The Dirty Game
Long Time Dying 9
Solomon Carter
Great Leap
The Dirty Game – Long Time Dying 9
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Great Leap
Digital Edition May 2015
Copyright © Solomon Carter 2015
Solomon Carter has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Edited by OnlineBookServices.com
This book is a work of fiction and except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this e-book publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review, without the prior written permission of the author.
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The Long Time Dying series
by Solomon Carter
Thrilling adventures featuring Eva Roberts & Dan Bradley, private detectives
Series list - in reading order
Out With A Bang
One Mile Deep
Long Time Dying
Never Back Down
Crossing The Line
Divide and Rule
Better The Devil
On Borrowed Time
The Dirty Game
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One
Alabaster’s office was a broad rectangular room filled with open space. Its emptiness smacked of somewhere which had once been a far busier place to work. The central swathe of empty room must once have been full of desks, with electric typewriters clacking away. That was how Eva imagined Alabaster had been once upon a time, with her client Jim Greer a younger man, a prince in a business kingdom. Now as she sat at one end of the green room with Jim Greer, the energetic old wizard pulled up spreadsheets onto his screen with his fingers dancing over the keyboard. Only three other desks occupied the room. One belonged to a man who clearly drank too much. He had a red face and a quiet demeanour and looked way too serious. She knew by looking at him this man had never cut an important figure at Alabaster. Life and alcohol had gotten the better of him. This assessment enabled Eva to consider him as a possible suspect in the case of Alabaster’s missing money. The tubby woman with the long tied-back black hair didn’t seem to like Eva on instinct. When her eyes moved Eva’s way they were accompanied by a scowl. Eva was used to this. And in reaction Eva automatically ruled this woman a possible suspect as well. Then there was Bruno, the big olive skinned man in the executive power chair at the far end of the room. Bruno wore a white shirt, a broad multi-coloured kipper tie, and always had a phone to his ear. When he spoke it was always loudly and with a big hearty laugh, and when he spoke by phone, it was always in a foreign language. Yes, Bruno was an able speaker of French, Italian and Spanish and maybe more. These were the ones Eva had heard him speak first hand. Jim Greer had known all of these people far too long to be impartial. All of them, he said, without a shadow of a doubt, were innocent of moving and removing sizeable sums of cash from Alabaster’s accounts. Eva had to suspect them - every single one of them. The only one she ruled as innocent was Jim Greer himself. The man was trusting to a fault, friendly without seeking friendship, and he was lively and cared about this company as most people cared for their spouses. Eva knew all this already. Jim Greer was the only definitely innocent person in the room. As for the rest, time would tell. Alabaster was the first proper fraud case Eva had taken on since business dried up. She was determined that her business would pivot back to life because of success in this case. But for that to transpire two things needed to happen. She needed to solve the case well, and solve it quickly. And once they’d prevented further loss, Eva needed the word to spread quickly that the agency was back in business, ready to tackle anything that came its way. She knew the case was important to Dan too… but not right now. The murder of his friend Laura, the prostitute who used The Refuge food bank and soup kitchen, had jarred Dan back into vengeance mode. Eva loved Dan and they were back together. She just hoped this new horror wouldn’t consume him as others had before. If it did, she would have to be strong enough to keep the agency afloat alone. She’d done it for a year before, but things were very different now. She’d endured too much to work that way…. In fact, when Eva thought about the number of innocent people in Alabaster’s office, she smiled bitterly, thinking that she could no longer put herself among them. Too much had happened in the last few weeks. There was too much bad blood. Too many bad decisions. Too much pain. Yes, as much as she wanted to be, Eva Roberts could never think of herself as innocent ever again.
“See here,” said Jim Greer, pointing to the screen, “the missing amounts this time are four thousand two hundred from this column, and yet the following month sees a shortfall in the exchange rate accounting for six thousand. The sums are never consistent Miss Roberts, and they move around. I tried to track and see if somebody was simply playing a game of moving money around, creating a puzzle for me to solve. The idea was actually helpful, because it made it a kind of challenge.”
“So what did you find?” asked Eva, making notes the old fashioned way, with a pad and pen.
“I found some money was moved from one cost head to another. One from building materials to licences. This sum was split in two and moved again, another month appearing in a tax account. It’s like chasing a fox through the accounts and never quite catching it. If it wasn’t so infuriating, it would actually be quite fun.”
“So you kept looking…?”
“The money was gone, of course. Ultimately, the money had been stolen in each case.”
“And the sums were different each time?”
“Absolutely. There is no pattern here whatsoever. The total sum missing is seventeen thousand four hundred and forty pounds across three months. As you can see, your fee, should you find them, will actually prove very inexpensive.”
“But why not go to the police, Mr Greer? You could save even more money that way?”
“I’m not the state’s greatest advocate, Miss Roberts. I’m a businessman you see. As a business woman yourself you are far more incentivised to fix this than some fat overpaid, lazy civil servant in a uniform. Your success depends on our shared success. I know you’ll fix this before any police case could bring anyone to book.”
And if it turned out to be an inside job, Alabaster didn’t have to prosecute unless they wanted to. But Eva Roberts was far too polite to say it.
“Do you still think Susan and Bruno are innocent, Mr Greer?” she waited and scanned his face. It flickered with emotion, but nothing that gave away any inside knowledge.
“These people are more family than employees of this firm. How can I ever believe they would ever cause us harm? No, for me it’s an outside job, Miss Roberts. But maybe, as a professional, you could prove me wrong.”
Was that a hint? Or just a throw away comment by an old man who fizzed with too much energy and humour. Either way, she had to investigate them along with the man with the sad red face. She would start with him. Unhappiness was always a clue to something wrong, though not always the cause of the crime. “His name is?”
“David Walters. A most unassuming chap. It can’t be him.”
“It has t
o be someone, Mr Greer.”
“Yes it does. Call me Jim, Miss Roberts.”
“Then I’ll start with him.” She declined to say Mr Greer’s first name.
“Mr Walters, can I have a word?”
“Um. Yes, sure.” She took the man to an old and dated boardroom with a brown veneer dining table and sculpted-backed chairs. The room looked like it could have been in a nineteen-eighties sitcom with shoulder pads and yuppies. Walters sat down and Eva sat opposite him.
“Tell me what you know about the missing money, Mr Walters.”
“It’s not me, if that’s what you mean. I only know what Jim and Bruno have mentioned at our staff meetings. A lot of money has been going missing, being shifted around the accounts like nobody’s business. Now that’s not even something I could do. I handle paperwork, I handle post, but I don’t have any dealings with the accounts.”
“But you are good with numbers?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Your work deals with invoices and paperwork and exchange rate receipts, does it not?”
“Yes, but I don’t have to read them. I don’t even have to understand them. I open the letters, and dole out the contents to those who need them. It’s a simple business for a simple man.”
She looked at him, assessing his last words. “Are you happy here, Mr Walters?”
“Happy enough. I know I haven’t scaled the heights of life, if that’s what you mean. But Jim and Bruno have been good to me. I have worked here for donkey’s years. I wouldn’t rock the boat believe me.”
She looked into his eyes, and saw someone with deep problems outside of work. The job was his security and his sanity. “No, Mr Walters. I don’t think you would rock the boat, would you? So, who do you think it is then?”
David Walters shrugged. “Nobody here, I can tell you. Think about it. Jim Greer has been here virtually his whole life. Susan wouldn’t know how to live without the place and Bruno – this is his palace and his kingdom. Mark my words, Miss Roberts. It’s none of us lot.”
“I’m marking those words, Mr Walters, mainly because Jim Greer has said the very same. I’m expecting to hear them again from Susan and Bruno.”
“And you will, Miss Roberts. Only because it’s true.”
“We’ll see. Criminals always leave evidence, Mr Walters. Especially when they are trying their hardest not to.”
“You’ll catch him then.”
“We will. Thank you, Mr Walters.”
Eva showed him to the door, then followed him through it. She wasn’t looking forward to the interview with Susan, but it had to be done. She went up to the rotund lady’s desk and the woman frowned, stood and followed her without comment. The interview was brief. Eva went through the same questions and had no reason to doubt the woman’s answers on the surface. After all, Susan Bocastle was an administrator. She worked mainly with filing, and the written word, and had little or nothing to do with numbers. The interview was so cold, though, Eva decided to run it in stages. Even with all the coldness, Eva was pretty sure the woman wasn’t involved. But Bruno? Bruno was the MD. He held the purse strings and was already very well paid. It didn’t seem likely to be him. Eva had to wait a half hour before the big olive faced man came off the phone. He joined her in the boardroom and sat down at the head of the table in his customary seat.
“Yes, Miss Roberts. How can I help you?”
“You can help by telling me as much as you can about this missing money business.”
“Of course.” The man steepled his fingers and leaned back in his chair.
“It looks like money laundering to me, but I’m no expert. But there are some similarities. First of all the sums are being taken and then passed between different sets of accounts. Apart from attempting to cause confusion, it's hard to understand the purpose for the moves.”
“Maybe confusion is all they want to achieve.”
“Maybe. But don’t money launderers try to disguise the origin of money by moving it around like this?”
“Yes. Between different bank accounts, usually, and through spending and selling. But this is all in-house. This is moving money between headings on a spreadsheet. That’s what suggests to me someone in-house has done this.”
“In-house? But that only leaves a few of us.”
Eva held her gaze on the man’s beige-brown eyes. “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?”
“But only Jim has that kind of knowledge and ability and Jim is no thief. He is the one who commissioned you. The suggestion that it could be one of us is preposterous but you could only realise that if you had worked here a while.”
“You’ve said what everyone else here said. If I was a sceptic, Bruno, I might think you’d all worked together and taken a chunk each…”
She smiled, but the man didn’t follow suit. “But then we would never have hired you, would we?”
“There is some logic in that.”
“Do you need me now, or can I get back to work? I have a stack of calls to make.”
“Don’t you have the same knowledge and access to the company accounts as Jim Greer?”
The man’s face turned to fully face Eva.
“Yes, I do. But Jim is the expert and the one we pay. I don’t do more than my job, Miss Roberts, because my job is demanding enough.” Bruno stood from his chair. “I didn’t do this so rule me out and stop wasting both of our time.”
“I’m sure I will soon. In the meantime I have a process to work through. You’d prefer I was thorough, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course. But I’d really rather you were correct. See you later on, Miss Roberts.”
Bruno left the room pulling his braces into shape and playing with the knot of his tie. In her notes she underlined Bruno and Susan as possibles, and wrote ‘awkward squad’ beside both names. Beside David Walters she wrote ‘unlikely.’ Beside Jim Greer she wrote ‘possible but unlikely.’ So far Eva had a whole lot of nothing. This case was like trying to hold water in her hands.
Before she had finished her notes, her phone started ringing. She picked it up, saw Dan’s name on the screen and answered the call.
“Hi Dan.”
His tone was quick and excited. Eva sat back in the boardroom chair to listen.
“I’ve been asking some questions around town. I knew a couple of Laura’s friends. Polly and Sam are the two working girls she spoke about the most. I asked them independently if they knew who Laura’s last tricks were. The girls said they knew a couple of them. They both came up with the same descriptions. I’d say we must be getting close to the killer already.”
“That’s good work Dan. Are you sure you’re okay? You’re sounding very fired up?”
“Fired up? I do my best work when I’m fired up, Eva. You know me. But listen, this investigation needs more than balls and elbow grease. If these bastards are the ones who hurt Laura I’ll lose it, Eva, I know I will. I can’t promise I won’t crush them the moment I see the guilt in their eyes.”
“That’s not how we do this, Dan.”
“She deserved a second chance, that’s all. We all deserve that, right?”
“But we can’t go down the eye for an eye route Dan, not if you want to stay out of prison. You’re not Judge Dredd, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right. I’m not. So do me a favour and drive down here before I start dispensing justice.”
“Dan, I’m working here, like we said I would. Like we said we both would, to make this business work.”
“And we will. But Laura was killed, Eva. They cut her throat. I can’t let this go until it’s finished…”
Eva nodded. “Okay,” she said just as Jim Greer walked into the boardroom. “Just hold tight. I’ll be there soon. Just don’t do anything else until I get there, okay?”
“Exactly. I need your cold rational head here to keep me in check. See you soon.”
“And I need to get a result here too, Dan. See you in twenty minutes.”
She hung up, feeling under
pressure from both ends. She sighed and put on a business-like smile.
“How’d you get on?”
“Oh. They all said what you said, Mr Greer.”
“Jim. Call me Jim.”
“Fine. They all said nobody in this office could possibly have done it.”
“So? What next?”
“Right now, I go back to my office and compile my notes. I’ll also need those accounts to look at, Mr Greer.”
“Jim. Yes, you can have those. I need a result here, Miss Roberts. If it’s not any of us, there must be a way you can find out who it is.”
“Oh, I’ll find out. I just have a few things to attend to first.” Eva smiled and picked up her coat. She had to leave now if she was going to get back to Southend before Dan clumped someone. She was going to meet Dan near The Refuge. Once again, because of Dan, a paying case would have to wait. If she delivered the goods on the Alabaster case, they could be back in business. But if she left Jim Greer hanging, they would not get their fee and the only word of mouth coming from Alabaster would be bad indeed. Alabaster had to pay. If Alabaster paid more work would come, Eva was sure of it. If it wasn’t for the revival of love in their tempestuous affair, Eva would have stayed right where she was in Alabaster’s boardroom until the answers appeared. But love and fear for Dan sent her home. Now she would have her mind in two places at once – with Dan to help him solve this Laura mess before he hurt someone, and in Rendon with Alabaster’s missing thousands.
But when she parked the Alfa in Southend, she found a text waiting on her phone. Dan hadn’t listened to her plea for him to wait. His text said ‘gone to see Vic Norton. In the Sutland Arms’ Eva dropped the phone in the passenger seat and started the car as quickly as she could. “You’re a bloody fool, Dan!” she said to no one. She turned the car round, and put her foot down. She had to find Dan before he snapped Vic Norton in two.
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