The Body in the Snow

by The Body in the Snow (retail) (epub)

  ‘Classic baddie in a crime book?’

  ‘Absolutely. Mrs Roy sacked my immediate predecessor because she thought she was spying on her for Deepak. I’ll never forget the day he came in just after I was appointed. “Who are you? And where’s Abigail?” he demanded.’ Mrs Boswell’s face lit up. ‘I told him, “I’m the new Abigail, delighted to meet you,” and I held out my hand. He stormed out and slammed the door. When I told Mrs Roy she was thrilled.’

  ‘So you were plunged into office politics from day one?’

  ‘Yes. But, when you have spent ten years flying long haul with drunken business class lotharios, and sex-mad flight crew, you can handle anything, believe me.’

  Claire laughed. ‘I take your point. By the way, I tried to get hold of Harry earlier, but he’s not answering his phone – I don’t suppose you know where he might be?’

  ‘Ah. Tuesday afternoon. You’ll find him down at the cricket ground.’

  * * *

  Littlebrook Fields cricket ground may have been, as Mrs Boswell claimed, just around the corner from the main EoS factory, but it wasn’t an easy place to find, access to it squeezed between two 1930s warehouses on a side street off Burnham Lane. There were no fields nearby. Claire had imagined a large circular ground, with velvety stripes of pristine grass, and gentle applause as men in whites cracked balls to the boundary. What she found was a rectangular area of weeds, netted up for practice, in the shadow of a motor components distributor, and behind it a modern but narrow two-storey building. Dozens of cars were parked haphazardly across the frontage. The heraldic shield above the front door, crossed bats and a pair of gloves, confirmed she was at the right place. As she passed through the sliding doors, she heard the echoes of children’s voices and saw directly ahead into a gym hall a dozen wheelchair-bound youngsters throwing basketballs to each other. She made her way along the corridor and into the hall, spotting Harry Roy in a tracksuit with a whistle in his mouth, directing activities. A number of adults, mainly but not exclusively South Asian, stood at the edge of the hall watching their children enjoying themselves.

  Nearest to her, a young pigtailed girl of around eight years, with thick glasses and a head that jerked continually, was motoring in her chair with a basketball in her lap. A large young man in a vest, with enormous biceps and thick dark glasses, tried to wheel his manual chair to intercept. The girl dodged past and accelerated, reaching another very lanky, ginger-haired girl, who plucked the ball from her lap and tossed it to a teammate further down the hall. When the ball was finally deposited into a waist-high net, there was a round of applause from the watching parents and carers, and some rather wobbly high fives on the court. Harry Roy continued to direct operations, sometimes in English, sometimes not, and it was another twenty minutes before the session ended and Claire was able to approach. She watched as parents congratulated Harry, and then wheeled their beaming youngsters away to the toilets, changing rooms, and other facilities.

  Harry recognised Claire, and introduced her to some of the parents. ‘This is DI Mulholland, who is working very hard to bring us some justice.’

  ‘Poor Mrs Roy,’ said one middle-aged Asian woman. ‘Such a good woman, so generous to the community. As is her wonderful son.’ She gestured to Harry.

  ‘This is all very commendable,’ Claire said.

  ‘It’s just something I’ve been doing for a number of years.’

  ‘So does Empire of Spice pay for all this? I saw a plaque by the front door.’

  ‘Well, the company paid to refurbish the building several years ago. But we have to move because even this little bit of land is so valuable, being close to the airport. So we found a proper piece of greenery a bit further west. Unfortunately, what we get from selling this won’t be enough to fully equip it.’ He shrugged.

  ‘So what will you do?’

  ‘I’ve agreed to cover the difference. I think it’s important to put something back into the community, don’t you?’

  Claire nodded in agreement.

  ‘You will have noticed Anita, in the motorised chair. She has come out of herself so much in the three years we’ve been running this. At the new place we will have a proper building for the physiotherapists, with at least one on-site at all times, and we will get a second adapted minibus. It’s actually very exciting.’

  It was the first time that Claire Mulholland had seen him grin, but the smile soon faded, and he scratched his head. ‘My mother encouraged my interest in this, and would have loved to have seen us move to a better site.’

  Claire began to explain the reason she had come. ‘Your mother had received some threats on social media, including some of… of a sexual nature since she had begun appearing on TV. We don’t seem to have any records of this being reported.’

  ‘No, I don’t think it ever was,’ he said. ‘It’s just today’s reality isn’t it? Do you think these things could be connected to her death?’

  ‘I’d be in a better position to say if there was some record of them.’

  Harry nodded. ‘I’ll get one of our marketing people to forward everything we can find.’ He paused for a moment and rubbed his chin. ‘You don’t need to do anything controversial these days to enrage someone somewhere, do you? Whatever happened to reasonableness?’

  Claire watched him go into the changing rooms then returned to her car to make some notes. She looked up ten minutes later across the now deserted parking area, and saw Harry get into his silver Mercedes. He buckled up, and then stared vacantly out of the windscreen. He didn’t move for two or three minutes, then rested his forearms across the steering wheel, his head slumped upon them. His shoulders began to tremble.

  * * *

  Businessman Johnny Lam turned out to be very hard to track down. Shireen had tried ringing several times the day before, and had left messages, which were not returned. Gillard sat with her at her desk as she again rang Hong Kong & International Cuisine, only to be told by his polite but evasive PA that Mr Lam was on a flight to Hong Kong. The PA insisted that she had passed on the messages, and that Mr Lam would call as soon as he had a moment.

  ‘Sorry, boss, that’s the best I can do,’ Shireen said as she ended the call.

  ‘I could have a word with Hong Kong police, but it seems a bit heavy-handed at this stage. Likewise for an arrest warrant on his return.’ Gillard said. The photographs they had seen online of Lam showed a dapper and flamboyantly dressed middle-aged man with smiling eyes and a goatee beard. There was even one photograph of him at some soirée with Harry Roy – a beautiful Indian-looking woman standing between them, but not identified on the picture.

  ‘How did you get on with the Americans?’ Gillard asked her.

  ‘Much better. I spoke to the chief press spokesman of Global Foods in Milwaukee, who confirmed the meeting with Mrs Roy, but was unable to shed any light on what was discussed. She did point out that if Global Foods had been intending to make an offer for Empire of Spice, she would have known about it. Which doesn’t mean that they are ruling it out in the future. She was quite apologetic that under Securities and Exchange Commission rules in the US she couldn’t tell me any more.’

  Gillard sighed. ‘I suppose we couldn’t expect any better.’

  * * *

  It was five o’clock, and the mobile incident room was packed. Gillard had convened the meeting principally for DS Shireen Corey-Williams to present the background to the Empire of Spice. DI Mulholland was there, along with detective constables Colin Hodges and Carl Hoskins, plus Rob Townsend, the research intelligence officer.

  The PowerPoint presentation Shireen gave was an overview of the foundation of the company, and the various business deals that it had made. Her exotic good looks and halo of dark wavy hair always guaranteed attention from male attendees, though she was often teased about her accent. She was a mixture of Iranian and Lebanese stock, and after marrying a Brummie and living in Britain’s second city for a decade she had picked up a little of the nasal Birmingham twang.
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  It was half an hour in before she came to the nub of the question: who controlled the firm?

  ‘In most ways EoS is a conventional company. The shares, traded on London’s Alternative Investment Market, have performed steadily for the last five years, with a market value of roughly £120 million.’ She outlined the family shareholdings. ‘The board and trustees together can thwart any bid, as they have a majority.’ She displayed the next slide. ‘Those four trustees are Mrs Roy’s son Harry; her brother, Vikram Vaj; Prisha’s ex-husband, Deepak Tripathi and L. P. Gosht, a retired judge who lives in India, but who was the cousin of the late Dr Roy. Vaj is the chair of trustees, and is also the family’s lawyer. His secretary has been good enough to forward me a copy of Mrs Roy’s will.’

  Carl Hoskins rubbed his hands together and chuckled. ‘Now we get to know who had a motive.’

  The slide showed a photocopy of the first page of the will. ‘I’ll summarise it for you. Mrs Roy’s five per cent stake in the company, worth about £6 million, is her main asset, and is transferred to the family trust. Likewise the house at Richmond, which is estimated to be worth over £4 million.’

  ‘That’s a lot of money,’ Hodges said with a grin. ‘I could kill for that.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re skint,’ Hoskins said. ‘If you was already loaded, like Mrs Roy’s sprogs, could you be bothered? Especially if you knew you would get it eventually anyway.’

  Hodges shrugged. ‘Fair point.’

  ‘What exactly is the trust for?’ Gillard asked.

  Shireen turned to the whiteboard. ‘I had assumed that it was set up purely with the children as beneficiaries, but it’s not so simple. The trust deed I found is a translation, and is quite brief. It lays out charitable aims, both for Dr Roy’s legacy and the future family business, but is also part manifesto. Dr Roy wants to fund Hindu education, and expand something called Hindutva, which seems to be something to do with Indian self-determination. The document refers to a schedule of reserved assets, and a “codicil of beneficiary precedence”. There was no copy of the schedule or codicil filed with Companies House. I emailed both Vaj and Harry Roy to ask for it, but I have yet to receive a reply.’

  Gillard looked up. ‘Harry’s just been diagnosed with depression, so I would just pursue the lawyer, Vaj.’

  Shireen continued. ‘One thing that is obvious about this company is its archaic and paternalistic structure.’

  ‘That’s just a polite way of calling it discriminatory,’ Claire said.

  Shireen smiled her agreement. ‘Yes. Harry is the second child, but has a huge stake compared to his sisters, and even his mother. None of the women were trustees, either, yet it was Mrs Roy’s business acumen that built it.’

  ‘Grotesquely unfair,’ Claire added.

  Carl Hoskins raised his hand. ‘So what you’re saying is she should have done the murdering, rather than being murdered?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way,’ Shireen said. ‘But power battles within the company should be of interest to us, however they play out.’

  ‘Definitely,’ Gillard said.

  Shireen continued: ‘What I did discover, from reading the minutes of one particular board meeting, was that Deepak Tripathi lobbied the other trustees to allow him to retain control of his ex-wife’s small stake even after their divorce came through. The chair of trustees, Vikram Vaj, reminded him that it might not stand up to legal challenge, though he expressed sympathy for his motivation.’

  Claire rolled her eyes. ‘That’s appalling.’

  ‘That’s one way to characterise it,’ Gillard said. ‘But it’s not simply male domination. The trust was built to enshrine the beliefs and preferences of the late Dr Roy. He seems to have controlled the company quite effectively from beyond the grave.’

  ‘A little bit of immortality,’ Claire said.

  Gillard leaned back on his chair and cupped his hands behind his head. ‘So the upshot is that although this company was run by a woman, and with two out of her three children being women, its destiny remains entirely in the hands of men, some of whom were only associated with the family through marriage.’

  ‘And a broken marriage at that,’ Shireen said.

  ‘I’m surprised that neither of the daughters have challenged the deed in court,’ Claire said.

  ‘It’s a good point. Perhaps we should ask them,’ he replied. ‘In fact I think it might be a good idea to do a little more digging into her children’s background: any debts, any bad habits, that kind of thing.’

  At the end of the presentation, Gillard stood up and thanked Shireen for her contribution. The various detectives headed for the exit, glad to escape the bad air and the insistent hum of the heater. Claire Mulholland remained behind, watching him collecting up the papers.

  ‘I think Deepak Tripathi should be our first priority,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard interesting things about his rivalry with Mrs Roy.’

  ‘I agree. I’m looking forward to meeting him.’

  ‘Mrs Roy’s last call on the Friday afternoon before her death was with him. Mrs Boswell overheard some furious disagreement before she slammed the phone down.’

  ‘Do you know what about?’

  ‘No. It was all in Gujarati. All she said was that soon after Mrs Roy left the building with a face like thunder. It was the last time she saw her alive.’

  ‘Let’s bring him in,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Slight snag. He’s in Glasgow until Thursday, so Mrs Boswell arranged for me to Skype him this evening at his hotel there. Will you join me?’

  ‘Absolutely. Let’s see if this slippery fellow has an alibi.’

  Chapter 6

  Their first Skyped glimpse of Deepak Tripathi revealed a smoothly attired businessman wearing a light grey three-piece suit and a pink tie. The fisheye-distorted image could not disguise his saturnine good looks. He had dark eyes, a short, neatly-trimmed beard and a deep, treacly voice.

  ‘My last call with Mrs Roy? Yes, it was on Friday afternoon, about 5.30 p.m. I think.’

  ‘What was it about?’ Claire asked. Behind him she could see some anonymous hotel room which, from the background noise, was quite close to the airport.

  ‘It was a really rather humdrum conversation. Just getting our Bombay ducks in a row for the new production line at Redhill.’

  ‘Mrs Boswell said she heard raised voices,’ Gillard said.

  Deepak laughed gently. ‘No. There were no disagreements, no hysteria. I’m afraid Mrs Boswell doesn’t realise that Guajarati is quite an energetic language.’

  ‘Then can you explain why Mrs Roy hung up on you, and was then seen to storm off from her desk?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t an argument. Maybe Philippa got mixed up about which call it was.’

  Gillard and Claire looked at each other. ‘Okay,’ Gillard said. ‘Let’s broaden the conversation. Had Mrs Roy at any stage shared with you any worries or anxieties that she had?’

  ‘You mean personally? No. I don’t think she’s a great sharer of that type of thing. I’m an ex-son-in-law, not exactly trusted within the family. I suppose that I keep my job only because it is hard to replace the contacts that I have in the subcontinent. However, I am aware that she was far from happy with the slapdash work that Harry did on the finances. I mean he’s horribly underqualified anyway, and there have been problems with the audits on numerous occasions.’

  ‘Are you talking about mistakes, or something intentional?’

  He laughed. ‘No, Harry’s certainly honest. But of course accounting mistakes can look like fraud. Credit to Mrs Roy, she may have had her tyrannical moments but she was a meritocrat. After all that is how she overcame her own husband’s prejudice against women. So while she disapproved of Morag Fairburn as a marriage partner for Harry, she repeatedly promoted her so she could keep an eye on him. Morag is as sharp as a needle, diligent and hard-working.’

  ‘Were there any disagreements within the family, do you know?’

  D
eepak laughed and shook his head. ‘Well, where to begin. There were differences of strategy, jealousies and enmities. The Roy family is full of very headstrong people, and if you’re not family, it’s a good idea to duck down into your trench from time to time.’

  ‘So what are the main issues at the current time?’

  ‘The same ones they always are: whether to sell up or expand, and to that end who gets control of the shares. I mean when you have someone as pushy as my former wife, then you are bound to get clashes. Especially when her new boyfriend is always pressing her for money.’

  Gillard looked down at his notes. ‘That would be Simon Parr-Fielding?’

  ‘The very same. A more idle man you could never wish to meet. I have no idea what she sees in him. He’s a gambler and an alcoholic.’

  Gillard was hardly surprised to discover that Deepak resented the man who replaced him. This was the way of the world. ‘Who do you think killed Mrs Roy?’ he asked.

  ‘My goodness, nobody in the family. Fortunately.’