Chapter 36
‘Come on, Al. How would he know?’
‘Maybe Wallace confessed at the pub when they were having lunch.’
‘Would that be before or after the results of the Fantasy Football? “By the way, I killed one of our best friends, lovely catching up with you all, see you next year”? Come off it.’
‘I’m serious. These people all go way back. They tell each other everything.’
‘White Illuminati,’ mutters Jonny.
‘Thank you, Jonny. I mean, I’m pretty sure the original Illuminati were also white. But yes.’
‘No,’ says Em. ‘Clearly Vane was just trying to protect himself from any involvement with this mess. Maybe he suspects Wallace but doesn’t have proof. If he had proof, he’d probably go to the police himself.’
‘Slippery bastard like Vane? No way.’
‘Shall we go over who we’re looking for again?’ asks Elle. She’s drawn everything up on the kitchen blackboard.
WE NEED SOMEONE WHO:
Knew re Davy’s appointment with police (how?)
Was involved in laundry scheme?
Got Davy his clients?
Has access to shared inbox with him
Shares Dubai bank account access
She’s written a second list beneath this one:
MORE QUESTIONS WE HAVEN’T WORKED OUT YET:
Where is ‘outbuilding’ full of ￡? Is that Dubai account?
What is deal with crap new properties?
Who killed Davy???
When can we stop doing this?
‘Yeah, good shout, Elle. OK, so Davy had clearly got out of his original money-laundering game,’ Em says.
‘What if Marshall Rivers and that German guy, Wolfgang, killed him? They teamed up to do it,’ I say.
‘Motive?’
‘They’d been cut out of his original scam. They wanted revenge.’
Em frowns. ‘Three years later, from several thousand miles away, with no prospect of getting at the money? I doubt it. It’s something to do with these new properties of his.’
We look at the map of the UK Jonny has drawn up on his screen.
It shows all the properties on Davy’s second, more recent list. As you hover over each pin on the map, it brings up the Google Street View for that place.
They include graffitied pillboxes; bedraggled terraces; flea-bitten apartments above rat-infested shops in no-horse towns.
Places you wouldn’t want to live in; frankly, places you wouldn’t want to walk past.
‘They’re all mega-scuzzy,’ says Jonny. ‘Not one of them sold for more than ￡250,000. And those are the ones in London. The ones outside it, some of them were under a hundred grand. They’re some of the cheapest, nastiest places on the entire market.’
‘Why would you launder money through cheap properties?’ asks Elle. ‘If you wanted to do that, you’d just buy a block of flats, wouldn’t you? So all the rents ended up as clean money too?’
‘Elle, you have a brilliant criminal mind,’ I say, and she blushes. ‘And yes, you would. So maybe he wasn’t laundering at all. Jonny, is there anything else on his computer?’
‘Nothing. I’ve crawled all over it. There are no clues. No signs of who the beneficial owners are. No company names, even, for these places. Just the addresses. It’s like not even Davy knew what was going on.’
‘Wouldn’t he have had an offshorer for this part of the operation too, another Mr Rivers?’
Jonny shrugs. ‘Maybe. But there are no contacts, nothing in the inbox, no incriminating messages, no documents. It’s like it’s all been scrubbed from the other side.’ That gives me a little shiver. If even Davy hadn’t written it down, how the hell are we going to find out?
‘It feels like when we know what the trick was here, we’ll find out everything else.’
‘Maybe.’ He looks at the screen, and his eyes widen. ‘Guys.’
‘What?’
‘Did one of you open this up?’
We all confirm we haven’t touched Davy’s computer.
‘Then … OK. We’ve made contact.’
‘With who?’
‘With whoever Davy shared his inbox with.’
We look over his shoulder, at the draft that originally just said hello, and to which Jonny added a second Hello. The page now looks like this:
hello
Hello.
who is this
‘When did you last check that, Jonny?’
‘Three minutes ago.’
We all stand around the computer, looking at the new words. Someone’s at the other end of the line. My skin tingles with the weird modern horror of being surveyed remotely.
Jonny keys in some tentative words: Friends of Davy. Who is this?
A second later, jerky type starts appearing on the screen: colleague of Davy. Good bloke. Shame what happened to him
‘Jonny, can you track this? Work out where it’s coming from?’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘Can I type?’ Em takes Jonny’s seat.
Did you kill him?
The response comes: He killed himself
Em: ??
Making an appt with police like that. Silly bastard. Should have guessed I’d find out. Which one of you is typing now? Probably one of the foreign girls right? We watch, not saying anything, as the words crawl across the screen. Or the tall black guy? Or the skinny white boy?
‘Double-ungood,’ murmurs Jonny.
Id tell you to back off. But bit late for that. My associate will find you. Big guy. No hair.
Em types: Where do we meet him?
Dont worry. Hell find you
She has one last attempt: We didn’t kill Davy. We don’t know what he was doing. We just want out. What can we do to make that happen?
No reply.