Hollow Man

by Oliver Harris

  The phone rang. The tall money-laundering expert picked it up and then turned to the room. “It’s Bronco, no doubts,” he announced.

  “Well, no one’s going to be shedding many tears.”

  “I am,” the DS said. “This is going to be a bloody nightmare.” He picked up a lighter and headed out.

  A DI from Snow Hill station flicked through a file. “Financial adviser,” she snorted. “That’s a nice way of putting it.”

  “Glorified arse-kisser to the criminal elite.”

  They passed around Buckingham’s sheets: a lot of work in West Africa and Egypt and finally the United Arab Emirates, where he was first linked to the Hong Kong Gaming Consortium. The DS with the moustache came back in, clutching his mobile.

  “We might as well go home.”

  According to the DS, staff from the FBI London bureau were on their way now. The rumour was rendered more plausible when the Snow Hill DI spoke.

  “We got a request from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission four days ago, saying they had an investor who thought Buckingham was up to no good. The next day the SEC call again saying the whole thing had been taken off their hands and we should forget we ever heard about it. Buckingham had connected to certain friends in the East. Key associates.”

  “Maybe that’s who was flying in,” the lanky inspector said. “I heard the Branch have got details of eight private flights into London last Saturday. Big boys. No one knows why they were here, but Buckingham’s name came up as party organiser.”

  “Can I see the file?” Belsey asked.

  “Be my guest,” the woman from Snow Hill said tiredly.

  Belsey flicked through the sheaf of notes and forms. He found the memo from a Lieutenant Stephen Maynard of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, responding to a complaint by a Texan investor with “significant concerns” over a deal between the Hong Kong Gaming Consortium and AD Development. There was a further memo regarding an Austrian Sparbuch account that might have been the home for bribe money. He felt a jolt of familiarity at the account number. He gave the file back.

  Still no one was touching the phones. The conference-room door remained shut. Seeing Devereux’s account in the file had been like coming across something personal, details of a dream he had never told anyone. But this dream was shared.

  The doors to the conference room opened and Chief Inspector Walker emerged, his face pale and strained.

  “Can anyone tell me why Pierce Buckingham was running around last weekend, trying to raise thirty-eight million pounds in twenty-four hours?”

  45

  Belsey left the room. He walked down the corridor to a deserted office, picked up a phone and dialled 9 for an outside line. When it connected he called up the Raiffeisen Zentralbank. Thirty-eight million, he thought. He looked around the office: a chart of investment banks and corporate ownership, a list of names and pending Suspicious Activity Reports. He was in Economic Crime. He laughed. The bank answered on the third ring.

  “Guten Tag,” Belsey said.

  “Guten Abend. Can I have your account number, sir?” It was a man this time. Belsey gave the account number. For all his gall, he didn’t feel reckless. What could be less conspicuous than a call to an Austrian bank from an Economic Crime office? An office no one would ever know he’d been in?

  “Is that Mr. Devereux?” the man said.

  “That’s correct.”

  “Can I have your password?”

  “Jessica,” Belsey said. He spelt it for him. He waited.

  “Thank you, one moment.” He didn’t dare breathe. “I’m just bringing up your details,” the man said.

  Belsey’s heart soared. The door handle turned. Four officers walked in. They frowned at the sight of him, and he hung up.

  “The wife’s not happy,” Belsey said.

  He drove back to north London, buzzing on triumph. He could see his future and it was lavish. What a dumb password. People think their obsessions are the most secret part of them. But they are all the same. Nothing’s more obvious than a secret—you learn that as a detective. That’s why you attend to the mundane: the brand someone smokes, how they take their coffee; everything they don’t think about.

  He parked on the street and sprinted into Devereux’s home, calling the Austrian bank from the study and giving the password.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I want to make a transfer to a company account held with the Bank of the South Pacific.”

  “How much?”

  “Everything. In instalments of ten grand a day until it’s empty.”

  “Were you intending to pay a sum into your account first?”

  “No. Why?”

  “There is currently a balance of two euros.”

  “Two euros.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Belsey hung up. He poured a drink. The fantasy caved in and left an awful silence.

  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission operated out of Atlanta. It was 9 p.m. in Atlanta. Belsey thought of the memo of theirs he had seen in Wood Street and wondered what they knew about Devereux’s secret Sparbuch account. After ten minutes being passed around the voice mail of various U.S. departments he was put through to the Office of International Affairs, and when he told them what he was calling about they gave him the number for Maynard’s “cell phone.” The lieutenant answered in a noisy restaurant.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Lieutenant Maynard? I’m calling from New Scotland Yard. It’s about Alexei Devereux.”

  “Hang on.”

  Belsey heard the lieutenant push through doors to somewhere silent.

  “Who am I speaking to?”

  “Detective Constable Nick Belsey. I work in the Financial Investigations Unit of New Scotland Yard, London. I came across your name in conjunction with AD Development and Alexei Devereux.”

  “What’s going on with him?”

  “I think I can help,” Belsey said. “What is it you’re investigating?”

  “We got a heads-up from an individual who’d been approached about an AD Development project. This is a very influential person coming to us in confidence. He felt something wasn’t quite right so I agreed to look into the company. By the time I got there it had disappeared.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The draw-down started 7 a.m. Monday morning, three accounts in the name of AD Development closed for good, funds emptied into eight shell companies on the British Virgin Islands. Half a million in cash is withdrawn. The person then opens two new accounts on the islands and splits the cash between them. Then he closes these down. We can only trace one half, which is moved over two days through eight front companies in Andorra. He uses one of those companies to buy twenty-seven more dormant companies stretched from Luxembourg to Delaware. That’s where the paper trail ends. I think the banks he’s using are ones he bought himself, offshore, licences paid in the last twelve months. That’s why we’re having no luck with them, and aren’t likely to any time soon. Do you know anything about this guy?”

  “He died last Sunday.”

  “Well, he’s been busy in hell.”

  Every penny had been shipped out of reach. Someone a lot slicker than Belsey had drained Devereux dry. You can’t take it with you, they say, but he was starting to feel like Devereux might have tried.

  “Did you see London activity from him?” Belsey asked Maynard.

  “No, I checked all EU countries and couldn’t turn up one report.”

  “There was one Suspicious Activity Report,” Belsey said. “From Christie’s auction house in London, dated 29 January.”

  “There isn’t any SAR from London. I checked.”

  “You didn’t see one? Five hundred grand cash.”

  “I didn’t see anything. I’m struggling over here. I’m saying this is one of the biggest frauds I’ve seen and no one gets it.”

  Belsey hung up and called New Scotland Yard. The phone was eventually answered by a night duty officer f
or the Specialist Investigations Department. It took another five minutes to persuade him to run a check on the SAR. Ten minutes later he could confirm there was no Suspicious Activity Report. They hadn’t logged any SARs from Christie’s for eight months. It seemed Inspector Philip Ridpath was inventing his own excuses to chase Devereux.

  46

  Belsey found Devereux’s last bottle of vodka in the freezer. He sat in the study in front of the bloodstain, drinking. No SAR, he thought; what the hell had Ridpath been playing at? And then he didn’t care anymore. He was exhausted; the raised hopes had led him to a crash. Now perhaps he could sleep. He raised a toast to Pierre Smirnoff; comrade, old friend. The phone began to ring. Belsey drank. He was sick of the sight of the place. The phone kept ringing and Belsey picked it up.

  “What’s going on?” a man said.

  “Nothing,” Belsey said. “It’s fucked. Get out of here.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Who is this?” Belsey said.

  “What’s going on?”

  Belsey hung up. He answered again when it rang a second later.

  “Mr. Devereux?” a different voice this time.

  “Speaking.”

  “Nothing you said was what you promised it would be.” The caller was struggling with the English; thin vowels, Latino or maybe even Chinese. Furious, which didn’t help.

  “That, my friend, is life,” Belsey said. “C’est la vie. Así es la vida.”

  “Nothing at all. Now a lot of people are unhappy.”

  “A lot of people are always unhappy,” Belsey said. He put the receiver down on the desk.

  “Hello?” it said. “Don’t fuck me around.”

  Belsey lay on the floor and shut his eyes. When he opened them there was a man standing in the doorway.

  47

  “It was open.”

  Detective Inspector Philip Ridpath paused with his black oxford raised where it had prodded the door. It took him a moment to recognise the individual on the carpet.

  “Detective Constable Belsey,” he said finally.

  “Detective Inspector Ridpath.” Belsey got up. There was no way of doing it elegantly. Ridpath had his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat. He appeared more crumpled than before, and smaller than Belsey remembered, but with the same animal-like inquisitiveness. He stared at Belsey, then at the receiver on the desk, still cursing: “You mother fuck, you die . . .” then back to the front door, to The Bishops Avenue, his expression melting very slowly from suspicion to concern.

  “Welcome,” Belsey said.

  Ridpath stepped over the threshold of the study like a priest entering a brothel. He looked around the shelves, peered at the bloodstain, then went back through the hallway to the living room. Belsey dropped the phone in its cradle and followed. Ridpath nudged a fallen decanter with the toe of his shoe.

  “Looks like he went out with a bang,” Belsey said.

  “How did you get in?” Ridpath demanded.

  “With a key.”

  “Do you have a warrant?”

  “No.”

  The inspector winced. “Have you touched anything?”

  “Hardly at all,” Belsey said. “What brought you here?”

  Ridpath walked to the French windows and tried the handle. “What have you learned about him?”

  “He had a nice house and not much else, as far as I can tell. He liked his towels tied with ribbons.”

  Belsey sat at the breakfast bar and tried to sober up. He watched the inspector circulate the ground floor. Ridpath put on a set of forensic gloves to open the doors. At each door he turned the knob, paused, then opened it. Then he stood in the doorway, staring. Belsey watched him go upstairs, then he picked the decanter up off the floor, took a final swig and placed it back on top of the cabinet. He went up to the first floor where he saw the inspector kneeling at the side of Devereux’s bed like a child in prayer. Ridpath rose, stiffly, arms tensed by his side, and walked to the master bathroom, looked along the line of aftershave bottles, then punched the door frame.

  “Are you OK?” Belsey said.

  “Yes.”

  Belsey went back to the living room and half considered running. Running and never stopping. He heard Ridpath call.

  “Look at this.”

  Belsey found the inspector in Devereux’s garage standing beside the pile of leftover goods.

  “Someone’s tried to strip the place.”

  “The Egyptians used to load up the dead with possessions, for the journey.”

  “He wasn’t Egyptian. And there’s no car.” He turned a full circle, then seemed to fully grasp Belsey’s presence for the first time. “What are you up to here?”

  “What’s Project Boudicca?” Belsey said.

  “What do you know about that?”

  “I know you’re going to talk to me about it while we have a drink, about why you’re working a case in secret and faking SARs; you can tell me why no one knows you’re working it and you’re still chasing a man after his death. Then I’ll leave you alone.”

  Ridpath held on to an expression of righteous defiance. “I don’t drink on duty,” he said.

  “I don’t think you’re really on duty,” Belsey said.

  48

  Ridpath had a battered Volvo parked outside Devereux’s home. They climbed in. Two a.m. in the north-London suburbs didn’t present many options for a nightcap. Belsey directed them to West End Lane, to a basement bar called Lately’s, a divorcee pickup joint with a shutter in the door through which they assessed your eligibility. The detectives must have looked rich or desperate because the door opened and they were nodded downstairs.

  The nightclub was very dark and close to empty. Small tables nudged a dance floor big enough for two or three. Sticky booths with UV lights lined the side of the room. The lights picked out curling photographs of previous partygoers, arms around the old owner. Ridpath scrutinised the place.

  “Is it safe to talk here?”

  “It’s about the only safe thing you can do.”

  Belsey set up some overpriced beers and let the inspector gather his thoughts. When he spoke, Ridpath was still looking at the empty dance floor, his eyes deep with memory.

  “You want to know why I’m still pursuing Alexei Devereux?”

  “Yes.”

  “He ruined my life.”

  Belsey nodded. Already he had the sense that this was Ridpath’s big moment, and he was providing the audience. “How did he do that?”

  “I’ve read every report on Devereux, every transcript. Not just ours, but those in Paris, Rome and the scraps that Washington will share. I’m saying this because I want you to know that I’ve been interested in Devereux for a long time.”

  “OK. So what do you know?”

  “Where do you want me to start?”

  “Start at the beginning.”

  There was a wicked twinkle in Ridpath’s eye, like a man holding a flush when the world thinks they’re bluffing.

  “Born Alex Demochev, Odessa, 2 February 1957. His parents were local party stalwarts. Their loyalty wasn’t repaid. They were killed by the secret police in 1963, after a show trial. By all accounts they were passionate about the cause. But it seems there were party wranglings. Loyal sacrifices to Stalinism.

  “Under the name Alexei Devinsky he becomes a young ideologue. At sixteen he’s writing speeches for local party Communists, very brilliant, tipped for top things in propaganda. But he got in trouble for organising a gambling racket among the local workers. They used to race rats. At seventeen, he escapes a reformatory in Leningrad and smuggles himself to Paris. He began forging connections in the banking community, worked for an underwriter, changed his name to Devereux. Became an entrepreneur.”

  Belsey wondered at the obsession in Ridpath’s eyes. They caught the coloured lights of the basement bar, as did his gleaming brow. His little moustache twitched. He looked a long way removed from his own life; alive, by proxy, through Devereux.

  “
Everyone who met him—in Paris, Prague, Amsterdam—they all say how intriguing he was. How charismatic.” Ridpath made the word sound glutinous. “He had beautiful manners—apparently he bedded several wives of local captains of industry. That may be why he left both Paris and Prague at short notice. He went back to Russia in 1992. People say he funded perestroika from afar. But he got back in time for the kill. Do you know much about the oligarchs?”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “People in the right place and time for the sell-off of a superpower. Everything must go. The summer sale included its military.”

  “Right.”

  “The world’s second largest military complex divided up between four or five individuals who happened to have the cash and connections at the right time. Dmitri Kovalevski got a lot of uranium, Vladimir Shchepetov the hardware. Devereux asked for the sports facilities.”

  “The sports facilities,” Belsey said. Ridpath drank his beer and licked his lips.

  “Hundreds of Red Army gyms, tracks, sports equipment. That’s what he wanted. People thought he was mad. Then he bought up floodlights. The army had a lot of floodlights, first used in the film studios after the revolution, then to blind the Nazis on the battlefield. He bought them. No one knew what he was doing.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “He saw that you didn’t need anyone at a racetrack except the jockeys and the horses and a camera. It meant he could run them through the night and broadcast live images to the UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore. He knew people who needed to sink money—money from embezzlements, money from sharp trades in weaponry and natural gas—and he persuaded them to sink it into these tracks. His first big international partner was the Iroquois tribe in New York State. They built a racecourse for him on their reservation. Last year he bought up a stretch of the Margow Desert in Afghanistan for a combination mall, track and casino. That was when he got the reputation for disaster capitalism. The U.S. still pay him to hold the land. Six months later he set up a casino resort on the site of an old Pennsylvania ore pit, which he bought for a cent.”