“Okay.” I nodded and put the accounts back in my jacket pocket. “The indirect approach hasn’t worked. Maybe your line manager or whoever will be a little more forthcoming. I’ll go see them tomorrow, and I’ll be sure to mention that police have already spoken to you about these accounts because your name’s on them and we suspect you’re something to do with the deceased being in possession of them. I’m sure they’ll be interested in knowing how these accounts made it into police hands. I’ll also be sure to mention the deceased in this case was investigating your bank. You think they’ll wonder why he was doing that?”
I was annoyed I’d been stonewalled but, at this point, I could do little. He apologised again for his inability to help with my questions. I left the flat without saying goodbye and began the walk back to the tube station. Walking away it dawned on me Hemsley had said he suspected his immediate superior was also involved, so contacting the bank was probably not the best way forward at this moment as I didn’t want to expose Hemsley to any unnecessary risks.
Something then made me look behind as I walked away, that sixth sense telling me I was being watched. I noticed there was somebody in Lawbury’s window watching me depart. I stopped and looked up at the window. The standoff lasted eight seconds, then the curtains were pulled.
I had to talk to Hemsley again. I needed to know who it was who’d contacted Bryant, or even whether it was him. Police would not have known who had put Bryant on to the trail of what he was investigating and so would not have known about Hemsley. Asking about this would mean he’d now realise the concerns expressed to Richard Clements had gone wider than he’d expected, but there was no helping that.
I took a taxi to his flat in Charterhouse Square. His wife answered the door and I asked for Nigel. She called out for him, giving me a sour look as she did so, and pointedly did not invite me inside, presumably to make a point about my calling at such a late hour, even though it was only about quarter past eight. She walked away as I was about to show ID. Hemsley came to the door. His eyes opened wide when he saw me again, as though he were seeing an apparition. He stepped outside.
“I need to talk to you again. This is serious.” I spoke as he was about to.
He sighed audibly and led me into his flat and into the lounge. His wife got up and left the room, closing the bedroom door rather too loudly.
I sat down without waiting to be invited. He sat across the room from me and lit a cigarette, looking at me apprehensively, like he was waiting to hear bad news from the doctor. I formed the impression he was trembling slightly as he held his lighter. I noticed a big picture of Hemsley and his wife on the sideboard behind him. They were both smiling broadly and I suspected it’d probably been some while since he’d last been that happy.
“I need to know whether you met with Josh Bryant the night he died or, if it wasn’t you, do you know who did? He’d been talking to someone in the pub just before he was killed and it’s important we find this person.”
He stared at me in amazement. My comments had caught him out as he’d clearly not realised I knew about his concerns. Or about his connection to Josh Bryant.
“I know about Josh Bryant and that he was looking at allegations of money laundering,” I said. “The accounts I showed you earlier? They were found in Bryant’s flat. I know Bryant was investigating your concerns about your bank being involved in money laundering and it’s our belief he found something which led to his being murdered. Was it you he met?”
So far as police were concerned, Bryant’s death appeared to be a motiveless and random killing, though I’d mentioned my belief about the reason for the killing to Mullins when I’d spoken to him earlier in the week.
“How do you know all this?” Hemsley gasped.
I debated with myself whether to mention Clements’ name. For the moment I decided not to do so.
“As I said, I’m Special Branch and any suspicions of money laundering are of concern to us. I’m looking into someone who I’m led to believe is involved in laundering money for a group connected to terrorism, and the trail’s led us towards your bank. That’s how I found out. Plus, as I said, we found those accounts in Bryant’s flat, and both you and Dereck Lawbury, who I’ve just spoken to, have confirmed they’re confidential, which means someone had to leak them to Bryant as there’s no other way he could have got hold of them. That’s why I’m asking you, as our investigations have led us to believe it was you who raised the original concerns about the bank. I’m right, aren’t I?”
He sat quietly for a few moments gathering his thoughts. His original belief, that Clements could simply be told a few salient facts, put them in print and have the culprits exposed and punished, had been shattered. Life just ain’t that simple.
“Yeah, it was me,” he sighed. He then spent a few minutes explaining why he believed the bank was laundering money. He mentioned he’d found a firm the bank did business with had been bought by a similar firm, which the bank also did business with. Both had been shell companies, which provided a convenient means to hide money the authorities would be interested in. He outlined his suspicions about the children’s charity the bank supported hiding evidence of funds being laundered to be repatriated back to one of the shell companies, when they’d be completely legitimate. As he spoke I wondered whether Mendoccini was involved in the shell company. Was this where the connection arose?
“So I started asking questions. I was initially fobbed off, told it was nothing to worry about, an accounting glitch. But money still seemed to be flowing from this particular firm to various other firms and there didn’t appear to be any evidence of trading. The bank was making loans to a business with no connection to what merchant banks do, and the level of secrecy involved made me think something was going on.”
“What kind of amounts you talking about?”
“Mostly quite small. Amounts between €50,000 and €100,000 were the norm.”
Quite small? I’d be happy earning either amount. “How did it work?”
“In some cases they were dressed up to look like loans being repaid, but that’s nonsense because I did some checking and found, in several instances, there was no original loan to repay. In certain cases, money that we’d placed but wasn’t repaid was listed in the extraordinary items in the notes to the accounts, and written off against tax. It was just funds being put through our accounts and made to look like normal business transactions, which was what got me thinking whether this was some kind of scam as this seemed to be a pattern over the last few years. This one Italian company we did business with: we make a loan to them of several hundred thousand euros but, soon afterwards, the company goes into liquidation. Out of that same company, another company emerges and buys the debts and liabilities of the failed business for peanuts, but it’s the same people running the new company. The loan we’d made was written off as a bad debt, but it was there in the accounts of the new company. The money was now clean and could be spent quite lawfully. It’s a textbook laundering scam.”
“But management inside your firm didn’t share your concerns, did they? They took you off what you were doing when you said you were thinking of blowing the whistle to the FCA because you weren’t happy with their lack of action. That’s why you put Josh Bryant on to this, didn’t you? Because I’m told you believe your immediate superior is part of this scam and you don’t trust him, but Bryant was an independent, an outsider, and could be objective.”
He expelled air audibly, as though trying to catch his breath after running up a flight of stairs.
“Who told you all this?” He was unconvincing in his denial, trying to sound shocked at what I’d just said.
“I’m a detective. I ask questions and people tell me things, and from the answers I get, or sometimes don’t get, I build up a picture, and I then ask more questions based on this, and I keep doing it till something makes sense. That’s how. Are you denying your concerns about money laundering inside your bank?”
He sat silently f
or about fifteen seconds. I could wait. He was nodding to himself and tapping his fingers on his knees. There were no sounds coming from anywhere in the flat. In the corner I could see a ginger cat lying in its basket, giving me the evil eye. Clever cat; it obviously sensed I was not a cat person, much preferring dogs.
“People don’t launder money because they’re saving for a holiday,” I tried to prompt him. “They do it because the money’s come from a source the authorities disapprove of and the amounts are usually substantial, and the people doing it want to be able to spend the money without the authorities breathing down their necks. Laundering cleanses money so it can be spent legitimately without the authorities catching on, and if you’re funding terrorism or banking huge amounts from narcotics, it’s key to your survival. So, if you think your bank’s laundering funds, you’ve done the right thing raising your concerns. I think someone in that Italian firm you mentioned is the money man for a terrorist organisation, and if I can link someone in your firm to him, we can close it down and him with it.”
I hoped I’d been convincing. He stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette. His face had an almost ghostly colour.
“Was it you met up with Bryant the night he died?” I asked.
“No, it wasn’t,” he sighed, shaking his head.
“But you know who did, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he answered after a few-second gap. “I do.”
I waited a few more moments.
“I’ve got a friend in the Mergers and Acquisitions section. He suspected I thought there was something wrong, so I took him into my confidence, shared my concerns about the accounts with him and he agreed I was right to be concerned. He and I tried to check where funds were coming from and we were making a little progress. But the firm somehow caught on to what we were doing, told us we were scaremongering unnecessarily and warned us off. My friend took the advice, backed off, but I didn’t, I kept looking into it, and when they found I was going to the FCA, they hauled me over the coals, threatened me with dismissal and blacklisting.” He stopped. He looked like he was about to cry. “I get sued for breaching commercial confidentiality and blacklisted, that’s my career down the drain.”
“Who told you this?”
“One of the senior managers. Told me he appreciated my concerns but said in no uncertain terms I was to step back. He said they’d look into my claims, but that was just to buy me off. I was transferred from the investments section to doing routine financial stuff any half-competent junior clerk could do. It also means I don’t have access to the financial statements I used to have, so my enquiries couldn’t continue.”
“So you put Bryant on to it.”
“Yeah. A friend in the City recommended him. He had a good rep as an investigative reporter. I met him and put my concerns to him. He took my claims seriously and agreed to investigate them. Said he could get them in print if my suspicions turned out to be correct.”
“How long had he been looking into them?”
“A couple of months, I think.”
“Had he made much progress?”
“Last time I spoke to him, about a week or so before he died, he was excited because he said he was sure he could prove the bank was laundering money. He’d looked at a couple of deals that’d been done and was sure they were dodgy. He was pursuing one particular lead when he was killed.”
“But you don’t know what it was.”
“No. That was what he told my friend. But he died just after this.”
“Who’s the friend? I’ll need to talk to him about this. Have police spoken to him about this matter?”
“No. He’s not talked to anyone.”
“What’s his name?”
“Name’s Darren Ritchie. He’s someone I’ve known since I started at the firm.”
Darren Ritchie. The name instantly resonated with me. I knew that name but couldn’t immediately bring to mind why. But I was sure I knew it. I made a note to check it out before I took this any further, as it was bugging me that I couldn’t recall why the name Darren Ritchie was familiar.
“When you talk to Darren,” Hemsley said, “don’t let on you got his name from me. He’s been at pains to ensure this stays just between us; says if too many people are in on it, there’s every chance too many details’ll leak out. He wanted it kept between him and me. That’s what I’ve done. You’re the only person I’ve spoken to.”
I knew this was untrue because he’d spoken to Richard Clements. “Keeping this under wraps may not be possible, but I’ll not mention your name if I don’t have to. You’ve told no one else about this?”
He picked up a mug of what looked like stone-cold tea or coffee and drained it. “Inside the firm, no.” He was looking anxious. “You know, if the financial system worked as it’s supposed to, I could report my suspicions to my immediate line manager and he’d look into it. But as he’s one of the people I think’s involved in the scam, I can’t go to him, and I don’t know how far up the chain it goes.”
He paused for a second.
“Actually, I have spoken to someone,” he said sheepishly, almost apologetically. “I went to see this reporter and talked to him. I was dumb enough to think he’d publish my story. He said he’d not tell anyone.”
I knew who he meant. “Why’d you go to a journalist?”
“I knew this person from university, so I felt I could talk openly to him.”
“But he’s not published your story.” I knew he hadn’t.
“No. It was stupid of me to think he would. I only talked to him because, when I heard Bryant’d been murdered, I was bloody scared, I don’t mind telling you. I felt guilty as well. He was only out there because I’d shown him some documents about my belief money laundering’s going on under my nose,” Hemsley eventually admitted.
“How did you find out he was dead?”
“Was on the news. I saw the report about a journalist found dead in Canary Wharf and when I saw the name, it scared me. I thought whoever did it might come after me. So Darren and me have been keeping a low profile.”
“Are you saying you think the killing came from inside your bank?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head.
“Police haven’t connected Bryant to your bank yet, so whoever did this is unlikely to do anything stupid just yet. But be careful, just the same.”
“That’s why, when you stopped me outside the bank the other day, I was initially scared. I was almost relieved when you showed me your ID.” He laughed nervously.
“Yeah, I’m a scary guy.” I stared at him. “Is it just you and Darren Ritchie who think laundering’s going on?”
“So far as I know.”
“Okay. Keep up the low profile. I’ll catch up with this Darren character and talk to him. Don’t tell him I’ve spoken to you. Once I know what went down between him and Bryant, we’ll know about what Bryant found out.” I stood up, ready to leave. “Thanks for your help.”
“Did you say you’ve spoken to Lawbury?” He sounded worried.
“Before I came here. Spoke to him at his place down by the river.”
“Did you mention my name?”
“Yeah. I also wrote it down for him so he doesn’t forget it.” Hemsley looked like a heart attack was imminent.
“I’m kidding. ’Course I didn’t mention your name. This is still an ongoing investigation, and we’re not going to tip our hand just yet, are we?”
Hemsley’s wife entered the room and glared at me with evident distaste, as though I were the source of a bad smell. Hemsley sensed the bad vibes.
“He’s helping me, Lois. He’s not connected with the bank.”
She didn’t seem convinced. I left the flat feeling as welcome as the Ebola virus.
S E V E N
Friday
After spending an interminable hour at a meeting I had no interest in, made no contribution to and promptly forgot about as I took one step from the room, I was back at my desk and finally reading Josh Bryant�
�s article. It assumed the reader was conversant with finance and economics, as well as political realities, and was written in very academic prose, requiring considerable powers of concentration as well as erudition.
The basis of the article was that the banking system was an uncontrolled and wholly unregulated fiefdom, almost a law unto itself. Bryant cited several examples from the early 2000s where banks had got away with activities which, in any other profession, would have had industry regulators down on their collective heads. Because bankers and brokers were regarded by the financial community as the new masters of the universe, he wrote, and the political classes were in thrall to their wizardry and what they contributed to the national economic infrastructure, the New Labour government had permitted them their excesses with light-touch regulation, which had directly created the conditions for Northern Rock to cause the first run on a UK bank for over two hundred years and, in America, ultimately for Lehman Brothers to collapse, leading to the western economy teetering on the brink of the abyss in 2008. He pointed accusing fingers at several top bankers, including Dick Fuld and Fred Goodwin, and was unsparing in his attacks on these individuals.
This was vitriolic stuff and it was easy to understand why the Observer had refused to publish it; the paper’s readership was largely drawn from the moderate centre left, but this article would be far too radical for its demographic. However, for the readership of New Focus, such rhetoric would be exactly what they wanted.
But what was particularly interesting was Bryant’s reference to one particular financial institution using its accounts to hide money deriving from loans made to businesses that had no relationship with the bank’s normal activities and were based on mainland Europe. These funds were being placed into the accounts as legitimate trades and then fed into the accounts of other companies based offshore and ultimately back to one particular firm as clean money, and, because this business was a funnel for a terrorist group, the implication clearly was that the bank was aiding and abetting the terrorists’ efforts. The article also referred to a charity supported by the bank being involved. Bryant gave an assumed example using derived figures to show how this would work.
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