by Iain Cameron
Nolan sighed as if he had made a decision. ‘I suppose I can tell you, there’s no harm in it. Harvey Templeton has been wanting to buy this place for ages.’
‘It’s a big site.’
‘It’s almost an acre and most of it is on the waterfront. Templeton wants to do what they’ve done at the side of canals in other places like Manchester and Norwich; build blocks of flats with shops and cafes underneath, places for people to sit, eat and drink.’
‘There’s certainly a market for it. It doesn’t interest you?’
‘I’m not against progress, and God knows, Newhaven is in need of a lift, but this business is my life. I don’t know what I’d do without it.’
‘With the money he’s offering, surely it would be enough for you to start afresh elsewhere, or do something else?’
He shook his head. ‘I left school with nothing, not a single piece of paper to my name. Now, thanks to my missus, I can just about read and write. What else could I do?’
‘So, Pedro’s beating was, what? An attempt to bully you into submission?’
‘I don’t know for sure until I can talk to him, but yeah, that’s what I think.’
‘If it is, did it work? Do you feel bullied into selling the business to him?’
‘Do I hell. No way would I give in to a little shite like Templeton.’
‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, he’s been released from custody.’
‘I hadn’t, but I expected as much. He’s a greasy bastard, nothing sticks to him. What about Mr Muscle, Tames?’
‘He’s still in custody and will remain so. He’s been charged with a number of serious offences and from what I’ve heard, there’s strong evidence against him.’
‘Good. He deserves what’s coming.’
‘I hope this doesn’t mean you’re considering taking the law into your own hands, Mr Nolan.’
‘Don’t you worry, it would take a lot more intimidation than he’s able to muster to make me think of doing that.’
EIGHTEEN
Alex Vincent said goodbye to Anita and closed the front door. The house had been quieter than normal this morning. The boys were at a stage now where they talked to each other instead of trading insults and blows as they did when they were younger. He suspected they had stayed up later than normal last night doing just that.
His usual route to work was along the A281 through Woodmancote, joining the southbound A23 at Muddleswood, or if time was on his side, remaining on country roads and driving over Devil’s Dyke. This morning was different. He drove slowly as he knew Joanna would be dropping Seb off at Hurstpierpoint College, the same place where Anita would be going.
The BMW was not a happy motor to be driving at this reduced speed. The big engine was at its best sailing down the outside lane of a motorway at eighty. Tootling along the stretch between Henfield and Woodmancote, he felt it wanted to do more than the regulated forty to fifty; like a thoroughbred horse it wanted to gallop off into the distance. In addition, he wasn’t making any friends with the irate drivers behind, who all had obviously important places to be.
Woodmancote wasn’t much of a village, more of a hamlet, as it didn’t have a pub, shop, or community centre, unlike Henfield which bustled with shops, a garage, and numerous pubs. That said, Woodmancote wasn’t far from Brighton and the south coast, giving residents a taste of the country without leaving them isolated or out of touch.
Vincent turned into Blackstone Lane and on arriving outside Forest House, got out of the car and keyed in the gate code. He drove in, switched off the engine and turned up the radio. The relationship between him and Joanna was familiar enough for her to have given him the gate code, but not so intense it included a spare key to the house.
He was listening to a government minister on Radio 4, whose face he couldn’t recall, blathering on about how we all needed to ‘tighten our belts’ to help reduce the deficit caused by the UK’s exit from the EU. We would, he could imagine all the listeners saying to their radio sets, if people like you stopped stuffing your faces on big meals in the subsidised House of Commons canteen, and claiming expenses for your second and third homes.
He must have dozed off as he didn’t notice the gates of Forest House opening and was only aware of Joanna’s arrival when her large 4x4 crunched noisily over the stones in the driveway. He got out of the car and stretched.
‘Hello, Alex, this is a pleasant surprise. You look tired,’ she said as she stepped out of her car. ‘Late night, or problems sleeping?’
‘Hello Joanna, it’s good to see you. No, nothing so mundane. I think it’s my reaction to all the issues at the office.’
‘Come on in and I’ll make you a nice cup of coffee.’
She unlocked the door and walked inside. He followed. Despite not having neighbours, and with few people living nearby, they had decided, although not in so many words, never to show any affection outside. Once the door was closed, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him warmly.
‘You poor thing,’ she said, her mouth next to his ear. ‘It must be so hard for you. Would you like to go upstairs and forget about it for a while?’
‘It wasn’t the reason I came, but you make such an irresistible offer.’
Three-quarters of an hour later, they were seated in Joanna’s large rustic kitchen: flagstone floor, pots hanging from a wooden frame, and an Aga pumping out welcome heat. Her two red setters loved him, and after giving them both a clap and rubbing behind their ears, they settled down and were now lying close to his feet.
Joanna liked to chat in bed after sex, the place where they usually shared thoughts, issues, and problems before he dashed off to his badminton club or home, depending on what excuse he was using. This time, he wanted to be dressed and sitting across from her.
‘I’ve been interviewed by the police,’ he said as he sipped his coffee. Joanna had a knack of making great coffee. If he could bottle the recipe, he would have sold it to Raymond Schofield for use in his Crema Coffee chain. He was handling the divorce between him and Rebecca which made him think of her, as she had left him a voicemail earlier.
‘I have too,’ said Joanna brightly, as if talking about a new jumper she’d bought. ‘Twice.’
‘You have?’
‘Well, perhaps not interviewed exactly, more chatted to. The first time to tell me about Martin’s death and to take a look at my fit for their suspect profile.’
‘Are you a suspect?’
‘Don’t be soft. When Martin went out of my life, that was it, he was gone. I don’t have, and never have had, any residual affection for him.’
‘I know. I was only kidding,’ he said.
‘The other thing they asked about was if I knew of anyone who might have killed him.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes. I said you.’
‘What? How could you?’
‘Calm yourself. It’s my turn; I was only kidding too.’
‘Oh really? Touché.’
‘Why did you mention the subject of the police interview? Have you said something you shouldn’t have in yours?’
‘No. Well, yes I…I did.’
‘What?’
‘I told them about our affair.’
‘I know.’
‘What do you mean, you know?’
‘Two detectives came to see me yesterday and asked me about it. I knew it had to have come from you as I’d never mentioned it.’
‘Right.’
‘How could you, Alex? We both agreed we had to keep it secret. For the sake of Anita, the kids, the school.’
‘I know, I know. I had no choice, it sort of tumbled out.’
‘You’re a lawyer, for goodness’ sake. Words and secrets are your stock in trade. Nobody knew anything, not Haldane, not Robinson, not even the police.’
‘They said they suspected something as they knew I’d come round to see you a couple of times after Martin’s body was found. They thought my interest was, I don’t know, unusual.’<
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Her face grew animated. ‘Yes, and they’re probably now thinking you or I killed Martin, and you coming here was to ensure we both stuck to our stories. Alex, how could you? If I get arrested, who’s going to look after Seb?’
He reached over to take her hand, but she pulled it away. This wasn’t the stoic, sensible, logical Joanna he knew.
‘That’s not the way they’re thinking.’
‘How do you know what the police do or don’t think? You’re a divorce lawyer, Alex. I’ve maybe got a better idea than you, and I think the worst.’
He left Woodmancote ten minutes later. The drive into Brighton, the time when he usually listed in his head the activities for the day ahead, so he could hit the ground running when he arrived in the office, was replaced with thoughts of doom. His anxiety was hard to rationalise, as he knew he hadn’t killed Martin, and he was one hundred per cent confident Joanna hadn’t done so either.
The thing he’d wanted to say to Joanna but hadn’t, was that he wanted to protect Anita and the boys from any fallout. He could do this if the police investigation didn’t intrude further, but not if he or Joanna were arrested.
NINETEEN
Before he realised what was happening, the car turned into the car park at Jonas Baines and slotted itself into his reserved parking space. Alex Vincent knew it was infused with all sorts of smart electronics, but for it to behave like a lost dog finding its way home in a snowstorm was beyond his comprehension.
He sat for a moment and tried to shift his thinking into work mode. Slowly, it worked. By the time he walked into his office, he looked and behaved like Alex Vincent, Sussex’s top divorce lawyer.
His assistant had left two new instructions on his desk. He always looked at them first to get a flavour of how the next few months would pan out. Inevitably, a new case coming into the office today would be his total focus in about three weeks from now, and for the following two or three months.
One case looked straightforward, while the other was anything but. A woman’s husband had been indicted for fraud over a bogus scheme to establish a palm oil plantation in Malaysia. Hundreds of people had invested significant sums of money, often by raiding their life savings and pension pots, keen as they were to carve a rich slice from this crop-of-the-moment juggernaut. However, no land had ever been purchased and most of the money raised had been plundered by the directors.
The problems he foresaw were that the couple owned a large house, their four children all attended private school, and they employed five staff to maintain their sprawling acres. It would be hard placing a value on their marital assets with a guilty verdict most likely in prospect, and the Fraud Office patiently waiting in the wings, ready to grab a sizeable slice of their ill-gotten gains.
He put the new instructions to one side and set about today’s first task. Ten minutes in, he remembered the voicemail he received this morning when his phone was switched off. He had listened to the beginning to hear who called him, but when he realised it was about work, he stopped.
‘Hello, Alex, it’s Rebecca. Sorry to bother you at such an early hour, but I’ve been up half the night thinking about the case. I wouldn’t be so pushy, but my new man wants it all to be settled, so we can make a start on our lives together. Can you call me with an update ASAP? Talk to you later. Bye.’
He cradled his phone thinking about Rebecca. She had been the driving force behind Raymond Schofield’s rise to prominence as one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs. It was she who had come up with the idea for a chain of themed hotels, which in time became a hugely successful one-hundred-and-twenty-strong European-wide business. She was also the driving force behind the Crema Coffee business, developing the ten Italian-themed coffee restaurants they’d bought for £2 million over ten years before into a two-hundred outlet goliath. This wasn’t her idle boast, but the distillation of numerous articles published in the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, and Wall Street Journal.
Having now sold all his business assets, Raymond wanted someone to share his new life. Most people’s money was on Clare Mitchell, his finance director at Raybeck and now his constant companion. However, Rebecca’s heart had been broken, and her marriage irrevocably damaged by Raymond’s earlier affair with Sylvie Goss, her former best friend.
A little warning light went off in Vincent’s head about Rebecca’s new man. He hadn’t met him yet and it wasn’t his place to say, but she needed to be made aware of the danger from gold diggers. She was high-profile and anyone with a laptop could see she was a very rich woman. Yes, her new man might want the slate wiped clean to woo the woman of his dreams without impediment, but equally he might want the divorce settled so he could get his greedy mitts on her loot. And what a pile of loot it would be.
According to the financial press, Raymond’s sale of all his business interests had realised somewhere in the region of eight-hundred-million pounds. He was declaring a personal wealth of three-hundred-and-fifty-million in the divorce papers, of which Rebecca was claiming half, but she also suspected him of hiding a lot more.
Before returning Rebecca’s call, he needed to dig out her file and examine a financial document she had given him. By surreptitiously entering Raymond’s office when he wasn’t around, she had discovered details of a variety of Caribbean bank accounts not declared in his statement of assets, totalling over five hundred million pounds. To date, Raymond had denied having any more cash, telling anyone who would listen that he’d paid a sizeable sum on advisor’s fees and repaying bridging loans.
Vincent had only given the schedule a cursory glance at the time; now he wanted to see if the details looked authentic and verifiable, and to assess whether it could stand up in a court of law. He swivelled his chair and stared at the box files behind him, arranged alphabetically. He reached for the ‘S’ box and laid it on his desk.
He knew the Schofield file was thin, but growing, so he would need to search for it. He found it, removed it from the box, and laid it on the desk. He opened it, but there was nothing inside. He searched through the other folders in the box, in case the papers had been misfiled. He still couldn’t find them.
A few minutes later, he pulled out his phone and dialled.
‘Hello Rebecca, it’s Alex. Can we talk?’
‘Oh, hi, Alex. Thanks for calling back. Yes, we can. How’s it going? Any idea when the hearing might be?’
‘I don’t know how I can say this without alarm bells ringing, but when I looked in your file, it’s empty.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The folder with your name on the front is empty. All the papers I had in it, the schedules, the forms, the statements, everything is missing.’
‘How can this happen? Has it been misfiled, or maybe someone else is using it?’
‘I’ve looked all over, Rebecca, it’s gone. If you remember the–’
‘What about the schedule I gave you of Ray’s hidden money?’
‘It’s gone too.’
‘Oh my god! That was a one-off, I can’t recreate it.’
‘Rebecca, keep calm. Remember what I’ve been telling you, there’s always…’
‘I know, I know. There’s always another option.’
‘Right. If you remember, we had a break-in the night Martin Turner was murdered?’
‘How could I forget? The poor man.’
‘You might not be aware, but the incident took place in my office.’
‘My God, how awful. How can you still work there?’
‘I’m stronger than I look. The only thing I can think of, is when the intruder was in here, he must have removed a number of files. Last week, I was looking for a file and couldn’t find it, but I didn’t think anything of it. With your file missing it points to something more serious. I’ll have to raise it with Haldane.’
‘Why would they do that? Any thieves I’ve heard about are after money, jewellery or electronics, not stuffy legal papers.’
‘Don’t ask me as I haven’t a cl
ue; perhaps it was to confuse the police.’
‘You should know me by now, Alex. I don’t dwell on problems, I focus on solutions. What can we do to move this forward?’
Rebecca had been head of HR in Raymond’s organisation. She was empathetic and a good listener, but she took no prisoners when she wanted something done, and didn’t stumble if she found an obstacle in her way.
‘I can recreate a few of the missing papers and notes from memory, I think,’ Alex said. ‘We have some of the blank forms here and others were sent to me by email. The only one that doesn’t fit into any of those categories is the schedule of Raymond’s secreted money. I know you said it was a one-off, but did you, by any chance, keep a copy?’
‘Damn, damn, damn. No, I didn’t. I assume the details are hidden somewhere in his laptop, but he’ll never let me into that house again to look. Even if he did, he wouldn’t leave me alone long enough to access his laptop.’
Alex was kicking himself. If only he had examined the schedule in more detail: authenticated the bank details, verified the amounts, certified the dates. It would have given him the basic material to help reconstruct it.
‘What I could do,’ Vincent said, ‘is employ a firm of forensic accountants to access and analyse his finances.’
‘Ray wouldn’t be best pleased, as I’m sure you are aware. Is something like that allowed?’
‘Not without showing a judge prima facie evidence of his wrongdoing. Some proof, on the one hand that he opened those Caribbean bank accounts, or that he had access to those additional funds.’
‘I’m not sure I can give you anything like that. You know Ray, he’s as slippery as Teflon and doesn’t leave that sort of stuff lying around.’
‘Give me some time to think about it, Rebecca. See if I can come up with something.’
TWENTY
This was an interview Henderson was reluctant to conduct. Raymond Schofield was one of the few criminals from the ‘serious’ list who shouldn’t have had a beef with Martin Turner. Schofield had been charged with murder, but due to Turner’s diligent research and his thorough briefing of Schofield’s barrister, the accused had been found not guilty, surprising the press and police alike.
