by Mick Herron
Jesus, Eliot. Is that the worst that could happen?
The music, having stopped, began again. The farmer’s in his den . . .
At least this one, he hadn’t been listening to while lying in bed this morning, five and a half hours and one hundred years ago.
Gordy looked up at him. ‘Why is the music playing?’ he asked.
He was trying so hard to whisper, it almost came out as a shout.
‘Yes, daddy. Why is the music playing?’
You never heard from one twin without hearing from the other. They lived in stereo.
Gently prising them from his thighs, he sank to a level where he could put an arm round each.
Eee eye addyoh, the farmer’s in his den ‘They don’t want anyone to hear what they’re saying.’
He surprised himself with this. Hush was what he’d been intending; truth just slipped out, the way truth some-times does.
‘Why?’
‘Why, daddy?’
‘I don’t know.’
This truth business could be addictive.
‘Gordy doesn’t know either, daddy?’
‘And Timmy doesn’t know either.’
Well, at least they were all on level pegging. As he looked across at Louise, he could tell something furious was raging inside her; a storm about to break. And with that a stray thought sank a hook into half a memory, dragging it up to the light, and he remembered words exchanged on a sofa while champagne worked its mischief.
I used to work in a bank.
I’m glad you brought that up. I ordered a new chequebook weeks ago.
She had laughed, but with a slight edge to it.
Not high-street banking. This was more your good old, leather-bound merchant variety.
Gordy’s lips were working again, but only the faintest sound was coming out. ‘What’s the matter? Are you okay, Gordy?’
‘Eee eye addy-oh,’ his youngest son whispered.
‘The farmer’s in his den,’ Timmy finished.
He held them tighter, tears pricking his eyes; tears he didn’t want them to see. How was that for wimpishness – he’d stared down a gun this morning, but his sons’ attempts to sing through this unmanned him entirely.
And still a memory continued unreeling; of voices – one of them his – thickened by alcohol, and rehearsing the small talk that was prelude to the main event. Something to get them through this interlude where their glasses remained full.
This was more your good old, leather-bound merchant variety.
(Which wasn’t, Louise reflected even as the words left her lips, quite right. There was precious little leather-bondage round DFM, where the prevailing culture was hi-tech, stainless, broadband – cutting-edge acronym, not polished courtesy; cocaine jag, not brandy snifter. But she wasn’t so drunk she needed to clarify every detail. Which meant she had a better head than Eliot, who was already saying things twice, to be sure she’d got it.)
‘Shuffling currencies in the big money markets.’
‘That sort of thing.’
‘Trading the yen against the dollar.’
Yada yada yada.
She liked him, though. He wasn’t without charm, and outside the nursery whirl – freed from the twin restraints of children and the encroaching working day – seemed younger, happier, and enthusiastic about her company, which was nice. Plus, something devilish had taken hold of her; something partly sex, and partly an urge to kick over the traces; to remind herself that life hadn’t always revolved around the needs of infants. And hadn’t always been lived with a mother on the premises.
Besides, she didn’t want to hear him talk about banking, because he knew nothing about it.
‘I didn’t have much to do with money,’ she said.
‘That’s a disappointment.’
‘I worked –’
‘I don’t have much to do with money either.’ He gazed at his glass; at the bubbles vanishing upward from a seemingly ever-replenishing source. ‘Not as much as I’d like, anyway.’
She waited, but he’d finished.
‘I worked in acquisitions,’ she told him.
‘I’m guessing you don’t mean things like buying stationery or office furniture.’
‘You’d guess right.’
‘Paperclips. Post-its. You know how they invented post-its?’
‘I’m not even sure who they are.’
‘Me neither, but they were trying to invent a kind of glue, and what they came up with didn’t work too well. Stuck things down, but they peeled off again. So some bright spark . . . ’ He lost his thread. ‘Came up with post-its,’ he concluded lamely. ‘Brilliant, really, Put it this way, out of the jaws of a failed glue-making experiment, he snatched a world-conquering item of desk equipment.’
Well, at least he wasn’t talking about banking any more.
Head for the bubbles or not, she couldn’t now reconstruct more of that night’s conversation. And these weren’t the best circumstances for trying to glue memories together, except that moments were being knocked loose in her mind – memory was a web, with any plucked thread here reverberating there . . .
‘It began when he went to Iraq,’ Jaime had said.
Are you the lady?
Well, how many ladies present had had daily contact with unreal sums of money?
That string plucked, a memory came back unbidden. Difficult to nail down in time, but the place was intact: her London flat, which had been a big clean space full of light, with a marina view. Crispin had always been at ease there; it was somewhere, he once told her, where his suits wouldn’t crease however relaxed he got. Which she’d been idiot enough to feel gratified by. Towards the end, Crispin had talked less and less on work-related subjects; had worn, it seemed to her now, a furrowed look whenever the subject of their common employment came up. And at other times had seemed lost in contemplation of unspecified difficulties, though not without a sometime glint in his eye, as if there were light at the end of whatever tunnel his train of thought had entered.
But the particular memory nudging her now belonged to happier days, when Crispin had been open and expansive, and more than likely post-coital.
‘There was a case a couple of years ago,’ he’d told her, ‘in the States. Classic example of fat-finger error. Some clerk was keying the taxable values of properties in some Mid West town or other, and took his eye off the ball long enough to rate a property at four billion dollars instead of forty thousand or whatever it was. By the time anyone caught the error, the notional taxes raised on the property had been allocated in the town’s annual budget.’
‘Did he get fired?’
‘Don’t know. But the point is, money can be conjured out of nothing. Once it’s on the books, it exists. That was real money on their records, there was just no way of collecting it, that was all. And real money had to come off the budgets. Services were cut, probably people laid off. The money only existed for a little while, but its disappearance affected the lives of the local people.’
Louise conceded the story was sort of funny, but only if you weren’t one of the local people.
‘Imagine,’ he’d said. ‘If that could happen by accident, it could happen on purpose too.’
‘How would that help anyone?’
‘I don’t mean in that specific way. I mean money, you could make it. Out of nothing. All you’d need is the right circumstances.’
Which might include, say, setting up a merger with a DFM subsidiary and a Swiss-based but American-owned bank, which . . .
‘Well,’ she’d said, ‘if you ever do. Conjure up a billion out of the ether, I mean. I hope you won’t forget about me.’
. . . was bankrolling a consortium of US building con-tractors, which . . .
‘Course not, sweetheart. I’ll credit you with the inspiration.’
‘Shame that’s not all it takes,’ she’d said.
. . . was tendering for one of the contracts filtering down from the White House Santa-sack for . . .
‘How do you mean?’
. . . the reconstruction of Iraq.
‘Well,’ she’d said. ‘I don’t doubt you could figure out the scheme. But you’d need some pretty impressive technical support to pull it off, wouldn’t you?’
Because Crispin, wired as he was into any number of global big-buck networks, had difficulty changing a plug.
‘Oh,’ he’d said. ‘I’d need some super geek onside. But they’re plentiful, cheap, and you can throw them away afterwards.’
‘Like female staff members?’
‘Exactly like female staff members,’ he said. ‘Except you don’t necessarily use those only once.’
She remembered him shifting against her as he’d said this, or something very like it.
Talking about money often had that effect on Crispin.
This might have been the last time they had such a conversation.
There are a hundred ways accounts can be fiddled . . .
‘I used to be in banking,’ she said.
‘There is bus there, as I reach the bus stop. It say Oxford on the front. And I remember something Miro tell me.’
‘What did Miro tell you? Something about Oxford?’
‘He get very drunk one night. He talk about . . . I do not understand what he is saying. He say that things that hap-pen, they have consequences. He talk about the war.’
‘Iraq.’
‘Yes. And about things that happen there afterwards. I don’t like the war, I am against the war. But I do not know much about what happens since. Miro, he knows. Because of being there. You know why he go?’
The farmer, now, was in his den. Ben could hear the little boys murmuring as much to each other, even as the tape recorder broadcast the information. He said, ‘Yes, I know. He was doing an audit.’
‘I am not sure what this means.’
‘He had a very specific task, Jaime. There was a sum of money – well, there were lots of sums of money, still are – and his job was to follow this particular sum, and find out what happened to it. It was sort of a test case.’
‘Test case?’
This was going to take a while.
‘It was an example, Jaime. This one particular sum of money, among the very many sums of money pouring into, and out of, Iraq – Miro’s job was to discover precisely what happened to it. Whether it was spent the way it was supposed to be spent, or got diverted along the way. And if it was diverted, to find out where and when that happened.’
‘And he had to be there to do that?’
This was the woman, of course – Louise Kennedy. Who seemed to think she had a duty to be heard, just because she was in charge here on ordinary days.
‘Yes,’ he said bluntly.
‘Because I thought a forensic accountant followed paper trails, not –’
‘Which is well and good when the paper can be trusted. Or when the figures are hidden in different columns, or someone’s keeping two sets of books, or any of the hun-dred other ways accounts can be fiddled.’
‘I used to be in banking,’ she said, a tightness in her voice.
‘I know. And the level you were working at, you’re presumably familiar with the way money laundering works.’ Jaime was looking first at him, then at her, like this had descended into a TV show. The thing in his hand was a remote. He could shut them down any time he pleased.
Louise Kennedy said, ‘You’ve checked up on me.’
‘I work for the security services, Ms Kennedy. As has been established already. So yes, you’ve been checked up on. And like I say, you know how money laundering works.’
Listen to him speak, he thought . . . Okay, it was open-ing up now. The outside world was deaf, or as deaf as he could make it. It was just this little crew in here: Bad Sam Chapman was out of the circle.
She said, ‘I’m not an expert. But yes, I’ve attended seminars.’
Eliot looked at her as if she’d just admitted a taste for Morris dancing.
Ben Whistler said, ‘The really serious stuff, the organ-zed crime money, comes in from overseas. Even if it started here in the first place, it rides the carousel through about fifteen different jurisdictions, and by the time it comes home it looks no grubbier than any other truck-load of venture capital. So it’s invested in one of a hundred going concerns, legit businesses established for exactly that purpose, and a shopping mall sprouts in Manchester or a multi-storey in Glasgow. Cash that started life as a drug deal in Marseilles, a bank job in Palermo, or a child prostitute ring in, I don’t know, Bolton, is now bricks and mortar. It’s there. It’s real. It’s a taxable institution.’
‘Your point being?’
‘Somebody invoices you for a water pipe they’ve laid in Amara, and the paperwork’s in order, and it’s three sheets among three thousand, and you’re in an office in London, what do you do?’
‘Okay,’ she said after a while.
‘It’s not like you’re about to drop into downtown Amara and turn on a tap. That’s why Miro wasn’t sitting behind a desk, Ms Kennedy. He was out there turning on taps.’
The spangly guitars were spiralling down into silence.
‘And what happened?’ she asked. ‘Did water come out?’ Ben said, ‘You’re asking if Miro found corruption? Of course he fucking did. It was everywhere he looked.’
They had art.
The first had been faxed, a passport shot: it showed one Miro Weiss, who either took an unflattering photo or was an unflattered man. Everyone looks washed out in those damn booths, but still. Weiss’s hair was thinning, and his face pudgy; his eyes looked like black marbles, and the left-side collar of his shirt poked up. Though no, come to think of it: it was the right-side. It was a photo; you had to reverse the details.
This was the man responsible for a missing quarter billion pounds?
And there was, Malcolm Fredericks knew, no point asking for information from Six, not unless he wanted to know what a Big Issue vendor felt like. Nor was anything sensible coming out of the annexe, unless you were interested in soft-rock versions of nursery rhymes. He turned to the other picture: a police artist’s impression drawn from Carrie Mannion’s memory – a local mother who’d seen the mad bastard wreaking this mayhem on the morning. Who was young, dark-skinned; hair a black and curly mess; eyes brown. His cheeks were stubbled in the way kids thought sexy, and grown-ups a nuisance. And he was wearing either a dark green or brown jacket – like most eyewitnesses, Carrie Mannion was weak on detail: all she’d really wanted to do was grab her kid and get out –
Well Jesus of course she did . . .
He shook his head wearily. Of course she did.
The gun, at least, was beyond dispute. It was a Heckler & Koch – ten-round version – which, before fetching up in South Oxford Nursery School, had belonged to Neil Ashton of Her Majesty’s Spooky Service – currently resident in the John Radcliffe, wired to a lot of interesting machinery. A phone call had established that the machinery was still functioning, though whether Ashton himself would ever breathe, speak or fart again without its assistance remained in doubt. As for his erstwhile partner, there were people you didn’t need to know well to know you didn’t want to know better. Chapman fitted that profile. Hell, he fitted the full frontal.
Artist’s impression in hand, Fredericks glanced up at the chimney stack of the house overlooking the nursery. No way of letting Bain see the sketch; on the other hand, what difference would that make? Bain knew the difference between the good guys and the bad. Only one person would come out of that building with a Heckler & Koch in hand: and if and when that happened, Bain would know what to do.
Target acquired.
Steady.
No target yet.
Steady anyway.
Abird flaps overhead, but Bain’s eyes don’t follow it; DS Bain’s eyes remain glued to the space in front of the annexe door; to the rainbow-crayoned cardboard sign reading The Palace. And Bain is still, very still. Bain could be a statue, though it’s an improbable place to fi
x a statue: next to a chimney block, where pigeons roost and aerials listen. Bain’s there, though. Is part of the skyline’s furniture. A motionless thoughtless figure, an observer might suppose, but ‘thoughtless’ would be wrong; ‘thoughtless’ would be way off target. In the back of Bain’s mind, like in the back of anyone’s, history repeats itself. Conversations are rehashed. Dialogue reconstructed.
There’s someone we think you ought to talk to.
How are you sleeping?
Fine, thank you.
No dreams?
Everybody dreams.
And yours, are they bad dreams? Nightmares?
Do I wake up screaming? No.
How about crying. Do you wake up crying?
No.
Anxious? Raised heartbeat?
This is starting to sound like a warning label on a cold cure. No, none of that. I sleep fine. I dream normal dreams. I wake when the alarm goes off.
What are normal dreams like?
Are you kidding me?
You said you dream normal dreams. I was wondering
what you meant by that.
Jesus . . .
[Pause.]
I’m here to help, you know.
Maybe I don’t need help.
You shot a man.
I remember.
He died.
I remember that too.
And you’re telling me you have no feelings about this.
Of course I’m not. Of course I have feelings about it.
And what are they? Precisely?
What they are, precisely, is that I wish it hadn’t hap-pened. I – look, do you mind if I call you doc?
‘Doc’?
Yes. This is so like being in a movie, it doesn’t feel right, me not calling you doc.
[Pause.]
Call me that if you feel the need.
It’s not a need. I’m just entering into the spirit of the thing.
Then go right ahead.
Thank you. What my feelings are precisely, doc, is that I wish it hadn’t happened. But what I also feel is, I was doing my job. Now, we both know how things turned out. The gun that man had was useless. He could have battered someone to death with it, but pulling the trigger wasn’t going to hurt anyone. But I didn’t know that at the time, doc. At the time he was an enraged man with a gun, who was holding his own family hostage and looked like he was about to commit murder by gunshot. Doc. So I did what I was trained to do, and followed the order I was given. If he hadn’t picked up that gun, I wouldn’t have had to put him down.
