Hollow Man

by Oliver Harris

  “One of the big Arabic newspapers: respected, pro-West, owned by a Saudi prince.”

  “Do you see many in London?”

  “Yes. Any shop selling Arabic newspapers will sell Al-Hayat. It prints in Europe.”

  “What does the circled article say?”

  The imam produced a pair of glasses from within his dishdasha and flicked them open. He peered closer and read: “ ‘Hong Kong Gaming and its major stakeholder, Saud International Holdings, believes sport is a language we all understand. It is the model for a global community.’ ” The imam looked up with a derisive smile.

  “What is this project they’re talking about?”

  Farahi examined the article.

  “Some investment in London. It doesn’t say. It says ‘the UK entertainment and leisure sector.’ Some big project with these people, AD Development. It was agreed last Saturday. They have just agreed something. They are shaking hands.”

  “It doesn’t say what?”

  “A development in the UK gambling sector. It will see big investment in London. That’s all it says.”

  “Who’s the blond guy?”

  Hamid read the article again. “Pierce Buckingham. Representing AD Development.”

  “Pierce Buckingham.”

  “That’s right.”

  Belsey looked closer at the untrustworthy Buckingham. One more piece for the puzzle.

  “Does it say who the other man is?”

  “Prince Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the gaming consortium’s majority stakeholder.”

  “Where was this picture taken?”

  “It doesn’t say.”

  Belsey studied the spire in the photograph: it had a weathervane on the top, glinting: an arrow on top of a ball. The spire capped a square, stone tower. Between the men and the church was an empty space, like a courtyard, with modern buildings at either side.

  “Have you heard of these people?”

  “Not Pierce Buckingham. The other man, yes. The prince is a great-grandson of the first king of Saudi Arabia. Not a good man.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a thief. He’s draining the country of its money, state money, for his own projects. Many people there are suffering and he invests all the resources in Europe and America. This newspaper is owned by his cousin.” He prodded the paper.

  “OK. Thanks.” Belsey took the clipping back. “You’ve been a help.”

  He dropped into Swiss Cottage Library on his way to Hampstead. The library kept old issues of the Ham & High: the last month’s out on a rack, the last five years filed in a cabinet behind the issue desk. What had Charlotte said? There was a news story about Devereux moving to London but only the Ham & High ran with it. Belsey found last week’s edition and turned through the pages until he saw the headline: NEW OLIGARCH IN TOWN UPSETS LOCALS.

  Alexei Devereux is the latest in a long line of Russian billionaires to set up home on Hampstead’s luxurious Bishops Avenue.

  But local residents have expressed concern over his sudden arrival.

  Devereux’s investment company, AD Development, has courted controversy in the past with its aggressive approach to land acquisition, seeking room for an ever expanding gambling and entertainment empire. Now Devereux’s new neighbours fear that the might of AD Development is in London for a reason. The Russian has made no secret of his wish to make an impact on his favourite European city. Nor is he short of political connections, all of whom refused to comment yesterday.

  Belsey didn’t have to go far to find the Ham & High offices. They took up a floor of the cream-coloured 1980s block beside the library. Belsey went in and said he had a meeting with Mike Slater and was sent up.

  Slater’s office went for a theme of organised chaos: a bicycle wheel and repair kit on the floor, half-empty mugs on top of stacks of books. The walls were decorated with old covers, various scoops, mostly concerning corruption on the council, and several awards for best local coverage: the environment, education, policing. Slater got up from his battered chair when he saw Belsey and grasped him with a double-handed shake. He appeared to be the one who’d had less sleep. One arm of his glasses was fixed with tape and his greying hair was a mess. His desk was covered with information on Jessica Holden.

  “I was a bit short on the phone yesterday,” Belsey said.

  Slater waved this away. “All is forgiven. You couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ve been trying to get my hands on a detective for five hours. It’s a cock-up, right? The shooting. We’re not getting any results from local gangs, criminals, police. I’m thinking it was one God almighty cock-up.”

  “I don’t know, Mike. Maybe. I’m here about Alexei Devereux.” Slater looked puzzled. “You were interested in him,” Belsey said. “At least you were last week.”

  “It was a quiet week. Am I in trouble?”

  “Why would you be?”

  “Because of the article we ran: the petition.”

  “Why would that get you in trouble?”

  “Because something’s wrong with it. And because he’s suddenly dead.”

  Belsey sat down. “Talk to me.”

  “I knew the name, Alexei Devereux.” Slater collapsed into his worn chair, hands gripping the arms. “I knew he was one of the oligarchs, expanding his empire. I’d heard the rumours about his interest in the casino and gaming industry, and that he had a reputation for liking bribes, kickbacks, call it what you will. This was the first I’d heard about him moving to London. But I ran a check and it seemed right, he was on The Bishops. I never saw the petition until it was too late. A new boy cleared the story. I would never have run it without a thorough check. Not where someone like Alexei Devereux is concerned.”

  “Then you heard he’d died.”

  “Well, you can imagine I had mixed feelings. I got a tip-off from someone in the hospital that he was dead—that he’d killed himself. I imagine he had bigger things to worry about than the Ham & High, but at the same time it didn’t fill me with a sense of good tidings.”

  “In the article it mentions Devereux’s political connections. Who are they?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I do know Devereux was turned down for a visa two years ago because he was wanted on fraud charges. This time around he had Granby’s name on the application and he was invited in. I know Granby helps those who help himself. And conveniently there are a lot of ways to help Milton Granby without your name appearing anywhere inconvenient. He’s a local character. I can’t pretend to know anything about his involvement with Alexei Devereux.”

  “The petition was about racecourses,” Belsey said.

  “Supposedly. It said he was a bad influence on the area. It was one of the vaguest things I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’d like to take a look at it.”

  Slater led Belsey into a back room crowded with box files. It had a safe in the side wall. The editor opened the safe, removed a file and after a moment produced the fax. It contained a list of 150 people who didn’t like Devereux moving into the neighbourhood, but very little indication of their exact grievance. Slater had marked the list with question marks and crosses.

  “What are these?” Belsey asked.

  “After the event, when I started to get a funny feeling, I called around. I ran a check on these names. A question mark means they deny knowing anything about it.”

  “What does a cross mean?”

  “It means they’re dead. Been dead two or three years in most cases.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. Dead and still indignant. That’s Hampstead for you.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “I don’t know. Someone using an old tax roll. Someone with an axe to grind. A business rival, maybe.”

  Belsey looked at the number from which the fax had been sent. It felt naggingly familiar.

  “Have you traced the fax number?”

  “No.”

  “Send something through to it. A blank sheet.”

  “OK.�
�� They went back to the main office and Slater did as he was instructed. “Now what?”

  “Can I take this?” Belsey said, lifting the fax.

  “I’ll run you a copy.”

  He used the same machine to run Belsey a copy of the petition.

  “Did Devereux contact you about the article?” Belsey said.

  “No.”

  “Is that strange?”

  “The whole thing’s strange. It’s going to get a hell of a lot stranger once news of Devereux’s death becomes established. The rumours are just starting. Soon there will be a storm.”

  Belsey wondered how that would impact on his own business. He had to get his plan in place quickly.

  “Do you know of a Pierce Buckingham?” he asked.

  “Rich boy. Helps Middle Eastern companies invest in Europe. Nasty piece of work as far as I’m aware.”

  “How do you know about him?”

  “I read the papers. It’s part of my job. Why are you interested in Pierce Buckingham?”

  Belsey produced the Al-Hayat clipping. Slater admired it but didn’t have anything to add. It was a handshake about a London investment. That much Belsey knew. Something facilitated by Granby, was his guess. Something that brought a lot of money in, but not enough to keep Devereux or Jessica Holden above the ground.

  Slater gave him a copy of the faxed petition. Belsey thanked him and headed for the door.

  “Nick,” Slater said.

  “What?”

  “You haven’t explained why you’re here.”

  “Haven’t I?”

  “No.”

  “I appreciate you keeping me out of the paper, Mike. Thank you for that. I owe you a drink.”

  Belsey walked to The Bishops Avenue and checked the fax machine. One blank fax had come through from the offices of the Hampstead & Highgate Express, forty-five minutes ago. The number on the machine matched the anonymous leak to the Ham & High. Devereux was complaining about himself.

  He walked out of the front door, wondering why Devereux would do that. He grabbed Devereux’s post as he left. It kept coming, more each day, eight envelopes of various sizes. Then he looked up to see Pierce Buckingham standing on the other side of the road.

  Belsey crammed the envelopes into his jacket and started at a brisk pace away from the house. He let his stalker follow him back to Hampstead police station. Buckingham kept a steady distance of twenty or thirty yards between them. Belsey rehearsed what he knew of him. Buckingham and Prince Faisal connected—he had a newspaper clipping of that lucrative-looking handshake. Max Kovar didn’t like that. Maybe he wanted to be the man in the picture. Don’t trust Buckingham. Belsey didn’t. But if Buckingham was going to hurt him he would have done it by now, surely. And maybe he needed the opportunity to speak. Maybe Belsey could ask him what exactly Project Boudicca involved that might have left a very empty home on The Bishops Avenue. And as he walked down Rosslyn Hill, thinking about the faked petition, he started wondering to what extent it had ever been occupied.

  Belsey made it into the CID office and ran a full check on his new shadow. His colleagues were busy, heads down. Belsey tried to be discreet, nonetheless. There was more on Buckingham on the Internet than in UK police files, which said something about his profile and his legal team. The reports painted a charming portrait. Buckingham’s first recorded misdemeanour was kidnap and false imprisonment of a stripper after an altercation in the Pussycat Lounge, Tel Aviv. That was four years ago. Buckingham played the diplomatic card; it turned out he was representing a UK government agency at the time, although it wasn’t clear which agency concerned itself with the Pussycat Lounge. His father was Edward Buckingham, or Lord Buckingham of Tankerness to friends, former shadow defence secretary. Edward Buckingham made a killing off the first Gulf War for reasons that may have involved the Kuwait Sovereign Wealth Fund. His son followed in his footsteps. There were a string of minor diplomatic incidents, rumours of assault, driving offences. Last year he had magically sidestepped a charge of aggravated violence and possession of cocaine. An incident two weeks later in which he ran over a journalist while trying to leave a Paris nightclub took an out-of-court settlement to reach a happy ending.

  The CID phone rang. Belsey avoided it. It rang ten times before Rosen snapped and lifted the receiver and grunted. A few seconds passed and his bloodshot eyes slipped to Belsey. Belsey felt them. Rosen covered the receiver with his fat hand. He didn’t say anything, just stared.

  “What?” Belsey said.

  “It’s a Charlotte Kelson.”

  Belsey sat up. He shook his head.

  “She wants to arrange to speak to a Nick Belsey,” Rosen said.

  Belsey drew a finger across his throat. Rosen slowly removed his hand from the receiver without taking his eyes off Belsey. “He’s not here,” he said. Charlotte must have said something else. Rosen grunted again and hung up.

  “Thanks,” Belsey said. Rosen shook his head and went back to his papers. It was only then Belsey realised how much he had wanted to hear her voice.

  He checked the window. Pierce Buckingham was there, on the pavement opposite. He had positioned himself behind a grey Saab, as if using it for cover. He was alert, scanning his surroundings. But his focus was the station. Skin infection—that was code for surveillance, for those on undercover ops. I’ve got a skin infection. I’m being watched. Now he felt why. His neck prickled. Something about the way Buckingham’s overcoat was buttoned up seemed strange.

  Belsey stepped out of the station. Buckingham watched him but didn’t follow. Belsey walked to the Prince of Wales. The Prince had a public phone tucked away in one corner. He called the Mail and asked to be put through to Charlotte.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  “How sweet,” she said with quiet caution.

  “What have you got?”

  “This Nick Belsey is a detective at Hampstead station. Do you know him?”

  “I’ll give you something to write about, Charlotte. But leave Belsey out of it. That’s the trade.”

  “Are you Nick Belsey?”

  “This is a very complicated situation.”

  “Apparently he’s in financial difficulties.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “It’s your turn to talk, Nick.”

  While he’d been happily living Devereux’s life, it seemed someone had been deciding how to use him. He had a vague vision of throttling them. But another, cooler part of his mind was profiling: someone sophisticated, controlled, with access to financial records. Someone who might have powerful friends. Someone Belsey had made nervous.

  “Listen, Charlotte, the story’s not about me. It’s about how Milton Granby connects to the Starbucks shooting.”

  There was a laugh. Then silence as she decided how to respond.

  “You’re joking,” she said.

  “I’m serious.”

  “Go on.”

  “I will when I know more. Trust me, Charlotte.”

  “You promised me a story. I get the feeling you’re trying to distract me from one.”

  “I have something. But I need time to get you proof.”

  “I don’t have that time, not on the promise of a bankrupt detective.”

  “Charlotte—”

  “We go to press this afternoon. I can’t work with you if you’re not able to tell me what’s going on here.”

  “Then you won’t be working with me.”

  Belsey put the phone down. He was being screwed with. So was Charlotte. The situation put him in mind of interrogation techniques—when you needed to undermine a hardened group of criminals you made sure every individual felt alone and betrayed. You built vast conspiracies going on beyond the interview-room door so that their values and identities collapsed.

  But Belsey’s mysterious foe had underestimated his resources. They had told Belsey he was on to something. Both he and Charlotte Kelson were on to something.

  And they had made contact.

  He return
ed to the station and called Vodafone.

  “What the hell’s going on? I faxed through a Section 22 last night and I’m still waiting . . .”

  The police got deference from network operators. They made themselves a lot of Home Office money supplying call information. Belsey was holding twenty sheets of Charlotte Kelson’s phone activity within ten minutes.

  I got a call an hour ago. It said to come here. To tell the people on the door I was meeting someone in the restaurant.

  He looked for calls the previous night, at approximately 10 p.m. There was only one: a landline number. Belsey ran a check and it was a public phone box in the middle of a residential street on the edge of Vauxhall. There wouldn’t even be CCTV to pursue.

  He called British Telecom. “I want all calls made from that box yesterday evening.”

  They sent the information through without protest. There was only one other call made from the phone box last night. It was to a Hampstead number: 37 The Bishops Avenue.

  They called Devereux’s home at eight minutes past ten. The call lasted forty-one seconds. Had he been in?

  Something began to shift into place.

  He called Les Ambassadeurs. A woman answered.

  “Yesterday, a man called from your restaurant, confirming a booking. For Alexei Devereux.”

  “Did they?”

  “You tell me. He sounded maybe French or Italian.”

  “I’m not sure about that, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s not our usual procedure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The table would be held for an hour, as a matter of course. After that we would try to seat the party where possible. We don’t make reminder calls.”

  “No one from the casino phoned yesterday?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Belsey put the phone down. He tried to cast his mind back to that voice, but a voice on a phone line was not a face, let alone a fingerprint. It seemed they wanted to scare him, but also to show him something. They wanted him to investigate. A lot of criminals liked the attention they got, but this was different. This one had something to show.

  Belsey found Devereux’s envelopes in his jacket and tore them open. Of eight letters, one was from a mental health charity and seven were demands for payment. In varying tones of politeness, obsequiousness and impatience they suggested it was time for the businessman to cough up: Carte Blanche International Yacht Charter, Sprint Domestic Cleaners, the Alan Cristea Gallery on Cork Street, the European Casino Association, Henry Poole Bespoke Tailors, Handford Wines in South Kensington, Les Ambassadeurs.