The Real World- the Point of Death

by Laurence Todd

  Bozetti came to mind. Arms supposedly manufactured for this firm had ended up in Burundi and been used in the slaughter of innocent demonstrators. When Garlinge had been negotiating with Ibrahim Mohammed, would he have realised the weapons being discussed were likely to end up elsewhere, given Mohammed’s role in international arms deals, or, more disturbingly, had this been the intent all along? Had Garlinge been a knowing link in a chain supplying arms to terrorists? Was this how he’d been able to afford the deposit on a love nest in Septimus House?

  “You have any leads on Garlinge, anything suspicious?” Clements asked expectantly.

  “It’s not our case. Herts CID’s looking into it, but I’ve not heard anything so far.”

  He looked like he didn’t believe me but didn’t make any further comment.

  We finished our drinks. The moment Clements’ cup touched the table, his fan behind the counter rushed around to collect it, smiling radiantly at him and ignoring me, leaving my empty cup where it was.

  “Thanks. You finished, you want anything else?” She smiled knowingly at Clements.

  He shook his head. We left the café together. At the door, Clements looked at the woman behind the counter again, smiled and waved at her. She returned it, looking doe-eyed.

  “Oh, if only Jack Smitherman wasn’t my father-in-law,” he sighed sadly.

  *

  Walking back to the Yard and thinking about what Clements had told me, I wanted to believe Garlinge wasn’t involved in terrorists obtaining arms, or in arms sold to Burundi. Taking a backhander was one thing, but any involvement in arming terrorists or massacres was beyond the pale.

  On the Embankment my phone sounded. I answered. It was Kevin Sharone. I asked when he was available. He replied he was about to go into a short meeting but would be available just after eleven. It was ten past ten, so I had time to do a little more checking of details.

  When I was back at my desk, Smitherman wandered across and sat down.

  “The preliminary autopsy on Garlinge’s been carried out, and they think they’ve identified the cause of death,” he said quietly, looking very serious. “The story in the media’s going to be he died from a cardiac arrest, which is technically true; he did. His wife’s just been officially informed this is how her husband died. But the coroner’s been told there’s evidence to suggest his heart suffered some kind of trauma before he died.”

  The look on Smitherman’s face told me he’d not finished yet.

  “The medic who did the autopsy told the coroner she believes the cardiac arrest was triggered by something making his heart rate increase to life-threatening levels in a very short space of time. So far, they’ve not identified what this might be. The thing about Garlinge, though, is the issue’s compounded by the fact he had to take medication for high blood pressure anyway, so his heart rate suddenly increasing dramatically stimulated the cardiac arrest. They’re trying to establish if he might have been injected with something to help trigger it.”

  This had a very sinister ring to it. If true, this wasn’t just a killing; it was a professional assassination.

  “There were no pills found on him, either, and, according to his wife, he always carried his blood pressure pills with him.”

  “So this is now a murder investigation?”

  “The preliminary report doesn’t suggest Garlinge died from natural causes.” Smitherman almost smiled. “So, on national security grounds, the real cause of death isn’t going to be made known.”

  I sat back and considered what I’d just heard. There had to be something about this case I wasn’t being told. Up to yesterday, what I’d learnt from this investigation suggested Garlinge was just another MP on the take, and I’d initially wondered why Special Branch, rather than the fraud squad, was investigating this matter. But the invoking of national security to prevent the real cause of his death from being made known made me realise there had to be other dimensions to this case.

  Before I could ask what these might be, though, Smitherman continued, his expression saying don’t ask. “Officially, of course, there is no police investigation as the death involved nothing suspicious. Garlinge was just another unfit, middle-aged man suffering from health issues who collapsed and died from a heart attack.”

  “Any leads on who or what did this?” I was still trying to get my head around what I’d just heard.

  “None I’ve been told about,” he said. “MI5’s looking at all instances of persons known to have used poisons or other noxious substances to kill, or who’d know how to mix and use them. They’ve not identified anyone yet.”

  “Any suggestion there might be a foreign involvement in this?” Garlinge had done extensive business overseas, and there were several well documented instances of political opponents of particular regimes being poisoned whilst in the UK and dying on British soil.

  “Not heard,” Smitherman said in reply. “MI6’ll keep us apprised if there is.”

  He returned to his office. I looked at Charles Garlinge’s file again, hoping to spot anything I might have missed yesterday. I was particularly interested in what Paula Jeffries had said last evening about Garlinge visiting Milan earlier in the year on business. Was this official business on behalf of Bartolome Systems, or was there another reason? Had he been to talk to Bozetti? Their production facilities were in Milan, so it would be logical to think this could be the reason he’d gone to Italy.

  I phoned Portcullis House, identified myself and asked to speak to Charles Garlinge’s secretary. After a moment, I was connected to a Ms Sarah Jennings, who immediately apologised for not taking my call yesterday. “I was just so upset at Charles dying suddenly. I was only talking to him the day before.”

  I commiserated with her on her loss, saying she’d no need to apologise for anything. She explained she’d been his secretary when he was at Bartolome and had relocated at his request. I then explained the purpose of my call, which was to make a few enquiries about Charles Garlinge and his movements during the past year. I told her we were looking into something involving Bartolome which had occurred whilst he was still working for the company, and we weren’t investigating his death, which was technically true.

  “It’s such a shame, Charles dying so suddenly like that.” She sounded sad. “I’d not realised he had a dicky heart. I mean, I knew he suffered from high blood pressure and all that, but I don’t know ...” She sighed and paused for a few seconds. “He was such a nice man to work for. That’s why I changed jobs, why I left Bartolome to come here when he became an MP and be his secretary.”

  I again expressed my condolences for her loss. She took a deep breath, regained her composure and asked what she could do for me, assuring me she was fine now.

  “As I mentioned, we’re currently looking into Charles’ movements earlier in the year,” I said. I then gave her the date of the Italy visit. “We know Charles flew to Milan on this date. Can I ask what the purpose of his visit was?”

  There was silence for the next minute or so. Happily, I hadn’t been left with some horribly cheesy music whilst I waited. She came back on the line.

  “He went with a Parliamentary trade delegation, some kind of fact-finding mission. He went with several other MPs, plus a senior Government minister. He used to work in the arms industry, so even though he’d not been an MP very long, he was invited to go because he knew the lie of the land, so to speak. The Defence Secretary himself asked Charles to accompany him.” She sounded proud of this fact.

  Paula Jeffries had said last night he’d gone to Italy on behalf of Bartolome Systems.

  “Do you know what he did whilst he was there?”

  “I think they were just shown round a few factories,” she said cautiously, “saw various stages in the production processes of certain weapons. They met representatives from the Italian government and talked business for a while. Other than that meeting it was just a routine visit, talking about arms sales, getting information about arms procurements.”

 
“Did the name Bozetti ever get mentioned?”

  “Yes, yes, I think it did; that name sounds familiar. Hold on a moment.”

  The line went dead again for several seconds.

  “I’ve just checked Charles’ diary for his time in Italy. The delegation visited Bozetti twice. No, actually, that’s not quite true. Charles visited with the whole delegation once, but he went back on his own for a meeting with someone next day. The meeting’s logged in his diary but I’ve no idea what was discussed, so I can’t help you there, detective.”

  “Meetings aren’t our concern. We’re looking into something quite different where Charles’ name came up, just a routine procedural matter. Anyway, thanks for your help.” I commiserated with her again and rang off.

  Garlinge had visited Italy with a Parliamentary delegation, and had also called in on Bozetti without them. Why would he have done this?

  *

  John Islip Street was a seven-minute walk away. I set off from the Yard, passed Portcullis House, went left into Parliament Square towards Millbank, turned right into Horseferry Road, and then left into John Islip Street.

  Sharone worked as a senior policy wonk at Lantanis, an influential think tank, a global consultancy offering political, economic and business risk assessments whose work had occasionally been sought by governments worldwide, as well as several leading organisations who’d use the political and economic intelligence Lantanis offered when making significant investment decisions. Lantanis was able to produce meaningful, insightful intelligence because several of its employees and sources had previously been employed in the security services and or were still connected to them. I was aware that Lantanis had influential connections inside the US embassy, and other London embassies, passing information on to it.

  The information Lantanis produced was highly prized in the top echelons of big business, at the rarefied level of those individuals charged with taking multi-billion-dollar decisions, such as whether to open a new production facility on another continent or to drill for oil in a remote and inhospitable region on the other side of the world. To get such a decision wrong could spell financial disaster for a company, so such firms needed all the relevant information they could get, which was where Lantanis came in. It had sources in places top businesses weren’t always privy to. I’ve occasionally thought, were I ever to leave the police, working for someone like Lantanis at this level might be appealing.

  Kevin Sharone made no secret of his strong left-wing views, views which’d have him marked as a dangerous revolutionary communist in his home state of Montana. It was little short of remarkable that he had even managed to obtain a position with such a body, let alone to sustain it for as long as he had. If he and Richard Clements were ever to meet, I was certain they would become fast friends.

  I entered the building, a six-storey office block at the north end of the street. After I’d explained to the impossibly young-looking security guard who I was here to see, and signed the visitors’ book in the foyer, I took the lift to Sharone’s office and was met by a tall, willowy, glamorous-looking and expensively dressed secretary, who bore an uncanny facial resemblance to Julia Roberts and spoke with a Midwest American twang. She smiled and opened Sharone’s office door and beckoned me in, saying she’d bring coffees.

  His small office was as I remembered from my previous visit; desk up against the wall and covered with papers around two open laptops, several TV screens on the walls showing up-to-the-minute share price and currency exchange movements from around the world, as well as a screen set to Reuters, plus several clocks showing times in different parts of the world. There were two other TVs, one showing Bloomberg News and the other on the BBC’s twenty-four-hour news channel. There were also several shelves overflowing with folders and books.

  Sharone was an Anglophile who’d fallen in love with the UK on a visit several years ago and had relocated to London soon after. He was head of a department which analysed all manner of raw corporate, political and economic data from a myriad of sources, official and otherwise, and turned it into viable intelligence for businesses to use when investment decisions were about to be made. I’d met him through my friend Mickey Corsley, as they occasionally trained at the same gym, and I’d picked his brain recently when investigating allegations about an American company named Hembrey’s, and had learnt some very pertinent information. It’d been through Sharone I’d discovered the full extent of Israeli involvement in the situation I was investigating.

  He’d just returned from his meeting, which had been, he said as he rose from his seat to greet me, about as useful as tits on a bull.

  “McGraw, how ya doing?” he exclaimed, nodding at a small armchair next to a coffee table covered in newspapers and business magazines. “Sit your ass down over there.”

  I did. He left his desk and dropped himself into the chair opposite. Despite being resident in the UK for some years now, he still retained his strong American accent, like a Montanan mountain man. He was dressed casually in dark corduroy trousers and an open-collared royal blue shirt. We exchanged sporting pleasantries about football and rugby results over the weekend for a couple of minutes, and I was about to get down to business when he surprised me with his next comment.

  “Funny you turning up like this, ’cause we were only talking about you last week.”

  “Who’s this, the royal we?”

  “No, nothing like that.” He grinned. “We were talking about your wife’s forthcoming article, because it’s really gonna make some waves when it’s published. Oh yeah, congrats on getting married, I only found out last week.”

  I knew the article he was referring to: the sale of Septimus House to Yuri Krachnikhov’s firm, Towerleaf Holdings. But I was surprised he even knew about it because I remembered, some while back, Clements telling me journos never talked about major articles they were working on, because it enabled them to retain the element of surprise and maintain control over the story, not to mention preventing another publication from running a spoiler to negate its effect. I was certain Taylor hadn’t told him – she didn’t even know him – so I wondered how he knew. I asked.

  “The guy she researched and wrote the piece with, Steve Jacobs? His partner Trish works here” – his eyes flitted upwards – “and she provided him with a few little snippets for the article. He told me last week the Evening Standard journo he’d worked the article with had just got married the previous weekend, and she’d wanted everything completed and the article written up before she went to the States on honeymoon. He said she’d married a DS in Special Branch, and he mentioned your name. I told him I knew you.”

  This explained how Jacobs’d discovered Charles Garlinge had an apartment at Septimus House with Paula Jeffries.

  “So,” he said, “where’d you go in the States for a honeymoon? Please don’t be boring and say fucking Florida. Everyone and their dead grandmother seems to want to go to Heaven’s waiting room.”

  “Went to Boston for several days.”

  “Baah-ston.” He mimicked the local accent perfectly. “Nice place, Beantown. Good choice.”

  “Yeah, it was.” I briefly wondered if he knew about the arrest of John McGreely but decided not to ask. “So why’s this article gonna make waves?” I already knew why but I was interested in what he knew.

  “Why?” He indulged me. “Because of the Russian, Yuri Krachnikhov, that’s why. He’s gonna figure very prominently.”

  “What about him?” I already knew a few things about him but, hearing Sharone mention his name, I was curious to know what he knew.

  “Well, he’s on Vladimir Putin’s shitlist for one thing, got an honoured place quite near the top of it actually. That’s what about him,” he said with a serious expression. “If they still had the Gulags in Siberia, Putin would send him to one for several years.”

  “How does he merit this honoured place?” I wondered.

  “How? Well, for one, he’s a crony of the oligarch Mikhail Fridman. You hear
d of him?”

  I admitted to ignorance.

  “He’s the guy who seized control of BP’s joint venture with TNK in 2008, and was backed by the Russkies when he did it. But Krachnikhov went beyond this. He’s on the shitlist because he’s said to have embezzled a couple billion roubles from the Russian treasury which, somehow, he managed to spirit out the country to a bank in Geneva, and it’s from this account he withdraws the money he uses to pay for Septimus House. Steve and your new wife – sorry, what’s her name again?”

  “Sally Taylor.”

  “Right, Sally. Steve and Sally manage to uncover this fact,” – he paused for a moment – “but mainly through Steve. He’s been freelance for ages and well-connected. He managed to unearth how the sale of Septimus House was financed because he knows someone who works in City Hall, one of the top bureaucrats there, and this person’s disgusted at Blatchford selling Septimus House.” He shuffled forward in his seat. “Apparently, Jacobs discovered the plans to do this were already in place when Blatchford was campaigning to become mayor. This is why the sale went through as quickly as it did, because all the preliminary work had already been done. All the necessary documentation was already drawn up and ready to be signed. This included helping Krachnikhov set up a company here in London, Towerleaf Holdings, to help facilitate the deal. The contract for the sale of Septimus House was with Towerleaf, and Krachnikhov remained in the background, but everyone knows the deal was with him. The article’s gonna highlight this quite strongly.”

  I was imagining the political firestorm coming when the article was published. Blatchford would have a lot of explaining to do concerning his pre-election preparing to sell Septimus House, despite election pledges to the contrary, plus his connection to Krachnikhov.

  “Blatchford, though, being the weasel he is, is stonewalling everyone, refusing to answer any questions about where Krachnikhov’s cash came from or even if he knows. He wouldn’t even answer questions in the council chamber at City Hall, so the article’s gonna focus not only on Blatchford’s duplicity in selling the building, but also on the issue of how much due diligence was conducted, because he has to have known Krachnikhov’s funding was dodgy, to say the least, given the fuss the Russian government’s made about this.”