by Iain Cameron
‘Hello Ray, how are you?’ a man who suddenly appeared out of the melee around them asked. He stuck out his hand.
‘I’m fine,’ Ray said, returning his handshake.
‘What are you up to these days?’
‘Apart from getting divorced and giving away a large slice of my fortune?’
They both laughed.
‘I’ve established a vehicle to invest in start-ups. Not so I can make another pile of money, but to solve some of society’s more pressing problems.’
‘In what sorts of areas are you thinking about investing?’
‘In particular, I’ll be looking at electric cars, battery development, household power generation, and Artificial Intelligence.’
On and on he droned. Clare noted the use of the word ‘I’. It summed Ray up; he was a selfish bastard. Raybeck was founded on ideas generated by Rebecca, but according to their corporate literature, it was Ray’s drive, determination, and his eye for the bottom line that brought them to fruition. Now, he was spouting ideas developed by Clare, ideas which stopped him becoming a lazy scumbag, heading down the pub the minute it opened. A huge self-centred streak permeated throughout Ray’s life. If she’d thought she was the only woman in his life, as Ray frequently told her, it would have made her as naïve as any reality television contestant.
She had known for a long time about the other women ensconced in houses owned by him. At Raybeck, he would take trips out, ostensibly to visit coffee shops and health clubs, but she knew where he was going. His visits were somewhat curtailed at the moment, not because she was adept at satisfying his sexual desires, as she would only have sex with him if leaving it any longer would make him suspicious, but he had less reason to go out in the car. She didn’t fear the women becoming frustrated or lonely; more likely, they were glad of the peace. They could thank her later.
The interval bell rang and Ray’s visitor made his excuses and departed.
‘That was an FT journalist I’ve dealt with before,’ Ray said, taking her arm and walking back into the main body of the theatre.
‘He could prove useful at some point in the future,’ she said, ‘if and when any of our companies decide to float.’
‘I thought so too. How are you enjoying the play? I think the guy playing Jonathan Holbein is terrific, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, he is.’
The second half of the performance was worse than the first. Many of the red herrings and twists had been signalled as obvious as buses, but the main point of the story, about a ghost and the disappearance of a woman, failed to provide a satisfactory conclusion. She couldn’t relate to the missing woman’s plight and the poor acting of her distraught partner did little to convince.
‘I thought it was brilliant,’ Ray said as they walked out of the theatre. ‘I loved it and could watch it again. Did you enjoy it, Clare?’
‘Yes, I thought it was great.’ If she said what she really thought, that it was dreary and ill conceived, Ray would sulk for the rest of the night and their late supper at Ernie’s Bistro would turn into a damp squib.
Ernie’s was packed when they entered, but she had expected it to be and had previously booked a table. It was just as well a member of staff led them to a vacant one, as Ray wouldn’t stand any excuses about overbooking or losing their reservation. He would demand to see the manager right away, and if not available, he would cause a fuss until he was given their mobile number.
She wasn’t big on eating generally, and after eight at night especially, despite feeling hungry. She’d had little to eat since a salad lunch around two, and didn’t participate with Ray when his housekeeper, Lyn, made him a cheese sandwich a few hours before they left the house.
‘What are you having?’ he asked.
‘I think I’ll go for the fish.’
‘I fancy a juicy big steak and a big meaty Barolo to go with it. I don’t suppose you want to join me?’
‘With the steak, or the wine?’
‘The wine.’
‘I don’t think it will go well with sea bream.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s something I can’t cook myself.’
‘You cook fish. You do it for me.’
‘I know, but I hate the smell that lingers for days. I like fish, but I don’t like cooking it at home.’
‘Can I get you something to drink?’ The waiter who was now standing beside them asked, his pen poised.
‘Indeed you can,’ Ray said. ‘I fancy a Barolo.’
‘The Barolo we offer is this one,’ the waiter said showing Ray the wine list, ‘but it only comes by the bottle.’
‘Not by the glass or half-bottle?’
‘No sir, I am afraid not.’
‘I can’t interest you in the steak?’ he asked Clare.
She rarely ate meat and never in the form of a steak. Ray knew this. She shook her head. ‘No, thank you.’
‘I’ll just have the bottle, then,’ he said to the waiter.
‘Yes sir. And for you, madame?’
‘A glass of Chablis.’
‘We’re ready to order food as well,’ Ray said.
‘No problem, sir.’
They ordered and sat back. It never ceased to amaze Clare how places like this could be busy serving food at ten o’clock on a Sunday night, and with new patrons arriving with monotonous regularity.
‘Are you prepped for tomorrow’s meeting?’ he asked.
‘As much as I’ll ever be.’
‘Tell me what you think. I haven’t had a chance to look over the material yet.’
She gave him a look. What else had he been doing? His failure to read couldn’t be due to time constraints as it had been at Raybeck, perhaps it was a lack of interest.
‘They operate in the field of Artificial Intelligence.’
‘I gathered as much.’
‘The system they’re developing is to streamline market research. Companies spend millions every year researching trends, either to improve existing products or launch new ones.’
‘I’m listening but it’s not grabbing me.’
‘AI takes their research, adds in other analysis done elsewhere, such as industry data, and then extracts social media data.’
‘Your Barolo, sir.’
Clare waited while Ray examined the label, took a sip, approved it, and invited the waiter to pour a large glass. Ray wasn’t so discerning when it came to wine, it could be Pinot Noir or Cabernet Sauvignon for all he knew. The drinks served, she waited to see if Ray picked up the AI cudgel again or, bored with the topic, moved on to talk about something else. If so, she would visit the company in question alone.
‘So,’ he said, putting his glass down after taking a large slurp, ‘this system takes all this information from those various places and does what with it?’
‘It crunches the numbers, which allows the company to target markets more precisely. For example, a manufacturer of trainers will now be able to determine which areas within counties or states are the best places to spend their marketing budget. It can add to this the state of the weather, local trends, local terrain, and socio-economic data.’
‘I like the social media angle. From what they know about us, they can extract age, gender, interests, political affiliations, the works; it’s better and more accurate than is available from almost anywhere else.’
‘What really sells this system is its precision, the speed of results, and the low operating cost, way cheaper than conventional market research.’
An hour later, they stepped outside and into a taxi. If she’d just chewed her way through a large sirloin and downed the best part of a bottle of wine, she would have walked back to the flat in Bayswater to burn some of it off. In Ray’s case, he was so pissed, as he had not only drunk the wine, he’d also downed a couple of G&Ts at home, plus a few more in the theatre, he was in danger of heading in the wrong direction and wouldn’t get home until the following morning.
The taxi dropped them outside the apa
rtment in Queensborough Terrace, and like a couple of drunks, she staggered towards the door with Ray on her arm. They made it without mishap to the first floor. This was Ray’s pied-à-terre in London, a place he had owned for over ten years. He would stay there after attending a late-night meeting or an after-work dinner, but always without Rebecca. She hated London and couldn’t wait to return to Sussex, no matter the hour.
The apartment had been remodelled at great expense two years before, and still looked and smelled as if the decorators had recently departed. With Ray no longer working in central London, there wasn’t much chance to use it, which only added to the not-so-lived-in feel.
‘I’m knackered,’ he said as she closed the front door and walked inside the apartment. ‘I’m off to bed.’
‘Don’t you want to watch the programme on Netflix we talked about?’
‘No, you watch it if you like. I’ll catch it tomorrow. ’Night.’
‘Goodnight.’
She headed into the lounge and turned on the television. Before sitting down, she went into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. The programme they had agreed to watch was a drama centred around Artificial Intelligence. She suspected it wouldn’t contain much to help with the meeting tomorrow, but it would have succeeded in getting both of them into the right frame of mind.
It was far from certain if Ray would be in the right state of mind at all, as he could be a bear with a sore head when suffering with a hangover. When he was still chief executive, he didn’t drink much. The responsibility of the top job weighed heavily and the chance that something could go wrong at any time of the day or night kept him on his toes. He seemed to be making up for it now, but the lack of practice had put him into the lightweight category.
Ten minutes in, she was getting bored. She got up and walked to the window and parted the curtains. It was a quiet street; on a Sunday night close to midnight, many lights were off and few people were walking the pavements. In London, on many streets like this, offices jostled cheek-by-jowl with residents, but she’d seen the buildings nearby in daylight and knew people lived there.
She closed the curtains and began mooching around the large bookcase and display unit which dominated one wall of the room. If she was intending having a long-term relationship with Ray, she would have put her stamp on this place long ago. Despite the recent redecoration, it still felt like a luxury man cave.
She knelt on the floor and opened a few cupboards, but most were empty, reflecting the London flat’s position in Ray’s scale of residences. She was looking for a safe, the last one on her list. She knew one was located here, as Ray had referred to it many years ago, but the problem was, she didn’t know where it might be. She pulled open the large middle door, believing it to be bare, but lo and behold, a safe had been inserted into the wall at the back.
In common with some hotel safes she’d come across, this one was awkward to access. She was forced to lie on the floor with hands outstretched. She knew the combination, it was the same for all of Ray’s safes, but given its position in an apartment he didn’t often visit, its limited accessibility, and with Ray not being the nimblest of individuals, she wasn’t hopeful.
She opened it and pulled out everything from inside. There was nothing obvious to suggest if the documents had been accessed, or added to lately, but at least she wasn’t shrouded in dust.
Much of it related to Raybeck’s takeover of Blake’s Health Clubs, the place where she used to work. She sifted through the documents one at a time. A minute or so later, she came across what seemed like a flurry of correspondence between Ray and Allan Blake’s wife, Tracey.
What she saw stopped her in her tracks. Many of the emails were dated months before Allan’s death.
TWENTY-NINE
Henderson arrived in the office early, a large cup of coffee in his hand. On Sunday night, he and Kelly Jackson had gone out to a small restaurant, close to where she lived in East Hoathly. He had intended taking it easy on the alcohol so he could drive home, but they didn’t leave the restaurant until late. They finished off a litre of the house’s red wine, plus a couple of whiskies afterwards. Rather than call a taxi and have the problem of retrieving his car in the morning, he stayed over at her house.
Kelly had been through one divorce, same as himself, in her case to a banker five years before. It wasn’t always helpful or healthy to talk about exes with a new partner, but Kelly’s ex, Rob, would have made a good perpetrator in a psychological crime novel. He was a reluctant party in the divorce and resisted all the way. When the inevitable happened, he bombarded Kelly with texts, emails, and messages on social media. When this failed to work, she started receiving food deliveries, flowers, and Amazon parcels, none of which she’d ordered. At times, on a weekend, she would open the door to a delivery driver six times a day.
A court order and a stern police warning had kept him at bay, but Kelly had a lurking suspicion he could be making a comeback. Stalking was a major topic in the new book she was writing, but for a victim with first-hand experience, she was late in getting it to her publishers as she was finding the subject difficult to put into words.
Henderson managed to take a couple of sips from his cup before Steve Houghton breezed in.
‘Morning, Angus. How are you?’
‘Morning Steve, fine thanks. How’s yourself?’
‘I’m looking forward to the International at the weekend. Do you think your lot are in with a chance?’
‘Are you going?’
‘Yep. I received the tickets a couple of days ago.’
‘Put it this way, I think we’re better at rugby than we are at football.’
‘I can’t agree with you more, although with the match being played at Twickenham, I don’t think Scotland have got a good record there.’
‘You might be right. The forecast suggests it won’t be cold or wet enough.’
‘What’s the latest on Martin Turner?’
‘We’ve gone through all his criminal clients, as you know, and at the moment we’re wading through Alex Vincent’s.’
‘The divorces?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is because Turner’s body was found in his office?’
‘Aye, but also because Vincent had reported the absence of some files, believed stolen by the intruder.’
‘I remember you mentioned it. Why would the intruder do that?’
‘There’s nothing we can see to connect the missing files. Divorce files have disappeared, also Medical Negligence, and Business and Commercial.’
‘It sounds like he was trying to cover his tracks, deflect us from the real reason for the break-in. Talking of Vincent, what’s the latest?’
‘I’m about to review all the CCTV evidence we have, see if we can determine for certain what happened to him.’
‘Angus, I’m concerned about the cost and time being taken on this. Martin Turner, I accept, as it was a brutal murder, but the death of Alex Vincent is a clear suicide, everyone says so. We are wasting time and money confirming the blindingly obvious.’
‘If we only had the Vincent death to deal with, I would be forced to agree with you. I probably wouldn’t even have gone to see the incident and viewed the CCTV and written it off as yet another jumper, but I cannot ignore the fact that he’s the second lawyer to die at Jonas Baines in suspicious circumstances. Their deaths must be related.’
‘They’re related all right. After hearing his mate was killed, Vincent topped himself out of remorse, or guilt.’
‘There’s no evidence to suggest Vincent was the least bit suicidal, nor was there a deep emotional connection between the two men. In many ways, they were simply colleagues working for the same firm.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, no relationship beyond a working one. It wasn’t from guilt either. His alibi that he was playing badminton in Henfield the night Turner was killed, checks out.’
‘Hmmn.’ He paused. ‘Okay, take a look at the CCTV today, but if the ver
dict is still inconclusive or, as I suspect, it confirms suicide, I want this case closed. If, as you say, the perp removed a number of files, this is what the team needs to be concentrating on now. Right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Henderson woke up his pc while drinking his cooling coffee. He clicked on The Argus website to see what the press were saying about the death of Alex Vincent. It was hard to find the story beyond the day it had happened; just another suicide to add to the grim statistic: the greatest killer of men under the age of forty-five in the UK.
It was no different with the other local newspaper sites he looked at, and the story didn’t appear at all in any of the nationals’. He’d bought a couple of Sunday papers the day before to see if one of the feature writers had done a piece. He could envision a series of intriguing-sounding articles: Legally Dangerous; Is the Legal World too Stressful; Lawyers on the Brink, or a statistical analysis comparing the death rate of lawyers to other professions. Having spent the majority of the afternoon and evening with Kelly, he hadn’t yet had a chance to look through them.
He had told Steve Houghton about the list of Alex Vincent’s clients and the law firm’s attempts at identifying the missing files, believed stolen by the intruder. What he didn’t go on to say was they had compared Vincent’s list to that of Martin Turner, and the name of Raymond Schofield tumbled out. He was the only one to hit the bullseye three times in a row: he was a criminal client of Turner, his wife had engaged Vincent to represent her in their forthcoming divorce, and her file was missing.
Trevor Robinson had told them it was not uncommon for the wife of a serious criminal, facing years in prison, to issue divorce proceedings. They didn’t want to spend such a long period on their own, and some were ashamed of the crime which their partner had committed, others to be associated with such a cruel or corrupt person. The DI wasn’t sure what the appearance of Schofield’s name meant, as he could see no reason why he would murder Martin Turner, but he would store it at the back of his mind for future reference, as he believed it to be significant.
