Make Them Pay

by Graham Ison

  I was tempted to say that Wormwood Scrubs wasn’t exactly a commonplace name, but I thought I’d chanced my arm far enough for one day.

  ‘I’ll keep you informed, sir.’

  ‘Yes, do that, Mr Brock, and do try to avoid going abroad again.’

  Capitaine Henri Deshayes of the Police Judiciaire HQ at the quai des Orfèvres in Paris was my contact for all French criminal matters. We had liaised on several occasions, sometimes in London, sometimes in Paris, ostensibly to discuss pressing police business. And to enjoy the occasional meal with Gail and Gabrielle, Deshayes’ gorgeous wife.

  Although it was getting on for six o’clock, I knew that Deshayes, like those of us at the sharp end, was a real detective, and would still be at work. After several attempts in pidgin French to locate him, I was eventually connected to his extension.

  ‘Bonjour, ’Arry. Are the London police once again in need of ’elp from the best police force in the world?’

  ‘In your dreams, Henry, and Bonjour yourself.’ I always emphasized the aitch of his name to compensate for him omitting it from mine. Unfair perhaps, but coppers of all nationalities tend to engage in a bit of badinage with each other. ‘How is Gabrielle?’ Deshayes’ wife was an attractive and vibrant woman who had once been a dancer with the famous Folies-Bergères. She had much in common with Gail and when they weren’t discussing the rigours of being a professional dancer, they were talking about fashion.

  ‘She is well. And Gail?’

  ‘She is well also, Henry.’

  ‘Bon. When are you and Gail coming to Paris again? It’s time we had a meal and a few cognacs, eh? While the girls are raiding the fashion shops.’

  It was a feature of our occasional visits to the French capital that Gabrielle and Gail used it as an excuse to raid the haute couture establishments of the city. Henri and I managed to avoid these incredibly boring excursions by making an excuse of exchanging information about urgent police matters. We would then disappear to Henri’s favourite bar where we would sink a few beers and put the world – and our respective police forces – to rights.

  ‘I have a problem, Henry. Several problems in fact.’ I explained in some detail about the triple murder enquiry that I was investigating, and told him about Lucien Carter. ‘From what we’ve learned so far, Henry, it would seem that Carter is at the centre of this operation. I was wondering whether the name had come to your notice for involvement in similar frauds in France. There was a suggestion that he lived there at some time, but we’ve largely discounted that.’

  ‘Leave it to me, ’Arry, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. You can give me details for this man, oui?’

  I provided Deshayes with the particulars that had been passed on to me by Joe Daly and which the FBI had obtained from Carter’s passport.

  ‘D’accord!’ said Deshayes. ‘Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to tell you if this man is of interest to the French police.’

  My next job was to contact the Bahamian police, but that was something that could wait until tomorrow. I rang Gail and suggested dinner somewhere local.

  We strolled hand in hand from Gail’s townhouse along the bank of the river Thames into Kingston town centre. It had been a blazing hot summer and this evening was no different with the temperature still in the high seventies and not a breath of wind.

  Gail was attired in a white linen trouser suit and her long blonde hair was loose. Her only jewellery was a set of discreet earrings that I’d bought her for her last birthday. At one stage she stopped to admire a bare-chested senior eight from a local school that was rowing upriver in perfect harmony.

  ‘Cor blimey!’ exclaimed Gail excitedly in the mock Cockney accent she was so good at. ‘Just look at those lovely boys. Every one of them with a six-pack.’

  ‘Why am I never lucky enough to see eight gorgeous women rowing along here stripped to the waist?’ I asked.

  ‘You always did like women oars,’ said Gail enigmatically, and gave me a playful punch. ‘You should be so lucky.’

  I’m usually pessimistic about trying new places to eat, but to my surprise the restaurant, a newly-opened bistro, had an excellent menu. Never adventurous when it came to selecting something to eat, I followed Gail’s lead. She chose smoked mackerel pâté followed by grilled sea bream, fondant potatoes and French beans, rounding off the meal with Eton mess. And so did I. We finished a bottle of Californian Zinfandel rosé, oddly described on the label as White Zinfandel, and wickedly saw off another half bottle.

  ‘Harry darling . . .’ Gail began somewhat pensively.

  I knew that appealing voice. ‘You’re not taking to the boards again, are you?’ Every once in a while, Gail displayed a hankering to return to the theatre. Mostly it had been a half-hearted ambition, and although she’d been offered one or two parts she’d subsequently turned them down. Not that she had to work; her millionaire father George gave her a generous allowance. Nevertheless, I suspected that Gail missed the greasepaint and bright lights.

  ‘No, nothing like that. I’ve been thinking—’

  ‘Careful,’ I said. ‘Harm can come to a young girl like that.’

  ‘Just be serious for a moment, darling. Anyway, I’m not that young.’ Gail gave a self-deprecating shrug and then voiced an idea that she’d obviously been harbouring for some time. ‘Why don’t you move in with me? Permanently, I mean.’ She spoke rapidly, almost as if she regretted allowing the question to escape her lips.

  ‘Whoa! Hang on just a minute.’ I was completely taken aback by her suggestion, one that she’d never even hinted at before. ‘We always said that living apart ensured that we wouldn’t get in each other’s way. Does this mean you want to get married?’ I tried to laugh it off. ‘Are you proposing?’

  ‘No, of course not. Anyway, it’s not February and it’s not a leap year. I don’t see any point in getting married, not again, but if you think about it, living together makes sense. We’d share the cost for a start. It seems silly for each of us to have our own place.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Gail. It might spoil a beautiful relationship.’ I was still trying to make light of her idea, as well as stalling for time, but only because the suggestion had come as something of a shock.

  ‘If you don’t want to, just say so.’ She pouted at me. It was a very petulant pout.

  ‘Let me think about it, darling.’

  ‘Does that mean that you’re not dismissing it out of hand, Harry?’

  ‘No, I’m not, but there’s a lot to talk about. For instance, what would we do with my furniture? There wouldn’t be room for all of it at your place, and naturally there are some pieces I’d want to keep.’ And then I played what I thought was my trump card. ‘But what about Mrs Gurney?’ The thought of losing my wonderful ‘lady who did’ would be too much.

  ‘I’m sure she’d be delighted to come and work for us,’ said Gail innocently. ‘I don’t have a cleaning lady at the moment.’ She glanced out of the window. ‘It wouldn’t be a problem for her, surely? Your flat and my house are less than a mile away from each other.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ I said. ‘So when it comes down to it, this is all a ploy to hijack the services of my Mrs Gurney.’

  Gail laughed. At last. ‘Oh, you’ve guessed,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not averse to the idea at all,’ I said, still loath to make an immediate decision. In truth, I was delighted that Gail had floated the suggestion. Although I’d thought about it from time to time, I’d always hesitated to propose it, and was agreeably surprised that it was she who’d done so. ‘But let me think about the practicalities.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ exclaimed Gail. ‘Let’s celebrate.’

  ‘We’ve just had dinner and it’s getting late. How are we going to celebrate? Anyway, it’s not a done deal.’

  ‘I’ve got champagne in my bedroom fridge,’ said Gail. ‘That’ll do for a start.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Use your imagination, silly.’

  ‘Miss G
ail Sutton,’ I said, ‘you’re one wicked woman.’

  ‘And ain’t you glad o’ that, Mr ’Arry Brock?’ she said, again assuming her Cockney accent and running her tongue seductively around her lips.

  Back home in Gail’s bedroom we opened the champagne, but it was quite warm by the time we got around to drinking it.

  THIRTEEN

  FBI Special Agents Brendan O’Grady and Hugo Fernandez, both experienced Bureau veterans from the office at the Big Apple’s Federal Plaza, entered the prison interview room on Rikers Island in the State of New York.

  Lucien Carter, wearing rimless glasses and clad in the correctional facility’s standard jumpsuit, was already seated on the other side of the table to which one of his wrists was shackled. He was a small man and had the appearance of a mild bookkeeper rather than a criminal mastermind. Not that he needed muscle in the particular line of criminality upon which he’d embarked. Just brainpower. But that was about to be tested.

  ‘We know a lot about you, pal.’ O’Grady, the senior of the two agents, threw down a dossier marked LUCIEN CARTER in large letters. ‘And now you’re going to tell us a lot more.’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to caution me?’ asked Carter, in his unmistakably refined English accent. He stared apprehensively at the dossier, unaware that it contained nothing but blank sheets of paper.

  ‘Yeah, sure. You have the right to remain silent, blah, blah, blah. If you’ve been watching TV here in Rikers, you’ll know the rest of Miranda. Take it as read.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I have a lawyer?’

  ‘You think he’s going to sweet talk the judge out of giving you twenty-five to life?’ asked Fernandez, wildly exaggerating any sentence that Carter might receive for his misdeeds.

  Carter paled significantly, but remained silent.

  ‘You’re in shtook up to your neck, Carter,’ said O’Grady. ‘Your three pals, Eberhardt, Schmidt and Adekunle have all been murdered back in little old England.’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Carter, unable to keep the telltale signs of shock from his voice, or the fact that the three victims were known to him.

  ‘Getting to be too much trouble, were they? What did you do? Send someone to rub ’em out, huh?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about these people. Who are they?’

  ‘You’re a real piece of work, Carter, you know that?’ O’Grady glanced at Fernandez and grinned. ‘He doesn’t know anything about ’em, Hugo.’ He opened his briefcase and pulled out another dossier. This one did contain information. Taking out a copy of the letter that Joe Daly in London had sent to the New York office he placed it in front of Carter.

  ‘That letter is a reference for the property in Paddington, London, England that you sent to a realty agent. You own that house, Carter, and that’s where the butchered body of your pal Samson Adekunle was found shot to death. So, what’ve you got to say about that?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any of this,’ protested Carter, but his face belied his statement. His brain went into top gear as he tried to distance himself from these shocking events.

  ‘He says he doesn’t know squat, Brendan,’ said Fernandez, an expression of contrived astonishment on his face as he turned to O’Grady and spread his hands. He faced Carter again. ‘My advice to you, pal, is to get yourself an attorney pretty damn’ fast. He might just persuade the DA to plea-bargain you down to fifteen to twenty. On the other hand, mister, you might just do yourself a favour and tell us all you know.’

  ‘He’s right, you know, Carter,’ said O’Grady. ‘Right now it’s a toss-up between spending the rest of your life here in Rikers or getting extradited back to the UK.’

  ‘What d’you want to know?’ Carter suddenly realized that there was no way out of his predicament. If he didn’t tell these hard-nosed federal agents the truth, they’d just keep coming back until he was old and grey and still on remand. Not that that was likely, but Carter was not conversant with the legal system of the United States.

  ‘Tell us everything and we’ll sort out what we don’t want.’

  ‘All right, so I ran a boiler-room scam, but I didn’t kill anyone. Why would I do that?’

  ‘You knew these three guys that gotten wasted, then?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did. They were my operatives in the UK.’

  ‘And where’s all the moolah stashed?’

  ‘The what?’

  O’Grady raised his eyebrows. ‘The money, you dumb fuck.’

  ‘Here and there,’ said Carter.

  ‘Listen, motherfucker,’ said Fernandez, banging the table with the flat of his hand. ‘If you want our help, you’re going to have to give us something.’

  ‘It’s in offshore accounts in different parts of the world. We moved the cash around between the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Lichtenstein, Dubai and Belize.’ Carter shrugged. ‘I don’t even know myself where it is right now.’

  ‘Are you telling me you ran this operation, but you never kept a handle on where the green stuff went?’ Fernandez didn’t believe him and his face and the tone of his voice registered that disbelief.

  ‘Certainly I did. But I relied on Eberhardt, Schmidt and Adekunle. They knew better than to play fast and loose with me. But now they’re dead, I don’t know where the money’s gone. They kept moving it and informed me whenever they did, but if they’d moved it just before they were murdered, there’s no telling where it is now.’

  O’Grady thought that Carter was probably right about that, but it didn’t help him to answer Joe Daly’s questions. He stood up and hammered on the interview room door.

  A corrections officer appeared immediately. ‘You guys finished in here?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ said Fernandez. ‘Take this useless bozo back to his nice warm cell and make him comfortable. He’s likely to be there for the next hundred years.’ And with that empty threat he and O’Grady left Carter to the tender ministrations of the Rikers guards.

  Once back at Federal Plaza, O’Grady sat down and composed a report for Joe Daly in London.

  Next day, I tried to put aside Gail’s suggestion of moving in with her. It wasn’t that I was averse to the idea, but the complications were too much for me to cope with while I was dealing with the three murders that I was attempting to solve. Added to which were the complexities of the international fraud that we’d discovered as a result.

  I spent an hour or two reading and rereading all the statements that had been taken in the hope that they might throw up something that I’d missed. They didn’t. Allowing for the time difference, I left it until the afternoon before attempting to speak to the Bahamian police.

  Colin Wilberforce interrogated his computer and came up with the name and telephone number of the officer in charge of the Central Detective Unit of the Royal Bahamas Police Force in Nassau.

  I went back to my office to make the call.

  ‘Good afternoon. This is Detective Chief Inspector Harry Brock of the London Metropolitan Police, phoning from New Scotland Yard,’ I began. ‘Is that Superintendent Duncan Gould?’

  ‘Yes, it is, and a very good morning to you, Mr Brock,’ said Gould with a chuckle. ‘How’s your weather over there?’ He had a rich voice that made me think of mahogany.

  ‘This afternoon it’s a fine sunny day with temperatures in the seventies, sir.’

  ‘Is that all? Must be damn’ chilly over there, old sport. It’s ninety-two here and raining like hell.’ Gould emitted another throaty chuckle. ‘Are you an Old Bramshillian by any chance?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Have you been to the Police College at Bramshill?’

  ‘Oh, Bramshill. Yes, I was there a few years ago, sir.’ I’d wasted a few months in the depths of Hampshire and spent most of my time listening to classroom coppers lecturing me on things I knew already. And drinking in the local pubs, of which there were far too many for the good of my liver. But I did forge a friendship with Jock Ferguson, now a detective superintendent in the Hampshire Constabul
ary. Being a local he knew the best hostelries in the area and since then had proved to be a useful contact on more than one occasion.

  ‘I was there too, a year or so back,’ said Gould. ‘Great fun and good pubs, but I didn’t learn much. Now, Harry, how may I help you?’

  ‘It’s a long story, sir.’

  ‘I like long stories, Harry, and call me Duncan, why don’t you?’

  ‘Right, Duncan.’ I explained, as succinctly as possible, about our complex investigation, the scam we’d uncovered and the possible link between Lucien Carter and the Bahamas. Just for good measure I threw in the names of the three murder victims and that of Wilhelm Weber. I included Weber because he’d told Horst Fischer about Eberhardt’s trips to the Bahamas. And the Essen police still hadn’t discovered whether he knew more than he was telling. ‘Carter was recently arrested by the FBI in New York, and is currently being held in Rikers prison pending further enquiries,’ I said. ‘But I wondered if he had come to the notice of the Royal Bahamas Police Force. Or, for that matter, whether any of my victims had.’

  ‘I can’t tell you immediately, Harry, old boy. These islands are full of crooks. Remind me to tell you about the murder of Sir Harry Oakes one day, the one the Duke of Windsor interfered with.’ Gould paused to laugh uproariously. ‘I’ll have to search the records. Give me your phone number and I’ll get back to you.’

  ‘Thanks, Duncan, I appreciate it.’

  I’d no sooner replaced the receiver than a call came in from Henri Deshayes. Things were certainly humming today.

  ‘Bonjour, ’Arry.’

  ‘And good day to you, Henry. Have you got something for me?’

  ‘Not directly, ’Arry, but we’ve had reports of dozens of share frauds involving this same Buenos Aires information technology company. We’ve also received complaints from about twenty people who’ve lost a total of some three million euros between them, but there are bound to be others who are too ashamed to come forward.’