne that I really had to go. The meeting was dragging on and on, and while I recognized that this was important to Lambert-Lorraine, I had nothing to contribute. After an effusive good-bye and elaborate thanks—
for what?
—from Conway, Gascoigne took me down to a car, and I set off for Luton.

I had never realized before that the great quality of money is not convenience, but insulation. Had I followed my humble little Ryanair pattern, I would have had to take the Tube, then the train, then gone through the check-in and security rigmarole at the airport, before I was surrounded by screaming babies and cabin attendants attempting to sell me duty free. Now a car drove me to the airport and drew up at a small building by a runway. I was escorted from the car directly to the plane, and ten minutes after I arrived we took off. A cabin attendant (who knew private planes had them?) said, “I'll be sitting up there. If you want anything, ring,” and then I was left entirely alone.

The quiet was in some ways unwelcome. Yes, it was wonderful luxury, but if I'd had to fight my way through commuter hell, I wouldn't have had time to think about the morning's events. Now I circled endlessly around the few details Jake had given me. I didn't want to think about it, but I couldn't stop. I tried to focus on what the meeting had thrown up, but it was the same circular pattern. I decided to treat it like an editorial problem, as though the plot in a novel needed sorting out. I pulled out a pad and began to make notes. We had three separate issues: Kit's disappearance; the money laundering through false invoicing; and now, it appeared, a property scam that Helena had picked up right away but no one else was mentioning.

That was worth considering. If that had been part of Intinvest's fraud, then surely Diego would have mentioned it. If Diego was telling the truth. If he wasn't, then the property scam might be part of Intinvest's laundering program, but one they thought they could still keep hidden, as no one had apparently noticed it. And Kit's—Kit's murder. I wrote the word down, so I'd believe it. I presumed, or at least I presumed the police presumed, that his death was the result of his uncovering Intinvest's money laundering. After all, he hadn't known about the money laundering via the property. Or had he? And where did the Thin Boy fit in? Who was he, and why was he following me? I couldn't see how that was linked to anything else. By the end of the trip, my pad was filled with names and arrows pointing wildly in all directions, but I wasn't any more sure of what I was looking at than when I'd set off.

We landed, and I tried to put everything except Breda out of my mind. The last week's happenings had made me feel that publishing wasn't important, and I really couldn't risk communicating this to any author, much less my star author.