Ten Grand

by Seamus Heffernan

  “What about you?” she asked. “Any ideas?”

  “You wanna talk here?”

  “Why? You want to go to Westminster?”

  “Not particularly,” I said. “I met the kid once during my preliminary investigation of the missing husband. Nothing suggested threats of violence to the family, either through him or my conversations with Annie Duclos.”

  “Who else you talk to?”

  “The usual,” I said. “Friends. Both current and former. Colleagues. And your new friend Copta.”

  She looked up from her notes. “He has been assisting in the investigation, yes.”

  “You know his background?”

  She nodded. “This is a homicide, not a long-over narcotics investigation.”

  One of the uniforms asked Dunsmore if she wanted a coffee. She nodded and gave me a look.

  “Sure,” I shrugged. “Thanks. So you don’t like Copta for this?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Bit weird that he’d kill Annie when he was in the middle of making himself available to us for questioning related to her husband’s disappearance.”

  “You’d have to admit that all of this is pretty goddamned weird, Dunsmore,” I said.

  She sighed, one of weariness rather than frustration.

  “Yeah,” she said. “No kidding. Hell of a way to work a first murder.”

  “They sending in anyone else?”

  “Yeah, a DI who is in Homicide proper. He’s on his way. I’m just getting the ball rolling here.”

  She flipped to a fresh page.

  “So,” she said. “Where were you earlier?”

  “If you don’t fancy Copta for this you must be mad to think I had anything to do with it.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “It’s protocol. So let’s go.”

  “I was on Copta’s yacht earlier tonight. After which my colleague, Ayesha Gill, and I attended an underground card game as part of my investigation into the missing Duclos.”

  Dunsmore looked up. “Seriously?”

  I nodded.

  “And someone there will back that up?”

  “Yeah. Plenty of people on the yacht. And my associate will vouch for the rest.”

  “OK. Make sure we get some names and numbers.”

  “First thing tomorrow.”

  The uniform came in, back from his errand and handing us our coffees.

  “Anything else I should know?” Dunsmore asked.

  “Well, uh, yes,” I said.

  “Cream?” the uniform asked. I shook my head, Dunsmore grabbed a little tub and dumped it in.

  “Like what?” she asked.

  I took a sip.

  “Um. Well, Duclos had a significant gambling habit and I’m guessing regularly hit up some pretty rough joints, one of which has ties to the Albanian mafia. That’s where I spent my night. He also had accumulated about 4 million pounds in cash over the last few years, all of which was cleaned through various clients and shell companies and is now hidden in several Swiss accounts.”

  After a painfully long moment, Dunsmore handed her coffee to the officer who brought them. He took it without a word or making eye contact with his superior. She slowly opened her notebook and poised her pen above it.

  I glanced over at the uniform and raised my cup. “Sorry, mate—thanks, by the way.”

  Dunsmore bared her teeth.

  “Anything else?” she asked, her voice like a tire rolling slowly over gravel.

  I nodded.

  “Yeah. Annie Duclos is the only person who knew of the existence of these accounts, and even she didn’t have the passwords. So…”

  I let my voice trail off.

  Dunsmore snapped her notebook shut and grabbed her coffee back.

  “So: that money is gone,” she said. “Duclos is gone, the wife is gone in the most real sense of the word, and that money is, for all intents and purposes, gone. That’s what ‘so’ means, is it, Grayle?”

  “I probably could have delivered this all a bit better,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “No shit.” She barked at another officer who hurried over. Pointing at me, she said, “Get him out of here. Get him home.”

  “I drove,” I said.

  “That’s great,” she snapped. “Bully for you. Get home safe. You’re coming in tomorrow morning, 8 a.m., for a chat. Try not to bury the lede this time, Grayle.”

  26

  Back at my flat. I had been trying to settle down and get some sleep but my mind wouldn’t stop pinwheeling. I hopped off the couch and began playing with my long-neglected turntable, finally laying down some Herbie Hancock. The noise swelled, warm and true, in the darkness of the flat. I grabbed a Diet Coke and plopped on the couch, flipping channels in the dark, the TV on mute.

  My phone hummed. It was Ayesha.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Let me in. Got those files for you.”

  I took a drag from the can.

  “This isn’t a great time.”

  “Then don’t look at them. But if you think I’m lugging these things around for kicks, you’re mad.”

  If nothing else, she could always be counted on for both her work efficiency and conversational economy. I buzzed her in.

  “Got anything to drink?” she asked. In one hand was a small takeaway bag and, in the other, a folder thick as a phone book. She laid the file down and headed for the kitchen.

  “Soda’s in the fridge. Kettle is on the counter if you fancy some tea.”

  I heard her clinking about the refrigerator.

  “I know you don’t drink, but surely some of your guests might fancy a beer every now and then,” she said, emerging

  “Y’know, it’s not yet come up,” I said.

  She sat across from me, setting up her drink and sandwich, tugging her phone loose from her jacket.

  “Why don’t you drink?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you ever cook for yourself?” I replied, nodding to her takeaway.

  “Thad,” she said, slipping her straw from its paper. “C’mon.”

  I shrugged. “Dunno. I’m better without it.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Sometimes, yeah,” I said. I stretched out a bit. “But it’s not a big deal.”

  “So you just stopped?”

  I nodded.

  “Something trigger that decision?”

  “Sure. Busted marriage. Career ennui. General depression and loneliness. I was gaining a bit of weight. You know—the usual.”

  “You look good, you feel good.”

  “I don’t know about good, but definitely better,” I said. “So: can we get to work now?”

  “Long as I’m here,” she said, popping the lid on her cola. “I can give you the quick version of what our guy found in the financials.”

  “Anything that’s going to blow the thing wide open?” I asked. “Like, say, a roadmap to wherever the hell this guy is?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then it’ll keep ‘til tomorrow,” I said. “Just e-mail me the CliffsNotes later.”

  She nodded, tucking enthusiastically into her sarnie.

  “You going to ask me how my night was?” I said.

  She looked up, giving me go on eyes as she chewed.

  I sighed, heading over to the turntable and flipping Herbie’s Maiden Voyage over to side two.

  “Annie Duclos is dead,” I said. “Shot in the head in her kitchen.”

  She sat back a bit.

  “No shit,” she said, after a moment. “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  I sat back down. She too another bite of the sandwich. Ham and cheese, by the look of it.

  “Cops call you?” she asked.

  “Sort of,” I said. “I got a buddy in Professional Standards. He gave me a heads up. I met with the team at the scene.”

  “They figure you for it?”

  “Nope. But they’re bringing me in for questioning tomorrow morning.”

  “Why�
�s that?”

  I resisted the urge to bite my bottom lip, instead momentarily focusing my gaze on the rim of the LP slowly spinning across the room.

  “I told them everything we knew about Duclos.”

  She put the sandwich down.

  “Oh god damn it,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Thad—”

  “What else could I do?” I asked. “It’s a homicide.”

  “Do you have anything to give them?”

  I nodded towards a stack of notes on piled next to my TV.

  “Just the interviews with who we spoke with, all of which were completely unilluminating in their own way. Plus, whatever your accountant friend dug loose from all the financial records, which of course the cops already have themselves and so probably know even more than we do.”

  “What about the money? Your money?”

  I over-shrugged, an attempt to signal my frustration. Instead, I only managed to trigger a twinge in my still-bruised solar plexus—a reminder of what awaited.

  “So what’s the next move?” she asked.

  I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. Hard.

  “Thad,” she said.

  I stood up and headed to the fridge, grabbing another Coke.

  “I think there’s still some left in that one,” she said. “Sounded pretty full when you laid it down.”

  “Maybe you should be the detective,” I said, falling back onto the couch, grabbing my TV remote.

  She took that in for a second.

  “OK,” she said, standing. She gathered her stuff. I jabbed the buttons on the remote, settling on Channel 4.

  “I know you’re smart enough to realize the seriousness of this,” she said. “But I also know you are a stubborn, stubborn man.”

  “I’m not following you,” I said, propping a pillow behind my head as I leaned back.

  “Well, you could always ask your ex-wife for the money,” she said at the door.

  I didn’t respond.

  “’Cause she’s, you know. Rich.”

  “Her husband is rich,” I said, evenly.

  “You worked enough divorce cases,” she said. “You know it’s all 50-50, right?”

  I stretched out a bit further and re-angled the pillow underneath my head.

  “Make sure you pull the door closed behind you,” I said. “Sticks sometimes.”

  “Sure,” she said. She buckled her coat’s belt and stepped through the frame. “But you might want to climb down from that woe-is-me cross sooner than later. ’Cause the last two times I’ve come here there’s the same guy in the same car outside, parked in front of the grocer’s.”

  I looked over.

  “Red hair, pulled back in a ponytail. Looks pretty Irish,” she said. “But what do I know, right? I’m not the detective.”

  She left, with not another word. I changed the channel.

  27

  If Dunsmore had cooled down any from our conversation last night, she certainly wasn’t letting on. She greeted me with the curtest of nods as she settled into the chair across from me. She nodded to her colleague, who introduced himself as DI Bronson Moore, Homicide division.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  “It’s early,” he said, with genuine joviality. “You might change your mind.”

  I tried to make eye contact with Dunsmore, give her the Are you guys gonna really pull this cop stuff look, but she was busying herself with the folder.

  “How’s Aiden?” I asked.

  “Managing,” Moore replied.

  “Can’t hope for much more, I suppose,” I said.

  “Mr. Grayle,” Moore said. He reached over to press record on a large black box that sat off to the left. “We will be recording this conversation. I will begin—”

  He rattled off his and Dunsore’s names, badge numbers and the time and date. He looked at me. I gave him my full name and home address.

  “And your occupation, for the record?”

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “For the record,” he said, a little slower, as if the problem was my cognitive ability.

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  “How long have you been one?”

  “Um. About five years.”

  “And your specialty is infidelity and divorce cases, correct?”

  “It was, yeah. But I don’t work those anymore. I’ve branched out a bit.”

  “What changed?”

  “Professional aspirations, I suppose.”

  “Which neatly explains how you got hired by Annie Duclos to find her missing husband.”

  “That’s the logical conclusion, yes.”

  He made some notes on the pad in front of him. I tried again to meet Dunsmore’s eyes and finally succeeded. But they were flat. Unmoved. I sighed inwardly.

  “Do you know where Yannick Duclos is?” Moore asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you know who killed Annie Duclos?”

  I leaned my chair back, rocking on its hind legs a bit.

  “C’mon, guys,” I said. “My alibi checks out. What are you looking for here?”

  “How can you be so naïve?” Dunsmore said, her voice low but strong. They were the first words to escape her mouth since I had arrived.

  “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You hid information from us in the course of an investigation.” She was angry—I could tell by the slight stretch to her neck’s tendons—but was doing a good job controlling it. I imagined I was not the first man in this chair to disappoint her. “Did you not think it might have been, I dunno, germane, to come clean a bit before this?”

  “Hold up,” I said. “You told me that this wasn’t even a big priority for the cops, that guys like Duclos run off all the time. I was just doing my job. Like you, but, you know, with something resembling a sense of urgency.”

  “And how’d that go?” she snapped back. “Did that urgency get you anywhere closer to finding him, right before Annie Duclos got shot in the back of her skull?” She opened the folder in front of her. The full report of Annie’s death was there, plus several photos of Annie’s corpse. One close-up showed her right profile, the eye still open and staring up at her ceiling. Her head lay in a shallow pool of blood, whose spread had been stopped only by the click of the camera’s shutter.

  I slowly lowered my seat back to the floor.

  Moore cleared his throat.

  “Tell us about the money,” he said.

  I gave them everything I knew. They scribbled furiously away. Dunsmore even checked the machine to make sure it was all getting on tape. When I was done, Moore tapped a pen against his now well-worn pad.

  “$4 million,” he muttered. “Cripes.”

  “I know,” I said. “Smart guy.”

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  “Any leads on the shooting?” I asked. “No forced entry, right? Someone she knew?”

  Moore and Dunsmore looked at each other.

  “I think we’re done here,” Moore said, standing.

  “Guys,” I said. “C’mon.”

  Dunsmore shrugged. Moore packed his notes in a slim briefcase.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Grayle,” he said. He didn’t even look at me as he walked out, closing the door behind him.

  “That your new boss?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she said. She leaned over, turning off the machine. “Depends how this investigation goes and if I get a chance to join homicide.”

  “What he lacks in manners he apparently more than makes up for in paperwork,” I said. “So you’ll have fun, at least.”

  Dunsmore wasn’t smiling. We weren’t close to being there yet, and I should have known that.

  “Sorry if I threw you under the bus a bit with the ‘lack of urgency’ thing,” I said.

  “No, no, that was great, thank you,” she said. “Who wouldn’t enjoy seeing themselves being slapped down by a grubby little snoop in front of the man who cont
rols their professional future?”

  “Hey, don’t spare my feelings.”

  She began packing up her own things. The file spilled out. I stooped under the table to grab some and hand it to her. She grabbed it, a little roughly.

  “Felicity,” I said. Her face turned to mine, eyes flashing.

  I took a breath, slowly, trying to make sure it didn’t sound like a weary sigh.

  “I’m sorry, OK?” I said. “But it’s my job. Same as yours.”

  “It is not the same as mine,” she snapped. “You think I’m an idiot? You think he’s an idiot? The Duclos woman had no money. None. We know everything about their financials. So unless you were doing this out of the goodness of your heart, you were going to get paid with some of that money.”

  “Assuming you are in any way right,” I said. “Not all of it was dirty money, DI Dunsmore.”

  She rolled her eyes then, deftly and deeply.

  “Look, I’m in trouble here too,” I said. “And there’s a lot more on the line than a pat on the back from my boss.”

  “The perils of being your own employer, I guess,” she said. “Show you out?”

  We fell into stride down the hall. The building clamored: phones bleating, leather soles slapping linoleum, voices ringing out.

  “Busy, busy,” I said.

  “I’m sure you’d love it for me to say something self-congratulatory about the never-ending nature of police work, but I’ll pass.”

  She stopped and jerked her head towards the front entrance. I was dismissed.

  “Thanks for coming in.” She turned to walk away.

  “Dunsmore,” I said. “The kid. You find that sister yet?”

  She stopped, turning around.

  “No. But we know she’s in Spain. We’ve contacted the local authorities.”

  “Why Spain?” I asked.

  She sighed.

  “Duclos owned a villa there,” she said. “It’s on his books. We found it this morning. It’s all we got.”

  “Not much of a lead,” I said.

  “Well. I’m sure you would have found it. Eventually.”

  “I haven’t gotten to the spreadsheets yet,” I said. “But I got ‘em.”

  “Of course,” she said, smiling thinly.

  I nodded good bye sullenly and headed out.