All that Glitters

by Les Cowan

  So, what to do now? He could just keep his mouth shut like he’d been told, but that was proving uncomfortable already; he wasn’t sure how long he could keep it up. Sonia wasn’t stupid. She knew something was wrong; she just didn’t know what. And she mustn’t find out. Her world had had enough violence and trauma. Naturally, it wasn’t something he could talk about at church, and going to the police was out of the question unless he wanted to answer some awkward questions on his own behalf. He wished he’d never heard of that stupid account or had anything to do with it. What was it going to be used for anyway? A great advance for the kingdom of God was looking less and less credible. He opened another email and tried to concentrate. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…

  Charlie Thompson took the printout David Hidalgo handed him and scanned down it.

  “Sorry, folks; all Greek to me I’m afraid. What does this claim to prove?”

  The day before, he had finally contacted Sam Hunter to tell her the results of the postmortem were available. Sorry for the delay – short staffed and all that. But at least she’d now be able to go ahead with what he’d euphemistically referred to as “arrangements”. “Would it be ok to come out and go through it with her?” he’d asked. Of course. “Would it be ok,” she asked, “if David Hidalgo joined them?”

  “How are we doing, Mrs Hunter?” he’d begun, taking off his coat in the hall.

  She had momentarily thought of saying, I don’t know about “we” – I’ve certainly had better weeks, then decided not to try to be smart. It wasn’t his fault. “Not fantastic,” she’d admitted. “I’ve got lots of good friends though. It’s a process.”

  “Of course,” he’d replied and nodded, no doubt aiming at sympathetic but ending up sounding more like a plumber round to check a leak.

  “I think we’ve got something here you should see,” David said once they were all sat down.

  “I told you my husband did not kill himself,” Sam added. “That stuff on his computer was put there by someone else trying to protect a criminal account.”

  Thompson scrutinized the printout.

  “Ok,” he said, “apparently this all shows that Mr Hunter’s computer was hacked, which you think relates to something he’d uncovered at work.”

  “Not ‘apparently’,” Sam said, beginning to lose patience. “He was investigating a money laundering account and his computer was interfered with. My husband was not a paedophile and he did not kill himself. We have a witness who says he was brought back from his run by two men who carried him in from a van. Mike was murdered and I want to know by whom.”

  “Ok, Mrs Hunter, ok,” Thompson replied, holding his hands up in a gesture of calming things down. “I’m not disputing what you’re saying; we’re on the same side here. It’s just a matter of evidence. Up to this point all we’ve had was an apparent suicide and a reasonable motive. I understand it’s beginning to look more complicated than that. Moving to a murder inquiry isn’t my decision though. I’ll have to take the case to my Chief Inspector. But I entirely hear what you’re saying. And if it’s as clear as you say that the images came in from outside without Mr Hunter’s knowledge – well that makes a suicide look a lot more doubtful. And now with the postmortem report here as well, we have another piece in the jigsaw.” Thompson pulled the report out of his document case.

  “What does it say?” Sam asked impatiently.

  “More or less what we expected,” Thompson continued, flicking to the final page. “Cause of death cerebral hypoxia – just what the pathologist said. Interrupted oxygen flow to the brain from constriction of the arteries in the neck. No surprises. Here’s the blood report.” He passed her the relevant page. It consisted of a long column of unfamiliar abbreviations. She scanned down them, feeling she ought to but not understanding what any of it meant. What value was supposed to be good and what was bad? How could she possibly tell if anything wasn’t as it should be on account of toxins in the blood? She was just about to hand it back when the one abbreviation she did understand caught her eye. She looked at it, then looked again, but it was unchanged. That wasn’t right.

  “What’s this?” she asked. “According to this, Mike was only showing 1.2 millimoles per litre of blood sugar.”

  Thompson took the page and looked at it.

  “No idea,” he said. “He was hungry?”

  “That’s not hungry. That’s hypoglycemic.”

  “And what’s that when it’s at home?”

  “It’s what happens when you have insufficient glucose in the blood to run basic body systems. Healthy people almost never get hypoglycemic because the body is able to recognize what’s going on and regulate blood sugar.”

  “What effect does that have?” David asked.

  “First you get muddled; then you lose balance and mobility, then basic body functions. If nothing’s done it eventually kills you.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you how you know all this?” Thompson asked.

  “Easy,” she said. “I’m diabetic.”

  “Poisoned with insulin?” David asked when Sam had come back with another round of coffees. “I thought insulin was a medicine, not a poison.”

  “It normally is,” Sam explained. “It’s a naturally occurring hormone produced by the pancreas to process carbohydrates from food. That turns sugars into a form the muscles can use. People with diabetes aren’t able to produce their own insulin so they need to inject it artificially. But that’s got to be balanced with the right amount of carbohydrate. Too little insulin or too much food – particularly sugar – and you get highs, which can cause long-term damage. Too much insulin or too little food means low blood sugar and that kills you immediately. They call it ‘dead in the bed’ syndrome. People go low in the night and don’t notice until eventually the body simply doesn’t have enough energy to run even basic systems like respiration, heartbeat, or brain function. It’s called hypoglycaemia – ‘hypo’ for short. When the woman across the road said she’d seen Mike being carried in I immediately thought he must have been drugged or something. But this changes everything. I’ve been diabetic since I was sixteen. Lately I’ve been losing hypo awareness; I keep going low and don’t realize it. First of all no energy, then disorientation, then, if it’s not treated, you eventually lose consciousness. When I get like that Mike usually guesses before I do and gives me something. There’s been a couple of times he’s had to carry me into the house and give me a hormone injection. If that doesn’t work then it’s 999. Now it all makes sense. Mike was hypoglycaemic but not because he was diabetic. He must have been injected with a massive dose of insulin. Maybe somebody behind this was diabetic too. It means you have a perfect supply of poison just sitting in the fridge waiting to be used.”

  There was silence as the new information was absorbed.

  “So that’s what you were asking for, wasn’t it?” David directed himself to DI Thompson. “How the images got onto his computer and how he was killed. We still don’t know exactly who’s behind it or how they knew they were being investigated but that’s enough, isn’t it?”

  Thompson shuffled his papers and sat back.

  “Ok,” he said, “just to run through it all from soup to nuts. Mike Hunter notices a dodgy-looking account in the course of his work that rings a bell because of something he’s doing privately. Wants to have a closer look and gets warned off. Whoever runs the account gets a tip-off and decides he needs to be removed from the picture. He’s still working on the account on Sunday morning while you’re at church, Mrs Hunter. Decides to go for a run – just to clear his mind, let’s say. Maybe the house is being watched and that gives whoever’s watching an idea. Instead of attacking Mr Hunter in his own house – they had no idea when you might come back – they decide to follow him on his run. I don’t know if he had a regular route but whatever the case on that, someone got to him outside. He was restrained but not enough to leave marks and given a huge insulin injection. So by the time they brought him back here he was alre
ady unable to walk. Your car wasn’t back yet so they had time and opportunity to make it look like a suicide. That must have already been decided on given the images already on his laptop and a bogus call. Now we have information – I won’t ask from where – that gives us chapter and verse of how that material found its way onto his laptop. Is that where we’re up to? Ok. I think that gives me enough to take upstairs.”

  DI Thompson drained his coffee, gathered his papers together, and stood up.

  “Another question, Mrs Hunter. Do you happen to know who your husband would have reported to at Salamanca – who it was that might have told him to back off on the dodgy account?”

  “Absolutely. Sandy Benedetti.”

  “Right. I think we may need to have a chat with Mr Benedetti. One final question, obvious really. Did Sandy Benedetti go to church, and if so do you know which one?”

  Sam Hunter leaned forward, nodded, and began to tremble.

  Chapter 10

  THE MIDDLE MAN’S TALE

  Middle men always make money,” Uncle Nicolae used to say, and he was right. Our businesses are entirely different but the principles are the same. He had a carpet warehouse in Kiev, then he moved to chilled food wholesale, then finally central heating components – different lines but the same model: read the market, see what’s selling, and get into the space between producers and retailers. It doesn’t take as long to set up a warehouse as a factory or a shop. Factories take too long to change production lines and involve huge investment. Shops suffer from fashions and trends so they have to keep a huge range of stock. Even then rivals can offer it cheaper so all your “loyal” customers go elsewhere to save a couple of roubles. But middle men simply hold whatever any shop wants. They don’t need to make it and they don’t need to sell it. They simply find the cheapest source and move it on at a profit. When the mood changes you dump the excess and change lines. For Uncle Nicolae rugs became radishes, then radiators. I’ve never needed to change, though, because there’s always a demand for what I do. I sell sex.

  In the past, supply was a problem since there used to be borders and immigration police and the girls didn’t come willingly. That meant drugging them, which can be dangerous, and you can’t exactly pack them like coke into cavities in a van. So it needed sufficient space, and the more space that’s unaccounted for the greater the risk. Then everything suddenly got easier. Schengen was meant to ease the movement of labour throughout the EU. Well, my product is a sort of a labour, I suppose. As the Eastern economies fell apart there wasn’t anything to fill the gap, so lots of girls decided to try their luck in the West. They watch the movies and read the magazines and think they stand a chance. Then they get on a bus in Belarus and get off in Hamburg. Then into a van or a tanker bound for London. My job is to send them to whoever wants them from there. It’s not exactly like Amazon but we do have a site on the Dark Web, and I have satisfied customers who come back and new contacts all the time.

  Having said all that about Nicolae and his warehouses, though, there is one major difference between us. This is a people business and people are less predictable than plumbing. It can be a challenge to take a girl who has got off a bus thinking she’s going to be a children’s nanny then maybe break into modelling, and introduce her to the idea that she is now a commodity. How do we do it? First of all we welcome them. We give them a hot meal and a bed. While we’re doing that we take their passports and papers for “safekeeping”. Then, the next morning, Ivan and I speak to them one by one. I point out to each girl that she is now an illegal immigrant and if she does not want to be handed over the police immediately, losing all her possessions in the process, she will do exactly what she is told. They get a bit upset about that, which sometimes requires a firm response. Then I tell them that their new job is to sleep with whoever is presented to them. If not they will suffer the consequences then be put back into exactly the same situation to try again. A second refusal results in even more severe treatment. A third time and they will be found without any identification floating in the Thames. By that time they are beginning to realize that they no longer have a choice.

  With Tatiana we got quite near the river solution. That was hard since she was really very pretty. At least she was before Ivan had a word. She simply did not seem able to get it into her head that this was the way things were. She kept on thinking she had a choice. She almost scratched the first guy’s eyes out. The next one she kicked so hard in the groin we had to pay him to go back in with her to finish off. The third time she was sullen and just lay there. That was an improvement but it’s still not what the punters pay for. So Ivan had to speak to her again. It was either that or the river, and I did believe we were making progress and shouldn’t give up. So the fourth time – I think she’s the only girl we’ve ever gone to four attempts with – she finally did what was required, if not enthusiastically, at least with some semblance of cooperation. I was relieved.

  So, finally, where to send her? I knew she would need a firm hand and proper guidance so I had to be selective. I went through every single one of our outlets to see who had the proper credentials. Finally, she went to an operation in – well, I shouldn’t actually say where. Just suffice it to say she’d have to wrap up warm and enjoy haggis and whisky. Is that enough? I hear she’s doing very well now. Very popular apparently. Sometimes I do a few tryouts myself when I’m not too busy. I often regret being so busy when Tati passed through.

  Chapter 11

  GEORGE IV BRIDGE

  A cold, bitter rain blew in sheets across the Firth of Forth, whipping the estuary into breaking waves from the Fife coast out into the freezing North Sea. A few work boats and freighters braved the gale but the season for pleasure sailing was over. If anything the storm seemed to gain in energy and violence as it hammered into Granton and Newhaven then swept up into the city, lashing trees, buildings, and the few pedestrians who had no choice but to be out. David Hidalgo gripped the lapels of his coat with one hand, holding onto his fedora with the other. The high buildings on either side of George IV Bridge seemed to act like a wind tunnel funnelling the driving rain like bullets. Having walked from Bruntsfield he was now completely soaked through but didn’t seek shelter. He felt he probably deserved a drenching. Pastors, he reflected bitterly, are supposed to be the ones with words of comfort for the troubled, but that Thursday he had sat with Sam Hunter without a word to say. Somehow the chain of connections that led to Alexander Benedetti had breached her dam of coping and all the anger and pain came flooding out. DI Thompson had seemed finally convinced and assured them that he would be sending things “upstairs” first thing on Monday morning for consideration of a murder inquiry. For Sam, it was as if she had been grimly holding on over the past week, determined to prove that Mike hadn’t killed himself. Now she’d achieved her aim, it all came overflowing out.

  Between bouts of shuddering, silent tears, and howling like a wounded animal, she had haltingly explained how they had tried to befriend Sandy and his new wife Sonia. Sandy wasn’t so senior that it was awkward and he’d let it be known that marrying a bit later in life wasn’t entirely plain sailing. “Why don’t you and Sonia come round for dinner some night?” Mike had offered. “Get a babysitter. We can have a bit of grown-up time. Adjustments like that aren’t always easy.” So they’d got to know one another and thought they were friends. Now this. Maybe Sandy hadn’t really understood what he was doing. Or, worse, maybe he had. But the net result was that he’d been part of the chain that led to Mike’s lifeless body in the garage. And it was all connected with his church. What on earth did he think he was doing? What church has that kind of money floating around? And what kind of pastor would want him to cover it up? David, in turn, wondered what kind of pastor could sit and listen to it all and find nothing whatever useful to say. Sam had wept and raged, while Gillian held her hand and made cups of tea. David could only think about Rocío hanging in his hall in Chamartin more than twenty years before.

  The wind and ra
in battering the city had almost the feeling of a malevolent being raging at all things calm, secure, and sensible. The more David turned that gruelling evening over in his mind, the darker his thoughts became. Mike’s investigations, their befriending of Sandy and Sonia, even the way Sandy had apparently been so enthusiastic about his new journey of faith – these were all the actions of good people trying to do good things. To say it had ended in tears was accurate in a way but a gross understatement. As David battled forward through the gale none of the Bible verses that floated into his mind seemed at all helpful. There was scriptural precedent, he knew, for believing that evil intentions might somehow be woven into good results but this was just the opposite – good intentions gone horribly wrong. And that left Sam Hunter hunched up and shuddering on her sofa and David Hidalgo sitting helpless and stupid beside her. So now, all things considered, the very least he felt he could do was try to get a good look at whoever might be behind it all. Those involved might be “helping police with their inquiries” soon enough so this was his only chance. The Minsk connection still made no sense but at least he now knew the name of the church.

  As he continued up George IV Bridge checking the numbers of buildings, David might have said he was checking it out for Sam but he knew it was really for himself. This was personal. How dare they take a church that should exist for the good of the harassed and helpless and twist it into a killing machine. How dare they take up an offering “for the Lord’s work” while they were sitting with millions of dirty money in a private account. Walking on stolidly into the stinging rain, he felt angry at his own ineffectiveness, angry at the abuse of believing people, and angry at those he’d had to let down even that morning. He’d phoned Juan early, explaining he wasn’t going to be at church and could he possibly find someone else to cover? Worse still, he’d texted Gillian to cancel lunch. The strain of everything going on was telling on them both and he ought to be making it better, not worse. So what do you do when nothing you’re supposed to be doing seems to help? Something else, useful or not, so long as it’s something you can do. David gathered his lapels and collar tighter still, bent his head further forward, and trudged doggedly on, paused to check his bearings, then turned into the entrance of a huge, gloomy, pre-Victorian church building.