Concealment

by Rose Edmunds

  ‘Do I have to come now? This isn’t a great time…’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  My mind raced—how on earth had JJ’s crew got wind of the forgery? But then I remembered, I’d told Lisa, who must have helpfully informed her new best buddy Smithies.

  ‘Can I see your ID again please,’ I asked, playing for time. Strangely, I felt calmer than I had in weeks, ready to use all my wits to rescue myself from this predicament.

  ‘Sure.’

  He let me peer at it for longer this time. It seemed genuine enough—they looked policeman-like. But still I had doubts.

  ‘You’ll have an opportunity to give a full statement at the station,’ said one. But that failed to reassure me.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, thinking fast. ‘Can I pop to the loo? I’ve been sitting in a meeting for hours and I’m absolutely desperate. It’s just over there.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ the older man replied uncertainly.

  I was desperate not for a pee, but for a few seconds to consider my options.

  I didn’t have many. The only exit was the door I’d come in by, which they’d be watching assiduously.

  If I hauled myself up above the suspended ceiling and crawled along the ducting…

  I stood on the loo and pushed, but the ceiling panel stuck fast. Even if I’d been able to dislodge it, the athletic demands of the plan would have been far beyond me, especially with my scabby, purulent knees.

  No—I’d have to exit the way I’d come in. And they’d spot me for sure.

  Unless…

  At lunch hour, people came and went all the time. A secretary I recognised emerged from one of the stalls and put on a cerise raincoat with a black baker boy cap.

  ‘Could you do me a huge favour?’ I asked her.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, studiously ignoring my unkempt appearance.

  ‘Can I borrow your coat and hat? I know it sounds absolutely ridiculous but some bad men are waiting outside for me and I need to escape.’

  As a partner, people automatically do your bidding and don’t ask too many questions. I counted on that now. And although she plainly thought me deranged, she reluctantly handed over both items of clothing.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll make certain you get them back.’

  I exited the Ladies, covering my face with a handkerchief as though blowing my nose. It was vital to walk assertively, as if I had every right to be hurrying along. I averted my head from the bogus detectives as I scuttled across reception.

  Unobserved, I stepped out into the normality of a Friday lunchtime in London.

  ***

  Once clear of the building I fled, running faster than I knew, the scabs on my knees cracking open as I went. It would be dangerous to stick to the main streets—already I’d drawn too much attention to myself—so I left Fleet Street as quickly as I could. I dived into a narrow passageway, which led to a labyrinth of further walkways and courtyards, and thinking quickly, jettisoned the borrowed coat. It was too conspicuous and before long, the two fake Plods would discover how I’d escaped.

  Was it my imagination again or did I hear someone behind me? I scurried round a corner, into another ginnel and then another. Still I fancied I heard indecisive footsteps going this way and the other as my pursuer tried to find me.

  I tiptoed into a new section of the maze and through an alley containing the back entrance to a pub. The bar was packed with grey suits drinking mineral water with their lunch. I wriggled past the heaving throng and exited by the main door on Shoe Lane, before hailing a taxi on Farringdon Street.

  ‘Where to, ma’am?’

  Good question. I needed to hole up somewhere while I worked out my next move, but I couldn’t risk a trip home.

  ‘Heathrow Terminal 5,’ I said in a flash. Airports were anonymous—and anonymous equalled safe. Plus I could leave the country—someone could fetch my passport—no idea who, but that was tomorrow’s dilemma.

  After a few hundred yards, I asked the driver to stop by an ATM and I withdrew five hundred pounds from each of my three cards. I didn’t know much about being a fugitive but avoiding leaving a financial footprint seemed like a sensible precaution.

  There was plenty of time for rumination in the hour and a half it took to reach Heathrow, and plenty of issues to ponder. How had I ended up in this mess in the space of four weeks? How much of it was my fault? What was real and what was imaginary?

  None of the questions had an easy answer.

  Fraud in a respected Pearson Malone client seemed unlikely enough. But cannabis growing in a slate mine—possible police involvement in money laundering—a partner murdering a junior colleague—all this sounded crazy and delusional.

  ‘Come on. You know it’s real.’

  Great—so a figment assured me all the rest of it was genuine. What sense did that make? And wasn’t that the whole point? People with delusions believed them.

  And if it was real, which I now doubted, that didn’t necessarily mean I was OK—far from it.

  I’d dreaded anyone seeing the muddle inside my head, or the mess in the house. For years I’d striven to present a polished image to the outside world. But now the madness had seeped out through the veneer of sanity, as an unchecked hoard would eventually spill outside the house. The prospect of being crazy terrified me, but equally I’d seen all too graphically where the path of denial led. So I had to ask myself—was it possible I needed help?

  ‘No—no!’ Little Amy shrieked.

  ***

  I’d last stayed at the Sofitel hotel with Greg when we’d flown to San Francisco in a last-ditch attempt to save our flagging marriage. With hindsight, the futility of the endeavour was clear, since he’d already lined up my replacement by then. But at the time I still harboured an irrational hope that my perfect life was salvageable. My decision in the taxi might have seemed random, but now I saw a depressing logic to it. Perhaps deep down I sensed that I was doomed to failure once more.

  Reception seemed reluctant to take a walk-in for cash—even asking had evoked a defensive, suspicious response. Being memorable might be more dangerous than being traced through a credit card, especially as the two goons were not real police. So I reluctantly handed over my Premier MasterCard, which the receptionist swiped, eying me curiously. With luck, the hotel wouldn’t charge it till I left, and not at all if I paid in fistfuls of notes at the end. Besides, I’d be long gone before anyone identified the Sofitel as my destination.

  But gone to where? And who could I trust to assist me?

  Not my mother, for sure. Nor the colleague who’d betrayed me. Not the boss who’d killed Isabelle and plotted to get rid of me. Or even the police. As I mentally ran through my pathetically short list of friends, I realised they were all acquaintances, work colleagues and business contacts. But whose fault was that? Isolation was the reward for distancing myself from everyone.

  The room was a standard, far less plush than the Prestige Suite I’d booked for the last visit, and noticeably smaller. The poky bathroom lacked the opulent marble finish I remembered, and the absence of a minibar was an additional irritation I could have done without. I sat on the bed, exhausted by the physical and mental exertions of the day, and flicked on the TV. At least I saw no announcement about a hunt for a deranged woman—something to be thankful for I supposed.

  After few minutes I’d recovered enough to run a bath—there could be no doubt I badly needed one. I also hoped relaxing in a hot tub might coax my brain into action. I gasped in agony as I submerged my scabby knees—how could they ever heal when every action triggered a relapse?

  Despite my valiant efforts to stay alert, I dozed off and woke nearly submerged in the now chilly water, amazed to find it was nearly eight pm. Shivering, I wrapped myself in a fluffy white towel and padded back to the bed, where I found seven voicemails and five missed calls on my iPhone. Two from Greg—the other three, worryingly, from Carmody. I daren’t listen to the messages.

  In the midst of my ac
hing loneliness, a sudden nostalgia for the times I’d spent with Greg swept over me, together with a recognition that the break-up had been my fault. My secret had been the cancer in our marriage, his betrayal merely a symptom. All he’d wanted was a normal girl to share his charmed life, and superficially I’d fitted the bill. How was he to have suspected the crumbling wreck that lay behind the elegant façade? How frustrating for him, living with a shadow, my big secret tethering us to a half-lived life filled with unspoken fears. Hardly surprising that he’d sought solace elsewhere.

  Of the people Smithies had mentioned who allegedly had my welfare at heart, Greg was possibly the only one who truly cared. Reluctant as I was to show him the depths to which I’d sunk, I guessed he was the one person who would help me. I waited for Little Amy to pipe up with her opinion, but she’d slunk away. Anyway, I’d run out of options. I hesitated, but not for long, before dialling his number.

  ‘Amy—thank God. Are you OK? I’ve been so worried.’

  ‘I need your help. This sounds ridiculous, but…’

  ‘It’s fine, I know what you’re going to say,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘You were right—there is a fraud at JJ Slate. I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you in the first place.’

  The relief was overwhelming. At last someone other than me was prepared to face the truth. Better still, everyone would take Greg seriously—he had gravitas.

  ‘Why did you change your mind?’

  ‘Call it an accountant’s nose, but something made me uneasy about those debtors and I asked some more questions. I’ve put in a preliminary report to Potter, and he’ll need much more information. But don’t worry—we can sort everything out. Look—where are you?’

  The place likely evoked the same unhappy memories for him as for me, but he didn’t sound surprised when I told him. He simply said he’d meet me in the bar in half an hour or so. I guessed he was coming from Chiswick, and wondered what he’d tell Tiffany about where he was going.

  38

  I dressed quickly. My clothes smelled pretty rank, but I had no others. I turned my knickers inside out—depths to which I’d never even sunk in the hoard house.

  By the time Greg rolled up forty-five minutes later, I’d downed two large G and Ts—but hey—I was celebrating. I wasn’t as flaky as I’d thought—a result in all the circumstances.

  He bought me another drink, and a beer for himself, and although I detected some disapproval at the empty glasses on the table, he said nothing.

  ‘Tell me what you discovered,’ I began.

  ‘The more I chewed over it, the more suspicious it seemed that those debtors had been cleaned up just before our audit. So I checked more thoroughly and one account, Parallax Projects, seemed especially dodgy.’

  ‘Yes, completely.’

  ‘I can’t prove it, but I suspect Parallax may be a related party to JJ. But in a nutshell, all those invoices were forgeries. No slate was ever supplied to them. I can’t think how the audit team didn’t pick it up.’

  ‘Pearson Malone will be on the hunt for a scapegoat,’ I said gloomily.

  ‘Well, they can’t hold me responsible—I’m only the corporate finance partner.’

  ‘Will the deal fall through?’

  ‘I expect so, but I don’t care. I’d much prefer to be on the straight and narrow ethically than cover my arse. If I’d listened to Ryan…’

  A sad, faraway look clouded his eyes, something I’d not seen before.

  ‘You can’t change what’s past,’ I said, putting my hand on his.

  ‘Shame about us too,’ he went on. ‘If only we’d been able to communicate better. It was down to me—I felt under such pressure to be perfect, and in the end I had to escape.’

  ‘You felt under pressure?’ I echoed.

  ‘Yes—however hard I tried, nothing I did could make you happy.’

  ‘It was the same for me—I wanted so much to be the ideal wife.’

  ‘Yes, and I found it impossible to live up to that. I knew something was wrong in your family, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. If it was out in the open it would have finished us—we wouldn’t be the dream couple any more. And I couldn’t tell you about my family situation either.’

  I almost asked what situation he was referring to, when the image of his father drunk at the funeral popped unbidden into my mind. In fact, he’d been plastered at every family occasion we’d attended, at our wedding even. And I’d never stopped to consider the effect that must have had on Greg—I’d been so wrapped up with my own issues.

  ‘I know. Your dad’s an alcoholic, but no one ever mentions it—you all cover for him and pretend it isn’t happening. And everyone covered for my mother. See—we’re quite similar really.’

  Greg squirmed uncomfortably.

  ‘So tell me about JJ,’ he said, pointedly switching the topic of conversation.

  ‘Right, for starters Parallax is a related party and I can prove it.’

  He listened in amazement as I described unearthing the link between Parallax and Jason Jupp, the drugs farm and the probable source of the debt repayments.

  ‘I’m amazed,’ he said. ‘I’d never have thought of using Facebook like that. And as for the money, I assumed it was all old man Jupp’s dosh—he hated his son, and he hated drugs.’

  Crucially, though, Greg believed me, which meant so much I almost cried.

  ‘But I still don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Why funnel the money into JJ? It wouldn’t be easy to extract it again.’

  ‘Do you really not get it?’ he said in disbelief.

  ‘No—I don’t.’

  ‘You’ll kick yourself when I tell you. It’s obvious. JJ Resources is selling out on a multiple of fifteen times profits—it was all a scam to inflate the value of the shares. You do the maths—JJ shells out a few million to pay off those dodgy debtors and gets the money back many times over.’

  Yes, it was obvious now, but I saw trouble looming post-completion.

  ‘Won’t Megabuilders twig that the slate division’s generating less income than they expected?’

  ‘That concerned me too,’ Greg admitted, ‘but I imagine they’d continue to put some invoices through to Parallax, and pay them, then taper it off over a few years. They’d still have made a killing. And remember, nobody will be scrutinising the books too carefully. It’s a small business division—that’s how they got away with the scam for so long—and it’ll be an even smaller part of Megabuilders.’

  ‘So you do believe me—about the cannabis?’

  ‘Of course I do—you saw it, didn’t you? Do you doubt your own eyes?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said hurriedly.

  ‘I feel so bad,’ said Greg, swigging the remnants of his beer. ‘We should have listened to Ryan.’

  ‘You shouldn’t beat yourself up. How were you to know? The auditors didn’t spot it, and neither did Megabuilders’ due diligence team.’

  ‘The audit partner says it’s not his fault—says he can demonstrate they carried out a thorough audit programme. I have my doubts though. They queried those debtors, but hey, when they were cleared all in one go, it didn’t ring any alarm bells.’

  ‘But why didn’t the Parallax guys clear the debts as they went along—avoid any suspicion?’

  ‘They probably didn’t want to put the money in until they were pretty sure that the company sale would go ahead. Like you say—it would be tough to get it out otherwise.’

  Which sounded plausible enough.

  ‘So what else did you find?’ he asked, trying to catch the waiter’s attention to order another beer.

  ‘Why do you think there’s more? Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘No—there’s something else you haven’t shared with me—I can tell.’

  There was no harm in coming clean, I decided, so it all spewed out. I described the papers Chloe Fenton gave me, the fake haulage invoices, and my fruitless visit to East Grinstead.

  ‘Ah, so that’s why you looked so rough at the m
eeting with Lisa,’ he said.

  ‘It shook me up, as you can imagine.’

  ‘You should have rung in sick.’

  ‘I would, but I didn’t want to let Lisa down in case she needed some support.’

  ‘I think she had enough support from Ed—she could hardly fail with his backing. I was pretty much told we had to find a way to pass her.’

  That didn’t shock me as much as it ought to have done, not even that Greg had taken the expedient course.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he said, suddenly concerned that I might have the wrong impression. ‘Fortunately she was up to the required standard.’

  But what if she hadn’t been?

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, avoiding the question I hadn’t asked. ‘We digress. You hadn’t finished.’

  For the dramatic finale, I added that the bank statements appeared to implicate former officers of the Metropolitan Police in a money laundering operation.

  At the point, for the first time, I’d shocked him. Perhaps I’d hit him with too much at once.

  ‘So in your opinion, who killed Issy?’ he asked.

  I hated Smithies so much I was still tempted to say his name, even though there were other, more convincing suspects.

  ‘Someone connected to JJ, maybe the son. They’re the ones who had most to lose.’

  ‘I’ve been working with JJ for several years, grooming the company for sale. I’d be amazed if he would…’

  ‘Who else if not him?’

  ‘Search me,’ he said.

  ‘He’s not acting alone, though. He employs all sorts of goons. Those policemen who came to arrest me—they definitely weren’t real.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘My mother would never complain.’

  A cold shot of realism ran through my veins, as I remembered the missed calls from Carmody. Could my mother have changed in the last ten years?

  ‘Let’s deal with one problem at a time,’ said Greg, sensing my panic. ‘It can all be sorted out. Might even be an opportunity for you to patch up your relationship with your mum.’

  ‘I sincerely doubt it.’

  At least he hadn’t said she was the only mother I had.