The Hollow Man

by Oliver Harris

  “Do you enjoy police work?” the counsellor asked.

  “No more than I’m meant to.”

  “Would you like to talk about what it means to you?”

  “Can I ask you a question about dreams?” Belsey said.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Herring interjected. “Did you enter the borough commander’s home on the night of 11 February?”

  “Yes.”

  “With his wife?” He sounded exasperated.

  “Is that an offence? You’ll have half the Met—”

  “Watch yourself.”

  “Watch yourself,” Sacco said.

  “Is this on the square, Nigel? Know what I mean?”

  “You’re running out of lives, Belsey.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes what?” Gaunt said.

  “Yes, I entered it.”

  “Why?”

  “I was curious.”

  Herring turned back to the window with his hands in his pockets.

  Belsey thought about money laundering. Even if he could get access to Devereux’s personal stash he wouldn’t be able to transfer it into his current account without setting off alarm bells. Sudden changes in wealth did that. Transfers from dead businessmen to bankrupt detectives did that. And he needed a financial set-up that could travel. He’d spent several months seconded to Anti–Money Laundering and knew the game. There were three stages to each wash: placement, layering and integration. Placing money meant establishing some door through which you could get dirty cash into the world of finance. It meant finding a vein. Layering was the web you weave, the movement around shells, offshores, numbered accounts, making it untraceable before the third stage: integration. Because no one wants a big cheque from the Bank of Downtown La Paz. But get it into the City of London and it’s legitimate. EC1 was every money launderer’s dream. Just half a mile away . . .

  “Northwood says you’ve got previous,” Herring said.

  “Does he?”

  “Trouble at Borough. Question marks.”

  “Chief Superintendent Northwood has some form of his own, doesn’t he?”

  Herring began to speak but the counsellor intervened.

  “Let’s concentrate on the specific incident,” she suggested, with gentle exasperation. “Try to explain what occurred.”

  “Not a great deal occurred. I apologise for taking the car. I’ve been going through a rough time.”

  “Had you been drinking?”

  “Of course I’d been drinking.”

  “Would you say you have a problem with alcohol?”

  “No.”

  “Any other substances?”

  “Ritalin. If I wanted to work here,” Belsey said, “would I have to be close to retirement? Older, I mean?”

  Herring tightened his lips. “We’re going to need a urine sample.”

  “Where would you like it?” Belsey said.

  Gaunt opened his desk drawer and produced a small pot, which he rested on Belsey’s edge of the desk as if to avoid contaminating himself. Is that all he had in there? Belsey wondered. Receptacles for urine? “OK, sure,” Belsey said. He took the pot, went towards the toilets, then he kept going to the lifts and out of the front doors.

  11

  Belsey looked up “Company Formation” in a Yellow Pages in Holborn Library and found what he was looking for.

  Ocean Wealth Protection and Private Banking Assistance. Same-day Company Formation Agent. Start a new business in 3 to 5 minutes: £32.00—Tax Havens and Privacy Solutions.

  Privacy solutions sounded right. He knew an international business corporation—an IBC—could be set up in somewhere like Antigua with the click of a button, complete with an office address and even board directors provided by the Antiguan authorities. Your name didn’t come up on any paperwork but you could steer money through. Ocean had a walk-in office in Belsize Park just a few minutes from Hampstead Police station. Belsey knew the street: a parade of estate agents, cosmetic surgeons and boutique clothes stores. He imagined Ocean looked at home there. He was correct.

  He parked the Porsche Cayenne outside their office, making sure Ocean had a good view of it. He got out, straightening his suit, and rang the intercom.

  “Straight up the stairs.” There was a positive note to the voice. Belsey climbed narrow steps to a door marked “Ocean Ltd.” The office was run by two men, one young and one old, with computers and little else. The older one had the faded sparkle of a player, hair cropped close, gym-build. He looked like a bank robber trying to dress as a banker. The younger one wore a white shirt with suspenders and a pink tie with a fat knot. On the wall was a map of the world with coloured flags pinned to a lot of small islands. A free-standing fan moved cigarette smoke towards a double-glazed window, where it rolled back towards the desks. Belsey was gestured to a seat at a bare desk in the centre of the room.

  “Coffee?”

  “Black, thanks.”

  Belsey glanced at the walls. Around the map were a lot of plaques and certificates that told you little other than the outfit knew how to look cute. The older man poured the coffee.

  “How can we help?”

  “I’d like to buy a company,” Belsey said. He took a sip of good, strong coffee. “I need to cover my back.”

  “What kind of thing were you thinking of?”

  “Two IBCs somewhere offshore, maybe Antigua, with nominee directors and a trading record. I want a postbox address that can’t be traced to me and an anonymous deposit account in the name of one of the shelf companies, somewhere untouchable. But I need it respectable enough to transfer medium sums into a European current account without drawing attention.”

  They leaned back, nodding. The younger agent balanced a pen between his index fingers.

  “Sounds like you know what you’re doing.”

  “I need an idea of prices.”

  “It depends on the jurisdiction. For an off-the-shelf company, the British Virgin Islands is attractive: Crown property, starts at eight hundred and forty. Jersey is twice that, but then it’s a major financial centre. Otherwise there’s Dominica, the Seychelles, Anguilla. All the companies we sell will have records going back at least three years. Dominica’s the cheapest that we’d feel comfortable recommending.”

  “What’s on Dominica?”

  He flipped a small laptop open.

  “We could sell you, for example, the Dutch Export Import Trading AG, set up March 2005. Or the American Auto Management Corporation, a couple of months older. Each comes with a law firm as nominee director, so that any dealings remain confidential. You get power of attorney so you can manage the company. There’s no reporting requirements.”

  “And the bank account?”

  “If it was me I’d go for Cyprus, but that will be fifteen hundred. Otherwise, maybe St. Vincent, which is U.S. dollar accounts only but you can receive or transfer money in all major currencies. Minimum deposit would be around two grand; you pay the deposit to the bank, not to us. It’s totally anonymous but they do ask for references. It’s a tough climate out there. You don’t look like a terrorist to me, but . . .”

  “Any that don’t ask for a reference or minimum deposit?”

  “The Island of Niue.” He pronounced it Nee-oo-yee.

  “Niue?”

  “A chunk of coral in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Three hours’ flight from New Zealand. Self-governing member of the British Commonwealth, mostly home to seagulls and the registered addresses of Japanese telephone-sex companies. And the Bank of the South Pacific, as it’s known. Essentially, you give us an address of your choice and we type up a bill and fax that to them. It will do. They’ll charge a one-off fee of two hundred dollars for admin.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Great. What else? We can do you a Certificate of Good Standing for ninety-five pou
nds, a virtual office in a city of your choosing which can hold mail and forward calls. That’s around seventy per month. For twenty-five pounds we can even give you a rubber stamp of the company.”

  “What does that do?”

  “It’s a stamp made out of rubber, with the company name on it.”

  “I’ll get one of those.”

  “OK.”

  “How does this call-forwarding service work?”

  “However you want. When someone dials your company it goes through to them. They answer the phone and say this is X company, so-and-so is in a meeting, and then they call you to pass on the message. Or not. They can wait for you to call, or pass messages once a week. They can sing the caller happy birthday, if you want. It’s your call, you see?” He grinned.

  “I see. I’ve got a lot of money in an Austrian account that I want to transfer. What works best for that?”

  “Niue will be fine. We can use one of the IBCs to set up an account on the island. That will come with a local office address, which is a statutory requirement, but we’ll throw in a virtual address package which means you can operate from anywhere in the world and not worry about unwanted bureaucracy.”

  “That would be great.”

  “Of course it would.”

  Belsey sipped his coffee. He felt, for the first time, what every career criminal must feel at least once and never forget: the possibility of getting away with it; the knowledge of policing’s limits, the limits of international cooperation, and the space of freedom beyond them. He gazed out of the window and thought of tropical seas. Wash me whiter than snow, the prayer went. Wash my sins away.

  “What’s the total?” Belsey asked.

  “For an address, two shelf companies and a bank account you’re looking at six grand, tops. Probably more like five thousand eight hundred.”

  “I don’t have the money on me right now.”

  “Sure. Come back when you do. It’s all ready to go.” The young man looked up from his screen and smiled.

  Belsey tore a parking ticket off the Porsche’s windscreen, tossed it and drove to a travel agent’s on Hampstead High Street. All the assistants were busy. He took a seat in the waiting area and thought of the last time he’d been out of the country: a weekend break to Palermo, a spur-of-the-moment thing with a blonde estate agent who had been a witness in a club shooting. They’d gone straight from the Old Bailey. That was last May, his only holiday in five years. But he remembered the feverish promise of those days, of places in which London seemed a long, dark dream; that was the kind of place he was going.

  He took a brochure and scribbled a list of non-extradition countries on the back. He knew the police forces that were hard to liaise with. There’d been several cases where they tried to liaise with Morocco. It was impossible; no one spoke English, no one answered the phones. To Morocco and then . . . on, farther. They give you weapons training. Play a bit of squash, stay in shape . . .

  “Can I help?” A young woman called him over.

  “How much is a flight to Morocco?” Belsey asked.

  The woman ran a search on her computer.

  “Right now, starting at two hundred and twenty, one way, Casablanca.” She tilted it so he could see.

  “Including tax?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the cheapest flight you do?”

  This check took a moment longer.

  “Dublin,” she said.

  “I need somewhere farther away than Dublin.”

  “How about Bremen? That’s in Germany.”

  “How much is that?”

  “Four pounds without tax. Probably twenty-eight with.”

  “Flying from Stansted?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What does the train to Stansted cost these days?”

  “Return?”

  “Single.”

  “Hang on.” She wheeled her chair over to a colleague, then wheeled it back.

  “Nineteen.”

  “Thank you.”

  He walked out of the travel agent’s and into a cafe, took a newspaper from the bin and wrote in the blank spaces of an advert: flight, taxes, train. He listed the prices for each one. And he felt a quiet satisfaction at seeing the bottom line—forty-seven pounds to start his life again. Then he wrote five thousand eight hundred pounds alongside it, the rough figure quoted by the company formations agent. That would keep alive the possibility of a more dramatic regeneration. But it meant significant start-up capital. He turned the page over and wrote a list of Devereux’s possessions in the margin and, beside it, a column of what he thought he could get for them.

  12

  His passport wasn’t in the CID office. Obviously he’d used it when he went to Sicily. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen it.

  Belsey had been searching for a few minutes when a phone call came in. “Belsey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mike Slater. We’ve got word there’s been a body found on The Bishops Avenue. A suicide. Any idea about that?”

  Belsey caught his breath.

  “None at all, Mike. Tell me about it.”

  “I’m serious, Nick. I’ve been holding off running a feature on your recent exploits. Now I need a story.”

  “A body’s not a story.”

  “It is on The Bishops Avenue.”

  “Let me get back to you, Mike. Keep me out of the paper. I appreciate that.”

  Belsey put the phone down, cursing loose-lipped paramedics and overeager journalists. Mike Slater was editor on the Hampstead & Highgate Express, a man whose crumpled charm and air of world-weariness disguised a passion for journalism that had kept the Ham & High a respected local weekly for two decades. Slater was on friendly terms with Belsey but he could smell a story in NW3 when one was ripening. Trapping entered the office.

  “Nick.”

  “Rob. That stabbing suspect, Johnny Cassidy, have you found him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You said he was Niall Cassidy’s boy.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is the old man still a fence?”

  “Well, he’s not head of neighbourhood watch, put it that way.”

  “Still in Borough?”

  “Nowhere else would have him. Used to be your neck of the woods, didn’t it, Nick?”

  “I passed through.”

  “Best not to stop, eh?”

  He picked up a file and walked out. Belsey pondered. Lack of funds was holding him back. The violent homecoming of Niall Cassidy’s son could be a stroke of luck. He needed to shift a lot of stolen goods very quickly and he wasn’t going to use one of the high street’s new pawnbrokers.

  He grabbed his coat and the keys for Devereux’s Porsche and decided on a trip down memory lane.

  13

  Belsey crossed the river on Blackfriars. The sun was setting. Halfway to the Old Kent Road it felt like he began to fall. The elastic of time had snapped and he was falling backwards through his once-promising career, down through Borough towards Elephant and Castle.

  He left the riverside glitz behind him. Beyond the redevelopment, in the timeless Victorian shadows, the landmarks had not changed: the estates in which he’d learned his trade, the pubs where he’d tried to forget it again. But the pubs were boarded up now. Places that had been derelict to start with and whose survival had seemed testament to something perverse and unyielding in life were gone. The Eagle, which had been a copper’s pub, bore anti-trespass threats on every window. His favourite memories of himself, bathed in an amber light of whisky and lager, had been boarded up. Barely out of his twenties when he’d last worked these streets, fresh to CID and high on it.

  By some grimy miracle the Wishing Well had survived. It stood alone beside a railway arch, on a backstreet of mechanics and lock-ups. The lege
nd “Take Courage” remained faint on its side, painted onto bricks still blackened by nineteenth-century smoke. Handwritten sheets promising “Live Music Saturday” obscured its front windows.

  Belsey parked the SUV and walked in.

  Niall Cassidy and his gang sat around a tin of cigarette filters, a transistor radio and a Racing Post. They were metal thieves—that was the current game, at least: they stole manhole covers and electrical cable to be melted down and sold abroad. Previously they’d connected to low-key amphetamine importation, and still did as far as Belsey knew. Most operated a complex portfolio of crime. Light from streetlamps trickled in through dirty strips of glass above the taped sheets. A sign said “Welcome Home Johnny,” but Johnny wasn’t home. What had Trapping said? Two years in the Balearics, comes back and stabs the man who ratted him out. Now lying low, it seemed. The Well had been robbed of its celebration.

  “Afternoon, lads,” Belsey said.

  “Bellboy, my son.”

  “Nicky, long time.”

  “Not long enough.”

  “How’s the land of the rich?”

  “Better than in here,” Belsey said.

  The snug bar was dingy. There was a pool table in a separate room behind it, in the deep end of the gloom. Cassidy nodded a greeting but kept his mouth shut. He looked like a man who’d been trying to get drunk and failing, a man whose jewellery was weighing him down.

  “What have I missed?” Belsey said.

  “Nothing. It’s been shit.”

  They grinned toothless grins, stroking faded tattoos. The landlord, Rod Thompson, was a wreck of a man with emphysema. He was pale as a corpse now, but retained the residual instinct of a wise publican. He set Belsey’s drinks up with a wink.

  A pint of Stella and a shot of Jameson. Belsey drank the whisky at the bar, watching the group. He’d interrupted a discussion: doubtless about Johnny and his unfortunate chain of events. Conspire literally meant to breathe together. He considered this as he watched the Well. Now they sat in the clear air like fish out of water: Dell Patterson, one of the half-dozen postmen from the Nine Elms depot sent down a few years ago for skimming credit cards; Trevor Hart, who dealt in untaxed tobacco and diesel; Brendan McCarthy, who had just got out of Wandsworth having served two years for Grievous Bodily Harm on his brother-in-law. These were individuals shrunk so far back into themselves that you saw a no-man’s-land behind the eyes, an undecorated space, then a shut room with furniture piled against the door. Porridge heads. And Wandsworth was hard time by all accounts. In the old days Belsey would have made a point of checking in with Brendan, having a probationary chat. You got the prison gossip, of course, but these were also the ones to watch, the newly free, spasming.