Latent Hazard

by Piers Venmore-Rowland

  Rafi tried to come to terms with what he’d seen. It was absurd. He had never met that man before; he had just wanted directions. The implications shook him. Thoughts flooded through his head. The horrific bombing had taken place on Friday morning. It was now Saturday. There must be hundreds if not thousands of CCTV cameras in the City of London. How did they pinpoint the terrorist meeting him so quickly? OK, the camera was only a couple of blocks away from where the bomb had gone off, but still Rafi couldn’t help wondering whether the police had managed to retrace the bomber’s movements, simply been lucky or been tipped off. It all seemed far-fetched.

  As his circumstances and plight struck home, his brain moved into panic mode. He realised that he was staring at the back of his dark brown hands. He was a secular Muslim, not a fanatical extremist. He surmised that his skin colour, religion and the misinterpreted CCTV evidence put him squarely in the frame.

  Slowly, Rafi regained control of his thoughts. He was in serious trouble. With the new draconian laws, it would be easy for them to hold him in this hellhole with no charges for weeks on end. He looked around at his surroundings: the bed was solid, the floor and walls were bare and there was a slops bucket in the corner. Superficially, the cell looked fairly clean, but there was an all-pervading smell of stale urine and the feel of grime everywhere. It was deeply depressing.

  The stark overhead light gave no warmth and just provided glare. It was getting to him. Its rays penetrated remorselessly into his eyes. He closed them. The light was still there. It was as if the bulb had been doctored to give maximum discomfort. He was tired, but he had to keep his brain working. He had to think, and think carefully. The only logical conclusion he could reach was that somebody had set him up. But what might he have done to make someone go to all that trouble? Nothing in his life, both private and professional, sprang to mind as unusual. At work things had been pretty normal, except for the research Callum and he had been pursuing. So by process of elimination that had to be at the top of the list . . .

  The thud of the cell door caught him by surprise.

  ‘You’re wanted again,’ growled the guard.

  ‘Jump to it you little oik! Time to be on parade!’ he shouted when he noticed that Rafi wasn’t in a hurry to follow him.

  He wore irritability in his craggy face and didn’t try to hide his hatred for Rafi.

  ‘Get up you little sod. I bet they want your balls for dinner.’

  Rafi winced as he was pulled forcefully to his feet and pushed down the corridor to the interrogation room. He was stuck in a nightmare.

  ‘You said that you didn’t know the Bishopsgate bomber, Imaad Wafeeq. So why did he have one of your £20 notes in his pocket when he died? Let’s see you wriggle your way out of that!’ barked Mike.

  ‘Yes, go on!’ said Andy. ‘The £20 note was from the sequence you took from the cashpoint. Three policemen so far have lost their lives and several others are gravely ill. Don’t give me any bullshit! You knew the bomber, didn’t you?’

  Rafi remained silent.

  ‘Playing the innocent, are we?’ interjected Mike.

  ‘Do you think that we are stupid or something?’ said Andy. ‘I am waiting for a reply.’

  ‘Can I have a lawyer?’

  ‘No you bloody well can’t!’ came the retort from Mike. ‘The likes of you forfeit all their rights. You don’t get a lawyer until you’ve been charged, and that could be weeks away.’

  The questions rained down on Rafi – ‘Who else?’ ‘Why?’ and ‘What are they planning next?’

  His lack of helpful answers was seriously annoying them.

  ‘We haven’t got all bloody day. Start talking or we will get real mean.’ Mike’s dark eyes narrowed and stared threateningly, just inches away from Rafi.

  Rafi’s brain was in turmoil.

  ‘Talk!’ ordered Mike threateningly.

  ‘We have two cast-iron pieces of evidence against you. The CCTV footage and the £20 note. Case closed! We keep you here for weeks, break you, get your confession, have the courts lock you up and then throw away the keys,’ said Andy.

  ‘With the evidence we’ve got on you, you’ve become invisible and the system doesn’t give a bloody monkeys!’ added Mike.

  ‘But I’m innocent, I tell you. All I can think of is I stumbled on something at work which upset some people,’ said Rafi.

  ‘Like what?’ snapped Mike.

  ‘Breaking the City rules on takeovers,’ replied Rafi.

  ‘What?’ burst out Andy.

  ‘Bullshit!’ Mike’s manner was becoming increasingly intolerant.

  ‘We want to know about the bomber and what his colleagues are planning next. Not about some poncey City insider dealing,’ said Andy.

  ‘Be very clear there’ll be no respite. We’ll hound you night and day. We will win and you will lose,’ said Mike.

  Rafi felt sick with fear. His stomach churned. What was he caught up in? The evidence against him was impressive and the only explanation he could find was that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to implicate him. All he could think of was the research that Callum and he had been working on, but what the hell was the link?

  ‘Are you going to talk?’ asked Andy.

  ‘Or do we let you rot forever?’ demanded Mike.

  How long would it be before they started getting really rough? Soon, thought Rafi. He sensed their physical aggression bubbling just below the surface.

  ‘Make a start and tell us how you were financing the bomber, Imaad Wafeed,’ said Andy.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ replied Rafi.

  ‘Get real!’ shouted Mike.

  ‘I think I’ve been set up,’ said Rafi. ‘At least hear me out.’

  There was a momentary silence. ‘OK,’ said Andy, ‘but it had better be good.’

  ‘I stumbled upon some information that suggested my employers, Prima Terra, and a group of Luxembourg fund managers were in serious breach of the City takeover code,’ said Rafi.

  ‘Go on,’ said Andy, looking nonplussed.

  ‘Thursday before last, I received a phone call from Callum Burns, a friend who worked as a financials analyst at Landin Young. He is fantastically good at his job and I’ve been one of his best clients. He wanted to talk about Renshaw Smithers, a niche finance business in which my company, Prima Terra, is a major investor, but he didn’t want to have the discussion over the phone, so we met for a drink at a local bar that evening.’

  ‘And?’ asked Mike.

  ‘How much do you know about fund managers?’ asked Rafi.

  ‘They look after other peoples’ money,’ replied Andy.

  ‘At Prima Terra we have £30 billion of funds under management, of which I manage £4 billion of equities. It was quite a bit more, but we too got caught by the stock market crash. Have you heard of the Stock Exchange Blue Book?’ asked Rafi.

  Andy and Mike shook their heads.

  ‘It’s the rule book governing company shareholdings and takeovers, by which as fund managers we have to abide.’

  ‘Obviously,’ said Mike, ‘but how the hell does this relate to the bomber?’

  ‘Callum thought Prima Terra had possibly broken the rules. He said he’d found something very dubious that was being hushed up,’ said Rafi.

  ‘I still don’t see how this relates to the bombing,’ commented Mike, thrusting his jaw forward at Rafi. ‘If you’re taking us for a ride, remember we can make life seriously uncomfortable for you.’

  ‘Callum suspected that Renshaw Smithers was being controlled by unknown offshore investors and wondered if there might be a connection to Prima Terra – the largest investor in the company.’

  Mike raised his arms and was about to cut Rafi off.

  ‘Before you throw the keys away, what’s the harm in hearing me out?’ pleaded Rafi. ‘I spent last weekend trying to substantiate Callum’s theory. To start with it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Then it hit me; all I had to do was look at the companies in which Prima Terra had
large shareholdings – there are just fourteen companies where they have more than 7.5% of the shares. So I checked their shareholders’ registers for the dubious nominee names Callum had identified.’ Rafi paused then went on, ‘There were no matches!’

  ‘What the bloody hell! Why are you pissing around wasting our time?’ Mike thumped his fist on the table centimetres away from Rafi.

  Rafi flinched. ‘Then I speculated that they’d be smart and cover their tracks. So I went through each shareholder’s register with a fine-tooth comb.’

  ‘So?’ asked Mike aggressively.

  ‘I found three more companies that had a large number of untraceable nominee names on their shareholders’ register.’

  ‘And . . .’ prompted Mike, whose short temper was getting the better of him.

  ‘Last Monday morning I gave them to Callum to investigate,’ replied Rafi.

  ‘And . . .’

  ‘I met Callum in a nondescript pub just off Moorgate on Monday evening. He was concerned. He had passed the three shareholder lists to his colleagues. My suspicions were confirmed. Callum’s colleagues had spoken to the companies’ registrars who said that it was all to do with a switch to a new nominee name management business, and they were having a few teething problems. They promised that the lack of information on the owners of these shareholdings would be rectified shortly.’

  ‘So this is a red herring,’ interrupted Andy.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. These shareholdings, when added to Prima Terra’s big shareholding, give them control of these companies and break all the rules. And there has to be a reason why I was set up.’

  ‘Tell us more about these four companies you singled out,’ said Andy.

  ‘Renshaw Smithers and Unicorn Sceptre Finance are niche finance businesses. ESSA is an executive recruitment agency and Dewoodson is a property consultancy business.’

  ‘So what is special about them?’ asked Andy.

  ‘Callum and I couldn’t come up with any reasons why these companies might be worth controlling. They are unexciting and hardly takeover candidates,’ replied Rafi. ‘But there has to be something, otherwise why incriminate me?’ mused Rafi.

  ‘You’re taking the piss,’ said Mike. ‘Sounds to me as if you’re just trying to distract us from your links to the bomber. Bullshit isn’t what we need.’

  Rafi looked at Mike’s frustrated eyes. ‘Whatever I say you’re not going to believe me, are you?’

  ‘Sod off back to your cell. We’ll deal with you shortly,’ said Mike irritably. ‘Your time is running out. We’ll break you and you will want to talk to us very soon.’

  Their lack of interest in his story and Mike glowering centimetres away from him made the knots in Rafi’s guts clench even tighter.

  Fifteen or so minutes later, the door of Rafi’s cell opened. A man in catering uniform entered. ‘I’ve got you some food. Where do you want it?’

  To Rafi’s surprise, the tray fell to the floor. He bent down to pick it up. With the speed and strength of a black belt, the man let fly a kick. It struck home just below Rafi’s left shoulder blade. It was followed by a punch to the kidneys. Doubled up, Rafi slumped to the floor.

  ‘You effing murderer! Prison’s too good for your sort!’ He stepped towards Rafi, who tried to shout. He had to get the attention of the guard but only managed to let out a strangled noise. To his relief the guard stuck his head around the door.

  ‘The nobhead seems to have slipped on ’is food! ’E should be all right soon, when ’e gets ’is wind back. Shame ’e didn’t get to eat it. Still, no doubt it’ll do ’im good to go hungry.’ With that the man left.

  The guard looked at the crumpled body on the floor. ‘You silly ijut! What a waste!’ He turned and pulled the door closed.

  Rafi remained where he was: an untidy heap amongst the food. He was too sore to get up.

  His thoughts went back to his phone call with Callum on the previous Tuesday morning. Callum had been excited, as he had managed to arrange a trip to Luxembourg.

  ‘A couple of meetings have cropped up. I thought it was too good an opportunity to miss! I fly out early tomorrow from City airport and fly back from Amsterdam on Thursday evening. I’m seeing a local REIT. But it gets better: they’ve lent me a car for the drive from Luxembourg to Amsterdam. One of their directors works in Luxembourg, but has a home in Amsterdam and he’s lending me his Porsche. Isn’t that great?’ Callum had said.

  ‘So a bit of a detour via Germany?’ Rafi asked.

  ‘You got it in one. I’ve always wanted to take a Porsche through its paces on an Autobahn without the fear of speed cameras, or blue flashing lights in the rear view mirror.’

  Rafi went cold. How the hell had he managed to forget to tell his interrogators that Callum was dead? In the interrogation room he was acting like a rabbit caught in the headlights. He had to think carefully. When was he going to tell them that Callum had given him a USB memory stick, with details of the shareholder lists and the work that they had done on the companies?

  Rafi was suddenly jolted back to reality. There, standing in the door frame, was the ugly guard, staring at Rafi slumped against the cell wall, surrounded by a sea of cold, inedible food.

  ‘I see you’ve been having fun, you silly little wazzock,’ he said, almost smiling. ‘You’re wanted again.’

  Waiting for him were the two familiar faces.

  ‘You look worse every time we see you,’ said Andy.

  ‘At this rate we’ll need to get a move on,’ added Mike, ‘or you’ll be in no fit state to talk at all.’

  ‘You’re a slimy little bugger,’ said Andy. ‘Explain why you didn’t tell us Callum was dead?’

  ‘Bloody good ploy, if you ask me,’ commented Mike. ‘Stops us checking your story!’

  ‘He was murdered.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ said Mike. ‘The local police say that he was driving a Mercedes hire car and hit black ice. Are you going to tell us what’s really going on?’

  ‘But, he should have been driving a Porsche . . .’ Rafi hesitated. ‘Can I explain what Callum was doing in Luxembourg?’ asked Rafi.

  Andy considered this, then nodded.

  ‘According to a colleague of his at Landin Young, Callum had five meetings in Luxembourg: one with a REIT – real estate investment trust – then a couple of tax advisers, an FCP investment fund and another meeting in the afternoon. The REIT was picking up the tab for the trip. Callum was due to fly back from Amsterdam on Thursday evening.’ Rafi paused. ‘The MD at the REIT had agreed to lend Callum his Porsche. Callum had planned a detour via the German Autobahns.’

  ‘Bloody bollocks!’ burst out Mike. ‘The local police have spoken to the REIT director. Callum phoned him to cancel the offer of the Porsche, as he’d be running late.’

  ‘Good try,’ added Andy, ‘but your story doesn’t fool us!’

  ‘There’s more,’ said Rafi with a touch of desperation in his voice. ‘The afternoon Callum died, he phoned me. He was excited. He said he’d found some proof. He was about to tell me what it was when he was cut off. I tried calling him back but his phone went straight to voicemail.’

  ‘That proves sod all!’ said Andy.

  ‘One of the people he saw was in on the shareholdings’ cover up. I’m sure of it,’ said Rafi. ‘He got too close—’

  ‘If you refuse to cooperate and continue to mess us around, we do have other options,’ said Mike, in a steely voice. ‘We’ve an, er . . . understanding with the Americans. We suggest to them that you’re holding back information that they might find helpful and, magically, through the rendition process you’re whisked away to some godforsaken place.’

  ‘I hear Guantánamo Bay will shortly get its first star,’ interrupted Andy disparagingly, ‘though its rooms are minimalist!’

  The knots in Rafi’s stomach tightened another notch.

  ‘It’s got great sea views,’ jeered Andy.

  Rafi started to speak. His voice was hoarse from the tension
and lack of fluids. ‘If Callum had found out who was running the clandestine nominee names and could prove that Prima Terra was involved, wouldn’t this give them a motive for his murder?’ Rafi was aware that this seemed to have nothing to do with the bombing on the surface, but he had to keep talking about it as he could find no other reason for finding himself in this nightmare.

  ‘Bloody hell! Not that old story again,’ said Mike. ‘Tell us about the Bishopsgate bombing first. We can get back to Callum later.’

  Rafi slumped in his chair and looked away from his interrogators.

  ‘Get real, you uncooperative little sod! You’ve told us the square root of nothing. If you continue to take the piss, remember that no one, I repeat, no one has the ability to come and find you. You have disappeared off the radar screen. There is absolutely nothing anyone can do to help you,’ said Andy.

  ‘You’re deluding yourself,’ spat out Mike. ‘You’re trying to convince yourself that you’re innocent, but in reality you’re guilty – as guilty as hell!’ He looked like a pug that had licked a nettle.

  ‘Look at the bloody evidence,’ said Andy forcefully. ‘The CCTV footage of you conspiring with the bomber and the proof that you gave him money is more than enough. Take this bastard back to his cell while we consider whether Belmarsh is too good for him.’

  Rafi started to panic but did his best to fight back his feelings of helplessness.

  The scene looked more like Gaza than the City of London. In the foreground was the burnt-out shell of the building in which the police garage had been located. The offices above had also been devastated. On the other side of the narrow street, the windows of the 1950s office building had been blown out and venetian blinds flapped in the wind.

  The stage-managed news conference had all the hallmarks of a major media event. The top political reporters and their cameramen were hemmed into the narrow space behind Bishopsgate police station.

  In pole position, with his entourage behind him, strode the Home Office minister towards the prearranged spot in front of the gutted garage. He was a man with a mission. He looked determinedly at the destruction, conscious no doubt that the TV cameras were trained on him. One of the burnt-out police cars had been pulled out of the garage and now would conveniently provide the backdrop for the minister’s meeting with the commissioner of City of London police. On the ground next to the car lay a police helmet in a pool of dark liquid. It gave those watching a stark reminder of the tragic loss of life.