Concealment

by Rose Edmunds

  ‘No—no I’m not. Why would I?’

  ‘Because he’s your lover.’

  ‘But he’s not. We just…’

  ‘Tell me the truth, Ms Robinson.’

  ‘I am telling the truth. Ryan stayed with me all night. And anyway, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t simultaneously claim that I’m lying about Ryan being at my place, and lying about him not going out. It’s one or the other.’

  ‘You’re a clever lady, Ms Robinson. I expect you have to be to run rings round the Inland Revenue.’

  I didn’t much care for the suggestion that I habitually lied in my professional life, but Carmody had the upper hand here.

  ‘So let’s suppose Mr Kelly spent the night with you on Friday. I’ll ask you again—can you be absolutely certain he didn’t leave in the night and then return?’

  ‘How would he have let himself back in?’

  ‘You tell me, Ms Robinson…’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Think carefully.’

  ‘But where would he…?’

  I swallowed. Could I say for certain that Ryan hadn’t gone out? I’d been deeply asleep—I’d pretty much passed out the moment Ryan had come…

  And tightened his grip round my neck…

  ‘The fact is,’ Carmody said, ‘both you and Ryan lied.’

  ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘OK—let’s just say you omitted to tell us the whole truth to begin with. But when a witness is dishonest, it raises some interesting questions—such as how can we be sure there isn’t a bigger deception? For all we know, Ryan confessed to you that he’d killed Isabelle on Friday night and you’ve been aware all along she was dead. Why, we might be considering a charge as an accessory.’

  I stared at him, horrified. If he’d been trying to scare me, he’d succeeded. I’d been drunk, hadn’t I? Anything could have happened.

  ‘But that’s complete nonsense…’

  ‘So you say. And there’s the text message you sent Kelly this morning—further evidence you cooked up the story between you.’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ I said firmly. ‘I wasn’t comfortable with Ryan lying about Friday night, or the way he was avoiding everyone—I thought it made him look guilty. So I advised him to come forward and tell the whole story. Then I texted him to check he’d done it. That’s all.’

  Carmody ignored this.

  ‘So—once more. Is it possible that Mr Kelly went out during the night?’

  It was plain what answer he wanted. I pretended to think long and hard, then back-pedaled furiously.

  ‘I can’t be absolutely sure,’ I said. ‘If I was asleep…’

  ‘Or drunk?’

  ‘Or drunk. And I suppose he could have taken the spare keys from the hall table…’

  I sounded weak and feeble—as if I’d been protecting Ryan only to retreat when I’d realised the stakes were higher than I’d thought.

  Carmody nodded at DS Holland—satisfied they’d broken me.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Carmody. ‘That’s all for now. Interview terminated one twenty-five pm.’

  I seethed as I stomped out of the police station towards the taxi rank on the corner. Carmody had been much too quick in assuming the worst. How I loathed that lying shit Smithies, stooping low to incriminate me, maybe for his own sinister reasons. And Ryan too, even if innocent, had dropped me in it. But most of my anger was directed inwards. I hadn’t stood up robustly to Carmody’s bully-boy tactics. At best, I’d left them with doubts as to my credibility as a witness, and at worst the sense that I’d been in it up to my neck. Never mind if my private life was exposed in court—now, through my own stupidity, I might end up in the dock myself.

  15

  Whichever way I looked at it, the JJ situation smelt odd.

  Why would JJ disclaim available tax losses? Could they be worried that answering the HMRC queries might bring some wrongdoing to light? As I’d already observed, the fraud was a strange story for Ryan to make up, strange enough perhaps to be true.

  Superficially, the case against Ryan seemed compelling, but what if he was right? Suppose Isabelle had stumbled across a crime, and had unburdened herself to someone seized with a need to eliminate the threat? Just because Ryan’s car had been spotted didn’t mean he’d been at the wheel. Someone could have set him up.

  With my own guilt or innocence now potentially at stake, I opened up the electronic HMRC enquiry file.

  As Isabelle had said, HMRC’s questions mainly centred on the allocation of administrative expenses between the different businesses. The client had apportioned costs according to turnover. This didn’t seem unreasonable to me, although HMRC preferred an apportionment pro rata to employee numbers, presumably because it gave a lower profit for the slate division. But none of this suggested dishonesty. At first sight, it seemed to me that JJ Slate had become profitable for a very simple reason—they were selling more slate. The gross margin appeared reasonable, and a cursory examination of the detailed divisional profit and loss account showed increased haulage and electricity expenditure. All of this stacked up.

  HMRC’s enquiries on the debtors’ ledger were, as Isabelle knew, plain silly. The inspector suspected the client had boosted profits by failing to write off irrecoverable debts, but this manoeuvre would only change the timing of profits and not the amount. The debts would have to be written off sometime in the future. Yet the basis for his question seemed clear—debtors were unusually high as a percentage of sales. And that was a red flag.

  Years back, I’d been the junior on the audit of an advertising agency where the client had been raising false invoices to puff up sales and increase staff bonuses. As part of an audit, a company’s customers are asked to confirm the amount they owe. The client’s accounts team had tried to hoodwink us by manipulating the “responses” from the “debtors”, but to no avail. All the old debts had roused our suspicions. You see—fictitious debtors never pay.

  Was it possible that the same was happening at JJ?

  If anything had been amiss, you might expect the Pearson Malone auditors to have spotted it. But the slate division was a small part of a sizeable company, so how closely would they examine its books? I could ask the audit partner, of course, but I was loath to draw attention to my enquiries. It would be safest to speak to Greg, although that prospect didn’t thrill me either.

  I jumped—Lisa had sneaked into my office without me noticing.

  ‘Hi—how did you get on?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Your police interview. I’m assuming you’re the thirty-eight-year-old woman mentioned on the BBC website, who’s been “helping police with their enquiries”.’

  This news alarmed me. I hadn’t anticipated being the focus of office gossip quite so soon.

  ‘Would have been nice if you’d told me beforehand,’ she said.

  ‘Well, you didn’t tell me you were at a job interview.’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘It’s obvious—foxy suit, silk shirt, hair in a neat little chignon.’

  ‘I’m leaving—people who plan to leave go to job interviews.’

  ‘And witnesses go to police interviews.’

  ‘Was it about last Friday?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘So how did you get on?’ she repeated.

  ‘Oh, fine.’

  ‘There’s no way you’re fine. Come on—tell all—you can trust me.’

  It wasn’t a question of trust, simply that I didn’t want to rehash all the ghastly details.

  ‘OK—if you must know—it was a complete disaster,’ I told her. ‘They think I’m inventing a story to alibi Ryan. Between us, the outlook’s a bit bleak for him. His car was caught on CCTV early Saturday morning near where the body turned up.’

  ‘But wasn’t Ryan with you all Friday night?’ As ever, Lisa had homed in on the key point.

  ‘They’re saying he went out.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘I can’t be cer
tain—I was so drunk, Lisa.’

  ‘But I guess he must have, if they traced the car.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Suppose Isabelle had found something dodgy at JJ? She gets killed and someone sets Ryan up by driving his car.’

  ‘But we discussed this earlier,’ said Lisa. ‘And you agreed that Ryan made up the story to throw the police off the scent.’

  ‘Ah, but that was before I found out about the tax losses.’

  ‘Found out what?’

  I had seldom known Lisa to display such a lack of interest in what seemed to me an important matter. She sounded bored before she’d even understood the essence of my argument.

  ‘Those losses were available—neither we nor the client screwed up. And Isabelle was aware of that, because she’d checked the file. Now why would the client disclaim available losses unless they were afraid of what the HMRC enquiries might bring to light?’

  ‘Didn’t we suspect Jim Jupp of using this to wangle the Pearson Malone Entrepreneur of the Year award?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You said he wouldn’t sacrifice actual losses just for that—remember?’

  ‘I’m not so sure now. I mean, what does it matter to him? The guy’s trousering five hundred mill in the next few weeks.’

  ‘But HMRC was asking questions about debtors, and they look pretty dodgy to me.’

  ‘Dodgy—how?’

  ‘High—as a percentage of sales.’

  ‘You’re jumping to conclusions based on incredibly slender evidence.’

  ‘Maybe, but just suppose for a minute there was some kind of swindle and Isabelle discovered it. Someone other than Ryan would have a motive for killing her, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘I guess so,’ she agreed. ‘But it’s none of your business, is it?’

  As a suspected accessory to murder, I felt it was my business, but said nothing. It was plain that Lisa had no interest in opening up a hornets’ nest when she was on the verge of leaving the firm.

  ‘How did your interview go?’ I asked, instead of arguing back.

  ‘Oh, pretty smoothly,’ she said. ‘It was only a preliminary discussion.’

  ‘With?’

  ‘Brown & Taylor.’

  Pearson Malone’s biggest rivals and my previous firm.

  ‘Potential partnership?’

  ‘We’ll see. You didn’t go through the assessment process there, did you?’

  I’d never confessed to Lisa that I’d failed Brown & Taylor’s partnership assessment all those years ago. A whole three days of them probing into my psyche had freaked me out. In a superhuman effort to stop them sniffing out what I urgently wished to conceal, I’d come across as bland and weak. Pearson Malone didn’t use an assessment centre for partners hired externally from another firm, but a series of discussions and interviews instead. It was much less demanding to hold the fiction together for an hour at a time and I’d passed all ten meetings decisively.

  ‘No,’ I lied.

  She peered at me strangely, like she knew I’d fibbed, and a little piece of me shrivelled and died inside.

  ***

  By late afternoon, the police had charged Ryan with Isabelle’s murder. Until then, all Carmody’s rhetoric about perverting the course of justice and being charged as an accessory had been nothing but hot air. Now I worried I might be unable to extricate myself from this absurd situation. I considered calling a lawyer but, fearful of over-reacting, I decided to sit tight for a while and see how it played out.

  Inevitably, the news of me “helping the police with their enquiries” had spread. The BBC’s low-key anonymous disclosure had now mushroomed into a major story, including my name, across all the major media channels.

  The first person to quiz me on this was Jim Jupp, ostensibly calling to ask who would attend the slate mine tour in place of Isabelle. The little bitch would have been proud to be hailed as such a key player on one of her clients.

  ‘I’ll go myself,’ I said without hesitating, hoping the trip might give me some further insight into any potential irregularities.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said, with insincerity. Then he moved on to the real purpose for his call.

  ‘By the way, what’s all this about you helping police with their enquiries? It’s everywhere in the news.’

  ‘Beats me why it’s such a hot story,’ I said with a nervous laugh. ‘I was resolving some loose ends, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m pleased it isn’t anything more serious,’ he replied. He sounded unmistakeably sceptical.

  Smithies was also agog to hear the details.

  ‘Everyone’s saying you’ve been interviewed under caution,’ he announced cheerily. ‘What on earth’s been going on?’

  He’d evidently tuned into the highly exaggerated rumours doing the rounds, rather than checking the news himself. I told him the same as JJ, but Smithies was less easily fobbed off.

  ‘What loose ends egg-zackly were you resolving?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to say. The police investigation is confidential.’

  Smithies was astute enough to realise that direct questioning wouldn’t elicit any further information. Instead he resorted to his usual tactics of unsettling me in the hope of garnering more clues.

  ‘How odd. There must be a reason they latched onto you…’

  His gaze seemed knowing, but I held firm. I was painfully aware that he had new ammunition to use against me, even without any details. Sly allusions to my possible connection with Isabelle’s murder would be dropped into conversations at the appropriate point, along with suggestions that I’d been covering up for Ryan. Hell, he could make up whatever he wanted, no matter how bad it sounded.

  ‘I can’t think what the reason might be,’ I said confidently.

  It occurred to me that if Smithies was Isabelle’s killer, playing up my involvement might be driven by more than plain spite. If a crime was being committed at JJ—if they were sleeping together—if Isabelle had unwittingly revealed her discovery, then he had a motive—to protect his creepy brother-in-law. And if he’d framed Ryan, dragging me into the net would further obscure the truth. But much as I loathed the man, this train of logic still contained far too many ifs to be compelling.

  ‘I should mention,’ he went on, aware that he hadn’t hit home yet, ‘Bailey is disappointed you didn’t find the time to compromise Ryan out.’

  ‘It was a tough ask. He was on the run, and now events have overtaken us…’

  ‘Oh, I understand completely. We can’t always respond to fast-paced developments. I told Bailey you’d tried your best, but he’s not the most tolerant of men.’

  His tone was at best condescending, at worst malevolent.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope events don’t move on any further,’ he said, cryptically.

  But events would move on further, because somehow they’d developed a momentum all of their own.

  ***

  ‘Is this about Ryan?’ Greg asked straight away when I called him.

  I hesitated. How much did he know?

  ‘Indirectly, yes.’

  ‘Come over now.’

  I’d expected him to feign busyness, to assert his importance over mine. But either he’d mellowed or was so disturbed by Ryan’s situation that the corporate mask had slipped.

  This was the first meaningful contact I’d had with Greg since our divorce. We felt no great animosity towards each other—that would have required a greater passion in the first place—but the sheer size of the building limited our encounters. Someone once calculated that if you stepped into an elevator at random with someone in the Pearson Malone London office, it was fifty-fifty you’d never see the person again. True or not, avoiding a member of a different department involved little to no effort.

  Greg was on the telephone as I arrived. He leant back, hands clasped behind his head as he engaged in empty chitchat with a crony. His brash, assertive demeanour didn’t surprise me—Greg had always found it easy to compart
mentalise his life.

  His secretary, seated outside his office, scarcely acknowledged me as I hovered outside the door. She was a bare-faced dragon with hair scraped back in a tight bun, grey pleated skirt and a grubby cream nylon blouse. Perhaps they’d thought it unwise to let him loose with another dolly bird after what had happened the last time—or perhaps Greg didn’t trust himself.

  Always one to play it safe sartorially, Greg wore a subtly pinstriped navy suit, a pristine white shirt, and what could have passed for an old school tie. He quickly cut short his conversation when he saw me waiting. For a few seconds, we eyed each other with a shared incredulity that our lives had ever been linked.

  ‘Amy. How are you?’ he asked. He gave me a bitter little smile, exposing new veneers on his front teeth.

  ‘OK, thanks. More to the point, how are you?’

  No aspect of his appearance betrayed the strain he was under, but I understood enough of him to realise his macho posturing did not reflect his true emotions. And equally, he recognised that pretence was useless.

  ‘Been better,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘Not good news about little bro.’

  ‘I know. But everyone’s certain he’s innocent.’

  ‘I wish I shared their optimism. You’ve heard all the evidence stacked up against him, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, still unsure to what extent he knew about my involvement.

  ‘Did he really stay at yours that night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah—I suspected he might be making it up, along with a load of other stuff.’

  ‘No. It was only a one-night stand. We were drunk…’

  Sensing my discomfort, he said, ‘Look, it’s OK—none of my business. You don’t have to explain. Shame you couldn’t give him an alibi though…’

  My cheeks reddened. He had much more information about my police interview than I felt comfortable with. How had he come by this so soon after the event? I wondered.

  ‘I’m sorry. But his car…’

  He cut my apologies short with a dismissive wave of his hand.