by Ed James
‘Is that why he wanted out?’
Neil’s eyes twitched. Gotcha. ‘Kind of.’
‘I know when I’m being lied to, son.’
‘What?’
‘It’s not why, is it?’
Neil blew air up his face. ‘The way Damo saw it, he was bearing the brunt of all the stress of the business. We just had to make the product, or do all the cheeky marketing crap Liam does. Damo did the books, spoke to the bank.’
‘Heard you weren’t happy about him trying to sell up.’
‘Would you be? He was core to it all. Not the product, but it was his business vision. If Liam wanted out, we could cope. Damon? Absolute nightmare.’
‘Were any of you putting pressure on him?’
‘Of course, but he’s not the kind of guy to buckle to it, you know?’
‘How much could he get from selling?’
‘We had a valuation at a million. Equal shares too.’
‘So a quarter of a million? That’s a lot of money.’ And one hell of a motive.
‘Right. This investment firm wanted to buy a ten percent stake, but they wanted to tie us to a long-term commitment.’
‘And Mr Lombardi didn’t want that?’
‘Nope.’
‘And their stake would be swallowed up by business expansion?’
‘Correct. Our salaries, the distillery, bottling plant for the spirits, and paying the mortgage on the school. You name it.’
‘Do you know the real reason Damon’s been trying to sell up?’
Neil stared up at the ceiling. ‘I think Damon was maybe trying to shift his stake to cover some of his debts.’
‘His mortgage? Credit cards?’
‘Nope. Gambling.’
‘Gambling?’
‘Crippling debts.’ Neil laughed, though it was bitter. ‘It’s where the money came from to start the brewery business. We’d been making some home brew, and really good stuff too, but we needed a chunk of money to get going as a business. So we went to Cheltenham one January, and put our own money on horses, to Damon’s bets. Came back with two hundred grand between us. Helped us get a mortgage on the school, kit it out, get the tap room going.’
‘Impressive.’
‘Damo was good at getting tips from people. And was building up a lot of profit, as he put it. But those tips stopped paying off, just as he started getting into riskier bets. Horse racing is pretty straightforward, the way Damo explained it to us before we potentially gambled away our savings. You’ve got a limited number of riders, with pretty good information on them, and only one horse can win. He was amazing at knowing in advance who would win. But the odds were low, you can only win so much. The bookies always clean up over the long term. Damo explained about overrounds and underrounds and I didn’t understand it, but the bottom line is that the bookies always win in the end. Always.’
‘So how did he get into such debt?’
‘Because he got into spread betting. Stuff like how many yellow cards there would be in a football game. How many sin bins in a rugby match. How many bogies in a golf tournament. It was going well, but then it went really badly. While your gains can multiply, so can your losses. And quickly. Damo ended up down a couple of million.’
Fenchurch had seen that size of debt before, but not very often. ‘That’s a lot of money. You know who he gambled with?’
‘He kind of alluded to me that he might’ve been meeting someone at the brewery last night. Give him a tour of the place, show how it’s all ticking over, show how we’re expanding.’
‘Any idea who?’
‘None at all. I was pissed off, but me and Maynard needed to pick up our kid from my sister’s. And Neil was busy. And we’ve not got any security in here.’
Fenchurch saw the regret of a man who knew he could’ve saved his friend. If only he’d done this, if only he’d said that. ‘This isn’t your fault, sir. Okay?’
‘I know that, but it’s not easy.’
‘We understand you were close with Damon. Did he mention anything about these people?’
‘No. Look, this all came out when we were drunk one night. Our grapefruit porter was ready and we tried it. We got smashed and he told me how bad it was, his debts. But I mean, who tries to sell a founder’s stake in Travis?’
Fenchurch frowned. ‘Excuse me?’
Neil sat forward. ‘Damo was in the first twenty employees at Travis. Just out of uni. Didn’t earn much, not to start with, but he got something like half a percent of the company.’
‘And he was trying to sell that?’
‘Sure. But the word on the street is, when they go public, that business will be worth billions. And a lot of it goes to the founders. One billion would give him five million quid. Multiple billions multiply up.’
‘But he hadn’t sold up?’
‘No. But there’s talk of an IPO.’
Reed grinned. ‘Not an IPA?’
‘No, an Initial Public Offering, and I mean going public…’
‘I know what you mean. It was a joke.’
‘Right. Well. There’s talk of that happening in April, maybe June. Who sells up that close to an IPO? He must’ve been really desperate.’
Sounded like Damon Lombardi was a couple of million quid worth of really desperate.
6
The lift trundled up the tower, the far side open to the view of the city through sheets of heavy rain. Fenchurch could just about make out the Old School Brewery over in the morning shadow of the Canary Wharf buildings. Crane your neck and you could see the Leman Street station, though Fenchurch’s new office was on the wrong side, the dark side that only got sunlight for a week in mid-June.
Reed was waiting by the lift door, her focus entirely given over to her phone. ‘Does that feel to you like Liam is lying to us?’
‘Assuming he knew.’ Fenchurch kept his grip on the cool metal bar behind him, resting his weight against it. ‘Chances are he didn’t. But with Liam Sharpe… Hard guy to trust.’
The door slid open to the main office floor for Travis Cars.
‘And this lot, Kay. They’re badging themselves as an online tech firm, but they’re yet another taxi firm like Lyft and Uber. All about undercutting long-established local firms and underpaying the drivers, not giving them the benefits of employees, or paying the tax as if they were.’
She nodded. ‘And just so the full-time staff on the tech side can take all the money.’
‘You understand about IPOs, or whatever Neil called it?’
‘I know you’re more of an IPA kind of guy, guv, but yeah. My Dave works in that world. Knows his onions.’
‘Care to explain it like I’m five?’
‘You’re not that smart, are you?’
‘Very good.’
‘Okay, so tech firms like Travis here, the way they make money is to start small, get their product working, then they get funding from a venture capital firm, which they use to grow. And they grow massively. Then they sell a minority share to the market and take that cash. That’s their pay-off.’
‘So these founders are people like Damon Lombardi?’
‘Right. And where there’s money, there’s a motive.’
Fenchurch walked up to the reception desk and leaned against it. ‘Looking for an Edward Summers.’
The thin man behind the desk looked like he was dressed for a Vegas show. A shiny purple suit with a piano-roll tie. His gaze swept between Fenchurch and Reed. ‘And you are?’
‘Police, sir.’ Fenchurch showed his warrant card. ‘Is Mr Summers around?’
‘Just a second.’ He tapped a number into his phone and looked away from them.
Reed joined Fenchurch by the desk. ‘You don’t have to accompany me, you know?’
‘I know.’ He looked right at her, deep into her eyes. ‘And it’s not about you, Kay, it’s this shower here. I’ve dealt with them a few times. They’re so slippery you could sell them as eels at Billingsgate market.’
The receptionist
stood up and pointed towards the office space. ‘Mr Summers will see you in the Steve Jobs meeting room.’
Steve Jobs was stuck between Bill Gates and Gordon Moore, meeting rooms devoted to three tech titans from the early days of computing. That they didn’t have a Henry Ford room, or even an Elon Musk, spoke volumes of Travis Cars’ internal delusion.
A man sat inside the room, staring at a laptop, but with the distracted look of someone who hadn’t slept in a while and could only focus on one thing, and one thing only. A big guy too, chunky but not tall. His dark skin went well with his light-purple shirt.
The glass walls were adorned with sheets of white flip-chart paper, all taped together. It looked like they were showing a massive diagram. Of what, Fenchurch couldn’t tell. A nuclear fusion reactor? An Artificial Intelligence that was going to take over the world? Or the flow of deciding which burrito bar to get lunch from.
Yeah, Fenchurch was starving. He hadn’t eaten anything all day. He followed Reed into the room, but the man still didn’t look up at them. ‘Mr Summers?’
‘That’s me.’ Gaze entirely on the computer, his fingers scrolling over the touchpad. Fenchurch took his time sitting down. Maybe Summers would look over. Maybe not, though. ‘We’re looking to speak to the line manager of Damon Lombardi.’
‘Right, that’s me.’
‘Sir, do you mind looking at me?’
‘I wish I could. What the hell are you playing at?’
Fenchurch caught Reed’s frown. ‘What the hell is who playing at?’
‘Never mind.’ Summers let out a deep sigh, and started typing. ‘This infernal code is…’
Fenchurch nudged the laptop lid towards his fingers. ‘Sir, this is important.’
‘And this isn’t?’ Summers pushed back against the pressure, keeping the machine open and his focus devoted to it. ‘I can multi-task.’
‘I doubt it. Not about why we’re here, sir.’
‘Seriously, whatever it is, just talk.’
‘You can’t put that away for a few minutes?’
‘If I do, I’ll lose my train of thought. And that’s like Theseus searching for the Minotaur just now, all that thread in the big maze. I am so tired and I haven’t slept in days.’
‘Watching the election results?’
‘What election?’
‘Yesterday. There was a General Election, sir. Boris Johnson won a sort-of landslide.’
‘Well, good on him.’ Summers shook his head slightly. ‘No, I didn’t watch the election, I’ve been flat out trying to…’ He sighed, and it was like he was trying to remember why he even existed. ‘We’re trying to implement a critical platform upgrade across our UK fleet. We were fined by the Mayor’s office, dating back to Boris’s time there, as it happens, and they’ve kept on fining us. If it’s not in by Friday, we’ll lose our licence to operate.’
‘No more Travis Cars?’
‘Last-chance saloon. No legal wizardry will get us out of this.’
And that started to make a bit of sense. Maybe Damon was getting rid of his stake before the business went to the wall. But surely his bookmaker would just come after him if it turned to a big fat zero?
‘It’s been a nightmare. As soon as we ship one drop to testing that fixes ten bugs, we’ve got another twenty new bugs to fix. It’s a constant drip, drip, drip. And we’re all so tired, we’re making more mistakes. I haven’t slept longer than two hours a night in a month.’
Just like being a cop. ‘Sounds like a thankless task, sir.’
‘It’s an impossible one. But it’s not thankless. The end is in sight. Once this is done, we can sell the company and I can make my money and get some sleep.’ He shook his head. ‘But until we’ve done that, it’s a complete mess. Criminals are absolutely hammering the system, probing it for bugs to exploit so they make money off our hard work. And I’m the only one who can stop them.’
A martyr complex too.
Summers leaned in to the machine. ‘Now, why are you doing that?’
‘Sir, this isn’t the first time I’ve been here. I always get this kind of run-around from you and your colleagues.’
Summers sat there, hands on the tabletop.
Fenchurch took it as his opportunity to slam the lid and grab hold of the machine. ‘Now, you get this back when you talk to us, okay?’
‘You can’t just—’
‘No, I shouldn’t have done that, sir, but you should be speaking to us. This is a very serious matter, sir, and any more chicanery from you and we’ll be having this chat down at Leman Street station. It might be next door, but you’ll need a lawyer and they can take their sweet time getting to the station. And all that delay will mean—’
‘I get it, I get it.’ Summers kept his focus on the closed laptop, just out of his reach. ‘What’s happened?’
‘You’re Mr Lombardi’s manager?’
‘Sure am. Well, I was.’
‘What happened?’
‘Damon didn’t come to work today, in our darkest hour. I told him he needed to come back in last night, but he didn’t show up. I’ve put a call out to HR to see what happened.’
‘So he was here last night?’
‘Left at… half past seven? Like the rest of us, he’d been pulling long shifts, trying to get all of this to work. And he said he had a private matter to attend to, so I let him attend to it. But then he leaves me in the lurch like this. I mean, am I the prick here?’
Fenchurch held his gaze, glad it was on him and not on that infernal machine. ‘I’m afraid that Mr Lombardi’s body was found this morning.’
‘Shit.’ Summers slumped back in his chair. ‘I really am the prick here.’ He shook his head, and tears started sliding down his cheeks.
Fenchurch had seen that before, so many times. Someone barely hanging on despite colossal pressure, then the worst news hits at the worst time and they collapse inwards. Especially someone as physically and mentally exhausted as Edward Summers.
‘Jesus.’ Summers rubbed at his eyes. ‘What happened?’
‘He was murdered, sir. At the brewery.’
‘That place…’
‘Sir, is it possible for us to get hold of his work laptop and—’
‘You can try but there’s no emails or messages on there. We operate with high precision here. Everything’s locked down. No personal messages, everything’s work focused. And it’s enforced. At the end of the day, the legal eagles here won’t let you get at it either. The machines are all linked to our networks, so you’ll have a world of corporate secrecy to unpick.’
Almost like the whole business was designed to be closed to law enforcement.
‘Okay, so this personal meeting last night, the one you let him attend, do you—’
‘Brewery. Those idiots. I told him to not get involved, but would he listen?’
‘I gather he’s been trying to sell up here?’
‘And that’s another mistake. I told him not to, the IPO… Uh, the Initial Public Offering, it’s been coming soon for a few years now. Our options will vest and he’ll make a lot of money. But he was blaming it on the work you’re stopping me doing right now. Said once that rug is pulled out from under the business, the whole of Travis will fold like a house of cards. His money will be valueless.’
Fenchurch frowned. ‘Mr Lombardi sounds like more of a partner than an employee.’
‘Yeah, well it’s the same difference for people like us who get in at ground zero. We’ve both been here since 2010, when this building wasn’t even standing, and we were up in a tiny room above a pool hall in Old Street. We don’t own a massive percentage each, but the company’s potentially worth tens of billions, so it’ll be a good pay-out.’
‘Assuming the company doesn’t go belly up.’
‘Well, quite.’
‘And these options are transferable?’
‘Completely. I’ve got a chunk of mine securing the mortgage on my flat. I’ve got to sign a ton of paperwork to get it back for th
e IPO.’
Fenchurch felt like he was closing in on the motive now. Money, money, money. And a lot of it. ‘Do you know why Mr Lombardi was trying to sell?’
Summers did that thing, giving that tell, the one that made Fenchurch know he was weighing up whether to give them the truth or not. In his case, he was stretching out his jaw until it clicked, then twisting it side to side. A weird thing to do, but most people had these quirks. It was what made them people. And what made them exploitable.
‘I suggest you open up, sir. Tell me the truth, then we can be on our way and you can have your laptop back and fix all those bugs in your platform.’
Summers sat there until he did that jaw thing again, then leaned forward, like he was confiding some deep, dark secrets. ‘Okay, so I don’t know know, but I think Damon was struggling financially.’
Fenchurch knew when to “play the daft laddie”, as Docherty would’ve put it. ‘Any idea why?’
‘Lots of ideas. I mean, student debt is a killer these days, almost as bad as over in America. Got a few guys here who went to college there and it’s eye watering the levels of debt they get into.’
‘Did Mr Lombardi go to university over there?’
‘No, he’s a Southwark lad, like me. Graduated in 2010, then came in straight here. But he’s a lot younger than me. I mean, I got a grant. A pittance, but still. He’s just got a stack of debt.’
‘You don’t know who the debt was with?’
‘No, but I gather he was also trying to sell his share in the brewery.’
‘Go on?
‘I heard at the watercooler, you know? I mean, it was for cash too, but nobody was buying.’
‘Did he talk to you about it?’
‘I’m not a drinker. But…’ Summer sighed. ‘Even so, craft beer is a massive business now. Like this kind of place, if you get in on the ground floor, it could be very lucrative.’
‘So you weren’t meeting him last night to buy him out?’
‘Me? No. I’m far too busy. And my capital is tied up in my home. No, I was here. All night. In this bloody room. All. Bloody. Night.’