Dreams to Die For (31 page)

Chloe's school, in common with most English private schools, had at least a week longer summer vacation than did the state schools and would reopen its doors to students on Tuesday, 12 September. Chloe, along with the other members of staff, was required to return to duty on Friday 8th to help with the preparations, meet any new teachers and to familiarise herself with her allotted classroom and any last-minute changes to the curriculum. Thursday morning, therefore, was the last opportunity of the summer recess she and Crossland had of a taking an extra few minutes in bed – and she wanted to end her holiday with something special for him, especially as he had seemed a little on edge of late. She had woken early and made two cups of steaming hot coffee, plus some toast and marmalade and taken them to him in bed. Forty minutes of rapturous pleasure later, and completely spent, he started munching rapidly on the cold toast and finished the small remainder of his coffee that Chloe had not used. He hurried around the room seeking to find a clean shirt and underclothes, but he was totally untroubled at being well behind his normal schedule.

Donaldson had waited impatiently outside Chloe's flat, having guessed the reason for the delay. Both the Crosslands had now become a source of considerable irritation to him, and jealousy at their respective love affairs only added to his mounting disillusionment. He wished he could strike back at them in some way: Alan Crossland for his meanness, increasingly erratic work hours and at his boss's apparent ease at being able to bed incredibly attractive females; and with Cindy for teasing and leading him on before making him feel inadequate and foolish. When Alan Crossland finally appeared, Donaldson offered none of the usual pleasantries and instead gruffly told him that the delay in leaving the flat would mean the traffic would be worse, and so it proved. Crossland eventually decided to get out of the car and walk. Having to rush through the crowds, he arrived at the Hannet-Mar an hour later than normal at 9:30am, slightly flushed and out of breath.

He glanced at the post, which had already been opened by Jane and sorted into a small pile with the most urgent on top, and then checked his diary. He was pleased. He had no major appointments other than a short meeting scheduled for 11:30am where he was to present a junior member of staff a congratulatory letter and cheque for passing her recent Accountancy examinations. The substantial part of his day could be spent catching up on some matters that were overdue his attention and he settled back in his chair and opened a file. Two hours later, his secretary knocked on the door and entered Crossland's office.

“Miss Kelly Palmer is outside. Shall I send her in?”

“Yes please, thanks.” Crossland rose to welcome the young woman, moved around his desk, extended his hand and smiled broadly.

“Do come in Kelly, would you like some coffee?” They shook hands and Crossland pointed for her to sit in one of the four comfortable armchairs surrounding a circular smoke-glass table.

“Thank you, Sir, I would.”

Crossland looked up at Jane, still waiting at the door, and nodded affirmatively. A cafetière and two china cups and saucers quickly arrived, along with a large plate of assorted expensive biscuits and chocolates. Crossland noticed how smart Kelly Palmer looked in her dark, tailored suit and cream blouse, enough of the top buttons open to arouse interest but insufficient to reveal any cleavage, well cut hair, understated make up and he detected only the faintest hint of perfume.
She will go far
he thought,
still only twenty-two, knows how to dress and obviously very bright as her rapid progress in the examinations proved.
Crossland then congratulated her and formally passed over his personally addressed and signed letter that enclosed the £2,000 cheque. He then asked how she liked the bank and what her aspirations were, the type of questions that all chief executives are good at asking, but rarely bother to remember the replies. Towards the end of the conversation, Kelly noticed that his computer was not turned on.

“I see, Sir, you have not logged on yet so you will not have seen my note to you this morning.”

“Oh, Kelly, what was that about?”

“An account in the name of Chalthoum Universal Holdings. The system threw up an automated alert message at about ten this morning that a withdrawal of £150,000 had been made online. It popped up on my screen. Everything seemed to be in order, but as you had at one time controlled the account, and there was a note in the comments section of the screen to notify you of all developments, I thought I should email you.”

Kelly's words stunned Crossland. He tried desperately not to show how really shaken he was.

“Thank you, Kelly. Yes, thank you,” he muttered barely audibly, his mind in turmoil. Fortunately the meeting with Kelly Palmer was scheduled for only twenty minutes, and whilst he may have been prepared to extend it a little in more propitious circumstances, it was now certain he would keep to his timetable. He closed the door when Kelly departed and sat at his desk, quickly turning on his computer and accessing the account. He was calmer now, having convinced himself that this eventuality was precisely why he had distanced himself from the Chalthoum case. He had removed his direct involvement and played down its importance.

“So, a transaction has occurred on a small beer case.” He mused quietly to himself. “Nothing to get excited about,” but the perspiration upon his forehead revealed his nervousness.

He picked up the telephone and asked Jane to put him through to Ritson at the ATU and then replaced the receiver. A few moments later, Jane buzzed his intercom.

“Ritson is evidently tied up, do you want anyone else or shall I leave a message?”

“Leave a message, Jane, please. Ask him to contact me as soon as possible. Thanks”

Ten minutes later, his phone rang and it was Ritson.

“Good morning, Sir. I understand you would like a word?” Ritson sounded calm and polite and Crossland relaxed back into his chair.

“Chief Superintendent, good morning. Thank you for calling back. It's really in the nature of a courtesy call. You remember, I'm sure, the Chalthoum account? Well, following on from our previous conversation, I removed it from my own personal attention accounts and, frankly, had forgotten all about it. However, this morning one of my junior staff received an automated alert on her screen that it had been the subject of a large online withdrawal and naturally she brought it immediately to my attention. Slightly regrettably, she did so by email, and being rather busy I have only just got round to reading it. I thought you may like to know.”

“That's very considerate of you, Sir, I appreciate you informing us. Can you provide any more details about the transaction?” Ritson smoothly asked.

Crossland told him all he knew from the computer record and offered to email Ritson a copy of the screens, but he declined. The details provided by Crossland matched exactly those of which Ritson was first informed at 10:45am and had immediately resulted in a flurry of activity within the ATU.

“Two questions, Sir, if I may at this time. Does your computer system keep a log of the computer id that carried out the transaction, and do you have the name of the Egyptian bank's account holder?”

“Good grief Chief Superintendent, I honestly couldn't tell you the answer to the first question. I will ask one of our computer boffins to talk to you if you like, I'm sure he'll know the answer. As to the second, I am sorry the answer is we do not have that on the record, though again I am happy to ask my staff to try and find it out.”

“Thank you Sir. May I suggest I send over one of my people this afternoon and perhaps your computer guy and mine can put their heads together. My chap's name will be Doug Ongles – funny name, likes to be called Dongle. Something to do with computers I'm told!” He laughed, as did Crossland.

Immediately after replacing the receiver, Crossland asked his own computer expert to come to his office. “Glen, the police are coming round again this afternoon and sending one of their computer guys. Give them every co-operation, but note what they say and keep a copy yourself of anything they want to take back. Let me know how it goes.”

In 2006, although the United Kingdom government (through HM Treasury and the Bank of England) purportedly monitored suspect bank accounts, its experience and resources were vastly inferior to those of the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) an agency of the US Department of the Treasury that came under the auspices of the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Its founding went back to 1950, under another name, but it formally became OFAC in 1962, and over the years had been highly successful in tracing and monitoring the funds of drug barons and, latterly, terrorists. The British and American organisations shared intelligence reasonably openly with each other and, in return for HM Treasury willingness to unquestioningly freeze assets of an OFAC identified suspect, OFAC would help its smaller counterpart when asked to monitor specific accounts, even those held at UK banks. Ritson had passed a request for monitoring of the Chalthoum account at Hannet-Mar International Bank to HM Treasury shortly after his first meeting with Alan Crossland back in 2005 and at 10:15am UK time on the 7
^th
September 2006 OFAC reported the withdrawal to HM Treasury. They passed the information onto New Scotland Yard ATU at 10:35am and ten minutes later Ritson was reading the details. He immediately went to see a jubilant Assistant Commissioner Manders.

“I told you, Bill, always follow the money. We now need to be really careful. If there is anything going on, I don't want it spooked too early. I need to know a lot more before we get heavy as its still not certain that this is anything other than a normal transaction, but I feel this is a breakthrough and worth pursuing. Take two lads from John and get Chris to deal with anything urgent that crops up on your other stuff. Put your whole team on this and keep me fully updated 24/7. I have a feeling we may be about to get lucky.”

Ritson was delighted at the extra resources. He would need them. He was in the process of gathering his team together for a briefing when Crossland phoned, but his information provided nothing new. Nonetheless, the mere fact that the bank manager had called at all showed that he was nervous about the account, a thought he pondered over as he returned to chair the briefing. He outlined the facts, gave out copies of all the documentation the ATU had gathered from Crossland, and from the latest printout from OFAC. He brought his team, which even with the additional help numbered only twelve including himself and the computer expert Dongle, up to the same level of knowledge regarding all aspects of the case, including the mystery surrounding the death of Kenneth Styles. He asked for their input, collectively and individually, before going to a portable whiteboard that had been rather precariously perched across two chairs – its screw fixings having loosened, resulting in it falling from the wall months previously – to write down a summary of the immediate actions to be taken:

OFAC to be asked to trace if similar funds transferred from Egypt, if so where and details.

Recirculate names of Chalthoum Universal Holdings / Corniche Consortium and Halima Chalthoum to all trusted Financial Regulatory Authorities.

Alert HM Treasury and Bank of England to monitor significant deposits from the Middle East being placed in private British accounts.

Notify all British banks to report all amounts in excess of £50,000 credited to private accounts from any overseas banks.

Dongle to visit Hannet-Mar, investigate system.

Ensure both MI5 and MI6 representatives within ATU briefed.

Highlighted in red and circled was GET NAME OF EGYPT ACCOUNT.

* * *

Ritson allotted the tasks to his various Heads of Section and glanced at his watch. It was 1pm. Several hours had slipped by since the money left British shores and he knew that if he was to be successful, speed was of the essence. The liaison between MI5, MI6 and the Metropolitan Police International Counter Terrorism branch (of which the ATU was part) was born of necessity, but since the London outrage of 7/7 working relationships had improved considerably and there was now much greater co-operation and the sharing of intelligence. The ATU had a dedicated liaison officer within both security services and Ritson himself undertook to talk with them. He was in a difficult position. He still only had suspicions and there was no additional evidence that could justify devoting the amount of resources Manders had given him for very long. He had to come up with some tangible results very soon or the investigation would be scaled down. He had another concern which he had not shared with his team, realising that in all probability they would be thinking along the same lines. If the money was for onward transmission from Egypt, he hoped it would be one large sum rather than several smaller sums. With the millions of financial transactions around the world every day, even a sum as large as £150,000 was pretty small and therefore would take the agencies powerful computers time to isolate and identify. If the sum was split and sent in smaller units to many different banks, it could be totally impossible to trace before an incident might occur. A certain amount of luck might be needed, but even more critical was that Ritson needed time.

Things did not start well. Within an hour he had learnt that there were considerable translation problems with the Egyptian authorities, plus jurisdiction issues. Eventually, the Egyptians had managed to find someone who spoke good English and so the translators that Ritson had called for had to be sent away. The Egyptians then said that whilst they would wish to help the UK if possible, they could not just divulge their account holder's details unless good reason was provided. Ritson did not want, nor could even if he wished, allege it was in connection with a possible terrorist threat, but after some considerable time and further lengthy discussion, the Egyptians said they would refer the British request to their Interior Ministry for a decision. Ritson now desperately hoped that OFAC could identify a similar transfer from the Egyptian bank. If so, more information regarding names would be available. He waited most of the afternoon, impatiently sitting at his desk whilst others did likewise. All they needed was something, anything, more tangible to give them a lead that would then cause them to spring into action.