by Peter James
‘Roy! Good to meet you! I’m DI Kate Tate from the City of London Financial Crimes Unit, and I’ll be acting as the Cover Officer on this operation.’
He shook her hand warmly.
‘And this is UC 2431, Roy,’ Tate continued. ‘Julius Cornel – better known as J. Paul Cornel!’
‘Good to meet you!’ Grace leaned forward and shook his hand.
‘Well, you know, it’s very good to meet you too, Detective Superintendent!’
The man’s accent was deep BBC English, tinged with a mid-Atlantic drawl. Perfect for an Englishman who had spent the past forty years in California. But not quite perfect enough. Grace stared hard at him in disbelief. Stared at the elegant suit, the tailored white shirt, the silk tie, the shiny black Gucci loafers, the shaven head, the designer stubble. Oh yes, he looked the part all right. And no doubt he could fool a lot of people.
But he wasn’t fooling him.
Did he blow his cover now or go along with it? He decided, to test him, to go along with it for the moment. ‘Congratulations, Mr Cornel. Great to see a Brit do so well overseas! I’ve read of your success on the internet, with great admiration.’
‘Well, that’s pretty generous of you, Detective Superintendent. Guess I’ve been lucky, you know. Someone up there likes me! Well, until recently, anyhows.’
‘I was sorry to read about the death of your wife.’
Cornel shrugged. Then, keeping up the accent perfectly, he replied, ‘Jackie and I had thirty-two happy years together. How many couples can say that?’
‘Not many,’ Grace said. He shook his head and grinned and Cornel grinned, too. Both men knew it was game over.
‘Bloody hell!’ Grace said. ‘You’re good, Norman!’
Potting removed his dark glasses, beaming. ‘You think so?’
‘I never knew you were a trained UC.’
‘Have been for years, chief. It’s part of our brief that no one else in the force must ever know. We’re sort of like those sleeper spies in the John le Carré stories. Never knowing if or when we might be called into service. Tell you the truth, I thought I was past it, entering the sad old gits’ club, and I’d never be called on. Then this opportunity came along – had to volunteer for it!’
‘Norman’s perfect, you see, Roy,’ Tate said. Then, with exquisite lack of tact, she continued, ‘And of course we can’t allow any UC to have sex with their target, so Norman will be able to tell her, with only a little white lie, that he has prostate cancer, leaving him impotent.’
‘How does DS Potting feel about that?’ Grace quizzed her. ‘Have you asked?’
‘Let’s hold it here for a moment, Roy, and let Norman speak,’ Tate said, holding up her hand.
‘I’m good, Roy,’ Norman Potting assured him. ‘I’m OK playing along with that. I was the one who actually raised it with Kate.’
‘Norman, I don’t know how well you’ve been briefed, but there’s a couple of things I need to warn you about,’ Grace said. ‘The first is that Jodie Carmichael is an extremely cunning and manipulative lady. If the information we have so far is correct, she has been responsible for the death of at least three men – and possibly more. The second is that I have good evidence there may be a contract on her life from a New York-based Russian organized-crime gang. They’ve sent the man we previously knew only as Tooth, who is currently travelling under different names including John Daniels and Mike Hinton. As you’re well aware, this man is very clever and dangerous. What you are doing may put your life in extreme jeopardy.’
Potting – and it was hard to accept it was Norman Potting and not the billionaire persona he now had – peered up at him. ‘Roy, you need to understand that the day Bella died, some part of me died too. I’ve got cancer. If I can do some good things with the rest of my life, then I’ll go out with a smile on my face, whenever that might be. OK?’
Grace smiled at him. Potting was ever the rugged old bugger. ‘OK, Norman. But take care. We’re putting every possible protection in place to look after you.’
‘Won’t need ’em, Roy. I can take care of myself. I’m a survivor!’
‘You’d bloody better be! I want you surviving this bitch and your cancer, OK?’
Potting grinned and then, in the accent he had pitch-perfect, replied, ‘You got it, buddy!’
94
Thursday 12 March
As Roy Grace sat back down in his office, he was in a quandary. Was he exposing Norman to too much danger?
But if he pulled him from the operation, without doubt someone else would be in danger. The black widow’s next victim. If they got it right, Potting would lead them to this woman, and they could keep a visual on him and protect him. But he needed that protection.
Grace phoned his ACC and updated him on the latest information, and his concerns.
‘Roy,’ Pewe replied after some moments, ‘you’re the SIO on this case, and you have to make the decisions here, including the cost implications – so long as you continue to be the SIO.’
As he ended the call, Grace was fuming again. So long as you continue to be the SIO. Great, he thought. Yeah, right. If it all worked out well, ACC Pewe would take the credit. And if it all went tits up, Pewe would be dumping the blame squarely at his feet and using it as the excuse he dearly sought to ease him out.
And he knew exactly what Pewe would be thinking at this moment.
Please, God, have Roy Grace screw up.
What was crucial now was connecting Norman Potting with Jodie. That needed very careful handling of the local media. Any inkling that J. Paul Cornel was a set-up and it was game over for that plan.
But he had to admit to himself, with a wry smile, good old Norman, with a makeover including teeth whitening, made a very convincing elderly billionaire.
Would she take the bait? That was something he would be discussing in detail with Detective Superintendent Nick Sloan, the Force Authorizing Officer, who was managing the operation.
But, more importantly, how did he protect Potting?
95
Thursday 12 March
The mildly eccentric-looking lady, her face heavily made-up, dressed in a calf-length coat, woollen hat and old-fashioned glasses, looked every inch the elderly bohemian artist. She hobbled slowly through the door in the white facade of the corner store premises of Lawrence Art Supplies in Hove’s Portland Road, supported by her silver-topped walking stick.
She made her way to the counter and politely requested a large tub of aluminium powder and a hot-glue gun. She paid for them with an American Express card in the name of Mrs Thelma Darby. Five minutes later she emerged with her purchases in a carrier bag and approached the waiting taxi. The driver helped her in, passing her the stick and carrier bag after she was seated.
Then, as instructed, he took her to a nearby aquarium store. Thelma again asked him to wait, then entered the store. She came out a short while later with two carrier bags, containing four boxes of oxygenating tablets and a frozen white mouse.
Climbing back into the taxi, she asked the driver to take her to the plumbing supplies store on a nearby industrial estate, where she bought an eighteen-inch length of malleable steel pipe with screw-ends. Then, as a precaution, she changed taxis and ordered the next one to take her to an electrical store on London Road.
There she bought a mini Arduino relay that was just half an inch across, a mercury tilt switch and an assortment of USB memory sticks. The assistant behind the counter gave her an odd look, as if wondering how on earth a batty-looking old lady like this even knew what these things were, let alone what to do with them.
Carrying her purchases, she stepped out and turned right, walking along London Road, stopping at a chemist to buy a cold gel-pack, then at a hardware store where she purchased a short length of heavy-duty insulated wire, a roll of insulating tape and a pair of pliers. She hailed another taxi and instructed the driver to take her to a kitchenware shop in Western Road, where she made her final purchases of a small set of digital
kitchen scales and a coffee grinder.
She then asked the driver to take her to the Jurys Inn Hotel, opposite Brighton Station.
As she made her way across the hotel foyer towards the lifts, leaning on her stick with grim determination, she was looking forward to getting down to work. Her shopping trip was complete and one hundred per cent satisfactory, no problems at all.
She didn’t do problems.
96
Thursday 12 March
At 12.30 p.m. Roy Grace did the Asda run to get his lunch and something to drink. He’d eaten nothing since a few mouthfuls of porridge at 6 a.m., and a muffin in the café, and he was hungry again.
His eyes ran along the superstore’s sandwich shelves, and he was tempted to get an all-day breakfast bacon and egg feast. But guilt held him back. Cleo had repeatedly warned him of the dangers of the rubbish diet that so many police officers survived on. He looked at several cakes and doughnuts, too. Often in the past he had ignored her – and Sandy’s – entreaties for him to eat healthily. But Noah and Cleo had added a new dimension and purpose to his life. He felt an extra strong need to take care of himself, for his family. So in the end he bought a tuna and sweetcorn on brown bread and an apple, and allowed himself just two naughty treats, a Diet Coke and a KitKat.
As he walked across to the ‘10 Items or Less’ till he saw a rack of Argus newspapers. The headline read:
BRIGHTON’S FAVOURITE SON SAYS: I’VE COME HOME TO DIE!
Good! The seed had been sown. He bought a copy.
Back in his office, Grace laid the paper in front of him. The front-page splash was accompanied by a photograph of the stocky, tanned billionaire barely recognizable, even to himself, as Norman Potting. The accompanying story, written by a reporter he didn’t know, told of one of the city’s favourite sons, born on the Whitehawk Estate, who had truly gone west to make his fortune in California’s Silicon Valley. He was now terminally ill with prostate cancer, and had decided to return home to his roots for the last months of his life.
Instead of buying a home in the city, because the doctors had told him he had so little time left, J. Paul Cornel had moved into a suite at an undisclosed hotel for a few days, before returning to California to tie up his business affairs there. With no dependants, he was intending to look at worthy local charities to leave the bulk of his estate to, and something by which the city would remember him. He said he hoped, if his health permitted, to return to Brighton to spend his remaining days here.
When I asked Mr Cornel if it was true he had been thwarted in his attempts to buy a US baseball team, he replied that it had once been a dream but now his love affair with the US was over. Did he have his sights set on anything closer to home? Perhaps Brighton and Hove Albion?
‘Well, you know,’ he replied in his American drawl, ‘I’ve got this damned cancer but I’m not done yet. Watch this space, eh?’
As he peeled open the wrapping round his sandwich, Roy Grace read on. J. Paul Cornel’s journey from Dorothy Stringer School – winning a scholarship to Boston’s MIT, the leading technology university in the USA – was documented in detail as were the visionaries he’d met and helped finance on the way, including acolytes of Danny Hillis, the founder of Thinking Machines Corporation and pioneer of the parallel processor, and of Nicholas Negroponte, head of the MIT Media Lab, plus half a dozen former employees of Apple and Microsoft.
Due to smart tax planning, the article continued, just as the Sunday Times Rich List team had found, Cornel’s true wealth was impossible to estimate. But many financial analysts put it as not far short of the $17.4 billion of Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft.
Since arriving back in our city earlier this week, Cornel has, understandably, gone to ground in a suite at a rather grand Brighton hotel which he has asked me not to disclose.
One thing I spoke to this delightful gentleman about, before our time was up, was romance. I asked him if he felt he still had the time and the energy for love in his life. He replied with a smile, ‘What else matters in life, at the end of the day? And you know what, this is going to sound strange. I know I don’t have much time left, but I would like to find love again – and I’m gonna keep looking!’
Yes, Grace thought. Brilliant stuff! Yes, yes, yes!
97
Thursday 12 March
Jodie Carmichael walked through the busy concourse of Victoria Station to the Brighton line platforms. She was in a foul mood after a distinctly unsatisfactory meeting with her lawyers. She used a top London firm of solicitors as she felt more anonymous there than with a local Brighton firm.
She reflected, as she walked, on the costly hour and a half of advice she had received from one of the firm’s senior matrimonial law partners, Drendia Ann Edwards. Jodie had been correct, Edwards had told her, the captain of the ship was a certified registrant and the marriage was indeed legal and binding. But, with almost unprecedented speed, a marker had already been put down by the law firm acting for Rowley Carmichael’s children. Alarmed at the haste of their late father’s marriage – and subsequent death – she confirmed they were not accepting the Goan Coroner’s report and, despite the fact that their father’s body was embalmed, were demanding a second post-mortem. They were prepared to take their fight to any level – and they had pockets deep enough to do so, Edwards had warned.
Which meant she would almost certainly be in for a massive fight over Rowley’s estate, too. Something that could easily drag on for a couple of years, maybe longer, with costs that could run into tens, if not hundreds, of thousands, which she would have to fund. At the end of the day she should certainly inherit some of his fortune – but that could easily be some while into the future.
Most of her inheritance from her first husband, Christopher Bentley, had gone on buying the house in Roedean, and on living and travel costs. She had the $200,000 windfall from the Romanian in New York, which would see her through for a bit, and she had a small emergency fund stashed away, but bloody Walt Klein had caused her to eat into that. She’d had to pay for everything out in Courchevel on her own card, because both Walt’s card and the one he had given her had been declined at checkout; on top of that, she was out of pocket for that ridiculously expensive coffin she’d bought him.
If she didn’t find another source of funding quickly, she might need to sell one of her properties. The Roedean house had soared in value in the years since she had bought it, but having to sell and downsize would be a worst-case scenario. An admission of defeat, and an end – even if only temporarily – to her plan, to the goals she had set herself.
Perching on her Standard Class seat – the first time in years she’d not travelled First – she was feeling a slight sense of panic that she was going to have to start making economies. She decided the first thing she would do when she got back home was sift through all the replies from the internet dating agencies that would be in her inbox, and contact a few of the most promising ones.
She slumped back and picked up an abandoned copy of the paper on the seat next to her, which had been left open part way through. She liked to keep updated on local Brighton and Sussex news – and especially anything that might refer or relate directly or indirectly to her.
The page seven headline of the Argus read:
POLICE WARN OF BRIGHTON CITY CAR-THEFT EPIDEMIC
She scanned it. A gang was operating in Brighton and Hove, breaking into houses not to burgle their contents but to get the keys to high-end cars, particularly Range Rovers and top of the range sports cars.
She thought back to the break-in at her home. Was that what the thief had been after? Her Mercedes?
She turned a few pages and saw another, smaller headline.
SUSSEX POLICE MORNING-AFTER CAMPAIGN TO REDUCE ROAD DEATH TOLL
She speed-read the article, which said that the police were mounting a series of spot checks in the city to catch people still over the drink-drive limit the following morning. She flipped through a few more pages then closed the pa
per, and immediately the front page splash caught her eye.
BRIGHTON’S FAVOURITE SON SAYS: I’VE COME HOME TO DIE!
She looked at the photograph of the man, read the article, then looked back at his photograph again; not that she really cared what he looked like. She was thinking to herself, OK, I could shag you for seventeen billion dollars. Not a problem. I could definitely be the love of your life. For the short amount you have left of it!
She actually found him quite sexy. And, she noted, the Argus said Cornel would be in Brighton for just a few days before returning to California to tie up his affairs there. Shit, she was going to have to strike fast to catch him while he was here. She read on, avidly.
Cornel has, understandably, gone to ground in a suite at a rather grand Brighton hotel which he has asked me not to disclose.
So how many hotels in this city would I go to ground in? she wondered. The Hotel du Vin? The Hilton Metropole? The Grand? One of the other smaller boutique hotels?
A rather grand hotel.
Oh, you wonderfully clever bitch of a reporter!
98
Thursday 12 March
Tooth removed his hat and coat, and the really uncomfortable flat ladies’ shoes, which he had bought, with the rest of the outfit, from a vintage clothing shop. He discarded the walking stick he’d picked up earlier in a charity shop, propping it against a wall, and hobbled, unaided, through to the bathroom, where he leaned on the side of the washbasin and stared at his face in the mirror.