“Roger Bradley,” I interrupted.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “He tells Nigel it’s all an accounting error, it’s being dealt with, blah, blah, blah. Usual stuff. Nigel forgets all about it. But a few months later, he discovers his wife’s having an affair with Bradley. His wife was supposed to be going away this particular weekend, something to do with her job, so Nigel goes out that evening and he’s in a restaurant with a friend when, across the road, he sees his wife, Lois, getting out of a taxi with Bradley and they go into a hotel. He checks it out and they’re registered as Mr and Mrs someone. This wasn’t the first time either; apparently they occasionally even used to meet up for a lunchtime quickie.” Ritchie almost smiled. “Roger even charged the room to his expense account. Man’s got style.”
Debbie didn’t look impressed.
Ritchie sipped his drink. “Poor Nigel, so bright but so dumb. Everyone in the section knew Bradley was shafting his wife. Only person who didn’t know this was Nigel.”
He stopped talking. I waited a few moments.
“So, what happened after this?”
“Nigel decides, rather than confront Bradley or his wife, he’s going to bring Bradley down. He decides he’s going to get Bradley put in prison. Bradley’s dad’s something in the Government, so he wants to cause maximum embarrassment to Bradley and his family. He remembers the accounts that didn’t make any sense, so he starts looking into these accounts and invoices much deeper, and it’s at this point he begins to suspect the accounts are being doctored.”
“Why’d he suspect this?”
“He found the invoices being drawn on a non-existent company. The bank was receiving money for services provided to a firm existing on paper only. Nigel keeps digging surreptitiously and finds out a lot more. A couple of these firms are just PO boxes offshore someplace. He began confiding in me as I’d made the mistake of becoming friends with him.”
“But he didn’t know you were involved, did he?”
“No.” He shook his head. “He pours it all out to me. Tells me everything he’s found. He’d actually done a good job unearthing evidence. He’d spent quite a while investigating what was happening. I was almost impressed with his diligence at digging up incriminating evidence. With what he’d found, people would be going to jail for a long time if it ever got out.” He sounded concerned.
“So you told Bradley.”
“After I’d stopped trying to persuade Nigel to give up. He was determined to go to the FCA with the details he’d unearthed. Hemsley’s quite resourceful; he’d found out a lot more than I’d initially suspected. He could have even brought the bank down with what he knew. He could have done to us what Leeson did to Barings. I was even more worried when he said he’d got a freelance journalist looking into a couple of the transactions. He’d given him copies of various sets of accounts: those ones you’ve got there, plus other stuff.”
“Why were you worried?”
“I’d seen some of the documents: accounts, invoices and memos. Depending on how clever this guy was, he could have implicated me in what was going on.”
I was taking it all in. “You know why he went outside the company?”
“Senior management got wind he was planning to blow the whistle.”
“Because you told Bradley, didn’t you? And he tells them.” “Yeah. He told them Nigel had misinterpreted a few figures and was planning on going public with his claims. Bradley’s the son of an ex-senior employee who’s also a non-executive director as well as a Government minister, so senior management took his word everything was fine. They threatened Nigel with the sack and prosecution. That spooked him. The bank moved him to other duties where he had no access to accounts and other stuff he needed to look at. He started getting depressed. He’d confronted his wife about her affair with Bradley and they were supposedly patching things up again. One of the last things he said to me was he’d also spoken to someone else outside the bank about his suspicions, but he wouldn’t say who. You being here means he spoke to police, didn’t he?”
“No, actually, he didn’t,” I corrected him. “I came across this because I’m investigating another angle. So far as I know, there’s no record of his talking to police.”
This was true. I’d not written anything for the record yet. “So, what happens now?” he asked almost resignedly.
“What’s your connection to Bryant getting killed?”
“Bradley’d discovered Nigel had put this bloke on to the laundering scam. I don’t know how he knew, but he did.”
“Come on, Darren,” I said calmly, “you told him. How else would he know? Hemsley told you and you told Bradley.”
Ritchie didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
“Nigel realised Bradley knew,” he said, “so he asked me to go along to see Bryant and answer his questions. Nigel had told him I was working with him and I could be trusted. I told Bradley I was going to try and steer Bryant off-track, give him misinformation, try stalling him. Tell him Nigel’s having second thoughts. I was actually trying to stop Nigel from getting in too deep.”
“So Bradley knew you were meeting him.”
“Yeah.”
“Who else?”
“Don’t know.”
It was a safe bet Roger Bradley had arranged for Bryant to be killed, but I had no definite proof of this.
“How do you, an ex-army man and Oxford grad, get involved in the first place?”
He expelled a breath of air and cleared his throat.
“Roger asked me to sign off on a few sets of accounts a couple of years back. Nothing too serious, just make it appear certain transactions had taken place at a given time when they hadn’t, so the accounts balanced out. He told me there’d be a sweetener in it for me. So I did. Got a few pounds for my troubles.”
He must have registered the look on my face.
“Don’t look like that. It goes on in every office. There’s probably not a straight set of accounts anywhere.”
I assumed he thought this was a justification.
“A while later he asked me to do the same again, only this time I asked what it was all about. He said he was helping out a friend, but he wouldn’t elaborate. It wasn’t till Hemsley told me he thought money laundering was going on that I twigged what I’d been helping with. I realised I’d been helping funds be transferred into certain offshore accounts. Apparently I’d signed off as to the veracity of these accounts, which Bradley wasn’t slow in reminding me.”
“You’re in a bit deeper than that, aren’t you? I’ve seen documentary evidence your name’s on company literature transferring ownership of one company to another. You signed these documents on behalf of a company called Fettolio’s, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. I’m listed as one of the officers of the company so I could sign ex parte the other director involved.”
“Who I’m guessing is Roger Bradley.”
“It is, yeah,” he said. “It was Roger’s idea to do this. I just signed on the dotted line where he told me to.”
“Makes funnelling money easier, doesn’t it?” I said casually.
Ritchie shrugged his shoulders.
“Hemsley thought the money was ultimately going to a terrorist group,” I said. “Was that your feeling?”
“Not initially, no. I thought it was, for want of another phrase, just another set of accounts being fiddled. The amounts involved were actually quite small, usually not more than several thousands, which is why I wasn’t too bothered by doing it. I’d not have got involved had I known who it was all in aid of.”
“So why did Hemsley think terrorism was involved?”
“Somebody called Delucca. His name was also on company literature. Nigel found out he’s linked to Red Heaven. Don’t know how he found that out.”
“What’s Bradley’s connection to Red Heaven?”
“I don’t know that either,” he stated positively. “I don’t know how or why he got involved. I just did it for the money.”
&
nbsp; “Speaking of which, was that what was in the case you left with yesterday?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Travellers’ cheques and currency, euros mainly.”
“And you gave it to Bradley?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “He takes care of dispersal. The money gets fed into different numbered accounts held in the names of certain companies. From there onwards, the money gets transferred to various other companies offshore. Ultimately comes back clean.”
“One other thing. A security source told me Hemsley’s listed as being a friend of Michael Mendoccini, but Hemsley denied knowing him, and I believe him. How would that have occurred?”
“Mendoccini thinks I’m Nigel Hemsley.” Ritchie looked pleased with himself. “He doesn’t know my real name. Bradley said I should do this after he found out what Nigel was up to. Thought it’d land him in trouble if the balloon ever went up.”
“I phoned your bank last Thursday as I’d just learned Hemsley had died, but I was told you were away for a long weekend break.”
“Yeah. That was Bradley you spoke to.” Was he smiling at the ruse?
I looked at Ritchie and Debbie Frost sitting together. The golden couple. Both achievers in their chosen fields but both equally dishonest and amoral. They deserved each other.
“So, you admit to knowing laundering was going on, and done through using firms existing for no reason other than to wash money. Also, you’re admitting to involvement in it.”
“Yeah,” he replied solemnly.
“You’re also admitting Bradley is the main person, the organiser.”
“Yeah.”
I put my hand in my jacket pocket and switched off the digital recorder with a small directional microphone attached I’d secreted away. If later on Ritchie was to deny what he’d said I’d simply produce the recording plus a transcript of our conversation. Either way I had the bastard on a hook.
“Do you have any idea who might have killed Bryant? As it stands, you’re still complicit in his death and my boss’ll need convincing your story about not knowing it was going to happen is credible if he’s to sanction a deal. He’ll give credit for the accounts but he won’t turn a blind eye to murder. Someone goes down for that.”
He sat quietly for a few moments.
“You’ve told him everything else, you might as well tell him that as well.” Debbie Frost spoke up. Was this a twinge of conscience or an attempt at damage limitation?
“Yeah, okay.” He blew his nose. “I was talking to Bradley about all this one time. I asked him what would happen if it all goes pear-shaped, you know, what if someone suspects something. He said not to worry because if anyone suspected what he was doing, he’d simply put it in the post.”
“In the post? What the hell’s that?” I was bemused.
“It’s a reference to someone he knows. A real violent thug, ex-US military, works as an enforcer for certain gangs in London. He’s one of the go-to guys when you have a problem you want sorting.”
“What’s the post bit? You have to write him a letter?”
“No. Post’s the name he’s known by. I think his name’s Bartlett Poe but they call him Post Poe. I don’t know why.”
“And you think it was him killed Bryant?”
“Sounds like his style. Wouldn’t surprise me.”
I was digesting what I’d heard in the past twenty minutes. I turned to Debbie Frost. “You knew about all this, didn’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
“Yeah, you just sat back and watched lover boy funnelling money to a terrorist organisation in return for however many pieces of silver it was.”
She said nothing in reply to that.
“Won’t go down too well with the selection committees, will it, being the girlfriend of someone helping to raise funds for terrorists? I wonder how the law ’n’ order brigade in your party would respond to knowing this.”
She ignored me. I looked at her. For all her supposed sophistication, she looked bemused and emotionally frail, like a teenage girl unsure of what her next step in life was. And to think, first time I ever saw her, I thought she was quite stunning. What I was looking at now sickened me. Both of them came from money yet were complicit in helping terrorism and doing so for financial recompense rather than ideology. What a world.
“Do you think Bradley has any reason to suspect you of anything?” I asked finally.
“No. He and I are cool. He does all the dispersing, arranging for money to be siphoned off into the different accounts. I just move figures around as and when required.”
I thought for a few moments.
“We need to keep you guys cool, then, so for the moment I’m not arresting you. But I’m officially cautioning you. This’ll also be written up, which means if I fall off the edge of the world later tonight, someone else’ll be back to take you in. So you’re not to tell anyone about this, understand? You’re not to try escaping or hiding because, if you do, I’ll get an arrest warrant and tie you both into everything and all bets and talks of a deal are off. And if you run, I will find you, trust me.”
She looked very apprehensive. I suspected she was seeing a potential career as an MP evaporating before her very eyes.
“I’m going after Bradley next, and this Post character. So you two are to say nothing to anybody and, when needed, I’ll arrange to have you taken in. Before that I’ll talk to my boss about likely charges but, if what you say checks out, he could agree to leniency. But for the moment I don’t want Bradley having the opportunity to destroy evidence. We clear?”
I thanked them for their honesty. Ritchie was looking almost relieved, sitting back in his chair, eyes closed and taking a deep breath, but Debbie’s expression was hard to read. Actually, I didn’t care what she was thinking. She was in a bind. That was enough for me. If I’d done one thing which would stop her ever becoming an MP, I’d be pleased. I left them to discuss their next step and enjoy what was now likely to be a miserable evening.
Sitting in my car, I wondered what Richard Clements would give to know what I now knew about Debbie Frost.
E L E V E N
Wednesday
Special Branch had nothing on its database about Bartlett Poe, so I’d requested MI6 to forward any details they had. They made interesting reading.
Bartlett Poe was thirty-six and from Idaho, USA. He was ex-101st Airborne and had enlisted in the military to avoid going to prison for a felony conviction when he was eighteen, as he’d already racked up a string of misdemeanour offences, mainly assaults. He’d seen service in Afghanistan and Iraq and had given exemplary service, credited with a number of known kills of enemy personnel, and had been on track for further promotion inside his platoon until his role at Abu Ghraib had come to notice.
In March 2003, Amnesty International and the Red Cross, amongst other human rights organisations, had highlighted widespread abuse and severe mistreatment of prisoners being held in Abu Ghraib prison, including buggery, ritual humiliations, beatings and burning the Koran in front of prisoners, and most of the allegations were later found to be true. This resulted in several soldiers going to prison and at least one senior officer demoted in the ranks. It was here Poe had earned the sobriquet Post. He’d suspected an Iraqi whom his patrol had arrested on the street of planting the improvised explosive device which had killed two of his platoon and injured seven more, so when the suspect refused to confess to planting the device, denying any knowledge of the incident, he’d tied the man securely to a metal post and had whipped him with a heavy chain until stopped by a senior officer, who’d heard the man’s screams from two hundred and fifty yards away. The man had suffered several broken ribs as well as significant liver and kidney damage but had survived the ordeal. The suspect had been a non-combatant, someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. Poe had been court-martialled, stripped of his sergeant’s stripes and dishonourably discharged from the army.
Since then, Poe had been resident in London, working as a bodyguard and enforcer
for a known criminal gang, though he had no convictions. His file listed an address in Elephant and Castle. He was known to be a very aggressive man who resorted to violence easily. He had no known connections to Red Heaven or any other terrorist organisations. Anyone he killed would be for money, not ideology.
I finished typing up the report of my questioning of Darren Ritchie the previous evening and included my recommendation he be charged with accounting fraud rather than under the terrorism legislation, assuming he made a sworn statement outlining everything he knew, as well as naming names. I mentioned I had him on tape admitting complicity in money laundering. My suspicion was he was a dupe rather than a committed supporter and had been blinded by easy money, though he still needed to be punished. But this would be Smitherman’s call and I forwarded the report on to him.
I was about to leave to find Poe when news reached me Darren Ritchie had been found dead earlier that morning.
The report read he’d received a call on his mobile phone around 10.15 pm from someone asking him to meet them. He’d left the flat to do so and, a couple of hours later, his body had been found in Cremorne Gardens, off the embankment, by a young couple out walking their dog. The dog had been foraging around and found the body lying beside a bush. They’d contacted police. He’d had his neck broken by what appeared to be a single blow, and had probably died instantly. Police were checking CCTV cameras, attempting to identify anyone who’d been in the area last night. No phone had been found. His distraught partner didn’t know who it was who’d phoned Darren earlier, though she did state he hadn’t seemed concerned when he’d left the flat. She’d given police Darren’s mobile number but there was no response, meaning the SIM card had almost certainly been destroyed.
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