The Hollow Man

by Oliver Harris

But it would take time. And Belsey sensed there was something more ambitious he could pull off, involving the money already there. He had been given the sparkling playground of Devereux’s life, and he hadn’t seen half of it yet. He didn’t buy the poor Russian businessman act.

  He needed to find out a little more about his target. He needed to stay awake.

  Galaxy Drug Store occupied the centre of a run-down parade of shops in East Finchley, sheltered between a William Hill and a Chinese takeaway. Its sign was missing the final “e” but the window display made up for it, flashing “All-Night Pharmacy” in neon. The window was crowded with film posters and international phone cards, and told the passing custom that they had DVDs for hire. Belsey walked in.

  The maximum amount of ephedrine hydrochloride legally available without prescription in one sale was 180mg. The only product commonly sold within these restrictions was ChestEze tablets, which bundled 30mg of caffeine, 18.31mg ephedrine and 100mg anhydrous theophylline, the last being a member of the happy family of xanthines, a pharmacological cousin to caffeine. They came in packs of nine.

  Belsey walked up to the counter where a teenage assistant stood picking at his skin.

  “I’ve been told I need a product called ChestEze,” Belsey said. The boy looked at him doubtfully, then went to shelves behind the counter and fetched a pack. He placed it down between them. Belsey made a show of reading the small print: For relief of bronchial cough, wheezing, breathlessness and other symptoms of asthmatic bronchitis.

  “Could I get two packs?” Belsey said.

  “I can’t sell you two, I’m afraid.”

  “One’s for my father. I got the bronchitis off him.”

  The boy raised an eyebrow but went to fetch another. He seemed easy game. Belsey asked him to wait and found some air freshener, vitamins and a pack of Sudafed as well.

  “I don’t have a PIN for it,” Belsey said, taking out the Amex.

  The boy briefly closed his eyes with a weariness beyond his years, then he pressed a button and passed Belsey a chewed pen.

  Belsey took his bag of supplements and walked to the public library on the high road. He asked for a guest code for the PCs, logged in and searched for Alexei Devereux. The top few hits looked credible: one was an article in Russian from the Khiminskaya Prada and one an article from the Wall Street Journal. You had to pay to view the Wall Street Journal article in full, but it began: “Of all the new crop of oligarchs to set their sights beyond Russia, Alexei Devereux is perhaps the most intriguing.” The Eurasian Trade News website dropped his name in a list of five men “changing the face of the Russian entertainment sector.” It didn’t say how. It said he was “notoriously reclusive.” Later it said, “The enigmatic Alexei Devereux is personally responsible for pumping two billion dollars into the ailing sports network TGT.” The Novaya Sayat newspaper linked a spike in Posky International shares to talks of a Devereux buyout. Posky operated in the leisure and retail sector. The piece was an inch-high column to the side of a general stock graph from 2007. Only the Moscow Business Gazette, dated to last October, gave something of the life: “Ultra-reclusive, ultra-successful investor,” Devereux was one of “the Christmas List,” ten men who pioneered the second round of sell-offs over Christmas 1998. It said Devereux had gone into political exile after his ties to opposition politicians made life increasingly untenable in Russia.

  Belsey read the last article twice. The implication was that he had gone into exile shortly before the piece was written, which was ten weeks ago. It said he had bases in Paris, London and New York and would probably be welcome in any of them. But no one knew where he’d gone. No one knew where his businesses were going.

  Belsey returned to the house. The smell of putrefaction had begun to fade. The insect life had moved on to its next show. He sprayed the air freshener, then found the bottle of champagne in the fridge and opened it. A recommended adult dose of ChestEze was one tablet in four hours. He took three with a glass of Veuve Clicquot. He shut the safe room and tried to forget it was there. He was slightly horrified by his actions, and yet this horror was a place to be for the moment.

  Belsey looked at the American Express credit card. It became valid only five days ago. He called the customer services number on the back.

  “I have a new credit card here,” Belsey said. “But I never received a PIN for it.”

  “Would you like us to dispatch a new card?”

  “I just need a PIN number.”

  “We’d have to dispatch a new card as well.”

  “That’s fine. And you send the PIN separately?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “How long would that take?”

  “Two or three days.”

  “Can you do it special delivery? I don’t want to lose another one.”

  “I’m afraid not, sir. But it should be with you in the next few days.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I just need to ask a few security questions. Could you give me your date of birth?”

  “Second of February, 1957.”

  “And your postcode?” He lifted an unopened catalogue of gardening equipment and read it off the address label.

  “Your mother’s maiden name?”

  “Demochev,” he tried.

  “That’s not the name I have here, sir.”

  So he’d hit a wall. Belsey wondered how he would get Devereux’s mother’s maiden name. He pictured a dense archive of Soviet-era paperwork. It had always seemed touching to him, the use of maiden names as security; this private knowledge of our mothers’ pasts. It didn’t touch him now.

  “I’m an orphan,” he said.

  There was a pause. “OK, sir. Is there a particular name you gave us? A password?”

  “I’ve forgotten.”

  “We would need to receive that before we can dispatch a new card.”

  “OK.”

  Belsey hung up. He gave it fifteen minutes, then called the Card Fraud Unit’s offices in Temple.

  “Any reports just made on this individual’s card?”

  “Not as far as I can see. Want to make one?”

  “No.”

  Out of curiosity Belsey called City Police and the Serious Fraud Office. He ran Devereux and his company past them but they knew nothing, were uninterested and, by their own account, busy enough already.

  It takes the average person twelve months to discover that their identity has been stolen. That was for the living. If this was what he was doing, stealing Devereux’s identity, then it gave him some time. He felt ready to pick up where Devereux had left off. If he was going to be born again it would be nice to be someone rich.

  Belsey set about his first systematic search of the premises. There were a lot of things he would have been interested to find: a will, a chequebook, the driver’s licence or any other photo ID, PINs, passwords, address books that might contain them, a laptop. He started with the study. The study had an elaborate dresser consisting of two alcoves joined at the top by an arch, with shelves in the alcoves, drawers beneath them, and then small cupboard doors. Everything was empty but for blank paper, yellowing newspapers in French and Italian; old catalogues.

  The chest of drawers in the bedroom and the living room were also empty. Belsey searched behind the artworks for a concealed safe but found nothing. He looked under the dining-room table and found folded tablecloths and a box of crystal wineglasses.

  He found a dusty sauna in what he had originally thought was a walk-in wardrobe. On the ground floor, beside the kitchen, he discovered a utility room that Devereux probably didn’t know about, with a washing machine, ironing board, tools for cleaners and gardeners, bottles of cleaning products, floor polish, mops, and overalls.

  Not a single item of use to him.

  The phone began to ring again. It seemed to announce the peculiarity of his situati
on. Each ring was the splash of oars pushing him farther away from shore. Belsey sat in the study and looked at the model ship and the Winter Palace, the will to plunder momentarily deserting him. Devereux’s possessions felt like words left hanging mid-sentence. They seemed to want to say something. About loneliness, perhaps. Exile was a feeling; he understood that. Belsey looked around and sensed someone trying to make a strange place look like home. Maybe it explained the noncommittal rental style.

  What had Devereux thought of, sitting here? Money worries? A deal gone wrong? A country he’d never see again? Belsey imagined snow-covered fields, farm machinery, a dirt track. There were peasant women selling honey cakes to travellers; factories with muscular men and flags. He walked to the window then sat on the floor and looked at the space beneath the desk and the antique chair. Something glinted on the floor. Belsey crawled under the desk to the object. It was a watch, supposedly a Rolex: silver and heavy. The face bore the Rolex logo, but the second hand didn’t glide, which was a giveaway. Devereux didn’t strike him as a man for fakes, but then it seemed Devereux might not have been all he once had been. It was still a watch, ticking and with ambitions. It had five dials on the silver face and a lot of buttons to play with. Even fakes could go for several hundred pounds. Belsey liked it. One of the dials showed the phases of the moon.

  He put it on and went to the wine rack in the kitchen. He opened three bottles and tried them all: a burgundy, Clos des Lambrays Grand Cru; a 1996 Riesling from Alsace; finally an Italian red from Piedmont, 1989. He decided the only moral thing you could do with wealth was destroy yourself with it. He looked at the fake Rolex on his wrist and drank the burgundy, then took the Riesling up to the pool. The light was turning grey. Belsey kicked his shoes off and sat on a sunlounger. He wondered what you did once you had achieved luxury, what you discovered on the far side of it. He decided he should learn more about time management. His career had been a substitute for time, he saw now, but the career had come apart in his hands. He didn’t know what would replace it. He wanted to talk to Alexei Devereux.

  He made one last search of the premises. He hadn’t investigated the garage any further because it had seemed empty. But a second check showed he had overlooked a garbage bin in the front corner, by the electric door. He lifted the top and saw a blue recycling bag, half full; tore it open and saw paper.

  Belsey took the bag to the living room and emptied it on the floor. The various documents preserved the form of whatever single file had contained them. The papers involved correspondence relating to something called Project Boudicca. At the top of the pile was a fax from lawyers representing the Hong Kong Gaming Consortium regarding “what we hope you will find is an arrangement convenient to both parties.”

  The proposed arrangement involved the split for a deal: 80 percent payment to AD Development and 20 to a numbered account with the Raiffeisen Zentralbank Austria. The fax gave account details. “Please consider this correspondence sensitive.”

  Belsey sat on the floor surrounded by the bin bag’s load. He felt himself swimming above a new depth of wealth, the water colder and darker. Behind every great man is an anonymous account. This one was a Sparbuch. Sparbuchs were so anonymous that the Austrian banks were no longer allowed to supply them, but old accounts changed hands on the black market. The bank didn’t ask you for a name or address. They gave you a small savings book, the Sparbuch itself, and you chose a password. That was it. It was useful to have an Austrian accent, or a helpful Austrian attorney, to ensure no flags were raised. Then you were free to drop as much money in and take as much money out, and all you needed was the password. No incriminating statements, no correspondence, no free pen. Mostly people liked to visit the bank in person but funds could be transferred by wire or telephone. They called it wealth protection and police called it a dead end.

  Belsey couldn’t find the savings book itself. But, incredibly, he had the account number, the Kontrollnummer. It was crazy to think he’d get further. But it was true that more than half of people write their passwords down somewhere. Seventy-five percent reuse the same one again and again.

  Belsey dug through the pile of discarded documents and saw the account mentioned in correspondence with a law firm called Trent Horsley Myers and a firm of accountants on Sloane Square. Finally there was a letter to the solicitors from Raiffeisen Zentralbank Austria, confirming that they now offered twenty-four-hour telephone banking and there were no formal restrictions on the amount an individual could deposit in one day, although sums over 500,000 euros would take forty-eight hours to clear.

  Belsey had found the buried treasure, he felt certain. He called the number on the bank’s correspondence.

  “Guten Abend,” a woman answered.

  “Guten Abend,” Belsey said. “I’m calling from London. I have an account with you and I need to make an urgent payment out of it.”

  “Of course, sir. Can I have your password?”

  “I don’t have the password here. I have the account number.”

  “I’d need your password, sir.”

  “This is urgent. I have a contractor waiting.”

  “I can’t do that, sir.”

  “What would I need to transfer money out?”

  “Account number and password.”

  “And I could do that by phone?”

  “Of course.”

  “What if I’ve forgotten my password?”

  “You’d need to bring proof of identity into one of our branches and speak to a security adviser.”

  “Thank you.”

  Belsey hung up. The money was there, he could smell it. We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. What had the PA said? Down to his last million. He could believe that Devereux was moved by poverty to take his life, but poverty was relative. One man’s bankruptcy was another man’s nest egg. It was just a question of advancing carefully.

  Belsey considered his next move. Then he saw the time. He was late for the end of his career.

  10

  The Internal Affairs headquarters were in High Holborn: a glass-walled office block with a Starbucks on the ground floor. Belsey parked the Porsche Cayenne round the corner and walked in. The headquarters wore a neutral mask; blue carpets, floor-length windows, code-access doors in pale pine. He’d been there once before, after a death in custody, and hadn’t enjoyed it much then either.

  “Belsey. Here for a review.”

  A front-desk man looked at him, checked something and sent Belsey, accompanied by a guard, to the second floor. There was an open-plan space with a lot of civilian workers at flat-panel monitors. The guard departed and a man came up to him.

  “Nicholas Belsey?”

  “Hi.”

  “Frank Sacco. I’m your lawyer, Riggs and Jenkins.”

  He shook Belsey’s hand. Sacco was a short man in an olive-green suit and slip-on shoes, face glistening as if he’d slicked the hair and continued slicking his face. Riggs and Jenkins supplied all the lawyers for internal investigations. It meant Belsey’s case had already reached the union.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Belsey said.

  “Anything we need to discuss?”

  “Do you know much about identity theft?”

  “It’s not my speciality.”

  “Let’s go in.”

  Sacco led the way to a corner office. Inside were two men and a woman—one man and the woman sitting behind a desk with a file, the second man standing, looking out of the window. Belsey walked in and shut the door. The seated man was Barry Gaunt, from IA. Belsey recognised the commissioner from television, where he talked about what went wrong at riots, police who had acted violently. He was too broad for his M&S suit, with a pink face and a thick neck. The standing man was tall, with rat-like features. The woman had a bob and a dark orange trouser suit and craft jewellery. So they’ve brought in a counsellor, Belsey tho
ught. From the office you got a view of Kingsway, the old tram tunnel, Red Lion Square. People were filing in to Conway Hall.

  “Please, sit down.”

  Belsey and Sacco took the empty seats. The counsellor spoke first, which was never a good sign.

  “I’m Janet, from the Mental Health Assessment Team.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Janet,” Belsey said.

  Gaunt spoke: “Barry Gaunt from Internal Affairs. This is Nigel Herring, from Camden Borough headquarters.” He waved towards the tall man. Herring avoided Belsey’s gaze. Belsey knew the name: Northwood’s attack dog, risen to inspector purely by virtue of kissing Northwood’s arse. A shifty character, with his finger in too many pies. He wore a Masonic ring and an unhealthy pallor.

  “What do you understand about this situation?” Gaunt asked.

  “This situation?”

  “About why you’re here.”

  “Because I stole and crashed a squad car.”

  “OK,” the counsellor said gently.

  “Chief Superintendent Northwood wants you to explain yourself.”

  “I don’t know if I can explain myself as such. Things happened, and I am ashamed of what happened, and understand that procedures will . . . proceed.”

  “It’s not just this, though, is it?” Gaunt said.

  “You mean with regards to that night?”

  “With regards to everything.”

  “With regards to everything, no. It’s not just this,” Belsey said.

  Gaunt looked half bored, as if he resented being drawn from serious riots to the small and insignificant riot of Belsey’s life.

  “Where were you going?” he asked.

  “I think I was actually trying to get to the Heath. In that sense I succeeded. I woke up the following morning on the Heath. Am I suspended?”

  “Should you be?”

  “Don’t answer,” Sacco said.

  “Would it be a paid suspension?” Belsey said.

  “Are you in financial difficulty?” the counsellor asked.

  “Yes,” Belsey said. He put his hands into Devereux’s jacket. Then he took them out again and checked the time. He thought: Who drops a watch? If you drop a watch, you hear it. You pick it up. And you don’t drop it anyway, because it’s on you.