The Real World- the Point of Death

by Laurence Todd

  I thought about the situation and all the players involved. It all seemed to make some kind of perverted sense, but the person I couldn’t get a handle on was Blatchford. Why would he even agree to the discount Alecks Krachnikhov demanded? This would be a considerable favour to ask for when it was nothing to do with Blatchford in the first place. Jacobs had done a lot of research into this; maybe he knew more about the mayor than I did.

  “What was the thinking behind selling Septimus House in the first place?” I asked. “All through his election campaign, Blatchford was promising to build more affordable housing.”

  “Ah,” he said, knowingly, his eyes lighting up. “You’re like everyone else, aren’t you? You don’t know the real Blatchford.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Blatchford didn’t really have a choice. Towerleaf pressed him to sell Septimus House.”

  “Huh? How could they do this?” A foreign-owned company forcing an elected London mayor to engage in any course of conduct detrimental to Londoners was alarming news. If they could do this to a city mayor, who else could they coerce into doing something for them?

  “How? Quite easy, really. Blatchford was heavily in debt; owed enough to pay off the national debt of Malawi, did our James.” He smiled wickedly. He was enjoying this. “So Alecks Krachnikhov says he’ll wipe the slate clean for him if Blatchford agrees to allow Towerleaf Holdings to purchase Septimus House. Alecks’ father, Yuri, ripped off the Russians for several billion, so they can afford it. Blatchford agrees to this.” He shrugged. “His debts are now all paid off and Yuri Krachnikhov now owns a block of flats he’s either selling individually or renting out for four figures per week.”

  I thought for several seconds. “What level of debts you talking about?

  “Millions. Enough to cause a scandal and land him in jail if they weren’t settled.”

  “How’d he run up such debts?”

  He laughed. “You name it. He’d been involved in property speculation, he got divorced, he took a bath on some bad investments, that kind of thing.”

  “What, in this country?” I was wondering why I’d not read about this.

  “No, no, in Europe.” He nodded knowingly. “He had interests in a number of arm’s-length businesses—”

  “Arm’s-length businesses?” I interrupted him.

  “Yeah. It’s where, technically, it’s your business, but it’s run by others, and there’re usually several layers of control between you and the nominees involved in the day-to-day running of it, so if anything goes wrong, you can hold your hands up and say nothing to do with me, squire.” He grinned inanely, trying to sound like Eric Idle. “But, and this is the thing, he was remiss in how these businesses were set up and how the system worked over there. There’re different rules

  in Gibraltar, where most of these firms were registered.”

  “Gibraltar?”

  I’d heard Gibraltar spoken of recently and I quickly tried to remember who’d mentioned it, but Jacobs was talking again before I’d pinned it down.

  “Yeah,” he said assuredly. “Oh, don’t be fooled into thinking Gibraltar’s just a large rock, a naval base and the place where three IRA members were executed by the SAS in 1988; it’s also a tax haven. There’re only 30,000 inhabitants, but there’re also over 60,000 companies registered there, and they’re not there because the view from the rock’s spectacular. Blatchford’s a finance man; he knew this.”

  Jacobs paused for a moment to check his phone.

  “Anyway, Blatchford doesn’t actually realise there’re different rules, either because he was badly advised or he himself was just plain negligent, so, as these losses were piling up, so was his personal liability. Ends up, even if he sold all his assets in those firms, he’d still owe something like twenty million, if I heard correctly, would our Mayor James. He had creditors coming out the woodwork looking for him to settle. One threatened to go public with what was owed, right at the time Blatchford was declaring his interest in running for Mayor of London, and being declared bankrupt would have ruled him out of standing for public office. But then the Krachnikhovs crawl out from whatever hole they hide in, offer to settle the debts, but only if Towerleaf ’s allowed to buy Septimus house. Blatchford doesn’t have much choice if he wants to run for public office,” – he shrugged – “and you know the rest.”

  A fascinating story, but I was puzzled by something. “How would Yuri Krachnikhov even know so much about Blatchford?”

  “Because one of the companies Blatchford was in hock to was a Russian armaments company called—”

  “Drawbridge?” I interrupted him.

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.” He looked impressed. “Towerleaf’s owned by Yuri Krachnikhov, but his son runs it. Yuri’s done business with Garlinge because Garlinge used to work for . . .” He paused.

  I leapt in again. “Bartolome Systems.”

  “Correct.” He nodded and smiled. “And it’s through this they get to know each other, and it’s Yuri who tells Garlinge about how much financial schtuck Blatchford’s in, so, acting on behalf of Yuri Krachnikhov, Garlinge advises Blatchford to sell Septimus House because it’d be his way out of debt, and clear his way to run for mayor.” He paused again to look at his phone screen. “Ask yourself one question. Why’d you think the sale went through so easily?”

  I asked how.

  “Garlinge helps smooth the way. He talks to the right ministers and the right London councillors, persuades them the London council tax payer will benefit from the sale, and voila.” He clapped his hands together. “The sale goes through, despite the election promises. Garlinge also gets a financial bonus,” he sneered, “as well as the discount on his flat, though I don’t know how much he personally made from this.”

  I was wondering if Armswatch knew about this as well, but Jacobs went on.

  “So, simply stated, Krachnikhov makes him an offer he can’t refuse: you agree to sell us the new building in the centre of London, City Hall gets a cash injection and your debts go away, and this, my friend, is what happened. Krachnikhov’s not only disgustingly fucking rich; he’s very influential as well. He pulls some strings abroad, gets the companies Blatchford’s involved with wound up out of sight and buried deep, so there’s no evidence for the press to find, and, trust me, I’ve looked bloody hard for it.” He nodded. “Debtors are paid a bit extra to keep schtum, Blatchford gets the slate wiped clean, and what was gonna be housing for ordinary Londoners now becomes housing for rich Londoners and Russian crooks.”

  I was processing what I’d heard. This was some story; it read like a financial thriller. Blatchford would be making news later this week, but it would now seem the late Mr Charles Garlinge was also going to feature prominently in the headlines. His obituaries might have to be rewritten. “So, how’d you find all this out?”

  “Oh, come on.” He laughed out loud. “You really think I’m gonna tell Special Branch, even if you are Sally’s husband?” He sat grinning for a moment. “You know, a month ago, when Sally told me she was getting married to a Special Branch DS, I thought she was winding me up. Clearly, she wasn’t.”

  We sat quietly as he finished his beer.

  “I know people who know people, that’s how,” he said quietly. He sat back in the chair, then looked around the bar for a moment. “I’ve been freelance about ten years and I know a lot of people I can plug for info. I ask questions, people give me answers, or not, and doing this leads me to look into something else; you keep doing it and eventually a picture emerges. Sally’s a journo; she does the same thing. Your job must be something similar: keep shaking the tree and something eventually falls from it.” He smiled. “But for this story I had one absolutely unimpeachable source and, no, I’m not telling you, so don’t even ask. I’ve not even told Sally; she doesn’t know who this person is, and I wrote the story with her.”

  I’ve tried asking journalists about sources before and, compared with this, Swiss banks are paragons
of overt and open cooperation. Taylor would threaten divorce if I even thought about asking her to name a source. “Is Blatchford aware you know all this about him?”

  “He will be soon. I’m gonna send him a draft of the article today and invite him to comment. Christ, I’d love to be sitting in his office when he reads what we’ve written.”

  *

  And then, at four twenty-three in the afternoon, an unexpected intervention meant not only that the situation became a little more complicated; the picture also changed completely.

  On the floor of the House of Commons, a backbench Labour MP, Graeme Ownsley, rose to his feet during a debate about defence spending and the UK’s ongoing commitment to NATO and asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he would care to respond to the allegations that a British company, Bartolome Systems, had manufactured and provided the weapons which Burundian soldiers used to slaughter dozens of innocent demonstrators earlier in the year, and would he also care to explain how such weapons came to be diverted away from their intended recipient and exported to Burundi, contrary to an EU ban on such sales as well as the Government’s own commitment to protecting human rights, and, in particular, what was the role played by the late Charles Garlinge MP in bringing this situation about?

  There’d been an immediate uproar in the Commons Chamber. Government MPs had howled their displeasure at this comment, with order papers being waved vigorously and all manner of insults and expletives shouted across the floor of the Chamber by honourable members on both sides, many of which had to be bleeped out on ‘live’ radio. It took nearly four minutes of yelling order, order, and, eventually, a threat by the Speaker to halt the day’s proceedings in the Chamber, to restore some vestige of control.

  Once a degree of tense, uneasy calm had been achieved, the Secretary of State for Defence again rose to his feet and, in the febrile tension, refused, as he eloquently put it, to dignify such an outrageous smear with a response. Looking icily across the chamber, he concluded the member in question should, if he truly was an honourable member, hang his head in shame at besmirching the memory of a member of this house who’d unfortunately died this past weekend.

  The immediate effect of this comment was that the DSMA notices issued the day before became otiose. The comments had been carried ‘live’ on BBC radio and heard by the assembled ranks of Parliamentary journos, not to mention thousands of radio listeners and viewers of the BBC’s Parliament channel. This meant the next day’s newspapers, as well as TV news the same evening, would be able to report what’d been said in the House without violating the terms of any DSMA notice or injunction; they’d simply be reporting comments made in the House, and, if legally challenged, they’d be entitled to raise the defence of qualified privilege, meaning anything they’d reported had simply been fair comment on a matter of public interest based upon what had been said in an open forum, the House of Commons.

  What had been said also became the subject of much comment and speculation on every form of social media, with Twitter and Facebook almost going into meltdown as Ownsley’s comments went viral and were picked up on by news agencies across Europe and the USA.

  The injunction and DSMA notices were now not worth the paper they’d been written on. But there was a more worrying point here: how had Ownsley known enough to ask this question?

  *

  Six twenty; I was talking with Smitherman in his office. BBC News at Six had led with the story, and there were requests for interviews and comments being made to Bartolome Systems and to the Ministry of Defence from all sections of the media, at home and abroad. No one was making any comments, though, and a Government spokesman had taken the standard line of refusing to confirm or deny the story. The Evening Standard had just about had enough time to change the front-page story for its final edition, though Taylor hadn’t been involved in writing it.

  “So, I suppose the obvious question is . . .” Smitherman looked at me and paused.

  “How did this MP know, who told him?” I asked. “Gotta be Nick Graves, has to be. Who else would have an interest in this? Ownsley and Graves are friends, used to be MPs together. Ownsley’s a long-time member of Armswatch and he’s had an article published in New Focus about dirty tricks used by arms manufacturers.”

  Ownsley was also no stranger to controversy. Earlier in the year, it’d been him who’d made the comment on the floor of the House about James Blatchford being in the pay of Russian crooks, a statement he’d consistently refused to withdraw and apologise for. Interestingly, his party leader had also refused to condemn Ownsley’s statement when invited to do so. He’d made no attempt to distance himself from what’d been said today either.

  “Can we prove it was Graves?” Smitherman asked.

  “I’ve asked for their phone records to be checked, see if they’ve called each other recently, though I suspect they probably met up. What I’m guessing is that Graves told Ownsley they couldn’t use what they knew about Bartolome because of the injunction, so he passes it to Ownsley, knowing he could safely repeat it on the floor of the House, because MPs have the right to absolute free speech there. Anything said would be carried live over the airwaves, which means the injunction being bypassed lawfully.”

  Smitherman nodded solemnly and sat back in his chair. Any hope the situation could be contained without publicity was now forlorn.

  *

  Back in the flat, we were larking about in the kitchen. I was sloppy kissing Taylor and tickling her, and things were just getting interesting when Smitherman called on my police radio.

  “I think we might know who told Ownsley.”

  “I’m right, aren’t I? It was Graves,” I said confidently.

  There was a three-second gap. I waited to hear the name I was expecting.

  “Actually, it was Sir Paul Peterson.”

  “What?” I was bewildered. That wasn’t it. “You mean the Sir Paul, chief executive and managing director of the company which’s just been named in Parliament?”

  “The very same. Graves hasn’t met Ownsley or called him for several days, so it couldn’t have been him. However, the more interesting call Ownsley did get was from the landline number registered to Sir Paul Peterson. Phoned him last evening around eight.”

  “What’s their connection? I mean, how would they know each other?” I was trying to imagine at what point the lives of a knighted leading player in the defence establishment and a noted left-wing firebrand politician would intersect. Ownsley was an ex-miner, so I was certain he wasn’t a member of Sir Paul’s club, the Army and Navy.

  “Their backgrounds are being checked as I speak, so I can’t answer that one.”

  I was shaking my head. Why would the chief executive of a company which’d just been implicated in a massacre have been in contact, just beforehand, with the man who’d publicly named it?

  Ownsley himself was in the clear. Whilst, of course, he’d openly violated the terms of the injunction preventing Armswatch from publicising any of the information they possessed relating to Bartolome, he’d done so in the one place where he’d be immune to any legal repercussions: inside the House of Commons. Historically, Parliamentary convention dictates MPs can say absolutely anything, anything whatsoever, no holds barred, on the floor of the Commons Chamber and be immune from the laws pertaining to defamation. So, if you wish to allege a fellow MP takes bribes, or indeed suggest he has a fondness for carnal relations with soft furry woodland creatures, say it on the floor of the House and you’re immune from any legal recourse, other than being issued with the challenge to repeat yourself outside the House.

  By taking this route, Ownsley had ensured the matter would now be publicised in media outlets around the world. Would this be the green light for the media to start looking deeper into the death of Charles Garlinge, and into Bartolome Systems as well?

  “So,” Smitherman said, “it’s imperative we talk to Sir Paul, find out if it was indeed him who called Ownsley and, if it was, what he said to him. More impor
tantly, we want to know why he did this.”

  Even though I was off-duty, I’d worked for Smitherman long enough to know this wasn’t a suggestion. Tickling Taylor would have to wait.

  *

  Back to Septimus House. Whilst a massed pack of journalists and television cameras were camped outside the house in Battersea Ownsley shared with several other Labour MPs, just a few roads away from where we lived, there were only a couple of bored-looking journos and a photographer waiting outside Septimus House when I arrived, leaning against their car and looking at their phones, hoping to get a quote or a reaction from Sir Paul.

  One saw me, perked up and approached as I reached the front entrance.

  “Excuse me, sir, you live here? Do you know Sir Paul?” he asked, looking upwards.

  “What, McCartney? No. Does he live here?” I asked, eyes open wide in mock surprise.

  Shaking his head and sighing, the journo strolled back to his waiting.

  I showed ID to an unfamiliar security guard, told him I was here to see Sir Paul. Informed he was in, I took the lift to the fourth floor. He didn’t seem too surprised to see me again when he opened the door.

  “No, don’t worry, nobody’s died,” I reassured him as I showed ID.

  He stood back and I entered his flat. His book collection still looked very impressive. He sat down at his desk in the corner and I stood nearby. He was casually dressed, no tie. I could see the late evening edition of the Evening Standard on the coffee table and the bold-print front-page headlines about uproar in Parliament. There was something about Sir Paul’s expression and body language I found hard to read.