Made A Killing (Alex Warren Murder Mysteries Book 1)

by Zach Abrams

  Alex climbed back in the car and noticed the music had finished and the radio broadcaster was speculating about the afternoon's football program. He drove back to his flat and they all changed and picked up the match tickets. They then continued across to Ibrox where, knowing many of the support staff, Alex was able to find a parking spot close to the stadium. They showed their tickets at the turnstile, picked up a programme and found their seats. Then while waiting for the game to start, they enthusiastically discussed Rangers' prospect of retaining the premiership title after their successful start to the season. A win today would add to their lead at the top of the table. They were already nine points clear of Motherwell and twelve clear of Celtic with these two playing each other the following day.

  Within minutes of the game starting, Alex became first irritated and then increasingly infuriated by the behaviour of a middle-aged spectator sitting three rows in front of them. The man was clearly intoxicated, jumping up from his seat and shouting and swearing at the players and the referee in the crudest possible way. Nothing seemed to please him and he made sure everyone knew about it.

  Although he wasn't in favour of the boys being too insulated from the real world, Alex was unhappy with them being exposed to this sort of obscenity. Eventually Alex had had enough,

  “We all came to watch a game of football, not to listen to your ranting. So just keep it to yourself!”

  “Oh yeah! And who's gonna make me?” came the reply from the thug who spun round showing clenched fists.

  “Well, I'm ready,” Alex replied holding up his warrant card while standing up to his full height which, from the lout's viewpoint, was further exaggerated by the tiered seating in the stadium.

  The thug turned back and sat down, doing no more than mumble to himself for the rest of the afternoon. A spontaneous round of applause burst out from around them and, witnessing the pats on the back and the voicing of thanks from fellow spectators, the boys looked approvingly at their father.

  Their enjoyment of the game was increased further when Nikica Jelavik headed the home side into the lead in what was Rangers first real attacking movement of the match. Although being far from their most impressive performance, the game ended with Rangers victorious, winning 3 – 1 and establishing a twelve point lead at the top of the Scottish Premier League. Their fans left the ground happy with the result.

  * * *

  Sandra had not been to this office before. She hadn't even known it existed. She arrived at the modern tower block building on Waterloo Street slightly ahead of her four o'clock appointment. She entered through the revolving door and, after showing her ID at the security desk, was told to take the elevator to the third floor and go to the fourth door along the corridor, labelled suite fifteen.

  Approaching the entrance, she saw the office wall was constructed out of opaque glass bricks and the door itself was heavy figured glass with three separate steel plate reinforced Mortise locks. Her rap on the glass was quickly answered as the door was opened into a very large bright and airy office. All the furniture was modern and fronted in aluminium or beech. There was a scattering of desks, a couple of large tables, a profusion of computer monitors and a bank of filing cabinets. Only two other people were there. Sandra wondered if she had come to the wrong office. The girl who had opened the door looked to be aged in her early twenties. She had very white skin, long jet-black hair and was dressed as a Goth.

  She introduced herself, “Hi, I'm Celia, you must be Sandra. You've an appointment to see Geoff. He's just finishing a call, but go across to his desk and take a seat. He'll be with you in a sec.”

  Celia sat back down at her desk by the door. It struck Sandra as odd the way the room was laid out. It was such a large office and the two people in it were sitting at opposite ends. Didn't they like each other or were they just trying to make use of the space?

  Just as she approached the desk, Geoff turned to face her. He looked to be about her age and was of medium height. He had the broad shoulders and muscular arms normally associated with a swimmer or a rugby player and neatly cropped, sandy-coloured hair. He was clean-shaven with hazel eyes and smooth, even features other than a kink in his nose, which looked like it had been broken at some time in the past, perhaps confirming the rugby playing. His tight jeans were straining to contain his muscular thighs and he was wearing a Rolling Stones' 'forty licks' tee-shirt.

  Sandra blinked a couple of times. This was not what she had been expecting. Having been introduced by Connor over the phone, she'd made an appointment to see someone she'd thought was from the force's financial investigations section. Although she truly hadn't known what to expect, this certainly wasn't it. She'd probably have felt more at ease in a dark dingy office, piled high with paper and old, brown wood furniture and staffed by someone bald, bespectacled, podgy and middle-aged wearing a pin striped suit. She couldn't help herself from staring.

  To add to her discomfort, she was dazzled by his wide even-toothed grin, his eyes dancing with mirth. “Have I disappointed you. You must have been expecting a suit, collar and tie?”

  “No, no,” she stammered showing her embarrassment. “I've just never been to this section before.”

  “You wouldn't have. It's new. Let me explain.” While talking, Geoff was reciprocating by casting an appreciative scan over Sandra's lithe form. “We're trying out an experiment with collaboration from the police, the accountancy bodies and the law society. This office was only set up last month on a trial basis. It's being staffed by some of your people together with secondments from some of the accountancy firms and the legal practices. I'm Geoff Thomson and I'm an Accountant. Christ that sounded like an introduction at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Have a seat and I'll tell you more about it.

  “As I said, I'm a qualified accountant and I work for Ross Marwick's, one of the big four accountancy firms. After I qualified, I worked in insolvency for a while and I really liked it. It gave me a taste for being at the sharp end, running a business, but what I really loved was getting involved in investigations and tracing where the money had gone. I've spent some time with the forensic accounting department too. When this secondment opportunity came up, I leapt at it. You met Celia when you came in. She's a law graduate. We're planning to staff this unit with three accountants, two lawyers and a few of your people, but that will take a bit more time to pull together. For the time being, there's just us and Tony and he's on holiday this weekend. Most of the work will be done in association with the Serious Fraud Office, but where there's time, we want to have greater interaction with CID. Inspector Connor told me about this case on Thursday evening and I said I'd be happy for us to have a look into it and maybe give you some pointers. I picked up the files yesterday. We don't have a lot of time because from Tuesday our time's committed as we're starting on a major investigation working with the Liverpool SFO looking at the Scottish end of one of their cases. That's why I've been working the weekend.”

  “That was good of you,” she replied smiling.

  “Well, what else would I be doing on a wet and windy Saturday? Now I've retired from rugby, at least on a regular basis, I've got so much more free time.”

  Sandra inwardly congratulated her own detective skills.

  “I miss the after match socialising though. Maybe, after we've finished this briefing, you'd like to come out for a drink.”

  Sandra was taken aback. “What? You're asking me out?” She'd only met this guy two minutes ago and thought he was coming on to her. Had she been sending out the wrong signals? No doubt he was good looking and he must be intelligent to have this job, but she didn't feel ready to accept an invitation without knowing him better.

  Seeing her concerned expression, Geoff continued, “Whoa. Wait a minute. There's nothing heavy here. We've had a hectic week and I'm calling it a day after our meeting. Celia and I had already agreed we were going for a beer when we finished and I thought you might like to join us.”

  Now Sandra felt even more embarrassed. H
ad she misread and jumped in too quickly? Or was it really a try on? Sandra had never been short of admirers but she hadn't had too many real boyfriends. When she'd broken up with one a few years back, he'd accused her of being scary and frightening other people away. Maybe he'd been right and she was too guarded, not prepared to give anyone a chance.

  “No it's okay. I was only joking. Anyway, I'm afraid I've still a number of things to do before I finish up. Maybe another time,” she recovered.

  “Fine, we'll take a rain check,” Geoff replied. “Another time it is. I'll not be staying out long myself. I need to get back to relieve my partner. Liz has been home watching the twins all day and she'll be looking for reinforcements.”

  So he's got a partner, Sandra thought, and children. Either he's a genuine guy who's just been looking to unwind a bit before going home, or my instincts were right and he's a bit of a cad. Either way, I'm here on business so let's get on with it. “Well, what have you been able to find out?”

  Geoff pulled a spare chair over to his side of the desk, patted it inviting her to move seats so she'd be better able to see the papers and the screen.

  “As I said before, we haven't had a lot of time but we've been through Stevenson's bank statements and his business records. At first, it looked as if all the records were immaculate. There were invoices and receipts to support nearly every transaction. But when we looked deeper, it wasn't so clear. It wasn't clean at all. It was quite strange too because we looked at the last three years and there seemed to be a major change just over a year ago.

  “In the earlier period, there was an inconsistency where there were a lot of transactions which made large profits, but that was offset by several other transactions which made losses. Sometimes it was when purchases had been made from the same person. With the profitable sales, the associated purchases were quite often made by cheque but most often with the loss making ones, the purchases were by cash or mainly cash and part cheque.”

  “I don't understand. Why would that be?”

  “We had our suspicions but we had to do some research to really find out. We've made a number of sample calls. All the purchases we checked where a big profit was made were confirmed by the seller. A few complained that they'd been robbed on the deal. It was a different story for the ones where a loss was made. We weren't able to confirm the price with any of the sellers. Some knew nothing about the transaction and others agreed the sale but claimed they were paid much less. We looked in detail at the purchase documents and found quite a few had been doctored. Look at this one: it's for a ring that was purchased for fifty quid and it's been changed to two hundred and fifty. Look closely, you can see the pen strokes are different on the 'two.' Then when it was sold it only fetched one twenty. He really made a profit of seventy but the books showed a loss of one hundred and thirty.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Two reasons; one, to reduce his profits so he wouldn't have to pay corporation tax, or less tax, and two, so he could take cash out the business without it showing and again so he didn't pay tax to take it out. It was a limited company. If he was taking money out, he should have been paying income tax and national insurance.”

  “It was pretty well thought out then?”

  “Yeah, I suppose so, but not very sophisticated. It was a pretty amateurish fraud to cheat the taxman and not too difficult to detect if you know what to look for.

  “Most of the sales look kosher. A lot of them are through the shop and he mostly received the money by cheque or credit card, and that didn't give him room for manoeuvre. He sold a bit through the trade too which could stand some closer examination. He sold many items through the auction houses and did some buying there too. He mostly used Great Western Auctions, the place out at Scotstoun, you know, Anita Manning's place, the one that's used on Bargain Hunt?”

  “Oh yes, I like her.”

  “So did he, apparently. He did a lot of business there, and from what I see, that's all completely legit.”

  “You said that was the earlier period and then it all changed, so what happened then?”

  “It didn't all change. Everything that had been happening before continued to happen but all of a sudden a new type of transaction began to occur and quite often.

  “A number of transactions went through that didn't seem to make either a profit or a loss. That in itself wasn't very strange. You don't always know how the market's going to react and you might just want your money back, the way the economy's been, things like antiques can be very volatile. The strange thing here was that they were bought and sold within days of each other and the items were more like commodities, mainly gold and some diamonds. The gold was mostly coins, sovereigns and the like, and the diamonds were all over one carat, so they were investment diamonds and not costume jewellery.”

  “Why was that odd?”

  “To a dealer, items like that have a known price. You wouldn't expect Stevenson to buy them unless he was getting a very good deal, or unless he already had a buyer and would be making a decent margin. But in most cases, the price he paid was on the money. There wasn't any scope for him to make a profit and true enough he would sell them on almost immediately, but at a price that was more or less what he had paid.”

  Sandra's face had a quizzical expression.

  “Maybe it'll make more sense when I tell you that he invariably paid for his purchase by cheque and then sold the items for cash. The receipts all went through the bank even though it was paid for in readies.”

  “So was this some sort of money laundering scam?”

  “Exactly, Stevenson had cash he couldn't account for. From what I've heard, it'll be from his blackmailing scams, and he's converted it into gold and diamonds. Things that can be fairly easily converted back to cash, that are easy to store and that can't be traced, not without a gemmologist's report at least.”

  “Phew, he seems to have had it pretty well tied up?”

  “Yep, it will have worked like a dream, just so long as no one looked too closely at the records. And that's where I came in.”

  “Well, what does that tell us about the murderer?”

  “Nothing really. We have evidence suggesting fraud, tax evasion and money laundering but how to link that to the murder is your department, not mine.”

  “Is there any action we should be taking about the crimes that we've discovered?”

  “That's a difficult problem. You can't prosecute someone who's dead. But then the assets he's accumulated have been derived from illegal activities so we don't want them passing onto his family with his estate. The Procurator Fiscal will need to have a look and HMRC might want to start its own investigation.”

  “What about the coins and diamonds, where do you think he's stored the loot?”

  “Ah! That one's your job too. Having said that, I was also asked to look and see if I could trace what other business interests or properties Stevenson had, so that might give you some leads.

  “I've searched Companies House records and Stevenson's listed as director and owning nearly all the shares of Odds and Ends Limited. He's also listed on three other companies: SS Sales Limited, Steve Scott Antiques Limited and Meg Assets Limited. There was a fourth but that went bankrupt and was liquidated about ten years ago. SS and Steve Scott are dormant companies and Meg is non-trading. It's an investment company and owns some property, stocks and shares. At one time, the shares in Meg were owned jointly by Stevenson and his mother but a few years ago she transferred them, most of them to him with a couple to his sister. She probably didn't want to own them, or more to the point, he didn't want her to own them so it wouldn't affect her entitlement to benefits.”

  “I'm sorry I don't really understand that?”

  “It's all to do with the benefit rules. Stevenson's mother is living in a care home and the charge for that is hundreds of pounds a week, probably about seven or eight hundred pounds. If she has her own money then she has to pay for it but if she doesn't have any money then the C
ouncil pays. It's not quite as simple as that. She's allowed to have some money or assets but if it's worth more than about fourteen thousand pounds then she has to pay.”

  “Really, I thought the Scottish Government had a policy about not having to pay for care for the elderly.”

  “There is a policy but it doesn't cover care home costs.”

  “But if she had assets and gave them away, surely that could be traced and challenged.”

  “That's true, but first the authorities would need to suspect they had a claim and whether the gift was okay would depend on how long ago it was made and if it could be explained as being for another reason.”

  “God, I hadn't realised these things were so complicated.”

  “Count yourself lucky, with an ageing population and limited resources, it's affecting more and more people In past generations, it was a lot more common for elderly relatives to be taken care of by their family, but that's now become very much the exception rather than the rule. Now most folk's lives are so busy and complicated they struggle to look after themselves, never mind having to nurse or care for their parents. With the added problems of greater longevity and near epidemic levels of dementia, the system is straining at the seams and costs are passed on to the families who can afford it whenever possible. Those who have never worked or who've spent or given away their assets get it for free, but any poor bugger who's been cautious and saved to create an inheritance gets it taken away from them.”

  “That doesn't sound very fair.”

  “It's not, but who said life had to be fair. A lot of those smart enough or aware enough do what Mrs Stevenson's done and give away their money or put it in trust.”

  “You sound as if you have some experience.”

  “I do, my grandfather has Alzheimer's and had to give up his house to go into a nursing home a couple of years ago. My parents and uncles had no alternative, the house had to be sold to pay the fees and so far they've amounted to over sixty grand.”

  “Ouch!”