I looked at her with surprise.
“It’s true. Nobody knows where. Without this evidence, they can’t prove he’s been acting untoward. Blatchford can simply say he was unlucky. I mean, other hedge funds were taking a bath, not just Crattelle & Hatchman. That’s a proven fact.”
I mused quietly for a few moments. I‘d just been told a candidate for the highest elected office in the country outside Parliament was a crook. If what Sally Taylor had just told me was true, and if Jamal Khoudri knew about this, that was a motive for murder right there. But Blatchford had been campaigning when Khoudri had been killed, so he’d not pulled the trigger, and Khoudri wasn’t likely to spill what he knew about Blatchford, was he? Even if he had been thinking of talking, and Blatchford had found out, where would he even know to get a gunman?
I speculated on whether Jaser knew what Khoudri’d known. It would make sense if he did. But where would it leave Jaser if he knew what Sally Taylor was telling me?
“When did Blatchford tell him this?” I asked.
“I’m not sure when. Khoudri told me all this one night a couple of weeks ago. He was feeling very down, missing his wife. He’d had a few drinks and was feeling very morose, and he just poured it all out. Told me he’d heard Blatchford making all these promises on television about honest financing in London, and he felt uncomfortable because he knew his boss was some kind of chiseller. He actually used that word. I think he regretted his words next morning, and he swore me to absolute secrecy. I said I’d not tell anyone.”
“And have you?”
“Have I? No. Well, except you.”
I was silent for a few moments whilst I thought about what I’d heard.
“But it gets even murkier,” Taylor said. “Jamal told me he already knew about this before Blatchford told him anything. His bank does lots of business with Crattelle & Hatchman. So he probably already knew he was campaigning for someone who’s dodgy financially and who’s hiding something that’d blow up in his face if it ever became public knowledge.”
The look of surprise must have been etched on my face. Sally Taylor looked at me, her eyes telling me it’s all true.
“Does Blatchford know Khoudri knew about him before he spilled his guts out?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I doubt he does, but . . .” She let the sentence hang in the air.
“You think he even suspected?”
She sighed, blowing out her cheeks. “I don’t know. I mean, I saw them together several times and they always looked as though things were hunky-dory, but that doesn’t really mean anything, does it?”
We were both silent for a moment.
“You used the phrase poison pill just now,” I said. “What’s one of those?”
“As I understand it, a poison pill means something inserted in the accounts which’d cause a lot of financial damage to a company. Something harmful to a company’s long-term health, if I’ve understood it correctly.”
“What does that mean here?”
“I can only assume he has something on his bank or someone else that’d cause real harm if it’s ever made known.”
I wondered what Blatchford knew, or had buried, that had caused his employer not to proceed against him with a dismissal. It had to be something significant.
From the way she was looking at me, I guessed she was wondering whether telling me was the right thing to do. We were quiet for several seconds.
“So, what do you think?” she asked.
“Have you any reason to doubt whether Khoudri was telling you the truth? You’re sure he wasn’t just spinning you a tale?”
“I don’t think he was, no. I’m sure he was serious,” she said, positively.
“You think Jaser knows about Blatchford as well?”
“I don’t know. I mean, he and Khoudri are close friends and all that, but I don’t know what he knows about this situation.”
I grinned inwardly, wondering what Richard Clements would give to be in possession of what I’d just been told. “Is there anything else?” I raised my eyebrows at her.
“No, that’s it. Hearing you mention assassination made me think of that conversation with Jamal. I thought it might be helpful to you.”
“Okay. Thanks for this. Not a word to anyone. Right?”
“Should be me telling you that,” she said, laughing. She really was very pretty when she smiled. I was certain that smile made reluctant male interviewees open up and talk to her.
“Nobody’ll be told who doesn’t have to know,” I assured her. “Are you gonna use this?”
“Oh, absolutely, I am.” She looked serious. “But only when the time’s right. I’m sitting on a big story here. If I can break this at the right time, this could get me on staff at one of the major dailies.” She smiled like she’d just had her first real kiss with a boy she’d had a crush on for some time.
“One other thing,” I said. “You think Blatchford knows you know about this?”
“No. He knows Jamal wouldn’t tell anyone. He’s got too much to lose. James Blatchford’s trading on his image as an honest financier.”
I snorted. An honest financier is about as rare as a poor lawyer.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“I’m not sure yet.” This was true. I didn’t know. “How much of this can you prove?”
“I can’t prove any of it.” She shook her head. “All I know is what Jamal told me, and I can’t even prove that now as he’d dead.”
I thanked her for what she’d told me, assured her again of my discretion and got out of her car. She told me to be careful, smiled at me, waved and drove out onto the main road.
Walking to my car, I saw Blatchford and Jaser in the doorway, following me with their eyes. Had they been there watching us the whole time we’d been in her car? I disarmed the car alarm, got in and drove away, still under observation.
*
I drove the couple of miles south to the City. When I’d been with Ian Mulvehill, I’d once heard him refer to the City as the most lawless square mile in the country. He’d said there were more crooks per acre there than in any other part of the country, and if any social housing estate had as much crime, police would be a permanent presence on their streets. I suspected Clements and Kevin Sharone would concur with this view.
I’d decided to sound out someone working in top management at Blatchford’s hedge fund inside the bank, to confirm whether what Sally Taylor had told me was in any way true. If there was any substance to what Jamal Khoudri had told her, I’d at least have a motive for murder.
Crattelle & Hatchman had its offices in Carter Lane, a decent goal kick’s distance from St Paul’s Cathedral. I parked up and walked along the busy street. It was mainly offices and estate agents’ shopfronts advertising expensive office lets, plus the occasional chain coffee shop. I’d not been in this area since I was investigating suspicions of money laundering by Debbie Frost’s boyfriend, Darren Ritchie, who’d worked for Karris and Millers in nearby Watling Street. So much financial chicanery; maybe Mulvehill had a point.
I passed several well-dressed people holding broadsheet newspapers showing the financial pages, staring at their tablets or talking on mobiles. One woman passing by was talking excitedly to the man she was with about something called dividend yield. I had no idea what that was.
The office was on the third floor of a four-storey building. At reception I asked to speak to a senior manager. After a couple of phone calls, I was escorted along the plush, carpeted corridor by a secretary, maybe early thirties, sporting a 1980s Lady Diana hairstyle, who was wearing a dress tight enough to reveal the kind of full-hipped curves Marilyn Monroe would have died for, and who spoke with an accent I could sharpen a pencil with. Her exotic-smelling perfume, whatever it was, was strong enough to leave a vapour trail.
I was shown into the office of Ms Katrina Hemsley. The name Hemsley resonated but initially I couldn’t think why. Her title on the door nameplate, below her name, was Se
nior Investment Manager.
I looked around the office. It was large and radiated comfort and affluence in roughly equal measure. The desk and the chairs looked very expensive, and there was an extremely comfortable-looking mauve three-piece suite against the adjoining walls. There was tasteful artwork on the walls and the windows had smooth velvet curtains which matched the settee nicely. I was particularly impressed by the drinks cabinet in the corner, housing what appeared to be several bottles of expensive-looking liqueurs and brandies, which probably helped make turgid board meetings more bearable. This was a classy operation. I could probably buy a new car with what everything in this office cost.
The secretary left. My eyes were following her curves back out the door when Katrina Hemsley, who’d spotted what I was doing, cleared her throat, introduced herself and invited me to have a seat. I did. As I looked at her and introduced myself, it dawned on me why the name was familiar.
“DS McGraw, Special Branch. I need to ask a few probably quite sensitive questions, but before I do, can I ask you something?”
She agreed I could.
“I knew a Nigel Hemsley, worked over at Karris and Millers. You related to him?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “He’s my younger brother, or was. Did you know my brother?”
I did. It’d been him who’d tipped off Richard Clements about money laundering inside Karris and Millers, and he in turn had alerted me to what was going on. Ultimately, the pressure of too many disparate things weighing heavily on his conscience had led him to take his own life: carbon monoxide poisoning inside his own car.
“Vaguely,” I replied. This wasn’t a complete lie. “We were contemporaries at King’s, here in London, though he was in the year above me.”
“I see.” She was still smiling. “You know Nigel’s dead, don’t you? Committed suicide.” She said this in a matter-of-fact manner.
“I do, yes. That was sad to hear. I’d only met up with him again not too long before he did what he did.”
“That bitch wife of his had him over a barrel,” she snapped. “She was involved in all kinds of crooked deals inside that firm. Nigel’d found out and was trying to do something about it. She was also screwing one of the managers there.” She was angry for a moment. Her eyes flared as she talked. “Nigel took his own life. But he helped bring cooking the books to an end, and” – she smiled delightedly – “Lois went to prison.”
I was familiar with the case and the role Nigel Hemsley had played. But for his suspicions, and his spilling them to Richard Clements, who had told me, the matter might never have been known about. The whole matter had been depressing for me, however, because I had discovered my oldest friend, Michael Mendoccini, whom I’d just re-established contact with after several years, was intimately involved in laundering money for terrorists. Lois Hemsley had played a role, though at her trial she was only found guilty of conspiracy to commit accounting fraud, which had earned her a four-year sentence. The issue of money laundering, at the insistence of MI5, had never seen the light of day.
“Yeah, I know.” I didn’t bother telling her I knew the case well as I’d been closely involved.
“Anyway, you didn’t come here to listen to my griping.” She adjusted her posture. “What can I do for you? What do you have to ask that’s so delicate?” She put on her professional businesswoman’s face.
“The London mayoral candidate James Blatchford works here. Is that right?”
“He does.” She smiled pleasantly. “He works in our hedge fund operation, but he’s away at present, campaigning. I’m not sure if he’ll be returning either.”
“What was his function here?”
“Why are you asking this?” Her eyes narrowed. She looked at me as if wondering about something. I took a deep breath and leapt straight in with both feet.
“I’m led to believe he’s under something of a cloud at Crattelle & Hatchman.” I said this in a neutral tone but made it sound like a question.
“Why do you think that?”
“I don’t think it. I’ve been told it, and I trust the source it came from. I’d like to know if it’s true and, if so, what that cloud was, because it may well have a bearing on something we’re investigating at present.”
The few seconds she stared at me felt like an hour. She leaned forward and pressed a button on her desk phone.
“Steve, could I borrow you for a few minutes?” She looked at me whilst she spoke.
Eight seconds later the office door opened and a man entered. He was around sixty, tall, thin and smartly dressed in a charcoal-grey business suit and pale blue shirt. His grey hair was closely cropped and resembled a Brillo pad. He carried himself with almost military bearing, walking the few paces to where I was sitting. Katrina Hemsley nodded at me whilst looking at him.
“Detective here’s asking about James.” She sounded concerned.
“I see. What is it you wish to know, exactly?” He walked around the desk and stood next to her.
“And you are?”
“Stephen Crattelle.” He announced himself as though about to read the lesson in church. He radiated an aura of control. This was a person with what the military refers to as command presence, someone you notice when he enters the room. He had the kind of authoritative voice which made me think he was used to giving orders. “My partner and I set up and run this business.”
“DS McGraw, Special Branch.” I didn’t show ID. “I’m here because, yesterday, James Blatchford’s campaign manager was shot dead in their campaign office.”
“Yes, I heard about it on the news last night,” he said. “I hope James is holding up.”
I wasn’t too concerned about whether I was treading on their feelings at this point. “I have a source who’s told me James Blatchford wasn’t exactly flavour of the month when he began his campaign due to certain dubious financial practices. If that’s true, I need to know what they were, because it could connect to something the Branch’s investigating.”
Crattelle and Hemsley looked at each other for a moment.
“Anything you could tell me would be in strict confidence,” I stated, “but I should stress this is a murder investigation, and there’s no guarantee we could keep things under wraps, given the press already have a suspicion about Blatchford.”
Both Crattelle and Hemsley took deep breaths and looked at me with abject horror. For a couple of seconds they both looked as though they’d just been told a loved one had died, and they were finding the news difficult to accept.
I was mildly exaggerating using the term the press. It was actually only Sally Taylor, but they didn’t know this. If they thought the press were likely to be looking into the bank more closely, they might be more willing to open up to me.
Crattelle and Hemsley whispered to each other for a few seconds.
“Okay.” Stephen Crattelle pulled up a chair and sat by the side of the desk, equidistant between Katrina Hemsley and myself. “I’m not going to name names, for obvious reasons, Detective. But we run an honest business. My partner Arnold Hatchman and I started this firm in the late eighties, when we left the air force. Since then we’ve done hundreds of deals, every one of them honest. You know what the City’s watchword is?”
I said I didn’t.
“It’s Dictum Meum Pactum. Means my word is my bond. That’s how the City built its reputation around the world and became the world-class financial centre it is today. As far as this firm’s concerned, we live and die by those words, every day. Our reputation down the years shows we’ve always adhered to this, that people can trust us to do right with their money when they place it with us to invest for them. It’s also why we rarely sign contracts with our clients. A handshake and our word’s usually good enough for them.”
He paused and looked forthright, as though reading the Ten Commandments in church. Somehow I couldn’t stop thinking about churches around this guy. He appeared to be enjoying what he was saying thus far. I was about to say I wasn’t here as an in
vestor when he continued with his spiel.
“A little while ago, it came to my attention James had lost some money on a deal. When I say some, we’re talking several millions. I spoke to him about it. He agreed he’d lost money. Now, that on its own isn’t a major issue. Everyone takes a loss at some point. That’s the nature of the beast. Markets are occasionally volatile and unpredictable. But, when his work was internally audited, we found he’d been making some very speculative investments which no reasonable financial manager in his position would even consider doing. And he was pouring good money after bad. But, when I asked to see his documentation, his dealings with clients, to see what evidence he’d based his judgements upon, it’d all been erased. He’d removed all evidence of several unsupportable trades.”
“My source says due diligence wasn’t undertaken. Could this be why he did it?” I was trying to sound as though I had an understanding of finance.
“Is your source someone inside this bank, Detective?” Katrina Hemsley asked, alarmed but almost smiling. “He or she is very well informed.”
“That seems to be the case, Detective,” Crattelle confirmed. “It was financial recklessness on the grand scale. No financially prudent bank in our position could support what he did.”
“And I’m told you reported him to the FCA,” I ventured.
“I’d like to have done, but suspicion alone isn’t enough.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s why it never got as far as an official complaint. I just had a chat with a senior official over at the FCA, and he said he’ll note my suspicions, but suspicions on their own are insufficient. Unless one can produce evidence for them to start investigating, they can’t do anything except note what’s said. I mean, your job must be the same.” He fixed me with a knowing stare. “You know something but you can’t prove it.”
I agreed with the similarity. A frustration every police officer experiences occasionally. “Can you give me a for instance, some kind of idea what might have been going on?”
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