Keeping Secrets

by Andrew Rosenheim

  And later, having written down the details of her late husband’s note onto a sheet of his own pocket diary, as he thanked her for the tea he realised that there was still a missing aspect of the equation, which was going to gnaw at him if he could not lay it to rest now. So he asked, ‘Did your husband know the man who came to see him?’

  She shook her head, to Renoir’s disappointment.

  ‘Did you ever see the man?’

  ‘No,’ she said emphatically.

  ‘I see,’ he said, wanting to proceed carefully but determined to find out. ‘When I got here you said something like “You’re not the same man.” But if you hadn’t ever seen the man how did you know it wasn’t me?’

  She looked at him as if his idiocy had at last been irretrievably confirmed. ‘It couldn’t have been you. Richard said he had a moustache. A thick, bristly one – like a shaving brush he said.’

  He nodded, then asked, ‘Was there any connection between this man and your husband before he came here that you knew about?’

  Again she shook her head, and he searched for a way to keep the conversation alive. ‘Have you always lived in Brighton, Mrs Urowski?’ They were standing in the hall, Terry having gone sulkily upstairs.

  ‘Goodness no,’ she said with a modest laugh, as if he had complimented her on her beauty. ‘I’m a Londoner. As was my husband.’

  ‘Oh, you retired here then?’ And the old lady nodded. ‘From London?’ She nodded again. ‘What did your husband do in London?’

  Now she puffed herself up proudly. ‘He was in the legal business.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely. He was a solicitor’s clerk for over forty years. Nowadays they’d call him something grander. But a clerk meant something then.’

  ‘Did you work too, Mrs Urowski, or were you busy with your children?’

  ‘No, I worked,’ she said. ‘Thirty-seven years I did. I was a cleaner. When I retired the people at Tallmadge said I was indispensable.’

  ‘Where was the building you worked?’

  ‘In Victoria,’ said the old lady proudly. ‘Just off Victoria Street.’

  A bell went off in Renoir’s head, and grew louder. ‘Near the Underground? I mean, St James’s?’

  ‘That’s it,’ she said, pleasantly surprised. ‘We were almost next door to it. A lovely modern building.’

  Renoir said goodbye as cheerfully as he could, but as he drove out of Brighton his mood was grim. He was confident now, in the strict sense of knowing what was supposed to happen, and because of that confident of keeping it from happening. What had the old woman said? ‘The signature didn’t mean anything once my husband was gone.’ On the contrary, thought Renoir, that was precisely when the signature came into its own. He remembered the woman from marketing who had made over half a million dollars from inside information; as he had told Kate at their very first lunch, she had disappeared into thin air, only to be picked up on another charge months later by the FBI. What was it Ticky had called her dummy trading account scam? He remembered now. He had found the Dead Man’s Hat.

  Once again he bought a cappuccino at the Italian sandwich shop and kept a keen eye out on the street. This time there was no need to disguise his watching presence, and when he saw the man he left his now lukewarm coffee and moved fast, catching up to the target on the pavement almost twenty yards short of the office block.

  The man was wearing a summer suit of khaki-coloured cotton, and when Renoir tapped him on the back of the shoulder he could feel this muscles bunch through the thin fabric. ‘Hi there,’ Renoir declared, easing alongside.

  Benedict’s head swivelled sideways, and as he recognised Renoir his stride slowed and then stopped. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘it’s Jack, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right, Conrad.’

  They faced each other, but neither man offered to shake hands. As a slight awkwardness grew, Renoir said, ‘Have you got a minute?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Benedict replied, but his surprise seemed too deep and too polished to be natural. He might never in a month of Sundays have expected this encounter, but, equally, he couldn’t possibly put it down to coincidence.

  ‘I said, could we have a word please?’

  ‘What, right now?’ Benedict looked around them as if perplexed.

  ‘Sure,’ said Renoir affably. ‘Carpe diem and all that.’

  ‘Look, Jack,’ Benedict said as he moved closer, speaking with a suddenly confidential tone. ‘I’d love to have a chat but I’ve got a client waiting upstairs.’ He pointed vaguely towards his office. ‘Business before pleasure and all that. Give my love to—’

  Renoir’s voice was deliberately flat, expressionless. ‘I’d never been to Brighton before. It lived up to its billing.’

  Benedict looked to be fighting an internal alarm that was ringing loudly. He fell back on the standard ploy of vigorous expostulation – which Renoir had variously encountered in every form known to man. ‘Listen,’ and there was nothing chummy in Benedict’s voice now. ‘Lovely to see you and all that, and any friend of lovely Kate is a friend of mine. Etcetera, etcetera. But I really must go.’

  ‘And you’ll never guess who I ran into in Brighton. Not in a million years.’ He had Benedict’s attention now. ‘Go on, Conrad. Make a guess.’

  ‘Haven’t a clue. And to be honest, haven’t got time to come up with one either.’ He made to walk away.

  ‘The Merry Widow of course. Frail, but sharp as a tack. None other than Madame Urowski,’ he finished, half shouting the name since Benedict actually had begun to walk away.

  Benedict stopped, like a predictable puppet, and turned back to Renoir, though he made a show of looking at his watch. ‘Perhaps there’s time after all. Why don’t you come up?’

  Renoir shook his head. ‘Let’s keep this outside. Come into the park,’ and from his voice it was clear this wasn’t a suggestion.

  They walked in silence into St James’s Park. As they neared the bridge over the duck pond Renoir led the way to a bench, empty but surrounded by pigeons. He sat down first and after a slight hesitation Benedict joined him, saying, ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ His voice had regained its bass certainty.

  ‘Possibly. I know what I know; the question is, is it enough?’

  ‘Enough for what?’

  ‘Don’t you want to know why I was in Brighton?’

  Benedict said with ironic dutifulness, ‘So why were you in Brighton?’

  ‘I was looking for Richard Urowski. Do you want to know why I was looking for him?’

  Benedict leaned back against the bench and crossed his arms. ‘I imagine you’re going to tell me in any case.’

  ‘I wanted to find him to understand what his connection was with you. You see, I knew there was a connection’ – he paused – ‘but for the life of me I couldn’t see how it fit into the other thing I knew about you.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘That you had inside information on an oil company’s results. And the only reason for getting that was to make a killing on the share price. But how were you going to do it? It’s really pretty hard to get away with it.’

  ‘I would have said it’s impossible for it to go undetected,’ Benedict said firmly. He gave a little grin. ‘And of course entirely illegal.’

  ‘Unless,’ said Renoir, ‘you were to do it through someone who was a stranger – with no connection to you that could be traced.’ Renoir leaned forward and looked ahead at the nearest pigeon. In the distance, approaching the bridge, was a tall blonde woman in Kelly green shorts. He said, ‘Here’s how it works. A man, let’s call him the Benefactor, shows up at the house, or maybe even it was the hospital bed, of Richard Urowski, who is ill, terminally ill with cancer; only months to live. The Benefactor makes Mr Urowski an unusual offer, really an irresistible one. One thousand pounds in cash, with more to come, every month, also in cash. In return all he has to do is sign a bit of paper.

  ‘That opens a trading account in his name.
It’s an online account, which the Benefactor takes control of – literally, in this case, since he runs the account from his own laptop. There’s nothing for Mr Urowski to worry about – he hasn’t got a clue what’s happening in his account, and the statements of it get sent to a PO box where the Benefactor collects them.’

  Benedict protested at once. ‘But why wouldn’t they trace any funny business directly to this man Urowski? And then he’d finger this Benefactor chap of yours.’

  ‘Who said there was any funny business?’ demanded Renoir, and for the first time he could see Benedict squirm ever so slightly. ‘I didn’t say anything about any funny business. Because in fact there hasn’t been any funny business. Not yet. Oh, the Urowski account has done a little trading – maybe even quite a lot of trading. But it would all be above board, and you’d move money from time to time out of the account.’ The ‘you’ seemed to startle Benedict, uncertain whether it was American for ‘one’ or was directed personally.

  ‘What for?’ Benedict asked.

  ‘To rehearse things for when the real money arrived. You wouldn’t send it to Switzerland, which behaves itself now despite the stereotype, but somewhere new, which hasn’t signed any of the international treaties. The Seychelles, maybe, or even Uzbekistan. An account there, from which the money doubtless gets shifted again, and again. So that even if an investigating agency could get the name of that first bank account holder – and that would be a dummy shell company – they’d never be able to trace it all the way through the other accounts. Not with different banks involved and doubtless some other dodgy countries. But that has nothing to do with Richard Urowski’s trading account, which as I say is at the coal face of the activity. It has been moving along nicely, getting ready for the Big Kill.’

  Benedict snorted derisively. ‘The Big Kill. This sounds like a film you’re describing.’

  ‘It would make a good movie,’ Renoir conceded. ‘But let’s stick to the real story. Now as long as Mr Urowski’s alive everything works above board – I mean, the trading that goes on is unexceptional. Maybe it makes a little money; maybe it loses some; but in either case it’s trivial.’ Renoir stared at Benedict, who was looking impressively impassive again. It seemed clear he wasn’t going to say anything, so Renoir continued. ‘But then Mr Urowski dies, as predicted by the doctors. Whatever his estate consists of soon gets wound up – bank account, building society, membership of the local bowls club. Etcetera. And in the normal run of things, you’d expect his online trading account to wind down pretty pronto too. But it doesn’t.’

  Renoir looked out across the park, where the blonde woman had crossed the bridge. His audience of one was proving hard to read. Usually by now fear, or contempt, or puzzlement, or even genuine outraged innocence would have emerged. But not this confident-seeming silence.

  ‘Why not?’ Renoir asked rhetorically, trying not to over egg the performance. Benedict managed to look supremely uninterested in the question. ‘Because,’ said Renoir slowly, ‘nobody has ever told the brokerage house that Richard Urowski is dead. As far as they know, he is still alive – and still trading. But then, out of the blue, he’s going to make an absolutely massive trade – at least compared to the chickenfeed stuff he’s used to. Acer Oil. Options which you plan to exercise tomorrow, the same day the Acer share price tumbles by almost forty per cent of its value. What a killing!

  ‘Such a killing in fact that maybe more than one eyebrow will get raised, and pretty damn quickly. “Who is Richard Urowski?” somebody will ask, “and where did he come by his remarkably gifted sense of timing”? A few more eyebrows will get raised, and they’ll decide to have a little chat with Richard Urowski before turning him over to the Fraud Squad. Only they can’t, can they? Because Richard Urowski met his maker some time ago.

  ‘And when they try to trace the paper trail, they find it’s stone cold. The money’s gone God knows where – offshore banking is alien stuff to an American halfwit like me – and there’s more chance of bringing Richard Urowski back from the dead than there is of finding who’s perpetrated the scam.’

  Benedict spoke up. ‘Or of actually doing anything about whoever might do such a thing. It sounds like it would be awfully difficult to prove.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said Renoir, trying to sound casual. ‘They might hit lucky and find a link through Mr Urowski, dead though he is. After all, even widowed cleaning ladies talk. And you’d be surprised what they remember. Facial characteristics. Moustaches. That kind of thing.’

  ‘But she never saw—’ Benedict began to protest, then stopped short. He smiled wryly at Renoir. ‘Nice try. But that’s not a lot to go on, you have to admit. Take that to the Fraud Squad and they’ll laugh in your face.’

  ‘If that’s all I had I’m sure they would. But ask yourself this, how did I find Richard Urowski? Or, more pertinently, how did I link him to you? Excuse me, I mean the Benefactor.’

  Benedict shrugged but looked more uneasy now. He clenched his jaw as if literally ruminating then shook his head decisively. ‘Let’s drop this Benefactor crap. Even if you had more, I can’t see you using it – that is, if such a trade were to happen. Which, I think we both understand, it hasn’t. Because it wouldn’t just be me you’d be landing in it, now would it? I am assuming you’re not out to get Kate a prison sentence.’

  The woman in shorts had stopped on the bridge and seemed to be looking in their direction, even looking at Renoir. Don’t flatter yourself, he thought. ‘No,’ said Renoir quietly. ‘I’m not. But I want it to stop and that’s why I came to see you. I’m not going to do anything about this, unless you exercise those options. If they get exercised I will know right away, believe me.’

  Benedict said, ‘Why not just leave it alone? What’s it to you anyway, Jack?’

  ‘Kate is what it is to me. You of all people must understand that. And it’s Kate who gave you the tip. That’s never going to change.’

  When Benedict didn’t argue, Renoir asked, ‘How was Roddy going to explain his windfall anyway? Presumably he’s got to pay off his debts in this country. Having money in some offshore account isn’t going to help unless he brings the money in again.’

  Benedict looked at him knowingly. ‘Let’s just say one of his Latvian deals would come through. We might know he’s a hopeless businessman, but the Revenue doesn’t. But you tell me, who is supposed to swallow the price of the options?’

  ‘You are. I can’t believe they cost very much; I’m sure Helena will be happy to pick up the tab. It will seem a mere bagatelle to her.’

  Benedict started to say something, then stopped. Renoir went on. ‘I don’t know how you got Kate to help you, and I don’t want to know.’ He was pleased to see Benedict’s surprise. ‘But I don’t want her involved in any way – no more requests for info, no meetings, nothing. The only woman you’re going to meet in a hotel is Kiki Reisberg.’

  Benedict spoke up, provoked. ‘You couldn’t resist that, now could you, Renoir? You seem to know everything about me. What is your problem?’

  ‘In your case it’s purely professional interest,’ he said, knowing this was untrue. ‘But do what I say, Benedict, or I will blow you sky high, even if that means Kate gets blown up too.’ This wasn’t true either, but he looked directly at Benedict as he said it, speaking without menace, and reducing the natural intonation of his voice.

  Oddly enough, Benedict looked relieved. ‘I’ve no intention of going any further. It’s not my call anyway, Jack.’ He shrugged as if hoping to persuade Renoir of his sincerity. ‘Honestly. I’m out of it. My debt’s been paid.’

  ‘What debt?’

  Benedict looked at him with amusement. ‘You amaze me, Renoir, you really do.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘It was just a figure of speech. You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Of course not. You’re a gentleman, Benedict, and I’m not,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Forgive me for forgetting.’

  Benedict looked at him, and Renoir found him har
d to read. ‘Are we finished now?’ asked Benedict, with a small smile. He looked around them. ‘Believe it or not, I really do have someone waiting for me in the office.’

  Renoir nodded and the two men stood up together. To his surprise, Benedict offered his hand. ‘Some day I’d like to know how you got to me,’ said Benedict as he shook firmly. ‘It wasn’t Kate. She doesn’t have any idea who Urowski is. Or was.’ And without waiting for a word from Renoir, he walked quickly along the path towards the gates.

  Renoir sat and looked across the park at the small bridge, where the blonde woman in shorts had turned and started walking towards him. She was attractive, he noted absent-mindedly, then noted he had noted it. Funny that, for over two years he had not even looked at another woman, not in that way – that hound-like sniffing inspection that had marked his bachelor years. Was he going to have to start all that again? ‘Dates’ in his fifth decade?

  It was sticky warm all afternoon in the flat, which wasn’t air-conditioned. He sat in the sitting room with the windows open, and listened to CDs and read old copies of the New Yorker, watched Countdown on TV, and allowed himself only one large highball from a duty free bottle of Old Grand-Dad which Kate had brought back for him from a trip. It wasn’t really hot, not by the standards of Sonoma, but somehow it seemed debilitating.

  He moved to the rocking chair with his drink, and ten minutes later when the front door opened he sat still. He heard her in the hallway, putting down the post and hanging her coat up in the closet. A moment later she was in the room.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, without intonation. ‘I thought you might be here.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I had a call from Conrad Benedict. I gather you paid him a visit.’

  ‘I did. We had an interesting conversation.’

  ‘He said you did all the talking.’

  ‘Well, I needed to get his attention.’

  ‘You did that all right,’ she said, and he could see she was angry.

  ‘Have a drink,’ he said, raising his own.

  She looked at him for a moment, bemused. ‘Why not?’ she said, and went into the kitchen, where he heard glasses clink and an ice tray being emptied. She came out with a glass of tonic and poured a large slug of gin from the drinks tray. Then she went to her usual place on the sofa, but sat there, rather than lying down as she usually did at the end of the day. She raised her glass. ‘Here’s to you, Renoir, and a brilliant piece of detective work. The one thing I asked you not to do you’ve gone and done. Are you happy now?’