The Island of Dragons (Rockpools Book 4)

by Gregg Dunnett

  Oscar hovered for a moment, half-on half-off the chair, then sank back down.

  “Just be as quick as you can.”

  “We’ll try sir.”

  Left alone again, Oscar told himself to calm the fuck down. It was obvious what they were doing, and it wasn’t going to work. He was surprised it had come to this, they obviously hadn’t completely disregarded what Billy had told them, which was a surprise. But at the same time, it was understandable, they had to follow it up. Otherwise it would be a problem in trial. Billy’s defense lawyer would be able to claim he had a defense that was never investigated. So this was nothing. Just the FBI acting like jerks because they could. Stay calm. Answer the damn questions, and then think about suing their asses off for the way they were doing this.

  Another hour later, they finally came to speak to him.

  It was Agent West and Black who came in, the former carrying a pile of papers in a plastic folder, with a tablet computer on top. Black had acquired a toothpick, which poked out from between his lips.

  “I apologize for the wait Mr Magnuson, I believe my colleague Agent Black explained our need to interview yourself and Mr Richards separately.”

  “Sure.”

  “Have you been offered a drink? Coffee? Iced tea?”

  Oscar considered. It wouldn’t hurt to be alert. “Coffee.”

  Agent Black went to get it, while West sat down opposite, placing the papers and computer on the table between them. She said nothing, until Black came back with the coffee, plus sachets of milk and sugar.

  “You understand you’re not under arrest, but we are recording this interview. You have the right to an attorney present, if you want one, and you do not have to answer any questions if you don’t want to. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah I understand.”

  “How well do you know Billy Wheatley?”

  Bang straight in. Oscar gave himself a moment before answering. This was the most difficult question he and James had discussed, back when they were putting this plan together. On the one hand very few people had seen them together – but some clearly had. He shifted a little in his chair.

  “We met a few times. He became friends with Lily.”

  “Lily Bellafonte?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was this?”

  “A few months back. Maybe six months?”

  “What did you think of him?”

  Oscar looked at Agent West, then slid his eyes sideways to Black. Both of the agents were looking at him, but not intently. They looked almost bored, he realized. Going through the motions. He relaxed a little.

  “I didn’t think much of him. I mean, I didn’t think about him much.”

  “OK”. West paused for a moment.

  “What do you think he was doing?”

  “Honestly? I thought he liked Lily, that he was trying to break her and James apart.”

  “He claims that’s what happened. That he and Lily Bellafonte were dating?”

  “I don’t know about dating. She and James have a kind of on-off relationship. It’s not unusual for them to take a break. Wheatley just got lucky for a few weeks, and thought it was more than that.”

  West didn’t speak for a while. Instead she tapped her fingers thoughtfully on the table top.

  “Mr Wheatley claims that was your motive. For setting him up as the bomber on Lornea Island. That James was jealous of him and Miss Bellafonte.” She met his eyes and gazed at him, more interested now.

  “That’s completely ridiculous. That’s crazy. He’s crazy. I’ve never been to Lornea Island. I was here when it happened and I can prove it. I have witnesses. I was with James and my girlfriend Jennifer…” he touched a hand to his forehead, reminding himself to stay calm, not to overdo it. “Agent West – you must be able to… I don’t know, check my cellphone records. I was here. We were all here.”

  “Mr Magnuson, I’d like to play you a clip from our interview with James Richards, if I may?”

  Oscar frowned, not understanding. He felt a line of tension form in his back. James better not have fucked this up.

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “No problem.”

  “Thank you.” West picked up the tablet, and fiddled with it a while, holding the screen where he couldn’t see it. Then she folded its case into a stand, and set it on the table. The screen now showed an interview room very similar to this, with James sitting, obviously facing the camera. West leaned around and hit the arrow in the center, to make the video begin playing. At once there was the sound of the microphone picking up a hum of background noise. Then a voice began – West’s – off camera.

  “Mr Richards, Mr Wheatley has accused you of framing him for the bombing of the Fonchem chemical site on Lornea Island, and the murder of the security guard, Keith Waterhouse. What do you say to that?”

  On the screen James answered at once. “It’s rubbish.”

  “Do you know why he would say that?”

  James shrugged, elaborately. With such unmistakable arrogance, that Oscar found himself smiling too. Or perhaps it was closer to a sneer. The video played on.

  “Mr Richards. I want to show you something. Could you look at this?”

  On the screen, James appeared to lean forward and look at a photograph, or a document that was being held up for him to see. There was a weird moment, when his face changed. It went from relaxed arrogance to one of shock.

  “Where did you get that?” James asked, on the screen.

  “Never mind about that, Mr Richards.” It was West’s voice again. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Did you set out to frame Billy Wheatley for the bombing of the Fonchem chemical plant on Lornea Island, and for the murder of Keith Waterhouse?”

  On the screen James didn’t answer. His face – filmed in high resolution – had gone white. He glanced at the camera, then back at whatever it was he was being shown.

  “Shit.”

  “Mr Richards?”

  “Shit. Look I don’t know where you got this, but it wasn’t me. None of it. The whole thing was Oscar’s idea. I was just going along with it, but I didn’t know what he was doing. I didn’t know he was going to blow up that security guard. I didn’t even know about it until I saw the news the next day.”

  Back in Oscar’s interview room, Oscar watched as the blood turned to ice throughout his whole body.

  “You’re saying Oscar Magnuson was responsible for the bombing? Can you tell me how it happened?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ll tell you. Oscar made the bomb. He made all of them. He used a pressure cooker, and he tricked Billy into picking it up. That’s how he got his fingerprints on it. Shit.” On the screen James covered his eyes for a moment with his hand. When he lowered it again he glanced at the camera again, but then seemed scared by the sight of it. He looked away. “Look, I need to have my lawyer here. My parents have an attorney. I need to use the phone.”

  West leaned forward and paused the video, leaving James’ white panicked face frozen on the screen. And deep inside Oscar’s head, all thoughts of staying calm had gone, as if blasted away by the explosion of a bomb.

  “What the fuck did you show him?”

  West didn’t reply, which only added to Oscar’s fury. His complete loss of composure.

  “What the fuck was that? What did you show him to make him say that? What the hell is this?”

  West sat back. Waited a few moments.

  “I showed him two photographs we recovered from his Apple iCloud account. The first was of you working on what looks very much like a home-made pressure cooker explosive device. The second was of you on the ferry to Lornea Island, with a newspaper in the foreground showing the same date as the bombing took place. It seems he took them both without your knowledge. Perhaps he wanted a little insurance against you, in case things went wrong. He just wasn’t very good at hiding it.

  The fuck… the fucking idiot. Oscar felt the floor dropping away from him. It really felt like he was free-falling down to a place he di
dn’t know. He opened his mouth to reply, but his mouth was completely dry.

  “Look, we know he’s lying. We know it was the pair of you, and maybe that he even led it – after all, he was the one with the grudge – Wheatley was dating his girl. But unless you start talking, and right now, before his attorney gets here, then we’re going to go with whatever version he feeds us. This is an aggravated murder case. That’s life without parole. You got one chance to cut a deal. You start talking. Give us your side of what happened. Right now. Or this is over.”

  Oscar looked at the floor, gray carpet. Cut into squares. Cheap and thin. He hadn’t noticed it when he walked in, hadn’t seen it the whole time he’d been waiting, so confident he was on top of this. That he and James had outsmarted Billy, the cops, the FBI, and it had been easy. Easy as manipulating the markets, and making more money than he’d ever known. Suddenly the enormity of what James had done was crashing in on him, stopping him thinking.

  “It didn’t go down the way James said it did.” Oscar’s voice was croaky.

  “Excuse me? Could you speak up a little? For the sake of the camera?”

  “It didn’t happen like James said it did.”

  “But you did carry out the bombing? And frame Mr Wheatley for the crime?”

  Oscar took one more look at the carpet, at the walls, at the heavy wooden door, firmly shut, and then at the two agents staring back at him, looking much more interested now.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  The two hotel rooms were joined by an interior door, and though neither Amber nor Billy, nor his father Sam Wheatley, who had been picked up a couple of days previously, had been arrested, the door was locked. The rooms were comfortable enough, but by that stage the three of them had been confined there for seventy two hours, with food and water brought to them three times a day by a young agent with very red hair. Every time she arrived Amber or Sam pounced on her, demanding information on what was happening, but she either didn’t know or wasn’t saying.

  “It hasn’t worked. It was never going to work.” Amber said. She wasn’t sure if she meant it, really she just wanted to break the silence that had descended over them, long after there had been anything helpful to say.

  “Have faith. They wouldn’t have kept us this long if they had nothing,” Sam replied.

  Billy ignored the pair of them. For the last twenty four hours he’d done nothing but lie on his side on the bed, staring at the wall.

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door, then the scratch of a key being fitted into the lock. It swung open. The same agent as before, the red-haired woman was there again.

  “Don’t tell me,” Amber said. “No news is good news right?”

  “Uh huh.” The woman said this time. “I’m going to need you to follow me.”

  Billy looked up.

  “They’re done?” Amber asked. “What’s happened?”

  “Agent West asked me to fetch you.”

  They followed the red-haired woman along a corridor and to an elevator, where they descended to the ground floor, emerging into the lobby of the hotel they’d passed through days before. They kept walking, outside, and across the street, into the FBI building where Billy had assisted with the creation of the final deep fake video. They passed through a security barrier, like one in an airport, and then went to another elevator, down a corridor and finally came to what looked, through the small glass panel in the door, like a conference room. The red-haired woman knocked, and opened the door at the same time, and ushered Billy and Amber inside. Two people were sitting down, in front of a tray of breakfast pastries. One of them was Agent West, the other was a man Amber didn’t know. Agent Black was standing by the window.

  West got up when they came into the room.

  “Hey guys. Are you ready for some answers? I’m sorry it’s been so long.”

  The three of them sat down, and were encouraged to help themselves to the pastries, and West got up to pour them each coffee. Then she introduced the man they didn’t know.

  “This is Special Agent Bernard Chow, he’s an expert in fraud and financial crime. He’s been sitting in with us over the last couple of days.” Chow smiled a good morning. “I’ve asked him here as well to help explain what this has all been about.” West directed her gaze to Billy, and Chow did the same, but Billy was silent. After a while he nodded.

  Amber watched, but couldn’t stay quiet herself. “Well? Did it work?”

  The three agents hesitated. Then Black spoke.

  “Did it work? It worked like a charm, a goddamn charm!” He burst into a smile. “Cocky bastard was enjoying the whole thing. Then we hit him with the fake video, and bam! You should have seen his face.”

  “Well actually you can see his face,” West interrupted. “Since we have his entire confession on tape.”

  “He confessed?” Amber said. “He actually confessed?”

  “Oh yeah.” Black answered. “We spoke to Magnuson first. When he saw the fake tape he totally cracked, blamed the whole thing on Richards. So then we took the real tape of that, played bits to Richards, and he started blabbing too. Pretty soon we had both of them admitting to involvement, only saying it was the other one’s idea.”

  West took over the explanation. “That actually happened pretty early on. Which gave us the option of holding them both. After that it was a matter of unwinding what it was all about. That’s what took so long. But yeah. Long story short. We now have the both of them admitting their involvement, and exonerating you. It’s quite the result.”

  “That’s fantastic,” Sam Wheatley said, his jaw open. He looked at Billy.

  “You should see the guy’s face,” Black said again. “The moment we showed him the fake tape. He looked like the whole ground underneath him just disappeared away.”

  “So what is the story?” Amber asked. “Why did they do it? It couldn’t all be just to frame Billy, over that girl, Lily?”

  “No. It might have ended up that way, but that’s not how it began.” West looked across at Chow. “Perhaps you could explain?”

  “Sure.” Chow leaned forwards, and his eyes sparkled in the morning sunlight that streamed into the room. He looked to be the only one who wasn’t exhausted. “What we have here is a good old family feud.”

  Chow stood up and walked across to the coffee pot, and poured himself a top up. He began his explanation as he came back to the table.

  “Lily Bellafonte’s father and uncle, Claude and Jacques Bellafonte are business rivals, each running sizable chemical companies, which they both inherited from their father, the tycoon Arthur Bellafonte. Billy, you probably know this already, but maybe the others don’t.” Chow smiled at Billy, who said nothing, but listened, his face dull.

  “You’re also no doubt aware that Jacques Bellafonte’s company EEC, has recently completed a hostile takeover of Claude’s business, Fonchem?” His eyebrows rose in a question, and when he saw the confusion on Amber’s face he explained.

  “A hostile takeover is where company A buys company B, even though the directors of company B do not wish it to be bought. In this case EEC – controlled by Jacques Bellafonte – made an offer to Fonchem’s shareholders to purchase fifty-one percent of Fonchem shares, but with the condition that the Fonchem board of directors be dismissed and replaced by a new board loyal to EEC. Does that make sense?”

  “I guess.”

  “Good. Now you might ask, why would the Fonchem shareholders be willing to accept such a deal, if the board was against it?” He was looking at Amber now, and she shrugged.

  “The answer is due to the depressed price of the Fonchem shares. They were trading at well below what they had been fetching in the five previous years. Which leads us to a new question. Why? Why were the Fonchem shares depressed?” This time he waited for an answer. Amber looked to Billy to provide it, but he was silent. She turned back.

  “The bombings?”

  “Exactly!” Chow grinned.

  “Ove
r the last year there’s been a series of bomb attacks on Fonchem sites. Every time there was a new attack, the share price dipped. For each individual attack, the effect was not significant, but cumulatively… It added up. And every time the share price dipped, Jacques Bellafonte bought a few tens of thousands more shares in Fonchem. Not enough to attract attention, but enough to help him to persuade and push through the takeover.”

  Chow turned to Billy and smiled again. But still he was silent.

  “I still don’t understand,” Amber said, after a while. “What’s any of this got to do with James and Oscar? If they did the bombings, why did they want to help Jacques Bellafonte?”

  “Ah, well this is the clever bit. They got something else out of it too. Have you ever heard of shorting stock?”

  “No.”

  “OK,” Chow took a moment to consider.

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t get this either,” Black interrupted, looking at Amber. “In fact I still don’t.”

  “It’s really simple,” Chow ignored him. “A short is when you borrow a stock from a broker, and sell it immediately at its current price. Then you hope the stock’s value falls, so you can buy it back at a lower price. You then return the shares you borrowed to your broker, and you keep the difference in price. Do you follow?”

  Amber looked at Sam, and knew he wasn’t clear either.

  “You don’t. Let me give you an example,” Chow went on. “Imagine I want to short stock from ABC company, which has a current price of $10. I borrow one share, and sell it immediately at $10. I have $10 now, but I owe my broker the one share I borrowed. Then let’s say the share price of ABC falls to $6. Now I can buy back my share and return it to my broker, and I can keep the $4 difference. I just made $4.” He smiled again, but his eyes really began to shine when he continued. “Now scale that up so that I borrow one million shares, and it gets more interesting. I don’t make $4, I make four million dollars.”