by Seb Kirby
When Montague looked up over his half-moon spectacles his attitude was dismissive. “I don’t know why I agreed to see you, Mr. Brogan. Call it a courtesy.”
Brogan disliked the way Montague referred to him as mister. The false note struck made this into an insult, a token of how inferior Montague thought him to be. But what was required here was not anger but modesty. “I’m grateful you could find time, sir. As I told your assistant, it’s something important that’s best spoken of between the two of us.”
Montague didn’t sound convinced. “So, out with it. You know how busy I am.”
Brogan took his time. He knew that Montague found it hard to resist a deal. Any deal that he thought he would come out of as the winner. It was a weakness that must have served him well. “It’s about a trade, sir.”
“What could you possibly have that I’d want to trade with you?”
“Information. I think you know something that’s of great importance to me.”
“Good for you. And what might you have to trade in return?”
“Something happened in your office last week.”
“Nothing has happened here.”
“As far as you know.”
Montague drummed his fingertips on the desk. “Nothing’s come through from Security. If what you’re saying is true, why hasn’t it been reported?”
“That’s why we need to have this meeting.” Brogan paused. “And because you might want to keep this confidential, away from Security and the police.”
Brogan knew this was a crucial moment. Montague was entitled to ask him to leave, entitled to call Brogan’s boss and ask for an explanation of why every rule in the book was being broken. Yet the look Montague gave him suggested the gamble of mentioning the police was about to pay off. If the rumors he’d been hearing were true, Montague would go a long way to avoid any form of police involvement in his business.
Montague gave a smile that said relax, let’s take this one step at a time. “OK, Mr Brogan. Tell me what you want from me.”
“The answer to a single question.”
“And if I agree, you’ll tell me what happened here last week?”
Brogan nodded. “Then we have a deal?”
Just as in an exchange of prisoners at a deserted checkpoint could not depend on one side going first and the other agreeing to respond, they had arrived at the matter of trust. The only solution was to meet halfway.
Brogan began. “I found someone in your office at 2 AM checking out your computer.”
Montague showed no surprise. “And you apprehended them?”
“They left before I could do that.”
“And you didn’t report it and then you waited all this time before letting me know?”
“You’ve not been the easiest man to get to see.”
“But you saw them?”
“No.”
“Then what do you have that could possibly be of any value to me?”
“I have something. Something that could allow you to identify them.”
“So give it to me.”
“Not before we make the trade.”
Montague leaned forward. “What, then, do you want from me?”
“The intruder was using your computer.”
“And?”
“There was an image on the screen. A photograph of a woman. Someone who’s important to me.”
“And how am I supposed to help?”
“I want to know her name. The one she’s using now. And where she is.”
“Why would you expect me to know that?”
“A beautiful woman on the computer of the CEO of one of the largest investment companies on Canary Wharf? Why else would she be there? If you didn’t know her?”
“Could be any woman. Men have any number of photos of beautiful woman on their computers.”
“Not this one. She’s Irish, like me. Three years older than me. Raven black hair. Shining bright, brown eyes. She’s wearing a pearl necklace. It’s unusual. Every fifth pearl is a black pearl. There can’t be many necklaces like that.”
Montague’s eyes narrowed as he heard the description. “You want to tell me why she’s important to you?”
“I’d rather you told me her name.”
Montague leaned further forward, staring at Brogan as if he was looking at him for the first time. “You’re her brother, aren’t you? I can see the resemblance.”
“So you do know who she is?”
Montague brought his computer back to life and, after a few clicks of the mouse, brought onto the screen the image that Brogan had seen the week before. “Is this her?”
Brogan stood and looked over Montague’s shoulder. “That’s her. That’s my sister. You know her name?”
“She’s Stella DaSilva.”
“You know where I can find her?”
Montague nodded.
Brogan could feel the optimism that he would again find his sister burning through him. But he knew enough to suspect that this might be yet another cruel building of hope about to be dashed. “So tell me where she is.”
“There’s the small matter of what happened in this office last week and that piece of evidence you have.”
So, as Brogan had predicted, there was no avoiding the matter of trust. Montague was a man whose reputation had been well-earned, they said. A man who would cheat and lie to secure any advantage while claiming that all he was doing was playing by the rules of the game. Brogan struggled to fight back the feeling that all along Montague was indeed his superior and that he would find a way to outmaneuver him.
He recalled all he’d been through since being separated from his sister and decided this was no time to lose faith in himself. Instead, it was time to raise the stakes. “I’ll give you what I have if you tell me where to find her.”
Montague could not hide a sneer. “You’re expecting me to trust you?”
“Yes, and the fact that I could hand over what I have to the police.”
“I could just report you.”
“And there’s the trade.”
There was a long pause as Montague assessed the odds. When he began again drumming his fingers on the desktop, Brogan knew he’d called the man’s bluff. “I just need to know where she is.”
Montague opened a desk drawer, removed a business card and handed it over. “She’s here in London.”
Brogan studied the card.
Stella DaSilva - Diamond Escorts.
Beneath the name, a phone number.
Montague held out his hand. “Now, give me what you have.”
Brogan knew it was time to honest. “I don’t have any evidence, as such. I just needed to find my sister.”
Montague’s eyes flamed. “You’re playing a very dangerous game, Mr. Brogan. What’s to stop me getting you fired?”
“For what? For telling you there was an intruder in your office?”
“For not following procedure and not reporting a serious security breach.”
“And not bringing in the police. I don’t think so.”
Montague’s eyes moved left and then right. “You know I have friends who won’t like to hear you didn’t keep your word with me?”
Brogan suspected that he had been successful enough in reducing Montague’s expectations that what little he had would now suffice. “I don’t have anything to identify the culprit, but I have a list.”
Brogan explained that the intruder must have been one of the overnight stayers since no one had trespassed into the building that night. “The culprit is one of those on the list I made when I did my rounds. I think I have them all. You should be able to find out who it was.”
There was almost a note of admiration in Montague’s voice as he accepted the list. “You’ve taken quite a risk, Mr. Brogan. But at least you’ve delivered something.”
Brogan smiled. “And all you’ve had to give in return is the card of an escort agency girl.”
CHAPTER 35
Looking round the room at the start of
the day’s morning meeting, Evan Hamilton was more convinced than ever that they were in need of a breakthrough.
It wasn’t that everyone in the team wasn’t working hard. The results just weren’t coming.
He asked everyone to provide an update on progress right from the beginning, without much expectation that something they’d missed would be uncovered, more out of hope that there ought to be some reward for being thorough and systematic.
Jason Blair had the look of exhaustion they’d come to expect of the office lothario. So routine had become his shift from one tryst to another that people had long stopped bothering to comment on the details of his latest conquest.
He’d been looking at the registration details for OAM Securities held at Companies House and failing to make much impression on the labyrinth of concealment he’d found there. “You know, Evan, I don’t believe in dressing things up. So, here are the facts, straight. If you’d set out to establish a company that was impenetrable to an outsider, this is it. OAM Securities is a subsidiary of Declan Holdings, which is a subsidiary of Ronicer Corporation. Declan Holdings is registered in the name of proxies in the British Virgin Islands and Ronicer Corp is registered in the state of Delaware, again with proxies serving as directors. Neither jurisdiction is prepared to reveal anything other than the barest of details. And since OAM itself is privately owned with no shareholders, it publishes no reports. In a word, it’s opaque.”
None of this was news to Hamilton. “You’ve been checking on the US connection?”
Blair nodded. “Our contacts in Delaware are cautious, scared of what might happen if the authorities get to know they’re even talking to us. I’m convinced they’ll deliver useful information on Ronicer, who really runs it and who benefits from it, but they’re going to need time.”
Something else that Hamilton was too used to hearing. “And that’s just what we don’t have.”
He turned to Tim Mason, seated to his right. “Anything on the tax situation, Tim?”
Tim Mason had been one of the first to join the team. In fact the team would not have been brought together if it weren’t for him. He’d delivered a string of scoops when the banking crisis had brought the world economy close to its knees and had been promoted three times on the strength of that. Some said he’d inherited money and didn’t need to come to work but came anyway.
Mason made a great show of shuffling the pile of notes he’d brought with him. This in itself was annoying. Where everyone else had gone digital, Mason preferred to remain a pencil and paper man. When he began to speak, it was clear he was going to take too long to get to the point. “Their tax arrangements are as complex as you’d expect. They’re offshoring in the Cayman Islands and in Bermuda. Governments there are reluctant to give details. It’s against the law for their banks to disclose anything about their clients.”
Hamilton interrupted. “We know that, Tim. Have you found anything untoward? Unless I’m mistaken, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”
“Evan, you did say right from the start.”
“OK, OK. But get to the point.”
Mason looked back over his notes once more. “If we’re talking about wrongdoing, then I have to say that’s going to be hard to prove.”
Hamilton cut in again. “Do they pay tax here?”
“As a company, I’d have to say the answer is no. What they pay is in the Cayman Islands jurisdiction. It’s not more than a few per cent. But you couldn’t say that was illegal. Shady, morally reprehensible but not illegal. Nothing that a growing number of the finance business in London aren’t also involved in.”
“And what about Montague himself? What about his tax arrangements? He lives here. He must pay his taxes here.”
Mason paused to read through his notes again. “Not according to anything I can discover from the Revenue. He’s resident in Jersey and spends less than the maximum allowed number of days here. That means he pays his taxes there. Once again, morally reprehensible but not illegal. There are thousands of high net wealth individuals like him doing just the same.”
“So, I take it we’re not going to get him on what did for Al Capone?”
“Looks unlikely. The tax affairs of OAM and Montague are everything you’d expect.”
Hamilton shrugged. “Yes, we get it. Shady. Morally reprehensible but not illegal.”
Hamilton turned last to Geoff Tunny who’d been listening in silence to what amounted to a catalogue of failure. “Any breakthrough on the investors front, Geoff?”
Tunny shrugged. “At the last count there were sixteen major ways that companies, with the right auditors, can cook the books. Most are in use. Many are regarded as merely questionable rather than illegal. The net effect is that companies that are running at a loss can be made to look profitable. A number are household names. So, to an investor, OAM looks like a good, safe bet. Returns are high, risk is low. The money flows in. The returns flow back to the investors.”
Hamilton could not help interrupting. “But, as we’ve suspected for too long now, Montague knows well how to walk the line between truth and reality.”
“And he could be using a combination of measures to cook the books. He has a willing accountant, after all.”
“Albert Emery. Where do we stand with him?”
Tunny smiled. “I’m sure he’s the weak link. He’s starting to look and sound like a man under pressure.”
“So, what will it take to reel him in?”
“One piece of hard evidence and he’ll crack. The threat of taking that to the police will break him, I’m sure.”
“How soon can we have that?”
It looked for a moment as if Tunny was about to tell the team about the bug he’d planted. “It’s going to mean unconventional means of inquiry.”
Hamilton tried not to show signs of alarm. “No need for the detail, Geoff.”
Tunny smiled. “Indeed. All I need to say is I have reliable information that will show where Emery and Montague are at right now.”
Hamilton prepared to wind up the meeting by giving his own summary. “OK. We’re making progress, but not fast enough. My next meeting with management will be no easier than the last. But I’m determined to keep the investigation going. There’s no one but us to bring Montague down. Everything points to the fact that he went Ponzi over a year ago. We need to find a way into the evidence.” He paused. He didn’t know how the rest of the team would take this. “We need more manpower. I’ve arranged with the Editor-in-Chief for Tom Markland to become a full member of the team, starting this week. He’s been doing well for us while co-opted in from criminal investigation and I’m sure he’ll bring in a fresh perspective once he’s fully inside our team.”
Hamilton looked at their faces as he made the announcement. Only Mason showed any sign of surprise or discontent. Perhaps it could be expected that he would fear being displaced by a newcomer’s arrival.
CHAPTER 36
If the meeting with Brogan had proved anything to Ty Montague it was that the time was fast approaching when he should be getting out of the finance business. The way the security guard was so confident in using the threat of involving the police made it clear that rumors about OAM Securities and the propriety of its business practices were now becoming widespread. It was a warning every bit as emblematic as that given to John D Rockefeller ahead of the Wall Street crash when his shoe shine boy asked him for share tips and, on the strength of that, the millionaire had decided next day to sell all his shares, saving the family fortune. The shoe shine boy effect. When the help gets to know about these things, it’s time to cut and run.
Even if, in this case, what they were saying about OAM was untrue.
As if Tyrone Montague would be seen dead running a Ponzi scheme? Who would fall for such a blatant con these days when so much was known about failed schemes of the past? OAM had over 900 million in investments. Many of its investors were household names – insurance companies, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds.
The very mention of Ponzi was an insult to himself, his company and all it stood for.
Who was he fooling? That was the public face he was so successful at maintaining.
In truth, of course, OAM was a Ponzi scheme, though it had not started out that way. The first five years had been all sure-fire success, generating the best returns the City had seen in a generation. When the downturn came, when the investments began to fail, there were only two choices. Own up, face bankruptcy and the shame of telling the truth to the investors, many his friends, that all the money had been lost, bringing disaster to some, misery to many. Or, arrange to massage the figures to show that the company was still doing well, to continue paying good returns to all those investors, using the money of new investors, keen to get a slice of the action of such a successful company, to pay the returns to those existing investors, many still his friends. No one needed to know. So long as enough new investment came rolling in.
What would anyone have done? The choice had been clear. If they called that a Ponzi scheme, so be it. Everyone was happy. So long as no one knew.
And now Emery was threatening all that. Albert Emery, the small time accountant that Montague had given everything in exchange for massaging the OAM books. The man who was now stricken with an act of conscience and who was threatening to bring the whole house down.
Emery, the man who had threatened only the day before to go to the press with proof that OAM was a well-disguised scam.
Time to snuff this out.
Montague picked up the phone and speed dialed Mike Quinn.
“We have a problem.”
The voice on the other end of line showed no emotion. “Emery?”
“He needs someone to get him to see sense.”
“Leave it with me.”
CHAPTER 37
Stella DaSilva readied herself.
There were times when life had been hard, when she’d done things that she would never have imagined, but this was worse.
He was coming to see her again.
The one she knew who had killed and, she was sure, would kill again.