Kovar had seemed very keen. He had seemed very rich. Belsey wondered if he had been given an easier means of exploiting Devereux’s identity. He felt a tingle of anticipation. Kovar believed Belsey was a direct line to the oligarch. Belsey had been trying to steal Devereux’s past, but what about his achievements still to come?
The City Children’s Fund came up online as a registered charity. It had been set up to help deprived children of inner-city London. It also came up linked to stories of foreign donors buying favours through the back door. A group called Campaign for Open Government pointed out that it was set up at a time when several investigations were under way, looking at anonymous foreign donations to Granby and his associates. Milton Granby sat on the Fund’s board of trustees.
Belsey gathered everything on Granby that was in the public domain. The Chamberlain lived on a very secluded residential road in the Vale of Health. The Vale was a privileged Hampstead enclave that got its name from being the only part of London to escape the plague. The Vale of Wealth, officers called it. St. John’s would have been his local AA meeting; Charlotte was on the right track. Hampstead police had him on the VIP list for fast response in case of emergency.
Most of the information regarding Granby appeared on the City of London website. The pocket of ancient parishes in the heart of London had been brandishing gold and autonomy for close to a millennium.
A state within a state, a City within a city. Its new website preserved the proud tradition, flaunting the City’s history. But then it had a lot of it.
The City of London is the oldest continuous municipal democracy in the world. It pre-dates Parliament. Its constitution is rooted in the ancient rights and privileges enjoyed by citizens before the Norman Conquest in 1066. From medieval to Stuart times the City was the major source of financial loans to monarchs, who sought funds to support their policies at home and abroad.
Loan shark to the warmongers. That gained you a fair bit of independence over the years. The website made some attempt at explaining the idiosyncrasies of City government. They retained a medieval structure of aldermen, derived from the wise “elder men” of Saxon London. They had a Remembrancer, responsible for ceremonies and protocol. It was a fine and solemn name, Belsey thought: London should have more of them. Then, of course, they had the Chamberlain.
The Chamberlain is the Finance Director of the City of London. He is the financial adviser, accountant, receiver and paymaster and is responsible for the City of London’s local and private funds. In addition, he is also responsible for making arrangements for the investment of the City of London and other funds.
The website gave Granby’s CV: as a stockbroker, working through the usual range of investment positions, and as a climber in the Corporation of London, rising through the ranks of various City guilds: a livery man, an alderman, a member of the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards. In his spare time Milton Granby enjoyed travel, walking, golf and theatre. It didn’t mention booze.
Institutions for which he is responsible extend far beyond the City boundaries and include the Barbican Centre, Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey and ten thousand acres of open space including Epping Forest and Hampstead Heath.
This caught Belsey’s eye. Apparently the Corporation of London took on ownership of the Heath following the abolition of the Greater London Council in 1989.
Granby didn’t make many headlines. He made one in the last week, after an interview with the Times: CHAMBERLAIN EXPRESSES CONCERNS OVER CITY’S FINANCES:
Very challenging, if not severe conditions lie ahead. The City Corporation’s own finances have not been sheltered from the raging storms which have had a major impact on our investment incomes. There is little doubt that all of us face a very difficult financial environment for some time to come, and some equally difficult decisions.
Belsey wondered what decisions Granby was making, as his car sped back through the night. The City desperate. Devereux ingratiating himself. What was that coincidence about?
Don’t trust Buckingham. Kovar’s solemn warning had stayed with him. It was the only name left unexplored. No Buckingham came up on any recent local crime reports. Beyond that was the full archive of the Police National Computer which, as Belsey expected, swamped him with information. Seventy-nine Buckinghams had come to the police’s attention in the last year in London alone. Two hundred and thirteen in the country at large. He didn’t have the resources to sift that. He made a mental note not to trust any of them.
Belsey switched the computer off and left the police station. There was something he wanted to see. He walked to the Heath, onto the pale track that followed the side of the ponds into the blackness. Belsey could find his way without sight. He headed north. Bats swung erratic loops out of the trees above his head. Athlone House appeared as a deeper shade of night in the distance, on the horizon. Then he had passed it. He saw Kovar’s smile, and he heard the voice of the Chamberlain: The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled and public debt should be reduced. Then he heard the Heath gardener: I want to show you something . . .
The yellow crosses appeared like a shriek from within the woods. They caught the moonlight. Belsey rubbed his thumb over the painted bark. He tried to follow their trail south, stumbling in banks of rotting leaves, but he got lost near the model-boating pond. He sat down and wondered about the crosses, and if there was any possibility that they connected to the moneyed world he had just passed through. He became cold.
Belsey climbed into the landscaped gardens by Kenwood House and crossed them, back towards The Bishops Avenue. The road was empty but for its heritage lamps. Everything was very still and silent. Belsey approached number 37 on the far side of the street. The gentle curve of the road gave him cover. It allowed him to see the house before it saw him, along with any cars parked up, the windows of the house opposite and the walls behind which someone might hide. The memory of Charlotte Kelson walking into the casino sobered him. Someone, somewhere, had been watching them. They knew he’d been investigating Devereux. Did they know he’d been sleeping in his bed?
Belsey opened the front door slowly and stepped into the hall. A photograph had been pushed beneath the door. He picked it up. It showed a naked male body on a concrete surface. The man’s nose and ears had been removed and the face was veiled in blood. He assumed the exact identity may have been less important than the implication it carried for himself.
Belsey took a chopping knife from the kitchen drawer. He turned the CCTV on, then the alarms, and gave a bleak laugh. He was turning into a good little Hampstead resident.
He went to Devereux’s study and found the correspondence from lawyers representing the Hong Kong Gaming Consortium. “Subject: Project Boudicca.” As agreed, 80 percent will be paid direct to AD Development and 20 percent to a/c K9767 with Raiffeisen Zentralbank Austria.
Belsey took the paperwork and the knife to the living-room sofa. He turned the sofa to face the door. He held the knife and put Sky News on and let the adrenaline slowly leak out of his system.
What did he say you’d get here? Information about the Starbucks shooting. Someone called Nick Belsey . . . Exhaustion began to claim him. Through his half-open eyes he saw Jessica Holden. She filled the screen, looking at him. To the reporters she was Jess now, with that familiarity we assume with the young and dead. But it was just the same old photographs; a shot of her home, a shot of the devastated Starbucks. It was a tragic loss. It was a mystery. Hampstead was pulling together in its grief.
34
He woke in mid-formulation of a plan. It got him to his feet. The knife fell to the floor. He put it back in the kitchen and walked outside to the garden to breathe the dawn. He thought, in the half light, he might be able to discern which of his ideas were dreams and which belonged to the daytime. It was a pitiless light: everything in the garden seemed carved from stone; the plants, the tennis court. He had expected the dream to disperse but what evaporated with the night was doubt.
Doubt fed on options, and he could see only one.
Belsey went to the Somali brothers and bought all the newspapers he could find. Saturday 14 February. Valentine’s Day. Front page of the Telegraph: a photo of flowers left among broken glass. A picture of Jessica on a school trip, beaming. They’d decided her hobbies were acting and dancing and that she wanted to be a teacher. The school was planning a special memorial assembly. Meanwhile the Chinese student was out of hospital. The Ugandan was having his immigration papers looked at. Police were looking for a young man described as being of Asian or North African appearance, but even the tabloids were hesitant about splashing this. There was a map of the supposed escape route; he would have gone straight past Belsey. He hadn’t.
Along the side they’d pushed a separate, more personal feature: how a peaceful morning turned into carnage. “Sharon Green was taking her two sons to nursery when she heard the shots . . .” It came with more quotes from the local celebrities, former models and political activists of Hampstead, all of whom could imagine this happening anywhere but NW3. “Leafy Hampstead,” the papers kept saying, until you wondered if the leaves might have been in on it.
They hadn’t pieced together a motivation yet. The tabloids were still filling space with victim stories, getting itchy to switch on the hate. Police were giving nervous quotes about a culture of “respect killings” among London gangs, and had released a dubious E-FIT of a square-jawed, grey-skinned man with deep-set eyes. Someone was E-FIT-ing their own nightmares.
Belsey found Kovar’s business card. Max Kovar, it said, and didn’t feel the need to specify a job or company. Belsey went into the CID office and spun his Rolodex of contacts. He called a friend in the Branch Intelligence Unit—a subdivision of Specialist Crime. Belsey used to play football with them. They played filthy. And they had connections; they played with men who weren’t police officers, describing themselves as Civil Service, which Belsey took to mean MI5. The unit’s switchboard put him through to DS Terry Borman.
“Terry,” Belsey said. “You’re up early.”
“I’m up late. One of those weeks. How can I help?”
“If my paths crossed with a character called Max Kovar would you be interested?”
“I know the name.”
“Can you know more than that?”
“Let me call you back.”
Belsey had expected as much. He’d be checking the files, but he’d also be checking the heat. When they operated on the edge of a big grey shadow called the secret services even men like Terry Borman went suddenly quiet on you.
Borman called back in ten.
“Which bit of him are you interested in?”
“Give me a rundown.”
“Speculator. Throws his weight around. He made a lot of money in the eighties investing in copper mines. Comes up in various corruption inquiries: unsavoury connections in Peru, naughtiness on the Ivory Coast. Likes to put money in the bank accounts of government officials and ship guns to loyal friends. But his big love is horses. Kovar spends a lot of time over in the UK checking on his thoroughbreds. He runs a major stable, got a manor in Gloucestershire he uses.”
“What’s he up to now?”
“No idea. The last couple of years he’s been moving a lot of capital into new media and gambling.”
“OK.”
“Are you still playing football? I tried to call you the other night.”
“I’m between phones.”
“We’ve got a match against Vice on Sunday. We need your pace.”
“I’m not match-fit right now, Terry.”
“We’re desperate.”
“Not this weekend.”
Belsey found the number for RingCentral. He had to move fast, while he had the CID office to himself. He rang RingCentral and gave Devereux’s reference number off the invoice.
“Is that Mr. Devereux?” a cheerful-sounding woman asked.
“That’s correct.”
“How can we help you this morning?”
“I believe at the moment calls to AD Development are going to an answering service, is that correct?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“I’d like to divert them instead. Can you divert to this number?” Belsey gave the number for his extension at Hampstead police station.
“That’s done for you.”
“Fantastic,” he said.
Kovar’s card gave a mobile number, but Belsey decided on a more subtle approach. He found the number for the Lanesborough hotel. He spent a few minutes looking at it, then lifted the receiver. His finger hovered over the buttons and then he pushed them, slowly. A hotel receptionist answered. Belsey introduced himself as Alexei Devereux and said he was looking for Max Kovar. She put him through to the Royal Suite. Belsey let it ring once, then put the receiver down.
Three minutes later a call came in. He answered: “AD Development. Jack speaking.”
“It’s Max Kovar. We met last night.”
“Max, good morning.”
“Did someone call me?”
“No, I don’t think so. I told Alexei I met you. Maybe he called.”
“Mr. Devereux? Well, I’m able to speak now.”
“He’s gone. He’s in a meeting. Everything’s full steam here, as you can imagine—Boudicca, all that.”
“Yes. You seemed like he might be open to some conversation on the subject.”
“Oh, I don’t imagine so. I don’t see why. Well . . .” Belsey paused. “Open to conversation?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think it’s possible. Alexei’s a man of business, not conversation. But I wanted to thank you for your interest.” Kovar was silent. Belsey let whatever he was thinking go on being thought. “I’ll speak to him,” Belsey said finally. “I didn’t think you were serious.”
“Of course I’m serious,” Kovar burst out, then softened. “Yes, I am serious.”
“My apologies. Our apologies. We’ll call you if we get the chance.”
Belsey hung up. The game was back on.
Kovar was canny, but that was what a good con man looked for: someone clever, someone who knows good luck happens quietly if you’re clever about it. Belsey called the answering service and told them to revert to the previous arrangement.
“Of course, sir.”
It took all of thirty seconds for his good spirits to sour. He went to the window. A man in an expensive overcoat looked up from a bench across the road and met his eyes. Belsey saw at once that it was the blond man from the Arabic newspaper cutting, the man shaking hands, the man who’d been banging on Devereux’s door at midnight. He hadn’t changed clothes. Hadn’t shaved. Belsey stared at him and the man stared back. So it wasn’t a tail operation. Belsey didn’t know what it was.
Belsey checked the corridor. It was empty. He took the shopping bag of money from where he’d stashed it in his desk and stuffed the notes into his pockets. He left the station by the back entrance.
Ocean Wealth Protection was just opening up. The advisers were in a cheerful mood. The place smelt of fresh coffee.
“Come in, come in.” They had the bonhomie of men about to close a deal. “Are you still looking for the same set-up?”
Belsey trimmed his ambitions. Five grand got him an office address in Liechtenstein, a checking account with the Bank of the South Pacific and a company called International Metal Holdings, registered in the Dominican Republic.
“It’s a nice one. Records go back four years. You’ve got three directors. All yours to start trading whenever you want.”
It was enough to sink some money out of reach for the moment, and it left him with a grand to play with.
“Do you take cash?” Belsey said, and they laughed. “I suppose you know where to put it,” he said. They didn’t laugh at that.
Belsey took his new paperwork and left the office. He walked to a newsagent’s on Belsize Lane. They stocked five Arabic papers in a rack at the front along with all the major European and Ameri
can dailies. He compared his clipping of the men shaking hands to the newspapers on offer—Al-Ahram, Alarab, Asharq Alawsat. None quite matched.
Hampstead station shared a pool of Arabic interpreters with the rest of Camden Borough but none were around that morning. Belsey stashed the ownership documents for his new business corporation in his desk. He felt a pride at the hard evidence of his new life and its burgeoning infrastructure. Now he needed to get some money in it. Which meant taking on the mantle of Project Boudicca. He made some calls. There was an Iranian police constable at Holborn station but the mosque was closer.
Belsey walked to the Regent’s Park mosque. Since his first, tense visit, the day after the bombings, he had grown to like the place, and its imam Hamid Farahi in particular. The worn lustre of its golden dome rose above the bare branches of the park, facing the apartment blocks of St. John’s Wood. Through the doorway Belsey could see an expanse of red prayer mats, temporarily abandoned but for two men prostrate beneath the huge chandelier. The sunrise prayers had finished a while ago, early-morning devotees dispersed to work, to the coffee shops.
Belsey slipped his shoes off, went in and asked an attendant if Farahi was about. A moment later the imam appeared.
“Salaam, Nicholas.”
“Salaam,” Belsey said. They shook hands. Farahi was elegant in his white robes. Belsey had initially been surprised by how young he was. But he carried himself with the authority of his position.
“I’ve got some translation work for you,” Belsey said. “If you have a moment.”
They walked into a library and cultural centre next door to the mosque and took a seat among the bookshelves. Belsey removed the clipping from Devereux’s wallet and handed it over. The imam held it at some distance, as if it was safer that way.
“This is Al-Hayat.”
“Tell me about Al-Hayat,” Belsey said.
Hollow Man Page 19
