The Property

by Catriona King

  He rose sharply to his feet.

  “OK, we need to find out more about this incident. At a minimum who the female caller was and why she called. Aidan, depending on whether Davy needs Mary tomorrow, I want you and Annette to take her with you to see Jackson Hardy in the morning and then I want the three of you to pursue this case at the Intelligence Section and identify the people involved.”

  He saw Kyle’s mouth opening to object and waved him down. “I recognise that you and Andy were involved here first, so, once Aidan’s identified the two players here, he can interview the woman and you and Andy can take the man, but I need to know who he is first. This was a sealed case, so I’ll have to clear this with the Chief Constable, on the basis that it’s essential to rule them in or out of our murder enquiries. So no-one speaks to anyone tomorrow until I say so. Understand?”

  There were clear nods from everyone but Kyle, and it earned him a hefty shove from Liam.

  “Can you never do anything with a smile, Spence?”

  The smirk he got in return said that Kyle could do him damage very cheerfully. Craig knew it was the closest to agreement that they were going to get so he motioned everyone back out on to the floor and picked up the briefing where he’d left off, ignoring the rest of the team’s curious stares.

  “Right, before we finish up. Davy, what else have you got for us?”

  The analyst responded by tapping a key on his PC, causing a slide to appear on the screen by Nicky’s desk. On it was a list of the issues that Craig had given him to research the day before, and another tap made the first point, ‘Build of The Howard Tower Hotel’ turn red.

  “OK, we checked into The HTH, built and opened in oh-seven, and w...we know the land was bought by a small consortium made up of two Pakistani brothers, Dalir and Kamran Barr, and a Saudi partner called Farshid Lund.”

  As the three men’s names appeared Ash stared at them, as confused about something he’d noticed as he’d been the day before. This time he made a note to check it out.

  Davy tapped again and a list of building associates appeared.

  “The sales agent, architects, surveyors and building contractors for the purchase of the DoE site and its development into The HTH are listed here. I can show you the list of who did the design, décor and furnishings as w...well if you like?”

  His glance at Craig was met by a shake of the head so he continued with his report.

  “I’ve got similar info for The Monmouth Consortium who bought the site from the Barrs this year, but the problem is that until we know what we’re looking for, w...we can’t narrow these down to get anything useful, short of doing basic background and criminal checks on everyone.”

  He looked at Craig hopefully for a steer. The detective gestured to give him a minute to think, and after a pause during which people fidgeted and rustled paper, he finally responded.

  “OK, Davy’s quite right that we need to narrow the search fields here, so I’m going to list a few things first, after which you can call out any suggestions.”

  He turned towards the screen. “Right, I want background and criminal checks on the main names in each of the companies: architects, surveyors, etcetera, who were involved in the sale and purchase in oh-seven, plus the company board of The Barr Group. In this year’s sale and purchase by Monmouth, check out the person leading from the Barrs’ side and Monmouth’s agent and surveyor. You mentioned a politician involved in Monmouth, check out him and the board, although Monmouth is much less important than The Barr Group if you need a steer on priorities. Is all that possible with just you and Ash, Davy?”

  Davy shook his dark head. “Not if you expect it tomorrow. But if I could have Mary and Annette for another day?”

  Craig made a face; he needed Annette in the field just as much as she needed to be there. He cast a glance around the group and found his solution.

  “You can have Mary. And Ryan, you’re just reading court reports, aren’t you?”

  The sergeant smiled. “Happy to help out. I’m not a computer expert, but I can handle basic searches and checks.”

  “Good. Does that work for you, Davy?”

  The analyst’s, “Yes” was almost drowned out by a loud suggestion from Liam.

  “Gossip columns.”

  Several questioning eyebrows rose and Annette spoke for all of them.

  “What do gossip columns have to do with this discussion?”

  Liam gave a tut. “Keep up, Inspector. The boss said if anyone had suggestions to call them out, so I just did.”

  Craig stifled a smile and motioned his deputy to explain.

  “Well, I was thinking. How do millionaires, or billionaires even, go about buying and selling places? I bet they don’t just stroll into the nearest estate agent’s and ask them what they’ve got.”

  Ash corrected him.

  “They buy through commercial agents, not estate agents.”

  Liam tutted again. “Estate, commercial, I still can’t see old Kamran Barr strolling in there himself, can you?”

  Craig was starting to see where he was heading and motioned him on.

  “So… either Barr has a lackey who does all that for him, but I’m betting the really choice land or properties never even make it to the advert stage, or… big business types have a sort of grapevine where things that are coming up for sale are passed on by word of mouth.”

  Craig nodded thoughtfully. “So, when you said gossip columns you really meant grapevine.”

  “No… well... yeh… maybe, but my point still stands. It’s all gossip, just business gossip between millionaires-”

  Annette interrupted him again, this time more hostilely, still smarting from his, “keep up” taunt.

  “And exactly how would that help us here?”

  Davy concurred. “I can’t see it either.”

  Liam repeated his intolerance and widened its aim.

  “Ach, you’re all thick. The Barrs decided to sell The HTH just as it was making money, so we know there’s something dodgy going on with the business. By the way, who was looking into all that?”

  Ash sighed meaningfully. “The tax stuff’s on my list, I’m not sure who’s looking at the re-”

  Davy cut in.“We’re coming on to that in a minute.”

  Liam carried on.

  “So anyway, what if when the Barrs decided to offload the hotel they’d wanted it all kept quiet? Not too much scrutiny for some reason, like maybe not alerting the taxman or getting caught for money-laundering? That could mean they didn’t use any sort of agent, just did the whole thing by word of mouth. But the money columns of newspapers often mention whispers of sales and takeovers that they’ve heard about; that’s what makes the stock market so volatile. Such and such being bought out, such and such selling or downsizing. So... I was wondering whether there might have been any gossip like that mentioned in the past year or so in the local papers about the Barrs selling, just for background info like.”

  Craig put his surprise at his deputy’s knowledge of the world of high finance to one side and focused on his suggestion.

  “Actually, that’s not a bad idea, Liam, but not just on the sales gossip issue.” He looked at his analysts. “It could be worth seeing if any dirt is available on the Barrs over the past, say twelve years. The sort of stuff that mightn’t register on a criminal or background check, but could be buried somewhere on the internet.”

  Mary’s hand shot up. “I’m good with gossip.”

  Only monumental restraint prevented Nicky making a dig.

  “If Davy’s OK with you doing it, then that could work. Davy, it needs to cover business and financial gossip and other rumours as well.”

  “Fine. I’ll set the parameters and we can do it tomorrow.” He gestured at the screen. “Anything else on that point, chief?”

  “Yes, look into the surveyors on both sides and Leonards Construction especially, please.”

  The analyst smiled. “That leads me nicely on to my s...second issue.” T
he next point on the screen read ‘Fax’, and once again Davy turned it red.

  “OK, Xavier Ross said he received a phone-call from the DoE saying that the cellar had flooded and needed to be filled in, but when I contacted the civil servant at the DoE who was leading the s...sale he was adamant that he hadn’t made it. I then contacted the phone company and they confirmed that the call had come from an extension inside the DoE building. Then Ross said he’d received a fax from the DoE’s surveyors on their headed notepaper to confirm the flooding, but they say they didn’t s...send the fax, and after checking it seems the fax also came from inside the DoE building, and both the call and fax were made from two different offices after the building had been vacated. The phone-lines for both w...were reallocated to other Stormont departments after the DoE building was sold, faxes aren’t used now and the phone handset itself has long been replaced, so we’re at a dead end there for evidence.”

  Craig shook his head. “Except that we’re now sure that both call and fax came from two different offices within the empty DoE building.” Something occurred to him. “Were they open-plan offices by any chance, Davy?”

  “Yes. Each with about ten desks in them. How did you know?”

  “Because that’s what I would have done. Called from two different offices that’d had multiple occupants when people had worked there, to prevent us from drawing an obvious association between the communications and any specific individual.”

  Davy knew he was about to regret his next question, but he felt compelled to ask, “Do you w...want us to look into all the people who’d worked in those offices, chief?”

  Craig smiled. “Thanks for the offer, but no. It could take days and yield nothing more. We already know the sender was someone associated with the DoE and they were afraid of being ID-ed. That’s why they tried so hard to mask the exact origin of the communiqués.”

  He turned to Ash. “You were checking out break-ins etcetera when the building was empty. Check whether the offices that the fax and phone-call came from were broken into, please. If not, that means someone opened their doors with keys.”

  “I can answer that now, chief. There were no broken doors or locks at the DoE.”

  “OK. So whoever it was had keys.”

  Davy was about to restart when Ash spoke again, seizing the chance to give an update. “Sorry, can I just add. Farshid Lund travelled to Belfast once in oh-seven, but not before or since-”

  Liam cut in. “To view his new hotel investment probably.”

  “And Dalir Barr hasn’t been here since oh-eight.”

  Craig frowned. It meant something he was sure, but he had no idea what.

  Liam added. “Back to the keys. We know that the day and night-guards would have had sets, or shared one, and I’m betting old Jackson Hardy held on to a set as well. He looked like the type who’d belt and brace everything.”

  “Aidan, check that with him when you interview him tomorrow, please. Liam and I will ask Tanner. Davy, do we have answers on whether the Barrs got compensation for the loss of the cellar space yet, or if Leonards got paid for Kelly doing the work to fill it in?”

  By way of response the senior analyst tapped again, and his third point ‘Finance’ appeared. Under it fell the answers to what Craig had just asked, plus questions around why the Barrs had sold a business that was just beginning to make them money.

  “Finance isn’t my forte, chief. S...So if anyone here understands the ins and outs of money-laundering, fraud, whatever, I’d be grateful for the help.”

  They were all shocked to see the perennially broke Andy raise a finger, but only Liam gave his surprise voice.

  “You can hardly even afford a pint!”

  Craig shook his head. “That’s his personal business, Liam.”

  Unoffended, the twice-divorced father merely shrugged.

  “That’s maintenance payments for you. Divorce costs. But I worked in the Fraud Unit for a couple of years as a sergeant, so I can find my way around a set of books if that’s any help?”

  “Thanks, Andy. If you could find a few hours tomorrow afternoon to help Davy that would be great.”

  Davy interjected. “Mainly on the big stuff if that’s OK. You can see from the slide that we’ve already confirmed the Barrs never got compensation for their loss of square footage in the cellar, and Leonards got stiffed on the bill for filling it in. The bogus call and fax obviously came from s...someone but nobody seems to have any idea who.”

  Craig frowned. “Who did the Barrs and Leonards send their invoices to?”

  “The DoE’s surveyors, who they thought were organising everything, but as before they s...said they hadn’t ordered the work and refused to pay.”

  “Our anonymous faxer and caller stiffed everyone. Anything else there, Davy?”

  “Just one last point.” The word ‘Flood’ lit up in red. “Ash, do you want to take this one?”

  PT Barnum rose to his feet and then realised that it wasn’t strictly necessary, so pretending that he’d just been adjusting his chair he sat down again.

  “Right, the supposed cellar flooding. I checked with the water company, several gas and electric companies and the fire service, all people who might have been called in to do checks or help if there’d been a flood, especially in a government building. Civil servants are pretty anal about health and safety things.”

  Craig edged forward on his chair. “And?”

  “And nothing, chief. Not a peep. There’s absolutely nothing to say that that cellar ever flooded, or was drained at any point. The DoE has no records of even knowing about it.”

  Craig thought for a moment. “OK, so, if we’re correct in who actually did fill it in-”

  John spoke for the first time in a while. “Who was that, Marc?”

  “We’re not positive yet, so I wasn’t going to discuss this till tomorrow, but I suppose I can tell you all what we’re thinking. For various reasons that we don’t have time to go into now, Liam and I believe that Brian Tanner, the DoE’s caretaker stroke day-time security-guard for the building, and Dean Kelly, the foreman for both this new construction and The HTH construction in oh-seven, may have been involved in filling in the cellar. I emphasise may there. We won’t know anything for sure until we interview them tomorrow.”

  He saw Ryan about to ask a question and raised a hand to halt him. “That’s all for now, sorry.” Then turning to Liam he added, “But if the cellar didn’t actually flood, then why fill it in at all?”

  Liam scoffed. “That’s easy. Like I said before, it was to hide something. And that could range from the bodies to something else they just didn’t want found.”

  Craig nodded. “OK, let’s not speculate on what that something might have been, because Doctor Marsham has begun examining the debris from the cellar so hopefully we’ll have some real evidence to go on soon, but everything we’ve heard could put Brian Tanner in the frame for the phone-call and fax to the surveyor. He had access to all the offices for months while the DoE was vacant.”

  “Plenty to ask the wee scrote tomorrow then.”

  Craig looked at the clock, stifling a yawn. “Right, it’s late, but just before we finish up. Davy, we speculated that a body could possibly have decomposed and risen upwards through the cellar filling, but John will explain to you why that isn’t the case.”

  “I’d be interested to hear the biological reasons against it. The structural engineer at Queen’s that I spoke to already told me it was unlikely.”

  “Fine. John, I’ll leave it with you to enlighten Davy on that.” Craig rose to his feet. “That’s it for tonight. You all know what you’re supposed to be doing tomorrow, so get on with it and we’ll brief at six again.”

  He was walking towards his office when he was stopped by the sight of Nicky’s anxious face as she stared at her mobile phone.

  “Is something wrong, Nicky?”

  She sighed wearily. “Jonny’s not coming home until late.”

  “He’s sixteen, a
nd teenagers do that, I’m afraid.”

  She gestured to a box at her feet and her next words were almost a wail. “But it’s his birthday and I’d got him a special cake. I don’t know what to do with him nowadays, I really don’t. He’s so wild and disrespectful that him and Gary almost came to blows the other night.”

  As she began gathering her things to leave Craig moved in closer and lowered his voice.

  “Is there anything I can do to help, Nick? Do you want me to have a word with him?”

  Not that his father hadn’t he was sure, but sometimes hearing the same thing from a policeman had a sobering effect.

  The PA shook her head, glancing away again so quickly that Craig couldn’t be sure whether he’d seen tears in her eyes.

  “Thanks, sir, but Gary will do it. I’m just disappointed I suppose, when we had a little party planned for him and all.” She gave a exhausted shake of her head. “I’ll get over it.”

  Craig rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment and then turned to enter his office, realising as he did so that he might have all that teenage trouble to come.

  ****

  London. 8 p.m.

  “That stupid bastard! After all that money and effort, the cops are going to find out everything!”

  The agent pushed back his chair and swung his feet up on to his high oak desk to listen to his call, making sure to avoid his blotter as he did so; he couldn’t tolerate dirt, something that his office cleaner had learned to her cost.

  He let his dark-eyed caller bluster for a few seconds more until he was forced to pause for breath and then cut in.

  “So, what would you like to do about it? Throw everything away at the first sign of trouble? Waste decades of careful cultivation when things could still be fixed?”

  If he could have seen his conversational partner he would have seen him lurching forward in his seat, but taking pleasure in imagining the high-handed bugger’s angst would have to suffice for now.

  “Fixed how? It’s hardly as if we can deny that we know him! We’ve been seen with him a hundred times!”