The Concrete Ceiling

by Peter Rowlands

  “So if I tell you what you want to know, you promise you’ll back off and leave me alone?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She waited a moment, then said, “I have to go to a meeting in a minute in downtown LA. I could talk to you after that, if you can find your way there.”

  After disconnecting I called up a map on my phone. I was impressed to discover that I could travel all the way into LA on the Metro Gold commuter rail line. All I had to do was take a bus to the nearest Metro station. All the same, by the time I’d understood the bus system the full journey had taken me more than two hours. But by one o’clock I was wandering beneath the skyscrapers of LA, heading towards Wilshire Boulevard.

  I liked big cities, and this one didn’t disappoint, though the central area was a paradox; some storefronts were empty, but the glitzy parts seemed even glitzier than I’d expected. I made my way to the café where Toni had told me to meet her, and she was already there, clutching a coffee and staring into space. I shuffled in opposite her.

  She eyed me warily. “This goes no further, right?” she said.

  “Can I ask you a question before I answer that? Do you think that what happened here in LA had anything to do with Rob’s death?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea who might have wanted to kill Rob. He might have upset a lot of people. All I can tell you is there’s no way it has anything to do with me or the company I work for.”

  “OK then, you have my word.”

  She nodded thoughtfully, then said, “So. Rob wanted to set up a new business to rival The Spine. We knew each other from when I worked there myself, so he asked me if he could borrow The Spine’s data until he could build up his own database – to feed his mailings through the Lammie system.”

  “Borrow?”

  “You get my meaning.”

  “Why did you help him?”

  She raised her eyes heavenward. “I’ll give you one guess.”

  “You were involved with him.”

  “Got it in one.”

  I nodded. “I had to ask.”

  She waited a moment, then resumed. “It went OK at first. I knew the ropes – I knew how to anonymise the mailings to make sure we weren’t found out. I made it look like they came from Magic Bookseller. My company is only a small outfit, and our security wasn’t as good then as it should have been. But after a while I realised Rob wasn’t making much effort to build up his own database – he was just relying on ours. He was expecting our deal to go on forever. By then we’d broken up, and I wasn’t having it.”

  “So you blew the whistle on him?”

  “Well, no. In the end the decision was taken out of my hands. I made a mistake with one of the mailings, and the people at The Spine got suspicious. They told my company they were going to take their business elsewhere, and they threatened to file a law suit against Rob. It was a nightmare.”

  “But none of that happened?”

  “No. Rob and I never admitted anything, but I think he gave them what they call a non-prejudicial undertaking. Basically he said he would never use The Spine’s data in future, or disclose details to anyone of how it might be possible.”

  “So he got away with it.”

  “Kind of.” She reflected on that. “I guess I did as well, but it didn’t feel like I had at the time. My company knew I was the most likely culprit, but they didn’t have proof. So we had this kind of weird conversation – like, hypothetically, if I was responsible for this, would I agree that I would never breathe a word to a soul about it? If so, I could carry on working there, and they would forget it ever happened. I had to sign a paper saying that.”

  “Sounds generous.”

  “They didn’t want the world hearing from me that someone had exploited a vulnerability in their system.”

  “What happened to Rob?”

  “Well, he ducked the law suit, but business-wise it was a disaster for him. Suddenly he had no mailing list. At least, he did have a kind of list, but it was nothing like The Spine’s. So he couldn’t live up to the claims he was making for his business. Also the press got a hold of the story. It was all just rumour, and The Spine never admitted any details, but I think that’s why Rob moved his HQ to England. Fresh start.”

  “But the internet is global. There’s no escape.”

  She shrugged. “I suppose he felt safer on familiar ground.”

  It all made sense. I asked, “So what happened last night?”

  She looked down into her coffee cup, then up again. “This is still not for repeating, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I mean it. I’m levelling with you here because I think you’re an honest person.”

  “I think so too.”

  She brushed her hair back and stared at me again. She said, “It was my brother Paul. It’s his house I’m living in. I gave up my apartment and moved in with him a while back.”

  “Why?”

  “He has … a problem. An expensive problem that he has to feed. I don’t want him to go out robbing people to pay for it.”

  “You’re very generous.”

  “He’s family, right?”

  “Of course.” I tried to smile sympathetically at her.

  She said, “You would do the same in my shoes.”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “You would. Trust me.”

  “So what happened yesterday?”

  She shook her head. “I’m so stupid. When you spoke to me, I thought my brother was out somewhere, but he was right there in the house, listening to the whole conversation. After you left … he told me not to speak to you.” She hesitated. “He can be very forceful.”

  “I see.”

  She adopted a defensive tone. “He knows all about my scam with Rob, and he’s terrified that I’ll lose my job if it comes out. He has no work of his own, so if I was fired in disgrace, we would have no more income.”

  “So you didn’t come to meet me at the diner.”

  “No, but then an hour later a friend of Paul’s comes screaming up in an old pickup, which he stole, no doubt – ” she broke off to scowl – “and the two of them head out. Somehow I knew they were up to no good, so I jumped in my car and drove round to the diner.”

  “And you saw what they were doing?”

  She nodded. “I can read Paul like a book. He thought the police would treat what they were doing like just another car-jacking that went wrong – a throwback to the bad old days.”

  “It was a brave thing you did. You probably saved my life.”

  “I think I saved Paul’s life too. He’s never done anything as violent as that before. Knowing him, he would have been caught, and that would have been the end for him.”

  “Aren’t you worried that he’ll find out you’ve talked to me today?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “He’d calmed down by this morning. I told him I could sort this out … and here I am.” She gave me an earnest look. “I have sorted it out, haven’t I?”

  I nodded.

  “Thank you.”

  As we rose to leave, she said, “I’m impressed with the way Dee has taken Ellie back so willingly.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She was always wayward. When she was twelve she broke her brother’s arm in a fight. She only just ducked out of the court system. I heard Dee was relieved when Rob whisked her away to England.”

  “I suppose there was no option but to bring her back home.”

  She nodded. “I guess not. What else could she do?”

  “Rob told me he hoped Ellie would calm down after she moved to the UK.”

  “So you actually spoke to him?”

  “Yeah, I visited him twice. The first time I was trying to find out why my book promotion hadn’t worked out. The second time was when we found him.”

  “He was a nice guy. You might not think so from where you’re standing, but a lot of people will miss him. He just didn’t always have the patience to do things right.”


  Part 3

  London

  Chapter 48

  Man in south London school scandal held in ‘bookman’ murder case

  Graham Bulwell (53), a former schoolteacher in south London, has been held on remand in connection with the so-called ‘bookman’ murder of Robert Openshaw (44), who ran a promotional service for eBooks from his home in Islington.

  Mr Bulwell, a bank clerk from Clapham, was a teacher at The Meriel School in Dulwich when it was the focus of a police investigation in the 1990s. Pupils accused staff members of improper behaviour during a period extending back over many years.

  Mr Bulwell was never charged with any offence, but he left his job soon afterwards, and has not returned to teaching. He has since published a thriller in electronic form, and is known to have been using Mr Openshaw’s Magic Bookseller service to promote it.

  Robert Openshaw launched his career in book publishing in London, then worked in the United States for many years, returning to Britain last year to run his eBook business from here. He was found dead in his kitchen this summer by his daughter Ellie (15).

  I sat reading this news item on my phone on the Piccadilly line during the hour-long trip from Heathrow airport to central London. I’d been alerted to it in a brief text message from Samantha that reached me in the baggage reclaim. It simply read “Have you seen this?” I’d downloaded the page before descending to the Underground station.

  I phoned Sam when I got back to Camden Town.

  “It’s a nightmare,” she said. “Graham thought he’d put that school business behind him forever, and now the sodding press have dredged it all up again.”

  “What was it about?”

  “I can’t tell you much – I was only eight at the time. From what I’ve heard over the years, the whole thing was whipped up by a group of mischief-making kids at the school where Graham taught.”

  “Why did they pick on him?”

  “I don’t think they did. A whole bunch of the teachers were targeted. I think the kids just focused on the ones they didn’t like. But it turned out that one of them really had done things he shouldn’t have, so it was more than just hot air. Graham was completely exonerated, but after that there was no way he could go back to teaching. In the end he got the job in a bank.”

  I felt a surge of anger. I said, “How can these people claim to be honest journalists? What possible link could there be between the two things? They’ve cast suspicion over Graham for absolutely no reason.”

  “That’s the press for you.”

  “It’s not my kind of press.” My mind was racing. “Do you know why he’s been re-arrested?”

  “New evidence – that’s all we’ve been told. We asked Bernard Croft to look into it, but it’s not his case, so the police aren’t telling him anything else.”

  “What about Graham’s own solicitor?”

  “He’s not sharing with us.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  * * *

  Dave was ahead of me this time. When I caught him on the phone he said, “As soon as I saw the press reports I knew you’d ask about this, so I talked to Pat Evans again.”

  “And?”

  “It seems the cops found a house across the square from Openshaw that had a webcam facing towards his front door. The owners were away when the police first investigated the case, but they did a second trawl and came up with this.”

  “What does it show?”

  “Your Mr Bulwell wasn’t being exactly truthful when he denied going all the way to Openshaw’s house that day. The camera apparently shows him going in at the front door, then coming out again fifteen minutes later. Clear as day. That puts him squarely in the frame for the murder. Oh, and this took place in exactly the time window during which Mr Bulwell’s money was paid back into his bank account. One can visualise him standing over Openshaw while the transaction went through.”

  “That still doesn’t prove Graham killed Openshaw.”

  “Course it doesn’t – but it’s quite compelling evidence that he might have.”

  A selfish question jumped into my mind. I said, “If they’re concentrating on Graham, does that mean they’ve finally discounted me as a suspect?”

  “I asked that question, and the answer is that you shouldn’t bet on it. They still haven’t ruled out the idea that you might have been working in collusion with him. They just haven’t figured out the mechanics of it.”

  “Great.”

  There was a pause, then Dave said, “How was the USA?”

  “Huh! Challenging. That’s probably the best word for it.”

  “Do I take it you got yourself into trouble as usual?”

  “You could say that. Probably best not to ask.”

  “I’m amazed you weren’t on the phone to me, asking me to help you fend off the combined resources of the entire LAPD.”

  I said nothing to that. A new question had occurred to me. “Why is your man Pat Evans so willing to share his knowledge with you? Doesn’t he think it’s odd?”

  Dave chuckled. “That’s a hard one to answer. Cop complicity? Something like that? It turns out that we both take much the same view of policing, and I think he enjoys throwing ideas around with someone who knows the score, but isn’t directly involved.”

  “But he must have an inkling that you’re asking on my behalf. Doesn’t he care?”

  “I filled him in on some of the other stuff you’ve been involved with in the past – the cases where you steered the police in the right direction. I’ve shown him you’re not a threat.”

  “Lucky me, then.”

  “Don’t be under any illusions, Mike. I practically had to pledge my life to this guy to convince him. At heart he’s as cynical as the rest of us.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “You should.” He paused. “So please think twice before you ask me anything else. Every time I go back to him he takes a bit more of my soul.”

  * * *

  How much of Dave’s information should I pass on to Sam? I was happy to believe she wouldn’t break a confidence, but I couldn’t assume the same about Nick. When I called her back I asked tentatively if she was planning on sharing my information with him.

  “Are you saying I shouldn’t? You’ve already asked me that once before.”

  “I’m just asking if you’re prepared to keep it to yourself.”

  “Why?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. Her attitude to Nick seemed to vary each time we talked about him, and today it was defensive. I fudged the issue, saying, “I’m just trying to limit the opportunity for ripples of knowledge to spread. My mate Dave will be in big trouble if any of this gets out before it’s been officially released.”

  “And you think Nick would spread it?”

  “I’m just covering all the angles.”

  “Hm.” She took a moment to think about it. “OK, I won’t say anything to Nick.”

  When I’d repeated what Dave had told me she said, “I still don’t believe Graham could have done this. It’s just not in him. If you’d known him as long as I have, you’d realise how ridiculous it is. However strong the evidence is, it’s just plain wrong.”

  “He didn’t help his case by lying about visiting Rob Openshaw. It’s made him look as if he was hiding something.”

  “You have to look at this from his point of view. He must have horrible memories of what happened all those years ago. When he was first arrested for this, the police presumably had no evidence that he went inside that man’s house. I can’t see him volunteering anything to make them think differently.”

  “The trouble is that so far there don’t seem to be any other suspects – apart from me, that is.”

  “They’ll just have to find some.”

  “Hopefully they will, but at the moment they probably don’t have much inclination to keep looking.”

  “Well they should.” She sounded downbeat, but then she said, “Maybe the answer is staring them in
the face, and they’re simply not seeing it.”

  “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  Chapter 49

  Rob Openshaw’s square in Islington was as quiet as ever. Autumn sunshine flickered through the trees in the scrubby central area. There were no hints of the dramatic events that had taken place at the house: no police tape across the front door, no curtained windows or drawn blinds. The building looked much the same as all the others in the terrace.

  Frustration more than anything had drawn me back here this morning. Partly it was frustration with my job. I’d written up my visit to Maintown Logistics in California, and now I was back on the routine work for Guy Dereham. I was looking for any excuse for a break. But more than that, I was frustrated at the strange turn of events surrounding Rob Openshaw’s death. I couldn’t dismiss the way Sam had championed Graham’s innocence so defiantly. If she was right, he must have walked into a setup that had been almost tailor-made for him. I would be doing us both a favour if I could find an alternative explanation for what had happened.

  Yet there was a problem. My determination to uncover a link to Openshaw’s book promotion service seemed to have run out of steam, and I had no other leads. If I wanted to pursue this further, I’d decided I would need to go back to the beginning.

  I stood looking at the house from across the street, leaning back against the railings that surrounded the centre of the square. I wondered how the police would regard my presence here if they found out about it. Was I interfering with evidence? Could I be compromising the testimony of potential witnesses? Probably yes – but then, nobody had explicitly told me not to come here.

  The house itself seemed to have nothing to reveal. If I wanted to know more, I would have to be proactive. Somewhat nervously I approached the next house along the terrace to the right of it. I climbed the three steps and rapped briskly with the brass knocker.

  A woman in her forties opened the door to me. Her well-tailored suit gave her a certain elegance, and her smile suggested confidence. I had my patter ready. I said, “Mike Stanhope, representing Seismic Scene, the news service. We’re doing a follow-up on Rob Openshaw’s death. Could you spare me two minutes?”