Chapter 24
Four hours later, we’re sitting in the wreckage of a big Korean takeaway and doing our homework.
Jonny’s sitting on the floor with his laptop and two phones; Elle’s in a solo armchair; Em and I are on the sofa.
Her bare feet are quite near mine. Focus, Al.
Jonny is talking us through something. He’s also told us he’s got exciting news, but he won’t tell us until he’s sure we understand the basics. He’s such a dad.
‘All right,’ says Em. ‘These companies listed in Davy’s ledger – every one of them owns one property, right? And you’re saying the properties are worth at least five million quid each.’
‘Much more, in some cases,’ says Jonny. ‘So now we find out who owns the companies. Anyone?’
I feel like this is a trick question. ‘You can just look that up, can’t you?’
Jonny sighs. ‘No. As I said a few minutes ago, these are firms registered overseas under a variety of complicated structures. It’s impossible to see at a glance who the ultimate owner is. Have you heard of the Paradise Papers?’
I shake my head.
‘Pandora Papers? Panama Papers? Mossack Fonseca?’
‘I’m more of a practical housebreaker than a theorist,’ I say, a bit defensively. ‘But you’re saying the owners of all these places are … crooks? Overseas crooks?’
‘Not necessarily. Plenty of people in Britain use complicated overseas structures as well, to own properties in Britain. Not that they’re automatically not crooks. The whole point is that it completely disguises your identity. And it used to be unbelievably easy.’
‘How easy?’
‘Until a few years ago, if you were an overseas buyer, you could hide under three or four nested companies and buy twenty million pounds’ worth of property without anyone blinking.
Then they tightened the rules, so now estate agents have to gather detailed information on buyers before proceeding with a sale.
You can’t just buy a place under a company name any more.
They need proof of ID, address … all of it. ’
‘But Davy must have known whose companies he was dealing with, surely?’
‘Of course, but he doesn’t seem to have written it down anywhere, unless it’s on this laptop of his.’
‘So assuming he was knowingly helping people who wanted to stay anonymous buy properties, how would he help them get around the rules?’
‘Easy,’ Jonny says. ‘He’d use a cut-out. You hire a stooge, get them to sign the paperwork in exchange for a few hundred quid, and they go on the agent’s forms as the property’s new owner. Most likely the forms won’t be checked.’
‘Nice racket.’
‘Very nice. But here’s the thing – last year the government introduced a Register of Overseas Entities to try and shut the racket down.
Every overseas company that owns a property in the UK now has to identify the “ultimate beneficial owner”, log their details with Companies House, and keep the details updated. ’
‘And what’s the ultimate aim here?’
‘Well, it’s all to stop money-laundering.’
‘Sorry, Jonny,’ I say. ‘Can you just … remind me what that is again?’
Jonny puts his hand to his face. ‘I have explained that twice already.’ He would not make a good teacher.
‘Yes, I know. But if you could just …’ To be fair, I didn’t ever make a good student. Em and Elle groan, and Em takes the reins.
‘Al, it’s for people with hot money. Let’s say you’re the recipient of ten million quid in bribes from a dodgy mine scheme in, say, Angola.’
‘Good for me.’
‘Not if you can’t spend it. You need to keep it somewhere safe.
You want it to look impeccable. So if you can buy into the British property market, maybe hold on to your investment for a few years, then sell it, suddenly you’ve changed “dodgy Angolan mining money” into “Knightsbridge townhouse money”.
Just by using Davy – assuming that’s what he was doing. ’
‘So Davy was laundering dodgy money into prime properties. And to get custom from the people legitimately selling the properties, he slashed his commission and did it off the books at his firm.’
‘Right. He doesn’t need the commission on the sale, because he’s looking out for a much bigger pay packet, paid to him some other way.’
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘What about that notebook of his? Did you have it last, Em?’ She goes to her bag, in the corner of the room, and fishes it out. ‘Look in the back page again.’
She opens it up and passes it round. As I remembered.
There are large sums of money scattered all over the place – some in the millions, a few in the tens of millions.
Each one has initials scrawled next to it.
Most of the sums are crossed out. ‘I can’t believe we didn’t remember this.
Maybe these are his commissions. Jonny, have you checked them? ’
‘No. Hand them over. Nice one, Al.’
For a moment, I feel genuinely useful, and I pass him the notebook.
‘All right, Jonny, can you just tell us the exciting news?’
‘Not until I’m sure you get it.’
‘I get it,’ I say, a trifle defensively.
‘Criminal A has dodgy money. He approaches our Davy. Davy finds a sellable property, thanks to his impeccable connections in the property world and thanks to his name being on the plate at Harcourt and Wallace. He discreetly secures sellers by playing on their greed, like Sir Simon from earlier. The sellers are now his clients. But the crooks buying the places are the real clients, because they’ll pay a bonus price to conduct a transaction secretly.
Dodgy solicitors at either end of the deal help it all go through.
Then Davy helps Crim A set up an anonymous company based in a secretive Caribbean island somewhere … ’
‘Or the Channel Islands.’
‘… right, or the Channel Islands, and Crim A is the ultimate beneficial owner of that company. Crim A pays their dodgy money into that company, and the company buys the huge property.’
‘All right so far.’
‘And that company is the one registered with the authorities, and the company’s ultimate owner now has to go in the Register of Overseas Entities. And you’re saying that’s how we’ll find the ultimate owners, right? Through this register?’
‘It’s not quite that simple, unfortunately.’
‘Thought so. Why?’
‘Because anyone really determined to hide their identity will probably just port over their stooge, their fake “ultimate beneficial owner”, and put them on the register.’
‘Oh. Won’t anyone check?’
Jonny shrugs. ‘Not much. Even worse, if you claim your dodgy overseas company is owned by a trust and nobody owns more than twenty-five per cent of it, you don’t have to declare the identities of any of the people with control.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah. It stinks.’
‘OK, Jonny, I’m really genuinely on top of it now. Can you please just tell us what you’ve found?’
He grins. ‘All right. After Elle went off on her trip today to find some of Davy’s sellers rather than his buyers, I just made a list of the companies and went through the register to see the listed beneficial owners. And they’re all the same guy.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The same guy owns all these properties?’
Em groans. ‘Oh my God, Al. No. The same guy is listed as the owner of all these places. Meaning he’s the stooge Davy relied on and provided to his dodgy clients.’
‘Oh. Yes. Got it.’
‘Exactly,’ says Jonny. ‘He changes the address and the details around so it won’t be too obvious to any software crawling the system to find duplicates, but basically that’s it. We know who Davy’s stooge is.’
‘And who is he?’
He turns his screen around. On it is a picture of a pallid-looking young man sitting in front of a concrete wall. The shot looks like the cover of an album for a genre of music too cool for you to have even heard of. ‘His name is Wolfgang Eisenlohr. German-based.’
‘Nice name. Extremely metal.’
‘You know the even better thing?’
‘What?’
‘I’ve tracked him down.’
‘Shut up. How?’
Jonny gives his standard finger-waggle. ‘Computer stuff.’
Elle pipes up. ‘Don’t be mean, J.’ She leans towards me. ‘He just took a punt and emailed wolfgang.eisenlohr@. Got a reply in three minutes.’
‘Often it’s hardest to work out the simplest thing,’ Jonny says.
‘Sure. Well done either way, Jonny, that’s amazing. Think he’ll answer any questions from us?’
‘It’s worth a try. He’s said he can Zoom us at seven tomorrow evening.’
‘And, I’m sorry, does all this help us work out who killed Davy?’ I gesture at Jonny’s screen.
‘Might do. The killer could be one of the crooks who found out they were about to be identified. Or it could be someone Davy was working on the scheme with. Thieves falling out.’
‘Someone else in property, you mean. Someone Davy argued with. Someone like … Rob Wallace?’
‘Could be.’
‘Amazing. Well done, everybody. Jonny for finding all that. Elle for finding Sir Simon earlier. Em for putting up with me all day.’
‘OK, enough Oscars stuff,’ says Elle. ‘What’s tomorrow?’
‘Well,’ Em says, ‘there’s the Balham Brats AGM, which was clearly important enough that Davy was going to try and attend even with this hanging over him.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, sorry, Jonny, you didn’t come and get crêpes. Neither did you, Elle. Take a look at this.’
The pair of them read the South London News piece on Em’s phone.
‘Wait a second,’ says Jonny. ‘Wallace is here. Would you go to a meeting with someone you thought was trying to kill you?’
‘Depends on the biscuits.’
‘Be serious.’
‘All right, no, I suppose I wouldn’t,’ I say. ‘But he might have put it in his diary before he was afraid for his life. Who were last year’s attendees again, apart from Davy and Wallace?’
‘Let’s see,’ says Elle. ‘OK, we have an MP, a senior police officer, and a fifth guy, Ben Westcott, who seems to have no achievements at all beyond his name. That’s it. Just five blokes allegedly running this charity and having a nice lunch once a year.’
‘We should go along,’ says Em.
‘That’s your answer for everything.’
‘We should, though. It’s obvious.’
‘Well it can’t be me who goes,’ I say.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I sat in Wallace’s office pretending to be a reputation manager. He didn’t seem like a genius but I think he might just about clock me if he sees me again.’
‘I can handle it,’ says Em. She gives me an arch little look. ‘If Al wants the day off.’