by Susan Lewis
Though Rachel agreed she said nothing, merely waited for her to continue.
‘My initial chats with people in Washington were interesting,’ she said, ‘in that they more or less confirmed the relationship was over, at least on a personal level, but some of her friends and colleagues said they’d seen her with him several times since the break-up.’
Rachel was surprised.
‘No one seemed to know him very well though,’ Laurie continued. ‘I got the impression he doesn’t enjoy socializing.’
‘Did you read what I emailed you about him?’ Rachel asked.
Laurie nodded, and paraphrased the profile: ‘Swiss businessman, living in Zurich, but with several other homes around the world. Personal fortune estimated at around five billion US; fifty-nine years old, divorced twice, not currently married, has an extremely valuable art collection, a doctorate in political science from Princeton, and another in social anthropology from the University of Berne. Not a bad bio, by anyone’s standards, but it’s when you start getting into the detail that it really gets exciting, particularly his early years in Africa when he was apparently keeping some very dubious company. I suppose it doesn’t set him very far apart from a lot of intellectuals and radicals of his era, but considering who he is and what he does now, we can probably assume that a lot of seeds were sown at that time. Your email mentioned only that he’s the founder and chairman of the Phraxos Group. How much do you know about the Group’s activities?’
‘I know it’s a private equity firm with some ten billion dollars’ worth of investments, mainly in the defence industries, and the kind of global reach that even BT might envy.’
Laurie nodded. ‘And what about its stellar cast of senior executives? Are you familiar with that?’
Rachel’s face was becoming strained as she said, ‘I know that an ex-president of the United States is the chairman of Phraxos US, and that an ex-British prime minister is a senior adviser to the company in Europe. There are also ex-defence ministers from a handful of countries, policy advisers, a former secretary of state … Top executives who have come from the telecom or pharmaceutical industries …’
As she listened Laurie was tracking the flight of a red admiral as it flitted from the valerian growing along the wall to the recently planted pansies in the beds. ‘A truly astonishing collection of power players, wouldn’t you say?’ she commented. Then, turning back to Rachel, ‘Tim’s name didn’t come up during my search into the board members,’ she said, ‘but I can’t say I really expected it to. However, if he was on the Phraxos payroll – and the fact that we’ve got four million dollars in a Swiss bank account makes it fairly certain that he was on someone’s payroll – then it’s probably not going to be easy to trace the connection, particularly when his government position was current, rather than ex, as in the case of the other top officials.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that even the most indirect connection to an organization that makes such a vast profit from the manufacture and sale of arms and munitions would be totally forbidden, on any level, to a man in your husband’s position, as you obviously know. It’s a definite conflict of interests, and might even be illegal, I’ll have to check. However, let’s presume, for the moment, that there is a connection, that Tim did become a member of this elite group of investors. We can be certain that his status, or interests, would be extremely carefully disguised behind some kind of holding company, or in the directorship of some obscure subsidiary of an offshore affiliate. In fact the possibilities are endless, and as the police have all his papers and his computer, I’m not entirely sure where to start with that. However, I’ve got access to a red-hot research team, which I’ll tell you about later, so we’ll work it out. Now, what about the name Phraxos? Does it mean anything to you?’
Rachel looked surprised. ‘Only in a literary sense,’ she answered. ‘It’s what John Fowles renamed the Greek island of Spetses in his book The Magus, isn’t it?’
Laurie seemed pleased with the answer. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d read it,’ she said, ‘but since you have, don’t you wonder if it tells us anything about Mr Koehler? Does he fancy himself as another Maurice Conchis, a raving megalomaniac, who, amongst other things, was a reclusive millionaire with a very impressive collection of art?’
‘He also played some hellish games with people’s minds – especially the main protagonist’s,’ Rachel commented. ‘What was his name again?’
‘Nicholas Urfe.’
Rachel nodded. ‘It might be worth rereading the book.’
‘It might,’ Laurie agreed. ‘But now let me give you what else I’ve managed to dig up on our friend, Mr Koehler. First, it turns out he was in London the day of the election, i.e., the day prior to the murder. He attended a meeting with some high rollers in the City, which ended around six, when he apparently returned to the Dorchester where he spent the night. The records show that he ate dinner there, and had an early check-out, around five the next morning, apparently to get a flight: but to where, or if he made it, are questions that still need answers, because checks with all the major airlines have so far turned up nothing. Of course a man of his means could very well have his own jet, and I’m working on that too.’
Rachel’s chest was starting to feel tight. ‘So if he left the hotel at five in the morning … Do you think … Maybe he is the other person the police are saying was in the flat.’
Though Laurie nodded, her expression was doubtful. ‘He could be,’ she responded, ‘but apart from the shoe size being wrong, I just don’t see a man in his position sullying his own hands with the business of murder. So no, if he is involved, I’d be more willing to believe that he was waiting downstairs to drive Katherine away after the deed was done. Did you know, by the way, that the police have interviewed him on three separate occasions?’
‘I knew they’d spoken to him,’ Rachel answered, experiencing another jolt of unease, ‘but not three times. There hasn’t been anything about it in the press.’
‘Probably because after the initial obvious inquiries, they’ve kept the other two interviews under wraps. I found out through a very convenient family connection I happen to have inside the Yard.’
Rachel’s face was pale. ‘If they’ve spoken to him that many times then they must have found something on Tim’s computer, or in his files,’ she stated dully.
‘Possibly,’ Laurie responded. ‘Or Koehler himself told them something during his first interview that they’re following up on. Anyway, I’d say the real problem we’re facing here is the Group’s extremely complicated structure which makes it nigh on impossible to find out who’s involved in the actual running of its operations, never mind who’s on the boards of all its subsidiaries and affiliates and associates, or whatever they want to call themselves. The high-calibre players – pardon the pun – you mentioned just now are probably there, as much as anything, to give the company kudos, as well as to open doors to various corridors of power, for which they’ll be handsomely rewarded. Do you recall anyone from the Group ever lobbying Tim, by any chance?’
Rachel shook her head. ‘If they did, he never mentioned it, but maybe Katherine herself was doing it.’
‘That’s the most likely scenario,’ Laurie agreed. ‘There’s no evidence at this stage of an order from the British Government going to a Phraxos-owned manufacturer, but it could very well have been in the works, which would be why they snapped up all his papers and computers so fast.’
Rachel’s eyes drifted unconsciously towards Beanie’s cottage. ‘It just doesn’t fit with his character,’ she said, her voice seeming to echo in her ears. ‘I mean, I know I’d say that, because I’m his wife, but if you knew how much he loathed that department … He was only there to try to force some transparency, to drag it into the twenty-first century, and he was resisted at every turn. So if there was something going on with any of them, some plan to put multimillion-pound orders in the way of Phraxos, I just can’t believe he was involved.’ He
r eyes went down. ‘Except the four million dollars tells me I’m wrong, doesn’t it?’
‘He could,’ Laurie said, ‘have stumbled upon the scheme and threatened to expose it.’
‘That still doesn’t explain the money,’ Rachel responded.
‘They did say it didn’t belong to him,’ Laurie pointed out, making another attempt to dilute the suspicion.
Rachel’s eyes were barely focused as she watched a young cormorant perch on the wall, keeping its wings outspread to dry in the sun. She could feel the heat on her own skin, and the terrible chill in her heart, as she listened to the gulls screeching overhead and around the cliffs, to the low growl of the sea, the buzz of insects. She felt the distance of normality, and prescience of fear. Until, in the end, knowing that she had no choice but to voice what she was thinking, she said,
‘The real and brutal truth behind an investment group like Phraxos is that it relies on conflict and war for its profits. In other words it needs civil unrest or rebellion or all-out military combat to create the million-dollar returns for its investors.’ Her eyes closed as the horror of it seemed to fill up her heart. Surely Tim wouldn’t have abused his position in such an unconscionable way, to profit from arms deals that were designed to stimulate a conflict, or keep a war going, rather than to end it.
Realizing she probably needed to lighten the load a little, Laurie said, ‘That’s the worst-case scenario. It might turn out not be anywhere near as bad as we’re thinking, we just need to explore every avenue.’
Rachel’s smile was small. She felt so overwhelmed by tiredness, and displaced from normality, that she wasn’t sure whether she was reacting to the baby, or to the fact that she just couldn’t bear to go where this seemed to be taking her. All those millions of refugees all over the world, the abuses of human rights, the starvation, the incalculable misery … For any company at all to reap any kind of profit from such horrors, never mind on such a scale, was, to her mind, immoral to the point of evil, and what made it even worse was the fact that those companies were legal. At least on the surface they were, but God only knew what went on behind the respectable façades of those organizations, what lengths they would go to to keep those multimillion-dollar defence orders rolling in … So if it turned out that Tim had been on a secret Phraxos payroll, part of some insidious scheme to generate revenue for the fat cat arms dealers and investors with total disregard for innocent lives, then maybe he deserved to be dead.
‘We should know more once I’ve managed to get to the bottom of Franz Koehler’s interviews with Special Ops,’ Laurie said. ‘I’ll be interested to find out which particular branch it was, Intelligence, Anti-Terrorist, Protection, which includes Westminster and your friend Haynes, or some other section that might surprise us. I’m also trying to set up a meeting with the man himself. I’ve put in a call to his office in Zurich, but needless to say, no one’s got back to me. At this moment in time, I can’t even tell you exactly where he is, but that’s just a temporary blip, because someone of his stature doesn’t just vanish off the face of the earth.’
‘Katherine Sumner’s managed it,’ Rachel reminded her. ‘They could be somewhere together.’
‘They could,’ Laurie agreed. ‘Though a spokesman for the Phraxos Group has announced in the US press that they’re putting together a team of private detectives to help find her. That could, of course, just be a smokescreen – and frankly I’m inclined, right now, to think it is, but we can always re-evaluate later if need be.’ Switching direction slightly she said, ‘Tell me, do you know who reported the murder?’
A wave of dismay coasted through Rachel’s heart. ‘No,’ she said, realizing that her failure to ask such a basic question at the outset showed how very much she needed Laurie’s help with this.
‘No, I don’t know either,’ Laurie said, ‘which bothers me, because I don’t seem to be able to find out. But I will.’
Rachel turned to stare out to sea. It all felt so bizarre, so utterly unreal, to be sitting here, discussing such iniquity in the face of such beauty. It was like staring at a masterpiece, while the gallery around it was being massacred by madmen. Or like taking a last look at the wonderful wide world on the eve of the Apocalypse. She was feeling so alone, and afraid, that she wished she could just disappear into the vast blue beyond and never return. Then pressing her hands back through her hair, she said, ‘I thought I was prepared for this, but it’s so much worse … I can hardly take it in.’
Laurie’s expression was full of sympathy as she watched Rachel’s eyelids drop again, obviously to hide her pain. ‘Like I said, we don’t know anything for certain yet,’ she reminded her gently.
Several moments elapsed before Rachel said, ‘Did you ever meet him?’
‘Yes, a couple of times actually, but I can’t say I knew him.’
Rachel’s heart was too full for her to say any more, so Laurie waited for the worst to pass, before saying,
‘There is something we haven’t discussed, which we probably should.’
Rachel forced herself to look up.
‘It seems to have been known in advance,’ Laurie said, ‘that Tim would be going back to Katherine’s flat that morning, so if the murder was premeditated …’
Rachel was shaking her head. ‘Even Tim didn’t know he was going there,’ she said, ‘so it was impossible for anyone else to.’
Laurie started to press the point, then didn’t. It was understandable that Rachel should still be in denial over that, so she said, ‘OK, but we do know that even if it wasn’t a prior arrangement, he did go into the flat willingly, because the chauffeur, who was driving them that night, swears there was nothing unusual about their behaviour when they got out of the car and went into the building.’
Rachel’s eyes darkened. ‘You’ve spoken to the chauffeur?’ she asked huskily.
Laurie nodded.
‘Did you ask if there was anything that appeared … intimate?’
‘Yes, I did, and apparently there wasn’t, or not that he saw. But obviously they’d have known he was watching, and since they didn’t ask him to wait, we can only assume that Tim was intending to spend some time there.’
Rachel’s face was white, her hands clutched tightly together.
‘I’m sorry,’ Laurie said softly. ‘I just don’t want to hide anything from you.’
‘No, no,’ Rachel said. ‘Please don’t do that.’ Her eyes moved to the empty cups and plates on the table between them, and rather than think about what Laurie was telling her, she thought instead about how absurd the quaintly convivial ritual of tea really was. It conjured images of those who played music as ships went down, or prayed at the foot of an erupting volcano. What was the point, she wondered, for no matter the spirit, or faith, or how fierce the determination, disaster was still on the horizon, with fate guiding everyone inexorably towards it. So what the hell was the point?
‘You must be tired,’ Laurie said.
Rachel didn’t respond.
‘Rose told me about the baby. I hope that’s all right.’
Attempting to pull herself together, Rachel said, ‘Yes, of course. No, that’s fine. In fact, maybe it could be your first exclusive in all this.’
Laurie smiled, and wondered how acceptable it would be to reach for Rachel’s hand. Deciding it might not be appropriate this soon in their acquaintance, she injected as much warmth as she could into her voice, as she said, ‘Thanks, but you don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry with a lens racing down here to take shots of you and your expanding waistline, so if I were you, I’d keep it a secret as long as you can. Does anyone in the village know?’
‘Yes, Beanie, my next door neighbour. You’ll have to meet her. She’s quite a character.’
Laurie’s eyes started to dance. ‘Actually, I think I already have,’ she said. ‘Does she ride a motorbike, with her dog in a trailer?’
Rachel smiled. ‘Yes, she does. When did you see her?’
‘On the way here, as I was walking
down from the car park. She chugged past me at about twenty miles an hour. Her name’s on the back of her jacket.’
Rachel gave a quiet laugh. ‘The motorbike belongs to her grandson,’ she explained. ‘She’s looking after it while he takes a year off to travel the world, and he said she could use it. I don’t imagine he thought she would, but of course she is. Tim always said it was only a matter of time before someone made a trailer for Romie, the dog.’ Her smile faltered, then forcing herself to go on, she said, ‘Would you like some more tea before we go down to the pub? I’m sorry we didn’t book the room in advance, we meant to, but other things came up. There won’t be a problem though, there’re hardly any tourists around at the moment.’
‘Tea sounds fine,’ Laurie replied, getting to her feet and stretching, ‘but wine sounds better. I brought some with me, just in case. Anna put it in the fridge before she went out.’
As they walked round to the side of the house Rachel paused to pick up a watering can and put it under the tap, while Laurie gazed out to sea again, and gave a sigh of pure pleasure. ‘I can understand why you’d want to come here to get away from it all,’ she said. ‘It’s idyllic.’
Rachel looked out to sea too. ‘Oh, here comes Zac and his multi-coloured dreamboat,’ she smiled, pointing out the red, yellow and green vessel that was slowly bobbing its way coastwards. ‘They call him that because he writes poetry and songs and sweeps all the girls off their feet when they come here on holidays. He’s quite good, actually. My brother-in-law’s helped him get a couple of things published in the past.’
‘You mean Anna’s husband, Robert Maxton?’ Laurie said, following her into the old-fashioned kitchen, where hand-painted mugs of Cornish scenes hung from the overhead beams, and an assortment of herbs sprouted from clay pots on the windowsill. Two stainless-steel drainers opened like wings either side of a big square porcelain sink, while a small alcove behind the kitchen door housed the washing machine, raincoats and a collection of Wellington boots.
