Saskia smiled at the memory.
‘I could have stayed on at school until eighteen, but Dad left school at fourteen—and I was desperate to get on—so I left at sixteen and ended up getting a job as a secretary for the ladieswear buyer for a department store on Oxford Street. And I really enjoyed the work—and the friends I made—and I thought that that was what life was going to be like. Living at home, working in town, being happy. Then, just after I’d turned seventeen, Mum got diagnosed with breast cancer.’
Saskia’s eyes welled with tears as she explained how her mum had promised to fight the illness, but in the end, it had made no difference.
‘By the time I’d turned nineteen, Dad and me had buried Mum in a cemetery just off the North Circular. And Dad was never the same after that. He retired from work and just sat in a chair. He lost weight. He wouldn’t eat. He stopped inviting his friends around. He just shrank, and there was nothing I could do. Mind you, I wasn’t much better. Just getting up and going to work. Just existing. We were like ghosts that year, Dad and me. Both in the same house, but barely speaking. Barely alive. And then the following winter, Dad got flu, it developed into pneumonia, he had to go to hospital and he just faded away. By the time I was twenty-one, I’d buried both my parents.’
Richard was grateful when Camille said, ‘I’m so sorry,’ as he knew from bitter experience that he sometimes sounded sarcastic whenever he offered someone his condolences.
‘Thank you,’ Richard said, nonetheless wanting to get on. ‘But how does this explain how you invested in Aslan’s scheme?’
‘That’s easy,’ Saskia said.
Saskia described how her mum and dad had always lived modestly, but her dad had also put any spare money he had into the stock market. It wasn’t much—he was only a train driver—but it turned out that, over the years, he chose his stocks well. What’s more, although her dad worked by the rough-and-ready Caledonian Road, her parents’ house was in nearby Islington. They’d bought it for a song back in the sixties, but it had gone up in value significantly in the intervening decades.
‘After Dad died, I inherited everything, and by the time I’d sold the house in Islington and Dad’s shares, I discovered I’d just inherited nearly £1.4 million pounds.’
Richard and Camille were impressed, but Saskia ploughed on before she lost her nerve.
‘And Dad had never let on. He’d always been proud of who he was—his working class roots—and I can honestly say I’d never known he had that sort of money. But there I was, aged twenty-one, with the best part of one and a half million pounds, and that’s when I made my first mistake. You see, Dad’s solicitor was an old family friend in Camden and he said that with that kind of money I should go to Coutts Bank in The Strand. They had a special department for what he called wealth management.’
Saskia told the police how she’d felt out of her depth on her visit to the glass-fronted splendour of Coutts. And how she’d got into a tangle with a well-dressed businessman in the revolving doors. He’d introduced himself as David Kennedy, they got talking—and she liked him. He was attractive, witty, self-deprecating.
‘Within the hour, we were having lunch at his club in Mayfair.’
‘He picked you up?’ Richard asked, amazed.
Saskia reddened in embarrassment.
‘He was so charming,’ she said. ‘And he made it sound so easy. His club was around the corner in St James’s, could he buy me lunch—that’s what he said. It’s the least he could do having nearly knocked me to the ground.’
‘And you agreed?’ Camille asked as delicately as she could.
‘This was a different world to me. Coutts Bank? A private club with doormen and oil paintings? I didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘How soon after meeting David did you tell him you’d just inherited one and a half million pounds?’ Richard asked a lot less delicately than Camille had asked her own question.
‘That first day,’ Saskia said. ‘The second martini. It was just after he’d said how he was making a mint from his art-lease business. And he was so charming. So believable. Before the end of lunch, I’d tried to hand over ten thousand pounds to him as my first investment.’
Richard was stunned. ‘You gave David Kennedy ten grand the same day you met him?’
‘Oh no, he was cleverer than that. He turned me down. He said I’d only just met him. I was still emotional after the discovery that I’d inherited so much money. I should wait.’
‘How clever of him.’
‘And it made me all the more desperate to invest. So I met up with him a week or so later, and this time I told him to bring all of the figures with him. They were very impressive. Of course they were. They were made up. But he explained how top-end companies wanted art to put on their walls, and how he paid next to nothing to artists to make canvases with big blocks of colour. But the key thing he told me was that he had to make sure that he charged a fortune to the companies who wanted to lease the paintings. It was reverse psychology, he said. He even called it a confidence trick, that’s how clever he was. After all, if he tried to lease the art at a low price, the big multinationals wouldn’t want the paintings on their boardroom walls, but as long as he kept the prices high—and he wore the right clothes and talked the talk—it was just a licence to print money.’
‘He sounds quite businesslike about it all,’ Richard said.
‘Oh, he was businesslike alright. He was utterly focused when it came to stealing money.’
Richard glanced at Camille, knowing they were thinking the same thing. After all this time of people saying how New Age Aslan was, here—finally—was someone who was prepared to say he had a streak of ruthlessness. And what could prove his ruthlessness more than the fact that he loitered outside swish London banks trying to pick up wealthy single women?
‘But he wasn’t leasing any paintings to anyone. That’s what I found out when his case came to trial. He’d just pretended to be my friend to get to my money. And that’s what hurt so much. I thought he and I had become really good friends.’
‘You fell for him,’ Camille said.
Saskia dipped her eyes in shame.
‘Of course I did. He was about twenty years older than me, but I just loved being with him. And I knew he liked being with me. Or so I thought. You have to understand. He was so glamorous. So rich. I had to see him every couple of weeks, and then, one night—after we’d had another great evening at his club, I couldn’t help myself. I threw myself at him.’
‘What happened?’ Camille asked.
Saskia was full of self-reproach. ‘He was a perfect gent. He said he liked me a lot, but he’d recently started going out with someone else—in fact had fallen in love—and he’d just asked this woman to marry him. It was better if we stayed friends. And the stupid thing was, him turning me down like that just made me believe in his integrity even more.’
Richard and Camille exchanged a look. It was interesting to see just how canny Aslan had been—and just how well he’d understood the psychology of a young woman like Saskia. But then, he’d managed to con two million pounds out of people, it was perhaps no surprise that he’d been so adept at manipulation.
‘Then can you tell me,’ Richard said, ‘how did you manage to hand over so much money?’
‘That first month, I invested fifty thousand pounds in his scheme. Or thought I had. Of course, there wasn’t a scheme, it was all a con—but a few weeks later David told me I’d lucked out on my timing and I could claim my first dividend from the investment.’
‘How much was it?’
‘Five thousand pounds.’
‘An immediate return of ten per cent.’
‘And I was hooked. As he knew I’d be. Three months later, I got another cheque for five thousand pounds. I couldn’t believe my luck, and before I’d even cashed this next dividend—or what I thought was a dividend—I’d written him a cheque for one hundred thousand pounds. That also gave me great returns—or apparently gave
me great returns—and by the time he was arrested six months later, I’d given him half a million pounds. That’s the whole truth.’
Richard and Camille considered Saskia a moment.
‘Didn’t it occur to you that that was an awful lot of money to give to someone to buy paintings?’
‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘Or that there was no way a load of paintings could have generated those sorts of returns?’
‘Nothing occurred to me. And if I’d left it there, maybe I’d have recovered.’
‘But you didn’t?’ Camille asked.
‘No way. Because after he was arrested, I was so angry that he’d betrayed me. So I went to see some fancy lawyers, and they told me I had a good chance of getting some of the money back. After all, the cash David stole from us all was never recovered. It had to be somewhere. So I had a team of forensic accountants working for me—private investigators—and lawyers firing off letters to various off-shore banks and David’s solicitors demanding access to his financial papers.’
‘And all to no avail?’
‘It turns out that the only bigger crooks than criminals are lawyers. Within five years, I’d spent the best part of half a million pounds trying to get back the half a million pounds David had stolen from me. Thank god I had the sense to get a house for myself before I’d completely run out of funds.’
Saskia took a moment to compose herself before facing her final humiliation.
‘But there’s no getting away from it. My dad left me nearly one and a half million pounds and all I’ve got to show for it twenty years later is a two-up, two-down in Walthamstow.’
‘Thank you,’ Camille said, although Richard couldn’t see what his partner was thanking the witness for. After all, they could have wasted a lot less time if Saskia had just told them the truth from the start.
‘You know,’ Saskia said, ‘it took me years to get over it. That what my dad had worked his whole life to achieve, I’d thrown away in a few years. That’s why I told you I’d only lost fifty thousand pounds. Because in my head I tell myself that that’s all I ever gave him. It’s the only way I manage to get up in the morning, I pretend that that’s all I lost.’
Richard decided that he’d allowed Saskia to have too much control of the conversation.
‘Saskia, did you kill Aslan Kennedy?’
Saskia was horrified. ‘No!’
‘But you knew he was David the moment you got here, didn’t you?’
Saskia’s face froze as guilt slammed into her eyes. Richard and Camille shared a quick glance and Richard was briefly thrilled to see that Camille was impressed with him. This was a rare moment indeed.
‘After all,’ Richard said, emboldened by Camille’s approval, ‘you’ve already admitted that you and Aslan had been good friends back in the day, of course you recognised him the moment you saw him. Even including his long hair and white beard.’
Saskia was getting increasingly strung out. ‘I promise you. I only got to the island the night before he was killed—and I didn’t see him when he was inside his office being shouted at.’
‘But you told us you saw him leave the office immediately afterwards,’ Richard said. ‘You told us he looked distressed.’
‘I only saw him for a second,’ Saskia said, ‘you have to believe me. And I didn’t realise he was David Kennedy. I didn’t even realise who he was when I saw him properly for the first time the next morning.’
With his thumb and forefinger, Richard pinched the woollen fabric of his suit just above his right knee and lifted it an inch to try and relieve the heat in his legs. It didn’t seem to make any difference, but it at least gave him a moment to consider what Saskia had just said.
‘I think you’re lying.’
‘I’m not, you have to believe me.’
‘You recognised him the night before.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You recognised him and decided he had to die.’
‘No!’
‘So you got a knife from the kitchen and set it in the Meditation Space. But tell me, where did you get the GHB sedative from?’
‘No—wait, you have to believe me, I didn’t recognise him!’
‘But Saskia,’ Richard said, calmly, ‘if you’re so innocent, why aren’t you telling me the truth?’
‘I am, I promise you. I’ve told you everything.’
‘But you haven’t, because you’ve not mentioned your second meeting with Aslan the night before he was killed.’
Saskia was shocked into silence by this assertion, so Richard continued, ‘Because we know that Aslan chose the people who attended his Sunrise Healing sessions personally, so how exactly did he choose you without you and he having a conversation at some point the night before he was killed?’
‘That’s the thing,’ Saskia said, eager to correct Richard’s misapprehension. ‘The receptionist explained it all to me when I checked in. The list for the Sunrise Healing had already been published and my name was on it even before I’d got to the hotel.’
‘How do you mean, the list had already been published?’ Richard asked.
Saskia got up from her chair and headed over to the cork noticeboard on the wall, explaining as she went. ‘Apparently, each night—just before tea—Aslan wrote up the names of the people he wanted in the next day’s Sunrise Healing in one of those spiral-bound notebooks. She explained that you didn’t have to attend, but that if I didn’t go I’d maybe not get offered a second chance.’
Richard and Camille went over and joined Saskia by the board.
‘Are you saying you found out you had to attend the Sunrise Healing because your name was on a list?’
‘That’s right. The notebook should be here. Oh …’
Saskia trailed off, and Richard and Camille could see that she was pointing at an old nail that was sticking out of the wooden frame of the board.
‘It’s not here,’ Saskia said.
‘It isn’t?’ Camille asked.
Saskia turned to the police. ‘I don’t think so. Maybe I’m mistaken.’
‘But you’re sure it was there the night before Aslan was killed?’
‘There was a notebook. On this nail. A spiral-bound notebook with all of our names written out in blue pen. “The Sunrise Healing” it said at the top. “Aslan Kennedy invites”—that’s how it started, I remember that much, and then it was a list of our names. Mine, Julia’s, everyone’s …’
‘Hang on, you’re saying that the list that chose who’d be in the Meditation Space the morning Aslan was killed was handwritten?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it’s no longer on its nail?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then can you tell me, did you by any chance recognise whose handwriting it was?’
‘I’m sorry. I’d only just arrived—I’ve no idea who wrote the list—I presumed it was Aslan—but it was definitely handwritten. And it was definitely here …’
Richard summed up for all three of them.
‘But if it was Aslan who wrote out the list, then how come it’s now missing? He was hardly in a position to remove it after he’d been killed, was he?’
As Richard was speaking, a couple of guests entered the front door with Rianka. Seeing the police, Rianka finished talking to the guests and then came over to join them. ‘Can I help at all?’ she asked.
Camille said, ‘We’re looking for the notebook Aslan used to announce who would be doing the Sunrise Healing with him.’
‘Well, it’s here …’ Rianka said, indicating the board before she realised it wasn’t. ‘It’s supposed to be here. It’s always here. It’s a little reporter’s notebook. You know, with a curly metal top. You flip the pages over …’
‘But now it’s missing?’ Camille clarified.
Rianka was quite clearly at a loss for words.
‘Then can I ask,’ Richard said, ‘was it always Aslan who chose the people who attended the morning session?’
&
nbsp; ‘Of course. Or rather, he’d ask people first if they wanted to attend during the day—and then he’d put their names up on the list by supper that night.’
‘He didn’t ask me first,’ Saskia said.
‘He didn’t?’ Rianka was confused.
‘No. The first I knew about it was when I saw my name on the list here. Not that the list’s here any more.’
Richard caught Camille’s eye and knew they were both thinking the same thing. Because if the handwritten list was missing, then it had almost certainly been removed because it was incriminating. And that suggested that it was perhaps the murderer who had handwritten the list. Which made sense, Richard thought to himself. After all, they’d been trying to work out why on earth Aslan had chosen only Ponzi victims for the Sunrise Healing, and here was evidence that suggested that perhaps he didn’t.
Maybe it was the killer who’d written out the list that filled the Meditation Space with Ponzi victims the morning that Aslan was killed. And who’d subsequently removed the incriminating notebook afterwards. In fact, Richard realised with mounting excitement, it was possible that if they could find the notebook, they’d be able to identify the handwriting of the list and therefore reveal the identity of Aslan’s killer.
With Saskia’s permission, Richard and Camille went to her room to search for the missing notebook. As Richard looked for it, he couldn’t help but notice that Saskia had regathered some of her composure. If she’d lied to them about anything, she was hiding her nerves well. What’s more, Saskia’s hotel room was so neat and tidy—and she’d brought so few clothes with her—that they were able to establish that she’d not hidden the missing notebook anywhere in only a few minutes.
Then, with Rianka’s permission—and her pass key—Richard and Camille went on to search Paul and Ann’s bedroom. Paul and Ann were down on the beach, so the police were able to work unimpeded—but it took well over half an hour because, although Ann had come on holiday with three suitcases stuffed full of clothes, the suitcases were now empty and their contents were scattered all over the room. But, again, neither Richard nor Camille could find any reporter’s notebook.
A Meditation on Murder Page 14
