by James, Peter
Meg looked away, hunting with her eyes through the melee for the Latino man. Then she thought she saw the top of his head, his dark shiny hair, some distance over to her right. Frantically, she barged her way through, forcing a path, yelling, ‘Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me!’
Then finally she was clear of the crowd. She stopped and looked around. He was nowhere to be seen. Panting from the exertion, her heart thumping, she carefully opened up her clenched right hand and looked at what had been pressed into it, as more people swarmed around her.
A small scrap of paper, torn from a ring binder, and folded several times. She opened it out; in neat handwriting in blue ballpoint, were written some words, with a row of digits below.
You did your best.
Call this number.
After all she had been through in the last three weeks, she couldn’t believe what she had just read.
108
Friday 31 May
Terrified of losing the scrap of paper, Meg tried to tap the number into her phone, but her hands were shaking too much. Suddenly the note fell from her trembling hands onto the ground and immediately disappeared under several pairs of feet. In complete panic, she fell to her knees, trying to grasp it. She ducked down and retrieved it, then from somewhere, as she stood up again, she found the presence of mind to photograph it, for safety.
She stared at it. The prefix was for Ecuador, she recognized. But the number was unfamiliar. Who the hell was it?
Call this number.
Laura?
An authoritative voice called out. ‘Will everyone who was in Court 3 please remain in the building!’
Too much noise, impossible to speak here. She eased away from the crowd and headed towards the toilets. As soon as she was far enough away from the din, she leaned against a wall, and with fingers that seemed to be in total disconnect from her brain, she struggled for a good minute or more before she finally got the correct number entered.
00 593 112 679483
She hit dial, lifted the phone to her ear and waited. There was silence, for what seemed an eternity, almost drowned out by her panting, the thudding of her heart and the drumming in her ears.
Then an overseas ring tone. Whine – silence – whine – silence – whine – silence.
A click.
Then to her utter joy, she heard the sleepy voice of her daughter.
‘Hrrrullo?’
It was midday here, which meant if she was still in the Galapagos, or over that side of Ecuador, it was a six-hour time difference – 6 a.m. ‘Laura! Laura, darling?’
‘Mum!’
Oh my God, she thought. Oh my God, you are alive! She closed her eyes, crushing away tears of relief. ‘My darling, have I woken you?’
‘Yrrrr, but that’s OK. S’good to hear you.’ She was talking quietly, as if she didn’t want to wake anyone up. She sounded fine, relaxed, normal.
‘Where are you, are you OK? Are you safe?’
Laura sounded surprised. ‘Safe? Yes, we’re in a hostel, back in Guayaquil.’
A tidal wave of relief surged through Meg. ‘I’ve been going out of my mind with worry. I haven’t been able to get hold of you.’
‘Yrrrr, sorry about that, Mum. Cassie and I got pickpocketed – can you believe it, in a queue for the toilets. Bastards took our phones, purses and passports. It’s been a bloody nightmare, we couldn’t pay for anything. We phoned the British Embassy in Quito – they’re going to help with new passports. Then we bumped into that weird guy – remember we told you about him – Jorge – who we thought was stalking us. He’s turned out to be our saviour!’ She was sounding increasingly animated. ‘We bumped into him right outside the hostel in the Galapagos – such a coincidence! He lent us some cash – I told him you’d pay him back, hope you don’t mind?’
‘Of course not.’
‘He found a phone place and bought Cassie and me a phone each – so amazing of him. But I couldn’t call you – we can’t call out internationally on them. He said he would get a message to you to call us!’
Meg said nothing. She didn’t believe Jorge was the saviour her daughter thought. But more importantly at this moment, she couldn’t believe she was talking to Laura again, how normal she sounded. How relaxed.
Had she been spoofed all along about the threat to her life?
‘How are you, Mum? How’s the trial going?’
‘Interesting,’ was all Meg could think to say at this moment, she was too concerned about her daughter. ‘Listen, you’ve lost your passports and your purses, with your cards?’
‘Jorge has bought us air tickets to Quito. I’m getting my credit card sorted.’
‘Do you need me to wire you money now, darling?’
‘No, it’s OK, Jorge is giving us what we need. I told him you’ll pay him back. You don’t mind, do you, Mum?’ Laura often repeated herself when she was excited, she always had.
‘My angel, absolutely I do not mind!’
‘I miss you,’ she said suddenly. ‘Like I really miss you. You’d love it here, Mum, it’s just – totally awesome. I’m really hacked off though, cos all my cash has been taken by those bastards. We were planning to fly to Argentina to see the Iguazu Falls. Cassie says her parents might lend her the cash – would you, too? And could you let them have her number if I give it to you?’
‘Of course. But how about if I pay for you both – for your flights there – if I came with you?’
Laura sounded elated. ‘If you come too? No way, wicked! Are you serious?’
‘Very serious. I could get a flight out to Quito and meet you both there! If Cassie’s OK with that?’
‘She’ll love it! Unreal. You are the best mum in the world!’
Meg grinned, all the horror of the past hour – and the days before it – temporarily forgotten. ‘I know.’
‘Seriously?’ Laura said. ‘You’ll come?’
‘If you really want me to? If you don’t mind an old person tagging along?’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Laura said. ‘We’ll sort out wheelchair-friendly transport for you.’
Ending the call, Meg felt utterly elated. She was about to call her travel agent, when she suddenly remembered the text that had come in, from the recruitment agency. She read it.
Meg, we have a very exciting job interview for you from a major pharmaceutical company. Can you give me a couple of dates/times you could do an interview? They seem really keen on you!
Meg replied,
Just off to South America – a couple of weeks?
A response came back almost instantly.
I’m sure they will wait. You have exactly the background they need!
Despite all the horror in court just a short while ago, she felt a sudden burst of optimism. She’d not felt like this ever since the accident. For the past five years she had been living her life in survival mode, more like existing than living, being there for Laura. This was the first time she felt a real frisson of excitement about the future. Going to see Laura! Laura was safe, she was fine. Possibly a new and really good job when she got back!
Had she ever actually been in danger or were they just using Laura as a bargaining chip and a threat? Should she now go to the police, she wondered? But tell them what? And what would that achieve? She would simply be implicating herself and, at the end of the day, she hadn’t really done anything wrong – she’d made the right moral decision in finding Gready guilty. It was now time to move on. Hopefully, they no longer viewed her as useful to them. But would she ever feel really safe again? Only time would tell, but there was no point worrying about things she couldn’t change.
The real excitement at this moment was reuniting with her daughter. There was just one cloud on the horizon – telling Laura about Horace. She’d been trying to think of ways to cushion it.
Guinea pigs had a lifespan of around five years. Poor Horace had been close to that, she calculated. She’d bought him for Laura as a coming-home-from-hospital companion after the ac
cident. Maybe she would tell her he’d died peacefully in his sleep, slipped away in his old age.
After all the lies she’d heard in court over the past few weeks, this seemed a pretty tame one.
109
Friday 31 May
‘Dead?’ Roy Grace said, in near disbelief. ‘Stabbed by his co-defendant, in the dock, in broad daylight?’
It was just gone 2 p.m. Glenn Branson stood in front of him in his office, nodding. ‘Yep.’
Grace shook his head.
‘You all right, Roy, you seem very distracted recently?’
He waved a hand, dismissively. ‘More grief about Bruno. Cleo had a call from the school this morning, he was really rude to a teacher. Anyhow, we’ll deal with that later. So, tell me. How the hell did he get a weapon in through court security?’
‘Did I tell you Starr has a prosthetic right arm? He must have spent hours – days – on it, turning it into a weapon – a shank. It was plastic so wouldn’t have been picked up by the metal detector.’
‘Doesn’t sound like Terence Gready is a big loss to the human race but, shit, I’ve never heard of that happening, ever.’
‘No doubt Cassian Pewe will find a way to hold you responsible, boss,’ Branson said with a sardonic smile.
‘No doubt.’ He shrugged. ‘So, talk me through what exactly happened.’
Branson gave him chapter and verse. When he had finished, Roy Grace was pensive. ‘So, first Starr pleads guilty, to get a reduction in his tariff. Next, his brother, Stuie, his raison d’être for his “guilty” plea, is murdered. Then, in court, he negates his potential reduced tariff by murdering his co-defendant in cold blood. Why?’
‘Anger?’ Glenn ventured.
‘He must have planned the attack on Gready for at least several days. He would have known it would have blown out his reduced tariff – and given him a much longer sentence. What triggered him to do that?’ Grace was pensive for some moments. ‘In my view, he must have suspected Gready was behind his brother’s murder. Perhaps, as was mooted earlier, Gready had ordered Stuie to be beaten up, as a warning to Starr to keep schtum. And the beating went too far?’
‘What about if there was an ulterior motive?’
Grace frowned. ‘Such as?’
Branson smiled. ‘Bear with me. That shit, Conor Drewett – who the Mercedes was registered to and who we nicked yesterday morning – squealed pretty quickly on his accomplice when we offered to tell the judge he’d been a good boy. The accomplice was totally wasted when we picked him up. Derren Skinner. Before he was even interviewed, in the car on the way to the custody centre, he’d told the arresting officers who’d hired him and Drewett. Probably because he was shitfaced on something.’
‘Grassed him up?’
Branson nodded. ‘Perhaps ratted on him would be a better word for Skinner – horrible little creep.’
‘So, who was behind it – tell me?’
Glenn Branson spun the chair in front of Grace’s desk, sitting down on it the wrong way round, placed his arms over the backrest and leaned forward, a big grin pushing across his face. ‘I think you are going to like this. I mean, really like it! You’ve told me before that we can do all the planning in the world, be as professional as all our training has taught us, but that one elusive thing we can’t count on is luck. I think we just got lucky.’ He smiled. ‘Like, very seriously lucky!’
110
Saturday 1 June
Nick Fox was feeling very seriously lucky.
He was sitting at his desk in the deserted Hoxton offices of his law practice, shortly after 7.30 a.m. He liked to be in well before the rest of the team, whenever he wasn’t attending a trial or client meeting out of town. And while the Gready trial had been in progress, he’d barely been in the office at all, which meant he had a mountain of catching-up to do. But that was fine. Today, everything was fine!
And it wasn’t going to be for much longer that he had to put up with the never-ending criminal scumbags he had to deal with. Truth was, much though he put on a smiling, positive facade, he mostly despised his clients. Whining lowlifes, protesting their innocence, swearing blind they’d been fitted up by the police – or as many of them called them, the filth.
Throughout his career, he’d kept his eye out for opportunities. Playing the long game had always been his tactic. And he had been playing a lot of different clients – all in the criminal arena. Just like that old Biblical parable: Some fell by the wayside; some fell on stony ground; some fell among thorns. But others fell on good ground and brought forth fruit.
And with one, he had struck gold. His client Terence Gready. Over the past twenty-five years, Gready had brought forth so much fruit. And some of it truly low-hanging.
Fox knew he had been lucky – lucky that Gready trusted him implicitly, lucky that, with Gready’s scheming mind, the Brighton solicitor had, all those years ago, set a trap, miscalculating the risk that it might one day backfire and help to ensnare him. Just like himself, Gready played the long game, too, always carefully covering his back. But, Fox knew, almost everyone, at some point, makes a mistake, even the cleverest people. The safety deposit box account was Gready’s first mistake and where it had all started to unravel.
As a hedge against ever getting investigated, Terence Gready had made sure it was always going to be Mickey Starr who took the fall, not him. With the deposit box, he’d made it look as if Starr had forged his signature. He’d also left the key in the shed, which could have been accessible to Starr or someone else. He’d been scrupulously careful not to be seen together with Mickey, and all contact they had was either by burner phone or where they would not be seen. By not having cameras and alarms at his house there was always the chance that someone, possibly Starr, could have planted the evidence that the police found. This concoction he always felt would be enough to distance himself if he was ever to be part of a police investigation.
Like so many successful criminals before him, Gready had become complacent. For many years, his network of drug distribution and, more recently, his system of importing drugs concealed in high-end classic sports cars, had worked brilliantly. Complacency had been his second mistake. He thought he could easily manipulate a jury. His third had been to entrust so much to Mickey Starr, who had a vulnerability. Stuie.
His fourth mistake, Nick Fox thought, very happily, had been to hire him as his trusted solicitor, and to confide in him over these many years. Fox knew where all the bodies were buried – or rather, in this case, where all the cash was stashed. And Gready had given him unique access to it.
With Gready now dead, there was no one standing in his way. He held all the bank account numbers, and the equally important codes to them, to access over £35 million that Terence Gready had carefully squirrelled away around the world.
All it had needed for that money to become his was one piece of luck. And that had come in the form of Mickey Starr’s love for his brother, Stuie.
When Gready had told him to find someone to ‘rough Stuie up a little’, as a warning to Mickey not to attempt to grass him up for a sentence reduction, Fox had seen his chance. All he needed to do was find a couple of thugs from his client base and offer them a massive financial incentive to kill Stuie, while making it look like a roughing-up gone too far.
He tapped on his keyboard, entering a serial number, followed by the password for one of Terence Gready’s accounts – at a bank in the Cayman Islands.
$750,578.02 on deposit.
All his now.
Luck had smiled on him. Not that luck was chance, it was something you worked at. Like his golf pro once told him after holing-in-one at a pro-am tournament, ‘Nick, I find the harder I practise, the luckier I get!’
That was kind of how he felt right now. Subtly feeding the information to Mickey Starr that it had been Terence Gready who had ordered Stuie’s death had done the trick. Producing a better result than he could have imagined!
Shame about the kid brother, but shit happened.
He smiled, cynically.
He was now rich. Properly rich. Beyond what would once have been his wildest dreams. All he needed to do, publicly, was to continue playing the long game. Be just like Terence Gready had always been, Mr Respectable. Just until everything died down. And then, a quickie divorce and vamoose! Off shore and out of sight. With his new girlfriend – well, not so new, three years and counting – not that Marion, his wife, suspected a thing.
His reveries were interrupted by a knock on his door, and his loyal secretary entered.
‘Sorry to interrupt you, Nick. There are two police officers – detectives – asking if they could have a word with you?’
‘Police – where from?’
‘I believe they are from Sussex.’
‘Show them in,’ he said, confidently.
A stocky, suited man in his mid-fifties with a shaven head and a smart tie entered his office, holding out a sheet of paper in one hand and his warrant card in the other. He was followed by a tall, equally sharp-suited younger man.
‘Acting Detective Inspector Norman Potting and Detective Sergeant Jack Alexander from Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team,’ he announced. ‘You are Nicholas Fox?’
‘I am,’ he said, pleasantly. ‘How can I help you, officers?’
‘Nicholas Gordon Fox, I have a warrant for your arrest on the charge of conspiracy to commit murder.’
Fox stared at them in sudden, utter panic, bewildered. What the hell was going on? For an instant, he wondered if he should make a dash for it. But Alexander, behind the DI, was blocking the doorway. ‘Arrest?’ he said, instead. ‘What do you mean?’
Potting started to caution him.
Fox held up his hand, interrupting him. ‘Yadda, yadda, yadda. I’m a solicitor, OK? Spare me the fucking pre-take-off crap. I know how to put on a life vest and blow the whistle.’
