Mendoccini

by Laurence Todd

  “Poletti’ll be arrested next time he comes to this country and, with any luck, the bastard’ll go down for as long as Addley, hopefully longer,” she said. “We’ve asked the Italians to keep an eye out and inform us next time he’s coming our way.”

  I told her about Darren Ritchie and my belief of his involvement both with money laundering and in the death of Josh Bryant, how he’d met Bryant just before he’d been killed and had him set up to be murdered by an as-yet-unknown killer. I also speculated he was in some way involved in the suicide of Nigel Hemsley, either by surreptitious pressure at work or in some other way. But either way there was blood on his hands. Simmons agreed he had a case to answer.

  “So, what now?” she asked.

  “Mendoccini’s in the country now and his every movement’s being watched, so I’m going after Ritchie. If I can get him to talk I’ll offer him a deal. He spills the beans, tells us what he knows and points a few fingers; he could get off with less than he deserves. There’s no evidence he’s planted any explosives. I think he’s just involved in the laundering activities.”

  “We have nothing on him as being a bomber,” she concurred.

  “He was supposed to be Hemsley’s friend. Hemsley confided in him, took him into his confidence, told him what he thought was going on. But that was Hemsley’s mistake. He trusted someone who used that trust against him because he was part of it. That must be how the bank found out Hemsley was planning to go to the FCA and blow the whistle on the scam. That’s why he got moved on to different duties. It was Ritchie behind it, him and Hemsley’s section head, Roger Bradley.”

  “We’ve found nothing suggesting Bradley’s father’s involved. He was thoroughly vetted by MI5 before he was appointed to his current position in Government, and he’s clean. Just as well; we can do without another banking scandal, particularly one with a link to terrorism and involving a Government minister,” she exclaimed. “Imagine the flak if he was involved with his son and positive vetting hadn’t picked up on it.”

  I imagined the delight on Clements’ face if he ever knew about this.

  “I’m also going to look at Delucca in more detail. If he’s the connecting factor between the three firms, he’s has to be involved in the laundering operation. His daughter’s also involved with Michael Mendoccini. Maybe she’s up to her neck as well. The family that terrorises together stays together, eh?” I remarked, somewhat flippantly. She laughed.

  “You and Mendoccini are old school friends, it seems. I’ve heard you two were out on the town last night. In a gay bar, no less.” She mimicked sounding shocked.

  I adopted a camp accent. “We’re just good friends. I’ve known him since I was eleven.”

  “Word of warning. Stimpson doesn’t trust you. Wants you off the case, but your boss says you can be trusted. You should watch your back.”

  “Thanks for that.” Good for Smitherman.

  I hung up, resisting the urge to ask her out. Some other time.

  Hemsley had suspected money laundering occurring inside his bank. He’d found out a company the bank did business with, Carloggias, was simply a shell owned by an Italian company, Chrenora’s, and funnelling funds from other companies registered offshore. He’d confided in someone he’d thought was a friend who was supposedly also concerned about such a possibility. My guess was Darren Ritchie was more concerned about the scam being rumbled, so he’d leaked the news to Bradley who, in turn, had told Karris and Millers’ senior management, who’d warned Hemsley off. Ritchie had then set up Josh Bryant to be taken out of the picture after he’d mentioned to Hemsley he was on to something.

  Roberto Delucca was connected to Carloggias, Fettolio’s and Chrenora’s. He could be connected to Paolo Poletti and Michael Mendoccini, both of whom were known to be active inside Red Heaven. Mendoccini was the money man. My guess was the case he’d passed on to Darren Ritchie yesterday contained money which was to undertake a journey through several accounts in different countries before ending up in an account used by Red Heaven, facilitated by Ritchie and Roger Bradley inside Karris and Millers, who were either willing dupes of or active participants in terrorism.

  A picture was emerging but based largely on conjecture. I had lots of suspicions but little I could arrest anyone for. Time to stir the waters.

  Darren Ritchie’s file on our database confirmed he still lived at Mulberry Walk, Chelsea, which ran parallel to the Kings Road. His file picture was absolute confirmation of whom I’d seen at Mendoccini’s table that evening. Cross-referencing against Debbie Frost’s name confirmed she still lived at the same address and was still in the employ of the Conservative Party as a senior official in their Policy and Research department. She was still hoping to be selected as a candidate for a safe seat at the next election as she was listed as being on the party’s A-list of approved candidates.

  I’d taken a dislike to her after she’d stonewalled my investigation into the murder of the Phipps brothers by Phil Gant, and this had turned to detestation when I’d learned it was she who’d put Gant on to the Phippses in the first place. I knew this to be true from an unimpeachable source but I couldn’t prove it as the source would never agree to verify it. Both she and Gant had evaded liability for the deaths of two innocent persons and it riled me she was free to continue her climb up the greasy pole whilst these deaths went unpunished.

  I parked outside Frost and Ritchie’s flat. There were several very expensive-looking cars parked along the short road and I briefly wondered if the owners worried about leaving them out in the street overnight. I saw the lights were on in their second-floor flat. I rang the buzzer and a few moments later I heard a click and the front door unlocked. I went in and up to their flat. The stairs were steep and I was glad I wasn’t delivering bags of groceries. As I arrived at the top, their door opened and Debbie Frost herself appeared. She recognised me instantly and her eyes opened wide when she realised who she’d just admitted to her home.

  “Good evening, Ms Frost, and how are you this fine night?” I smiled at her. For all my dislike of her, as a man I had to admit she had beautiful hair and great legs.

  “Oh God, not you again.” She turned back into her flat. Clearly she wasn’t a fan. I followed her in.

  “Who is it, Deb?” a voice called from the small kitchenette. A man appeared carrying two mugs of something hot. He looked surprised when he saw me.

  Debbie Frost had walked to the centre of the lounge and was standing, arms crossed and tutting to herself, looking at me with an expression suggesting she was not pleased to see me again. “What the hell do you want now? You still trying to pin something on me? I told you everything I knew about the theft of my stuff last autumn.” She sounded irritable. I derived the distinct impression I was interrupting some quality time together. I was not displeased at this thought.

  “Who is this guy, Debbie?” He put the mugs on the coffee table. He sounded unconvincing asking the question.

  “DS McGraw, Special Branch,” she exclaimed, almost spitting the words out.

  “Oh, come on, Darren, you know me,” I said light-heartedly. “You saw me in the Chinese restaurant a couple of weeks back. That’s why you turned away so quickly when you saw me looking across at your table, because you knew who I was. You recognised me from when I came here before, didn’t you? And you also told your friend who I was. Isn’t that right?”

  “What’s he talking about, Darren?” She sounded perplexed.

  I looked at her. “Doesn’t he tell you where he goes when he goes out and who his friends are?” I was still being flippant. “Sounds like there’s some trust missing here, Darren.”

  There was silence for a few moments.

  “Actually, you’re off the hook for the moment, Debbie; it’s Darren I came to talk to. I need to ask him a few questions about accounting protocols inside Karris and Millers, and also about a couple of his more recent activities.” I looked at him and adopted a serious tone. “We can either do it here or with you in custo
dy. Your choice.”

  He sighed and sat on the couch. I sat in the chair across from the coffee table. Debbie Frost continued to stand, arms folded and glaring at me.

  “Do you want me to get you a lawyer, Darren?” she asked. She was taking a mobile phone from her bag.

  I stood up. “Your prerogative, Darren, but you go that route, I’ll arrest you right now under the 2006 Terrorism Act on suspicion of having engaged in acts designed to facilitate acts of terrorism and you’ll be held incommunicado whilst in custody. I can hold you fourteen days without even telling anyone anything.” I waited. “Alternatively, we can just talk, you might not be arrested and you won’t need a lawyer.”

  He and Debbie looked at each other for a few moments. She sighed, shook her head and put her phone down. I sat down again.

  “I’ll come straight to the point, Darren. I have evidence you’re involved in a money laundering operation inside Karris and Millers, and we believe the money’s going to a terrorist organisation, Red Heaven. You heard of them?”

  He nodded.

  “Then you’ll know what they’re capable of and what they’ve done, won’t you? At present the case against you is largely circumstantial but I’ve more than enough suspicion to arrest you.”

  His expression changed. He looked worried.

  “But you answer a few questions for me and, if I like your answers, you might not be charged with anything terrorist-related, you’ll just face charges of falsifying accounts.” I stated this softly though firmly. I was hoping his resolve could be tempted by the possibility of a lesser charge.

  He sighed and pursed his lips.

  “I’m not a terrorist.” He looked at me, almost imploring me to believe him. “I fought against ANC terrorism in the South African army.”

  “Perhaps not, but you’re an associate of them. At least one of the people in the restaurant where I saw you the other week has a terrorist connection. You know how easy it’d be to add conspiracy to any charges you could face? I can testify to having seen you with someone who’s known to have terrorist links. Think about it, Darren. You in the company of a terrorist suspect? Money being laundered and going to terrorists? What do you think a jury’ll make of that in the current climate?”

  He looked around the room for a few moments, gathering his thoughts. The room was comfortably furnished with mainly new furniture, though the brightly coloured 1960s lava lamp by the window looked out of place. There was a top-of-the-range Samsung stereo system against the other wall. I wondered what a pair of yuppies like these two would be listening to. James Blunt? Debbie Frost had sat down and was looking nondescript. Despite her beautiful hair and great legs, there was little else to like about her.

  “What do you want to know?” Ritchie finally asked.

  “Who were those people in the restaurant with you, Darren?”

  “Just a few people from work and a couple of people they knew. We were celebrating; the bank had just declared substantial interim six-monthly profits, so the bonus was looking good and we were having a few drinks to celebrate.”

  “Was Roger Bradley one of them?”

  “Yeah. He organised it.”

  “One of the other people you were with was Michael Mendoccini, and he’s not a banker. The money laundered is handled by him. How well do you know him?”

  “Barely, just enough to say hello to.”

  “But you know him well enough to meet him for lunch in Soho yesterday and collect a briefcase from him and take it back to the bank,” I stated.

  He looked up at me, surprised.

  “I saw you meeting him in Costa coffee,” I assured him. “I was across the street, waving at you. You obviously didn’t see me. You denying you were there? I’ve got the CCTV footage if you wanna see it.”

  He didn’t reply. He sat back in the seat.

  “His family’s involved with a firm called Chrenora’s, in Italy. Your bank has dealings with a firm called Carloggias. The money that’s moved between this firm and various offshore accounts ends up in Chrenora’s account. Chrenora’s is how Red Heaven gets financed. Italian security’s confirmed this.”

  He maintained his silence. He looked like a schoolboy waiting to be chastised, with his head slightly bowed and avoiding eye contact.

  I was carrying a plastic wallet. I unzipped it and produced a number of items. I showed him a picture of Josh Bryant. “Recognise this man?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” he muttered after a few seconds of pretending to look closely at the picture. “Who’s he?”

  “You quite sure? Take another look.”

  He did. “Still don’t know who he is.”

  “Who he was, you mean. He’s dead. His name’s Josh Bryant. He was killed a few weeks back. Hit hard over the head, died from the resulting injuries. I thought you might recognise the picture because you were the last person to see him before he died.”

  “Me?” he exclaimed.

  “Yeah, you. You met him in a Canary Wharf pub two weeks ago last Friday evening. Staff working that evening positively identified you from the picture they were shown. They also identified Bryant as the person you were talking to. I even know who asked you to meet him. I do believe you two were discussing these.”

  I produced the set of accounts and invoices I’d purloined from Bryant’s flat and handed them to Ritchie. He looked at them. His eyes told me he recognised them.

  “Bryant was investigating something related to these,” I said. “He’d been put onto it by Nigel Hemsley, who was concerned because he’d formed the impression there was money being laundered in the bank’s accounts. Hemsley confided in you because he thought you were his friend. But you tipped off the bank, didn’t you, when he told you he was going to the FCA to blow the whistle because the bank wasn’t taking his allegations seriously? That’s why he put Bryant on the trail, because he was good at unearthing stuff like fraud. And it got him killed as a result.”

  I stopped talking and looked directly at Ritchie. He was staring intently at the accounts, as though they were telling him the secrets of the universe.

  “As well as financing terrorism, I’ve enough to arrest you and have you remanded as a suspect in the murder of Josh Bryant. I know you’re some part of a money laundering scam at your bank and looking into it cost Bryant his life. You met with Bryant a couple of hours before he died, so you’re complicit in his murder, whether or not you actually hit him. I think you knew it was going to happen after he left the pub, and you set him up to be killed. You’re an accessory before and after the fact at the very least. Throw in the terrorist angle and you’re looking at real jail time, Darren. Think what that’ll do to her chances of landing a safe seat.” I nodded towards Debbie Frost. I enjoyed the look of discomfort on her face. She was frowning as though someone who’d stayed overnight had wet the bed. She got up and went into the kitchen.

  “It wasn’t like that, honestly,” he said quietly, after a few moments’ thought. “Look, you’re right, I did meet him in the pub, but all I did was try steering him away from what he was doing. He was getting too close to being able to prove there was laundering going on in the bank. Hemsley’d given him some documents and Bryant had been looking into them. Someone had made a mistake on one of the accounts. Funds had been deposited into the wrong account, and it led to Bryant discovering a connection between our bank and a company holding funds in the Caribbean that were supposed to be going to the charity. My hand raised before God, I had no idea he was going to be killed after meeting me. Someone else arranged for him to be bumped off, not me. I was just there trying to give him a bum steer, though I don’t think he bought it.”

  “What did he actually say?”

  “He’d contacted Nigel, told him he was sure he could now prove money was being laundered. As I said, he’d found a connection between the bank and a company registered in the Caribbean which the bank had never declared. He’d traced funds all the way to this company and back to Karris and Millers. He had proof of wha
t we’d been doing. He pointed it all out to me when I met him.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “What?” He was surprised at my apparent naivety. “Something like this gets out, it means the fraud squad, the FCA, the whole bloody lot of them’d come digging around.”

  “And he was going to go to the police,” I stated.

  “He was going to publish it. He wasn’t going to name names but it would have triggered police interest. He’d already written something in a magazine about it.”

  “So, who did you call after he left?”

  “Nobody. On my mother’s soul, I swear I didn’t call anyone.”

  “Someone knew, because whoever did it was waiting for him. Who else knew you were meeting Bryant?”

  “No one, just Hemsley. He asked me to go meet him and then report back what he said about his investigations.”

  “Bullshit, Darren. You’re telling me Hemsley arranged for the man he hired to be killed?” I stood up. “Let’s talk about this at the station. You’re under arrest.”

  “No, no, look. I’ll tell you what you want to know.” He sounded panicked. Debbie Frost reappeared from the kitchen and sat next to her boyfriend.

  “Look.” I sat down again. “Do yourself a favour. You put me in front of this and, if what you say pans out, you’ll quite likely face a lesser charge and, depending on what my boss says, get a lighter sentence, but you have to tell me everything you know. Understand?”

  Ritchie took a couple of deep breaths. He’d realised the hole was deep enough and it was time to stop digging.

  “I’m guessing you know Nigel’s dead,” he said. “Committed suicide last Thursday evening.”

  “Yeah, I knew,” I said softly. “Did you know Hemsley was a friend of mine? We knew each other at King’s.”

  Ritchie looked surprised.

  The second part of the statement was true. I’d known who he was. But I wanted Ritchie to feel bad about Hemsley’s death.

  “Nigel was examining some accounts on a spreadsheet about a year ago and he came across something he later realised he wasn’t supposed to see,” he said. “They were accounts from a transaction with an Italian firm, Chrenora’s. He had no idea about this account and, looking through the figures, he thought they didn’t make any sense. They seemed to be about various funds relating to the charity the bank’s involved in, and a couple of other companies, but he couldn’t work out how the transaction was structured. It was all very complicated, nothing added up. So he reports this to his section head.”