Concealment (24 page)

‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked. ‘Had you forgotten we were meeting for a catch up?’

‘No,’ I fibbed. And then, staring at the pile of papers, ‘Jeepers—that’s a whole morning’s work by the look of it.’

‘Shouldn’t take a mo,’ she said briskly, as though determined to be in and out as quickly as possible.

I worked my way through what she’d brought. None of it needed reviewing—Lisa was a better technician than I would ever be. Normally, I liked to whizz through and make the odd salient comment to show I’d added value. Today though, I signed without raising any questions.

I sensed that my failure to confide in her about the hoarding and other matters still rankled with her. But surely it would be possible for me to make amends…

‘I’ve been trying to contact you—to ask if I could help you prep for the assessment centre?’

‘Bit late for that now. I mean you’ve known for nearly two weeks that I’m attending.’

‘Not too late at all. Why don’t we sit down over the weekend and…’

‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘I have all the help I need.’

Something stopped me from asking her where from.

‘Well then, fancy a drink after work?’

‘Um, sorry, I’ve something else on.’

‘Another time?’

‘Sure. How’s your mum by the way?’

‘OK, I guess.’

‘You
still
haven’t seen her?’

Her voice conveyed more than a hint of rebuke. Like everyone else, she judged the relationship by conventional standards and found me lacking. She’d been prepared to make allowances when there’d been “something terrible” lurking in my background. But the hoarding was no big deal to her—she neither understood the secrecy surrounding it nor why it had driven a wedge between my mother and me.

‘No.’

Did anyone seriously imagine I’d found it easy to cut off contact with my own mother? That I was callous enough to take this draconian action on the trivial grounds of her failure to meet up to my standards of tidiness?

‘Shouldn’t you get in touch with her?’

‘No.’

‘Up to you,’ she said. ‘You might find the relationship more fulfilling if you tried harder. But then, being close to people doesn’t come naturally to you.’

Her barb stung. It also irked me that without having met my mother, Lisa appeared to be taking her side. My feelings never seemed to matter to anyone.

‘Perhaps not,’ I agreed. ‘But you and me, are we OK? Lately you’ve been a bit off with me. Can’t we clear the air?’

Lisa didn’t hesitate before replying.

‘I’ll be honest with you—it’s grim being your friend at the moment. You never tell me anything—you’re really paranoid about everyone. And if I’m brave enough to suggest there’s something wrong you become angry and defensive. What am I supposed to do?’

What was I supposed to do, throw myself at her mercy, and beg for another chance? Not likely—it takes two to break a friendship. I suspected she’d somehow manipulated me to get on the assessment centre, but I daren’t say so. She’d pounce on any such thoughts as further evidence of my paranoia.

‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’ I said lamely, instead. ‘And fingers crossed for next week.’

‘Thanks—I’ll be fine.’

‘And call me when you’re through.’

‘Sure, yes.’

She left without a backward glance.

‘
She won’t call you—she’s not your friend anymore,’
whispered Little Amy.

Which was a shame, because I’d been contemplating asking Lisa’s advice on JJ. But that was impossible now, with the permafrost between us.

Scarily, apart from an imaginary version of my fourteen-year-old self, I was entirely alone in the world.

***

Fact was, as I’d warned Carmody, no one at Pearson Malone would ever accept there was any irregularity at JJ Slate. Too many links and personal agendas clouded people’s judgement. And without any definitive proof, discrediting and belittling me was a much easier option than facing the truth. Eric Bailey had probably been joking around, but there’d been a menacing edge to his comments—
don’t you dare rock the boat, Amy Robinson
.

The answer was obvious. Possession of suspicious documents, which could always be explained away, was not enough. I needed proof. Then they would have to sit up and take notice, like it or not.

I took a mental inventory of what I had.

Debtors ledger—bank statements—haulage invoices—calculations.

Out of all the bundle of papers, the invoices intrigued me the most. They were all for deliveries to Parallax Projects at an industrial estate in East Grinstead, Sussex. But as I’d spotted before, the serial numbers of two of them were out of sequence, meaning they might be forged. Fake transport invoices for non-existent consignments of slate.

I’d quickly established that the East Grinstead address was the registered office of Parallax, which was not wholly surprising. But I’d made little progress otherwise, and hadn’t unearthed any links between Parallax and Jason Jupp—quite the reverse. A Companies House search showed he was neither a director nor a shareholder.

Questions swirled round my mind. Where had the two million paid into Parallax every quarter come from? Why was everyone pretending to sell slate? Was there a secret JJ drug-dealing division of which the auditors, central management, and Megabuilders were all unaware? Why hadn’t Parallax paid off the JJ invoices on a timely basis and avoided arousing anyone’s suspicion? Why pay the money into JJ anyway—why not just to Jason Jupp himself? And why would drug dealers have all these neat traceable transactions through bank accounts?

My brain cried out for coffee to kick-start it. At the machine, I pressed the button for cappuccino, but instead a vile diarrhoea-like liquid spurted out.

‘Oxtail soup,’ said a passing secretary, spotting my disgust as she put envelopes into the nearby pigeonholes. ‘They got the buttons mixed up when they serviced it.’

‘So if I press soup do I get cappuccino?’

‘Nah—not so simple—you have to press the button for black coffee.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘Oh—while you’re here, this is yours,’ she said, handing me an envelope with the Vodafone logo on it.

All the bills on the corporate phone account came round shortly after the end of the month.

All the bills…

The same brain that minutes before had been struggling whirred unbidden into action.

‘Is there one of those for Isabelle?’ I asked, endeavouring to hide my excitement. ‘We’re sending a few bits on to her parents.’

‘Sure,’ she said, rifling through the pile and handing it to me.

I poured away the soup and rushed off—the need for coffee forgotten.

***

By sheer good luck, I now possessed a log of all the calls Isabelle had made up from 1
^st
June to 14
^th
June, the date she’d died.

I worked backwards.

She’d last called Ryan, presumably trying to track him down. An earlier call to Greg must have been made for the same reason. Before that, she’d rung a number with a Llandudno dialling code—her parents, I guessed, to share the joyous tidings of her promotion.

But she hadn’t called Smithies.

That was disappointing—after all the shenanigans over the tax losses I still favoured him as number one suspect. If he’d somehow got wind of what Isabelle had discovered, then he had a motive. It was possible he’d called her—I recalled that the police list had included his number. Also Ryan had told me Smithies’ number had come up when he’d checked Isabelle’s phone. But that might have been days or weeks earlier. I contemplated several devious ways to get my hands on Smithies’ phone bill, before concluding that the task was impossible.

She’d called another mobile number Friday lunchtime. I googled the number, but to no avail.

‘
Dial it.’

I used my landline, so whoever answered would see “number withheld”.

‘Hello.’

‘Uh—who is this?’

‘Thomas Evans,’ came the reply. ‘Who are you?’

I resisted the urge to ask directly if he was connected with Evans Haulage.

‘Jan Brady,’ I said, making a rapid decision to impersonate my personal assistant. ‘I’m a secretary where Isabelle Edwards used to work and I’m calling round everyone who knew her—we’re having a collection for a memorial fund…’

He cut me off abruptly.

‘I’m not that close to Isabelle.’

‘But your number’s on her phone, so I assumed…’

‘We went to school together, but I haven’t seen her since—well not much. We exchanged a few words in the local now and then when she visited her parents. To tell the truth, I was surprised to hear from her.’

‘Did she say why she was phoning?’

‘Said she wanted to pick my brains about the business.’

My ears pricked up.

‘What business?’

‘Why, the family haulage company.’

‘
Well, well, well,’
said Little Amy.

‘What did she ask you?’

‘Nothing—but she asked to meet up the next time she came back to Llandudno. That would have been last weekend. But then she went missing and the rest…I already told the police all this…’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Just being nosy.’

I reckoned the police weren’t aware of the link between Evans Haulage and JJ. And even if they were, Carmody and co had been focussed single-mindedly on their prime suspect Ryan Kelly.

‘So will you donate to the fund?’ I asked him, deftly reverting to the lie I’d spun.

‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Put me down for fifty pounds and text me where to send it. You sure you didn’t want anything else?’

His tone of voice suggested he’d twigged that the memorial fund story was a complete fiction.

‘Quite sure—thanks so much.’

Without thinking too hard, I dialled the number on the Evans Haulage invoices.

‘Good morning,’ I said smoothly, ‘Please may I speak to your accounts department.’

‘The bookkeeper, you mean?’

‘I guess so,’ I replied and with a click, the receptionist put me through.

‘Hi there—I’m the temp up at JJ Slate and I have a query on some invoices,’ I began. If they were involved in the scam, this would undoubtedly rattle them, but it was a risk worth taking.

‘I usually deal with Trevor.’

No alarm, just natural caution.

‘Yes I know. I’m calling on his behalf.’

He appeared to accept this without question.

‘If I give you invoice numbers can you check them back to your records?’

‘Sure I can.’

I read out the numbers of the suspected counterfeits.

‘They’re ancient,’ he said. ‘Two years at least.’

He gave me the dates from his files, which were markedly different from those on the invoices, as was the customer name, delivery address and invoice amount. As I’d thought, someone had photocopied old invoices and changed the details, but forgot about the serial number. Careless.

‘
Ask him if they ever deliver to the East Grinstead address?’
urged Little Amy.

They did.

‘From the slate mine?’

‘Why yes—but that’s on a different arrangement—we bill a company called Parallax Projects.’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘maybe that’s where the confusion’s come.’

‘No confusion here,’ he replied defensively.

‘I realise that—I’m checking from our end.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘we’ve got another load going out there on Wednesday.’

Five days’ time.

‘What of?’ I couldn’t resist asking.

‘Empty crates, of course. Parallax is the company that repairs the crates.’

‘
Cannabis leaves. The crates would be too light to pretend they were full of slate, so instead they pretend they’re empty.’

As if she feared she wasn’t making her points forcefully enough, Little Amy had put in an appearance. She sat perched on the table in the corner of my office, in a hideous yellow jumpsuit I didn’t remember at all. The kid might be correct about this, even if her fashion sense hadn’t fully evolved yet. Crate repair using the usual haulage company would be a great cover for transporting drugs.

I took stock.

There was likely a counterfeit haulage invoice to correspond with each fictitious slate sale to Parallax, and probably forged delivery notes and other documentation too. Meanwhile, genuine invoices had been raised to Parallax, allegedly for transporting empty crates.

But I kept revisiting the same uncertainties. If the slate sales were non-existent, why had the invoices been paid? And how were Jason Jupp and Parallax connected?

As ever, I had more questions than answers but I’d gleaned some useful information—a load of something en route to East Grinstead on Wednesday evening.

‘
Why don’t you find out what?’
said my gutsy alter ego.

It was a lunatic idea, dreamt up by a fourteen-year-old.

Although in her defence, it didn’t seem lunatic at the time—more like the next logical step in a voyage of discovery. I’d found a link between Jason Jupp and drugs, but had failed to establish a connection between Jason and Parallax. If I could tie in Parallax to the drugs this would scarcely matter. I’d have enough evidence to move forward.

Common sense should have suggested that whatever evidence I obtained during this ill-judged expedition might be of limited use. Strictly, I’d still be obliged to report to Smithies’ chum the MLRO. And I’d have the additional challenge of inventing a rationale for my unorthodox initiative.

But common sense lay dormant as I changed into jeans and drove down straight to East Grinstead from work the next Wednesday. The merits of action versus inertia outweighed all other considerations at this point.

On the way I called Lisa. The assessment centre normally wrapped up Wednesday lunchtime, but I’d heard nothing from her. We would go together to learn her results tomorrow morning, but I’d hoped for a debrief before then. Her phone rang twice before switching to voicemail. I left an upbeat message, hoping that all had gone smoothly and she was out enjoying herself. Once she would have called me the minute she’d left the centre, I reflected bitterly. Once she would have been out enjoying herself with me.

A quick recce confirmed that my Merc was far too conspicuous to be left anywhere near the industrial estate. I parked discreetly in a residential road half a mile away, and made my way on foot.