She realised she’d been caught out. I’d thought she was lousy at following me the first time I’d sussed her out eleven days back and saw no reason to change my mind now. If I were a client paying money for her services, I’d want a substantial refund.
“You don’t tell me why you’re on my case, I’m gonna go straight to Bartolome and make so much stink, you and them’ll choke on it. I’ll also get my boss to make inquiries with MI6, ’cause I know you used to work for them. He can make your life with your agency really uncomfortable. And I’ll talk to my mate Gavin over at Prevental, see what he has to say about this.”
At the mention of Gavin’s name, her eyes opened wide in surprise.
“Gavin’s an old friend; known him for years,” I assured her. This wasn’t strictly true but she didn’t know that. “How’d you think I sussed you so quick?” I paused for a moment. “So, how badly do you want me to ruin your day?”
She took a few deep breaths and then sighed, almost exasperatedly. I waited.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
I agreed there probably was.
We walked further along and turned into Strutton Ground, and found an almost empty café. She didn’t want to sit outside as a couple of tables still bore the residue from pigeons using them for target practice, so we took a table inside by the window. We both had an outrageously overpriced Earl Grey tea served in chipped cups.
Seeing her close up for the first time I could see she was a reasonably attractive woman but not in Christine Simmons’ class. Few women were. I don’t know why, but I noticed she was wearing a wedding ring. I looked directly at her across the small table. Somehow she seemed so much smaller sitting back against the chair.
“Before I say anything,” she said, “I wanna thank you for helping my younger sister that time. She’s really grateful for what you did. The whole family was.”
“Huh? What’re you talking about?” I was curious.
“About eighteen months ago my sister was taken hostage in a pub in Bayswater. Some scumbag held a knife to her throat. You helped get her out from under that. Thanks.”
I thought for a moment, then realised what she was alluding to.
Louis and Paulie Phipps, being pursued by an assassin named Phil Gant, had taken refuge in a bar owned by my friend Mickey Corsley and had held Mickey, his wife and another woman hostage. The woman, Amanda Redmond, had only entered the bar looking for help to change a flat tyre. I’d been called in and helped get her away from the situation unscathed before Gant shot and killed the Phipps brothers. Now I was being followed by her older sister for reasons I hoped I was about to discover.
“She’s your sister? Small world, eh?” I smiled. “No problem, all part of the service. Glad she’s alright. I hope she’s none the worse for her experience.”
“No, she’s fine. We saw the pictures on the front of the evening paper, the two dead bodies. No one was ever arrested for that, were they?”
“No, whoever shot them was never identified.” I didn’t bother telling her I knew exactly who’d killed the Phipps brothers but couldn’t prove it.
“When I was asked to follow you, your name sounded familiar, so I checked you out and found it was you who’d helped Amanda. Ironic, eh?” She almost smiled.
“Isn’t it just?”
There was a five-second silence.
“So you’re not denying you’re following me,” I began.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
“First off, anything you tell me’ll be in confidence, okay? I won’t let on where I heard it from. Fair enough?”
She nodded.
“So, I wanna know why Bartolome Systems wants me followed. It is them you’re working for, isn’t it? How have I made it onto their hit list? Have I done something to upset them?” I asked directly.
She registered surprise at the question. She didn’t say anything at first, marshalling her thoughts.
I waited a few seconds, then spoke again. “When I lost you the other Saturday coming from St James’s Park, CCTV tracked you all the way to Prevental’s HQ in Mayfair. I told you earlier, I know someone who works there. He told me they’d been approached by a leading manufacturer looking for someone to do some legwork for them. He wouldn’t tell me who, though. I became suspicious when you were following me out of Berkhamsted next day. I’d been there talking to a woman whose deceased husband worked for Bartolome. You follow me back from there. I then track you coming out of your office in Chancery Lane, all the way to Bartolome’s office in Holborn, and they confirmed they’d hired you, in a roundabout kind of way.”
I paused and drank some tea.
“That’d explain how you’d know I was gonna be in Berkhamsted on the Sunday. The woman’s father also works for Bartolome; he’s a director, so he was probably instrumental in your being hired. I’m right, aren’t I?” I grinned at her.
She sat in silence for a few moments, wondering whether to reply. I’d clearly caught her out. She grimaced for a moment, then appeared to relax.
“You’d been to see Paul Sampson’s wife,” she said.
“So? How’s she of interest to you?”
She took a few deep breaths to compose herself.
“Okay.” She looked serious. “A couple of weeks ago, we were contacted by Prevental, offering our agency a job, asked if we were interested. I went along to see them, hear what they were offering us.”
“Us being DeeCee Inc.,” I said.
“Yeah. Prevental introduced me to someone from Bartolome Systems. He said he had a delicate problem needing to be resolved and he thought, as we came highly recommended, we could help them resolve it.”
“What did they want?”
“He didn’t go into full details. He just said the company had been the victim of industrial espionage and had lost some vitally important documentation concerning weapons designs and blueprints, stuff like that which’d been stolen from their R&D department. He said there was nothing compromising in them. They were mainly just ideas; designers thinking out loud, blue sky thinking, what they could make if money were no object, how certain things could be improved or updated, plans for prototypes, that kind of thing. Nothing too specific. But what he was really worried about was the firm losing some highly sensitive financial information.”
“Like what?”
“Profit projections, cash flow forecasts for the next financial year. Confidential aspects of the firm’s financial health and viability. These were taken from the chief accountant’s office. He was particularly concerned about a bank letter which’d also gone missing, detailing how the firm was well over its overdraft limit and further lines of credit were unlikely unless the firm took steps to reduce its borrowings. He was worried about the impact on the company if this fell into unauthorised hands or if the media got hold of these details and published them. He said the company’s share price’d collapse if they got into the press.”
“So, how does this lead to you following me? I haven’t got them,” I said only part-flippantly, raising my eyebrows to emphasise the point.
“I’ll come on to that in a moment.” She was still looking serious. “The company’s pretty certain it knows who’s responsible for the theft of all this information but hasn’t been able to definitively establish whether its suspect actually did take the documents. This person’s one of only a very small number of people who’d have direct access to both the financial and the R&D documentation, so Bartolome decided to launch a private search for them. It got in touch with us. We’ve investigated and checked out everyone inside the company who’d have had access to one or both sets of information but so far have drawn a blank.”
“Nothing personal, but why did Bartolome come to you? Why didn’t it just go to the police? Something of this magnitude’s clearly a police matter. They’ve specialists for this kind of investigation.”
“As I just mentioned, the company wanted this kept under wraps. What it’s lost is highly confidential and it wanted it ke
pt that way. But, more importantly, it didn’t want the police involved because it thought it might compromise the search for what’s been lost.”
“Huh? What do you mean?” I wasn’t sure I understood. “It was believed police were involved in this and the company didn’t know how far this extended.”
“What? Bartolome Systems thought the police were involved in stealing confidential information from the company?”
“No, just one policeman. Commander Neville Thornwyn.”
It felt like a kick in the solar plexus. Thornwyn also involved in industrial espionage? I knew about his blackmailing of Paul Sampson and, through Turley, his involvement in the stealing of weapons from Byzantium and the possible connection to Khaled al-Ebouli. Both reprehensible enough on their own, but, if what Gillian Redmond was saying was true, this was simply staggering. Was this the bigger picture Smitherman had alluded to when I’d last spoken to him?
“Commander Thornwyn,” I blurted out.
“Yes, your old skipper. That’s who Bartolome thought was involved in stealing sensitive and confidential company information, and the company thinks he had help doing it.”
“That’s almost unbelievable,” I stressed.
“Is it really?” she said in a challenging tone. “Bartolome believes he was working in conjunction with one of its employees to steal this information and use it to hold the company to ransom.”
“Which employee?” Somehow I just knew which name was coming.
“Paul Sampson,” she replied after a few seconds’ pause.
“Paul Sampson?”
“Yeah. He’s who I was alluding to just now when I mentioned it not being easy to ascertain exactly who was involved. Sampson took his own life recently but Bartolome still thinks he was working with Thornwyn in purloining this information.”
“Bartolome really believes this?”
“That’s right,” she agreed. “It thinks one of its own non-executive directors was stealing confidential commercial information from it.”
“Assuming what you say’s true, why would he do this?”
“I’ve no idea, and I can’t exactly ask him, can I?” A rare flash of humour. “I don’t know the man, but the company believes it was him, so that’s what I go along with until Bartolome tells me otherwise.”
I knew Sampson had been blackmailed by Thornwyn. I’d no idea how much he was paying Thornwyn, but the thought dawned on me that Thornwyn had also been bringing in money from the scams he’d been running whilst in charge of the team I’d been a member of for a few years and, knowing him as I did, I could imagine the delight he’d take in knowing he could really stick his claws into a victim. So had Sampson been coerced into paying Thornwyn in company secrets to keep him quiet? As a director of Bartolome, albeit a non-executive one, and with a father-in-law who was also production director, with responsibility for R&D, how difficult would it have been for Paul Sampson to gain access to important and confidential material inside Bartolome Systems?
But, if there was already a tenuous connection between Khaled al-Ebouli and Thornwyn, did this involve secret information being traded as well?
“Sampson was known to be seen with Thornwyn several times in the period before he took his own life,” Redmond said. “It was around this time the company became aware of the missing information. Sampson would have had access to it. Thornwyn’s also now a convicted corrupt policeman.”
I couldn’t disagree with the last point.
“Besides, this is what the security service thinks as well. Bartolome’s an important player in the defence industry and the Government was also concerned about all this information falling into the wrong hands. So we were asked to help look for what Bartolome’d lost.”
I thought about what I’d heard for a few moments. “This is all very interesting, but how does all this lead to you following me around?”
“MI5 learnt Thornwyn had asked to see you just after he was convicted two weeks ago. His whole team was under suspicion for being corrupt, and I know at least two have been suspended pending further inquiries, ergo the suspicion you were in it with him. MI5 thought he might have been going to tell you where the documentation that’d been stolen was, so, through them, the decision was taken to have you followed. I was told to follow you, see who you met and where you went.”
My eyes had opened wide in utter surprise. “What? They thought I was in it with Thornwyn?”
“That’s why MI5 wanted you tailed.” She nodded as she spoke. “It was they who contacted Bartolome when the concern about lost confidential information was first mooted. So Bartolome contacted Prevental, who, in turn, got in touch with us. The woman you were just talking to? Her boss is the one who was in contact with Prevental. He’s also my uncle, which is how our agency got the job pushed our way. That should answer your question about why they’d use us. You know people in MI5.”
I felt a mild nausea rise up in me, like I’d eaten something unwholesome.
“Your uncle being Peter Stimpson. Colonel Peter Stimpson.” I said this calmly, so as not to make her realise I thought he was a pompous jackass.
“Yes, that’s right.” She smiled. “He’s my mum’s older brother. You know him, I believe.”
“Yeah, our paths have crossed.” I didn’t mention it’d been unpleasant each time. “And he thinks I’m somehow part of this scheme to steal confidential plans from Bartolome Systems and blackmail the firm.” I said this neutrally, trying to conceal my irritation.
“They had to be sure you weren’t. So I was told to tail you, see where you went, who you spoke to. That kind of thing.”
I spent a few moments thinking dark thoughts about Colonel Stimpson but didn’t dwell on them as my mood would have turned very hostile. I continued. “They’re sure it’s Thornwyn?”
“It all points to him. Sampson was in the company’s head office more than he usually was before doing what the company thinks he’s done.” She looked knowingly at me. “This coincided with the information going missing. As I said, he and Thornwyn were also seen together quite a lot during the same time. The belief is Sampson stole the information and passed it to Thornwyn, who’s secreted it someplace safe. You going to see Thornwyn raised the suspicion you were also involved because he was supposed to be being kept isolated, yet one of his old team was allowed to go visit him . . .” Her voice tailed off, as if to say you know what I mean.
“I was told by my boss to go see him, see what he knew about another case we were working on. That’s easily verifiable. I didn’t even know about this and I’d not even heard of Bartolome Systems till last week.” I emphasised the point.
She said nothing in response.
“Are you actually working for Bartolome Systems or MI5?” I asked.
“Let’s just say MI5 has more than a passing interest in the case because of the strategic importance of Bartolome Systems. But, officially, I’m doing this for Bartolome.”
“So, am I still a suspect?”
“I’ve not found anything, if that’s what you’re wondering. We’ve had you looked into but nothing’s come up.”
“That’s not an answer.”
She shrugged and sipped her Earl Grey.
“When you followed me from Berkhamsted, you were tipped off by Jeremy Godfrey, weren’t you? I was there to talk to his daughter about her late husband and he was also present. He came outside with me when I left.” I thought about when I’d left. “Yeah, of course, you’d see me and him together and you’d know which car you had to follow. That’d also explain how he knew my name. I’d not told him but he knew me, knew who I was.”
She sat looking at me and didn’t respond.
“He’s the production director at Bartolome Systems. He’d know exactly what the significance of the missing documentation was. He was probably the one you spoke to at Prevental. His son-in-law’s a suspect in this. Yeah, it was Godfrey who hired you.” I stated this with certainty.
Her expression didn’t change and she
still didn’t respond. It didn’t matter. At least I now had some idea why she was following me. I wondered briefly whether she’d been behind me when I’d been to Bernie’s flat or to talk to Turley.
Smitherman had told me, just after Thornwyn’s conviction, that the team Thornwyn had been running when I’d first joined CID was tainted with corruption and everyone was likely to be investigated. Turley and John Paine had been suspended and Larry Jasper had transferred out before the shit had really hit the fan. Were Gillian Redmond’s claims about my being suspected of involvement in the theft of Bartolome’s information part of this?
“So, you satisfied now? You have any more questions for me?” she asked.
“Yeah, several, but just one for the moment. You still gonna be tailing me?”
She shrugged her shoulders, almost lazily. “Don’t know.” “I see you behind me again,” I said, standing up, “you know what’ll happen.”
“Is that a threat?” she said as I left the café. I didn’t respond.
Bartolome Systems Ltd had its main production facility just outside Berkhamsted, in the heart of some quite delightfully leafy Hertfordshire countryside. It was set in the middle of what had once been an RAF base, and I could see what appeared to be an aircraft hangar, a series of Portakabins clustered around it and an ugly purpose-built five-storey office block clearly as I came off the A41 and drove along the winding lane leading to its car park. There was ten-foot-high chain link fencing, topped with barbed wire, running along the perimeter and I saw several signs stating that unauthorised entry onto the site was strictly prohibited and a criminal offence. I could see CCTV cameras every couple of hundred yards. There was a barrier at the entrance to the car park and, as I didn’t possess a swipe card, I stopped by the sentry box and showed ID to the guard, who raised the barrier to admit me.
I pulled into the parking area reserved for senior managers and took great delight in parking in the space reserved for a Dereck Liddiart, whoever he might be. There was an expensive-looking BMW in Jeremy Godfrey’s parking space. Walking towards the main building, I could see a man wearing some kind of uniform coming towards me.
Thornwyn Page 16
