Chapter 28
Five minutes later, we’re off the Zoom, and with Jonny’s aid we’ve ordered the biggest pizza available on the dark web. He’s even flexed one of his rules and is allowing himself full Coke instead of Diet. We’re feeling festive.
‘OK, so let me repeat it back so I understand it,’ I say. ‘Davy was laundering money for various people around the world, we don’t know who.’
‘Yes,’ says Jonny.
‘He secured the properties by speaking to motivated sellers, and gave them an extra motivation by slashing his commission if they did it off the books of Harcourt and Wallace. Then his solicitor from the firm did that end of the transaction under the table.’
‘Right.’
‘But he needed his clients – the buyers, the potentially money-laundering ones – to buy the places via complicated companies owned overseas.’
‘Bingo.’
‘So in order to avoid naming them on the register, he used Wolfgang as his cardboard cut-out, and Wolfy pretended to be the ultimate beneficial owner of all these firms in exchange for some cash.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that is why nobody talked to us when we went door to door, Em! They were all Davy’s buyers, the ones who bought through these shell firms!
No wonder they didn’t want to say anything!
And the two people who know the names of the clients are Davy Harcourt – deceased – and this guy whose name we have here. ’
‘Yeah,’ says Jonny, looking at the name Elle wrote on a Post-it note as soon as Wolfgang said it. ‘Marshall Rivers.’
Wolfgang told us before signing off that his principal contact had been a man named Marshall Rivers, and that Rivers was the one who actually set up the companies.
He had only ever seen Davy and Rivers on the same screen once, during his first call with both men, but he had been in contact with both about different elements of the transactions.
Rivers handled the paperwork, he said, and the payments.
I guess Davy wanted to keep at least one bit of the process free of his fingerprints.
As for why Wolfgang was telling us this …
He seemed quite glad of the opportunity to avenge himself on the employer who’d gone AWOL on their little arrangement and never told him why.
There’s a chance he was lying to us, I know, but Jonny had done some searching in real time and found a bit of evidence that seemed to corroborate the story.
It’s also possible Wolfy was so baked his disclosure filters had melted.
‘Hey,’ Jonny says now. ‘Bad news.’
A bit of the room’s fizzy mood ebbs away through invisible cracks. Elle pauses the Harry Styles song she’s been trying to persuade us to get into.
‘What bad news?’
‘This Marshall Rivers, the one who organises everything. He’s in Nevis.’
‘Nevis like Ben Nevis?’
‘Nevis like small, underpopulated Caribbean island Nevis.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah. I’ve been doing a bit of digging’ – doing something useful while Al’s been banging on about how he finally gets it, I sense – ‘and Nevis is a great place for an offshore structure.’
‘How so?’
‘It’s basically impenetrable. The data’s probably kept in a discreet server in the capital and not online. There’s no way of legally getting it, and the only way would be to physically break in.’
‘Can’t you just …’ I wiggle my fingers.
‘Not if it’s not online. You can basically memory-hole your entire fortune there for a few payments to the right people. All perfectly legal.’
‘There’ll be a government computer you can access, right?’
‘Nevis authorities don’t have access to bank information. You’d need a court order, which I would guess we’re not likely to get.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah. They have a lot of regulations designed to make the world feel comfortable parking anonymous money there.’
I know what Em is going to say next even before she opens her mouth.
‘OK,’ says Em. ‘So we go to Nevis.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I say. ‘We’re wanted for questioning about a murder. I think they have rules about leaving the country.’
‘They’ve only got your name,’ says Em. ‘And Jonny’s prints. Nobody’s interested in me yet. They’d be going off a physical description, and I doubt they’d manage that.’
‘So who’s going?’ I ask. ‘You and Elle?’
‘Oh, not me,’ says Elle. ‘Not with my allergies.’
‘You can come with me, Al. We’re more experienced at getting our way. We might need some of your breaking-in skills.’
‘No. Not going to happen. I actually, literally can’t go.’
‘Why not?’
‘No passport.’
That stumps her for about ten seconds, before she asserts: ‘We’ll think of something.’
Once Jonny and Elle have gone to bed, Em and I stay up.
‘It still doesn’t make sense, though,’ I say. ‘Not completely. Davy got out of this line of work three years ago – or that’s when he stopped putting any work Wolfgang’s way. And his ledger dries up at the same time, doesn’t it?’
‘So Jonny says.’
‘So why’s it relevant now?’ I ask. ‘Why would Rob Wallace be so angry to find out that Davy had been doing something wrong when he stopped doing it years ago?’
‘I’m sure it would still crush the firm if the truth came out. People don’t like being associated with this stuff. Three years isn’t so long.’
‘Maybe. But would that really be enough for Wallace to murder him? And if Davy had wound up his operation and presumably got away with it, why’s he suddenly arranging to go to the police? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Yeah,’ says Em. ‘We’re clearly missing something.’
She and I are next to each other on the sofa, and I can feel the same kind of tension I felt before she kissed me last night.
Then again, that’s the thing about sexual tension.
It is entirely possible for only one party to be feeling it, and for the other to be thinking of ways to dodge border control.
I lean a little closer. ‘So. I was thinking.’ She looks up at me.
‘Yes?’
‘Why don’t we …’ She glances down as her phone pings. ‘As I was saying, I think we should …’ Her phone pings twice more, in rapid succession, and she breaks off to unlock it.
‘Ooh, Al. This is good.’
‘What?’
‘Elle just texted from upstairs. Charli Harcourt’s been in touch. She says she has some information for us.’
This has swiftly dissipated the mood. ‘Oh yeah? What kind?’
‘She says we should come for breakfast.’