Concealment (29 page)

Of the people Smithies had mentioned who allegedly had my welfare at heart, Greg was possibly the only one who truly cared. Reluctant as I was to show him the depths to which I’d sunk, I guessed he was the one person who would help me. I waited for Little Amy to pipe up with her opinion, but she’d slunk away. Anyway, I’d run out of options. I hesitated, but not for long, before dialling his number.

‘Amy—thank God. Are you OK? I’ve been so worried.’

‘I need your help. This sounds ridiculous, but…’

‘It’s fine, I know what you’re going to say,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘You were right—there
is
a fraud at JJ Slate. I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you in the first place.’

The relief was overwhelming. At last someone other than me was prepared to face the truth. Better still, everyone would take Greg seriously—he had gravitas.

‘Why did you change your mind?’

‘Call it an accountant’s nose, but something made me uneasy about those debtors and I asked some more questions. I’ve put in a preliminary report to Potter, and he’ll need much more information. But don’t worry—we can sort everything out. Look—where are you?’

The place likely evoked the same unhappy memories for him as for me, but he didn’t sound surprised when I told him. He simply said he’d meet me in the bar in half an hour or so. I guessed he was coming from Chiswick, and wondered what he’d tell Tiffany about where he was going.

I dressed quickly. My clothes smelled pretty rank, but I had no others. I turned my knickers inside out—depths to which I’d never even sunk in the hoard house.

By the time Greg rolled up forty-five minutes later, I’d downed two large G and Ts—but hey—I was celebrating. I wasn’t as flaky as I’d thought—a result in all the circumstances.

He bought me another drink, and a beer for himself, and although I detected some disapproval at the empty glasses on the table, he said nothing.

‘Tell me what you discovered,’ I began.

‘The more I chewed over it, the more suspicious it seemed that those debtors had been cleaned up just before our audit. So I checked more thoroughly and one account, Parallax Projects, seemed especially dodgy.’

‘Yes, completely.’

‘I can’t prove it, but I suspect Parallax may be a related party to JJ. But in a nutshell, all those invoices were forgeries. No slate was ever supplied to them. I can’t think how the audit team didn’t pick it up.’

‘Pearson Malone will be on the hunt for a scapegoat,’ I said gloomily.

‘Well, they can’t hold me responsible—I’m only the corporate finance partner.’

‘Will the deal fall through?’

‘I expect so, but I don’t care. I’d much prefer to be on the straight and narrow ethically than cover my arse. If I’d listened to Ryan…’

A sad, faraway look clouded his eyes, something I’d not seen before.

‘You can’t change what’s past,’ I said, putting my hand on his.

‘Shame about us too,’ he went on. ‘If only we’d been able to communicate better. It was down to me—I felt under such pressure to be perfect, and in the end I had to escape.’

‘
You
felt under pressure?’ I echoed.

‘Yes—however hard I tried, nothing I did could make you happy.’

‘It was the same for me—I wanted so much to be the ideal wife.’

‘Yes, and I found it impossible to live up to that. I knew something was wrong in your family, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. If it was out in the open it would have finished us—we wouldn’t be the dream couple any more. And I couldn’t tell you about my family situation either.’

I almost asked what situation he was referring to, when the image of his father drunk at the funeral popped unbidden into my mind. In fact, he’d been plastered at every family occasion we’d attended, at our wedding even. And I’d never stopped to consider the effect that must have had on Greg—I’d been so wrapped up with my own issues.

‘I know. Your dad’s an alcoholic, but no one ever mentions it—you all cover for him and pretend it isn’t happening. And everyone covered for my mother. See—we’re quite similar really.’

Greg squirmed uncomfortably.

‘So tell me about JJ,’ he said, pointedly switching the topic of conversation.

‘Right, for starters Parallax
is
a related party and I can prove it.’

He listened in amazement as I described unearthing the link between Parallax and Jason Jupp, the drugs farm and the probable source of the debt repayments.

‘I’m amazed,’ he said. ‘I’d never have thought of using Facebook like that. And as for the money, I assumed it was all old man Jupp’s dosh—he hated his son, and he hated drugs.’

Crucially, though, Greg believed me, which meant so much I almost cried.

‘But I still don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Why funnel the money into JJ? It wouldn’t be easy to extract it again.’

‘Do you really not get it?’ he said in disbelief.

‘No—I don’t.’

‘You’ll kick yourself when I tell you. It’s obvious. JJ Resources is selling out on a multiple of fifteen times profits—it was all a scam to inflate the value of the shares. You do the maths—JJ shells out a few million to pay off those dodgy debtors and gets the money back many times over.’

Yes, it was obvious now, but I saw trouble looming post-completion.

‘Won’t Megabuilders twig that the slate division’s generating less income than they expected?’

‘That concerned me too,’ Greg admitted, ‘but I imagine they’d continue to put some invoices through to Parallax, and pay them, then taper it off over a few years. They’d still have made a killing. And remember, nobody will be scrutinising the books too carefully. It’s a small business division—that’s how they got away with the scam for so long—and it’ll be an even smaller part of Megabuilders.’

‘So you do believe me—about the cannabis?’

‘Of course I do—you saw it, didn’t you? Do you doubt your own eyes?’

‘Not at all,’ I said hurriedly.

‘I feel so bad,’ said Greg, swigging the remnants of his beer. ‘We should have listened to Ryan.’

‘You shouldn’t beat yourself up. How were you to know? The auditors didn’t spot it, and neither did Megabuilders’ due diligence team.’

‘The audit partner says it’s not his fault—says he can demonstrate they carried out a thorough audit programme. I have my doubts though. They queried those debtors, but hey, when they were cleared all in one go, it didn’t ring any alarm bells.’

‘But why didn’t the Parallax guys clear the debts as they went along—avoid any suspicion?’

‘They probably didn’t want to put the money in until they were pretty sure that the company sale would go ahead. Like you say—it would be tough to get it out otherwise.’

Which sounded plausible enough.

‘So what else did you find?’ he asked, trying to catch the waiter’s attention to order another beer.

‘Why do you think there’s more? Isn’t that enough?’

‘No—there’s something else you haven’t shared with me—I can tell.’

There was no harm in coming clean, I decided, so it all spewed out. I described the papers Chloe Fenton gave me, the fake haulage invoices, and my fruitless visit to East Grinstead.

‘Ah, so that’s why you looked so rough at the meeting with Lisa,’ he said.

‘It shook me up, as you can imagine.’

‘You should have rung in sick.’

‘I would, but I didn’t want to let Lisa down in case she needed some support.’

‘I think she had enough support from Ed—she could hardly fail with his backing. I was pretty much told we had to find a way to pass her.’

That didn’t shock me as much as it ought to have done, not even that Greg had taken the expedient course.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he said, suddenly concerned that I might have the wrong impression. ‘Fortunately she
was
up to the required standard.’

But what if she hadn’t been?

‘Anyway,’ he went on, avoiding the question I hadn’t asked. ‘We digress. You hadn’t finished.’

For the dramatic finale, I added that the bank statements appeared to implicate former officers of the Metropolitan Police in a money laundering operation.

At the point, for the first time, I’d shocked him. Perhaps I’d hit him with too much at once.

‘So in your opinion, who killed Issy?’ he asked.

I hated Smithies so much I was still tempted to say his name, even though there were other, more convincing suspects.

‘Someone connected to JJ, maybe the son. They’re the ones who had most to lose.’

‘I’ve been working with JJ for several years, grooming the company for sale. I’d be amazed if he would…’

‘Who else if not him?’

‘Search me,’ he said.

‘He’s not acting alone, though. He employs all sorts of goons. Those policemen who came to arrest me—they definitely weren’t real.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘My mother would never complain.’

A cold shot of realism ran through my veins, as I remembered the missed calls from Carmody. Could my mother have changed in the last ten years?

‘Let’s deal with one problem at a time,’ said Greg, sensing my panic. ‘It can all be sorted out. Might even be an opportunity for you to patch up your relationship with your mum.’

‘I sincerely doubt it.’

At least he hadn’t said she was the only mother I had.

‘And if you need medical attention, we can fix that up too.’

‘Oh God. I’d forgotten I’m supposed to be crazy in all the excitement.’

We laughed together—the first time in two years. And I glimpsed for an instant what I’d seen in him in the beginning.

‘By the way,’ he said. ‘Where’s all the paperwork, the invoices and so forth? I’ll have to go through it to update my MLRO report.’

‘At the house. In the drawer of my bedside cabinet.’

‘OK—I can pick it up if you give me the keys. Safest if you stay here, in the circumstances.’

‘Another drink?’ he asked, as the waiter approached.

‘Why not?’

It would be my fourth double G and T, but hey—I had a head for it. And anyway, a minor celebration was in order. Greg had accepted what I’d told him. And who better than him to spur the bigwigs into action, willingly or unwillingly?

I popped to the loo and reappraised my appearance. All in all, I’d scrubbed up reasonably presentably and looked considerably perkier and less deranged than earlier in the day. Things were on the up.

Greg had his phone to his ear when I returned.

‘Potter,’ he mouthed at me.

I envied the sure-footed way Greg dealt with the situation. Compare and contrast with gutless little me, unable even to begin the reporting process.

‘Yes, yes—having spoken to Amy, there’s significantly more information than I realised. Your judgement call, but I fail to see how you can avoid making a report.’

Greg took a swig at his beer, as Potter responded, probably reinforcing the need for concrete evidence.

‘I’m not scared of Eric Bailey,’ said Greg, with striking bravado. ‘Anyway, let’s speak again when I have the papers.’

‘Well done,’ I said.

‘And well done you too. I feel terrible—if I’d paid attention to Ryan, I’d have been onto this much sooner—why he might still be with us…’

He kept revisiting the guilt that was eating him—I feared it would haunt him forever.

‘We were all reluctant to recognise the truth—you weren’t the only one.’

‘But you stuck with it, like a dog worrying at a bone—at considerable personal cost. You were brave—I’m just picking up the pieces on the back of your tenacity.’

‘In fact, they played it pretty cleverly—the deception wasn’t that easy to spot, even down to those counterfeit haulage invoices.’

‘Yes,’ Greg agreed. ‘The quality amazed me—impossible to tell them from the originals, except for the serial numbers. How on earth did Isabelle get them?’

‘I bet she blagged them off the client, using her unquestionable charms.’

Greg shook his head sadly.

‘Both dead,’ he said. ‘Tragic.’

He excused himself, ostensibly to go to the Gents, but I’d caught a glimpse of the little tear in his eye. He was a kind man underneath all the corporate finance bluster, and I’d let him get away.

I sat, substantially more woozy than I expected after three and a half large gin and tonics. It could have been lack of sleep, or relief at the way everything was panning out, or shock at Greg’s staggering revelations of his perspective on our marriage.

No—no it was more than that.

My fingers tingled—the room swam. Something was wrong—very wrong.

And then it hit me. How could Greg comment on the quality of the forged invoices? He hadn’t seen them yet.

I vacillated. Could I have mentioned it without realising? It seemed a tiny inconsistency…

‘
Tiny!’
piped up a familiar shrill voice. ‘
It’s absolutely enormous.’

She sat on the arm of the sofa in a denim mini-skirt and a Breton top, and those frightful hooped earrings.

‘
Check his phone,’
urged Little Amy. ‘
I’ll bet he wasn’t really talking to the Potter guy.’

He’d left it on the table with his car keys. My head swam as I typed in his pass code (the same as it always had been) and tried to focus on the call history.

In the past two hours, he’d made or received no calls. The last but one call had been to me, and the final one I recognised as JJ’s personal mobile.

And I recognised, in a flash of insight, what had been staring me in the face. Chloe Fenton had told me Isabelle planned to talk to someone she trusted. Not Ryan, because she’d been reluctant to disclose how she’d conned her way into a double promotion—not Smithies, because she reckoned he must be involved. No—she’d chosen to confide in Greg. That’s why she’d called him the night she died.

But Greg hadn’t been a safe confidant. Maxed out on his borrowings, he depended on the deal completing to avoid incurring Bailey’s wrath and keep his job. It was much easier for him to eliminate the threat than address the issue properly. And Greg was in an ideal position to set Ryan up. Even Ryan’s suicide now made sense—he’d guessed the truth. Faced with the impossible choice of taking the rap for a crime he hadn’t committed or destroying his adored elder brother, he’d opted out altogether.