Due Diligence

by Grant Sutherland

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Baxter?’ Hugh says. ‘I'm from the council. We’ve adjusted the tax-band in this street downward, I just need your signature.’

  Owen doesn't reply. After a few seconds Hugh looks across at me, and I signal for him to push the doorbell again. When he shakes his head, I step out from my hiding-place. He gestures angrily for me to go back, but right then the door suddenly opens; and there is Owen.

  He focuses on Hugh first, then he looks across and sees me. The scene freezes. Me looking at Owen, and him looking at me. Before Owen can recover, Hugh rams his shoulder hard against the door. There is a crunching noise, and someone bellows in pain.

  I move fast, following Hugh through the breach, and in the hallway we find Owen bent double, hands over his face, and swearing. There appears to be blood. Hugh looks at me apologetically.

  ‘Fuck,’ Owen says. ‘Fuck.’

  Still bent double, he turns and stumbles down the hall, a trail of red droplets forming on the pale wooden floor behind him. We follow him into the kitchen. Hugh keeps asking if he’s okay.

  Owen hangs his face over the sink. ‘You broke my fuckin' nose.' He snorts blood.

  Hugh wets a tea-towel, Owen snatches it and starts dabbing. This isn’t working out as we’d planned.

  ‘Owen,’ I say. ‘This is Hugh Morgan. He’s an investigating accountant. He has a few questions for you.’

  ‘Jesus H. Christ! Questions? What about my 'fuckin’ nose?’ Owen splashes his face. He doesn't sound quite so bad this time.

  ‘Concerning Twintech,’ Hugh puts in.

  Owen pivots now, and stabs a finger in Hugh’s direction. ‘That was assault. I’m gonna do you for fuckin’ assault.’ Blood trickles from both nostrils, but the nose doesn’t look broken. When the blood touches his top lip, he swears again and turns back to the sink.

  Hugh fetches a roll of kitchen towels from near the bread bin, and for the next few minutes we watch Owen tear off sheets as he tries to staunch the flow of blood. The kitchen smells of detergent. All the shiny black surfaces have the look of being lifted from a magazine, a bachelor’s idea of good taste. Expensive enough, but this is one life that a million and a half pounds worth of fraud could have changed. Finally Owen faces us again, holding a crumpled sheet to his nose. He says he’s going to find a doctor.

  ‘You’re going nowhere,’ Hugh mutters.

  Owen lunges at him, and Hugh darts around the table. When I step between them, Owen tries to jostle me aside.

  ‘Get out of my fuckin’ house,’ Owen shouts, pushing me.

  And right then something in me gives way. I grab Owen and drive him backwards; he slams into the fridge door. I hold him there, my hands on his throat, and I begin, quite deliberately, to throttle him. His eyes open wide. He kicks, but I just keep right on squeezing. Hugh shouts my name, but that doesn’t touch me either. Owen clutches at me, struggling. I have him in my hands, the man that killed Daniel. Steadily I squeeze.

  And the next moment I’m on my back, Hugh has his knee planted on my chest, and Owen is slumped at the table, holding his throat and trying to breathe.

  ‘Jesus, Raef,’ Hugh says.

  Lifting his knee from my chest, he casts an anxious glance at Owen as I sit up. Owen coughs and tries to swallow. Blood drips from his nose. Hugh brings over the roll of kitchen-towel and puts it down at Owen’s elbow.

  ‘Fuck,’ Owen says. When he asks for water, Hugh fetches him a glassful.

  After a few seconds I get to my feet. My hands, I notice, are trembling. All that rage, where did it come from? Hugh points to the far end of the table, and I go and sit there, a good distance from Owen. Owen drinks his water and towels his nose, glancing nervously my way.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Hugh asks him, and Owen nods, he seems to have recovered.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’

  ‘We told you,’ Hugh says. 'Twintech.’

  Owen doesn’t respond. He dabs at the blood while I produce the list of Twintech deals from my pocket. Hugh takes it and smooths out the page. Then he reads the numbers aloud. After half a dozen deals, he stops and looks at Owen. ‘Twintech,’ he says.

  ‘And there was one went through today,’ I add. ‘This afternoon in CTL.’

  Owen holds the kitchen towel to his nose, saying nothing.

  ‘Owen, why did Daniel put you on the nightdesk last week?’

  ‘Bananas,’ he mumbles through the towel. ‘I got caught long in that stupid banana market, some idiot dumped two barrowloads in reception.’ The same reason Daniel gave me: Owen, bored, got involved in one of those dealers’ games. When it went wrong, Daniel sent onto the nightdesk as a punishment.

  ‘So where did you disappear to on Wednesday night?’

  Owen goes to the sink, his back is turned to us. ‘Nowhere,’ he says. He opens the tap and says something about calling a doctor. But he doesn’t mean it this time, the fight seems to have gone out of him. He knows now that this is serious. It looks, at last, like he might even be thinking.

  ‘We’ve listened to the tapes. You went missing between 1.03 and 1.47 a.m.’

  ‘Because I’m not on the tapes doesn’t mean I wasn't there.’

  ‘We’ve spoken to your colleagues. You weren’t there.’

  Owen faces us, a fresh towel to his nose. ‘Maybe I went for a leak. ‘Last Wednesday, I mean give me a break.’

  ‘They couldn’t find you in the building,’ Hugh tells him.

  ‘They didn’t look hard enough.’

  ‘They couldn’t find you because you weren’t there. You were gone for three quarters of an hour.’

  Owen tilts his head right back, eyes to the ceiling. But there’s no fresh blood on the towel. I have the impression he’s simply buying a few seconds in which to think. When he drops his head again he says, ‘So we took a loss, big fuckin’ deal. We came out square on the night.’

  ‘Inspector Ryan isn’t interested in how much money the bank lost,’ Hugh says.

  Owen does a double-take. ‘You what?’

  ‘Ryan questioned everyone on the boat that night, from the party. You weren’t there, so he didn’t question you.’

  ‘What is this bullshit?’

  Owen takes the towel from his nose, he’s stopped bleeding. When I rap the table with my knuckles, he looks my way.

  ‘Daniel was murdered that night. Right around when you went missing.’

  ‘Hey,’ he says raising his hands. ‘Hey. Nothin’ to do with me. No fuckin’ way.’

  ‘The Bank of England knows about the Twintech fraud. And Inspector Ryan’s waiting to hear from us.’

  Tapping a forefinger on the table, I conclude, ‘If you have any kind of explanation Owen, now’s the time.’

  A cornered rat could not look more frightened. His bravado deserts him completely, he steps forward and drops into a chair. He rests his elbows on the table, and puts his hands to his face. Blood begins to trickle from his nose again, he lifts his head, looking around helplessly. Hugh hands him another towel.

  ‘It wasn’t a fraud,’ Owen says, wiping the blood. ‘It was a systems check.’

  Hugh snorts in derision. ‘A what?’

  Behind his bloody towel, Owen mutters, ‘Ask Aldridge.’

  For a second the world tilts, as though everything is knocked completely askew. Charles Aldridge and Twintech?

  ‘Why come breaking down my fuckin’ door?’ Owen whines.

  When I look at Hugh he’s shaking his head: he doesn’t believe a word of Owen’s story. Recovering, I tell Owen that he’d better explain.

  ‘Explain what? He asked me to put through some deals. Keep it quiet, he said. The audit committee needed to check our systems.' Owen is all wide-eyed innocence.

  ‘Daniel wasn’t told?’

  ‘Search me. Ask Aldridge.’

  ‘Who chose Twintech’s deals?’ I ask.

  ‘Look, what is this shit?’

  ‘And you reported the deals to Aldridge?’

  Owen no
ds. Then he pauses as if he’s just figured it out, the reason for us bursting into his house like this, and the meaning of all these questions. ‘Jesus, he was telling you guys, wasn’t he?’

  I turn to Hugh. He is watching Owen carefully now. Intently.

  ‘Shit.’ Owen suddenly stands, his chair topples over. ‘If he wasn’t, I’ll kill the bastard.’ He thumps the table with his fist, and the fruit bowl jumps. Not a very convincing display of outraged anger.

  Hugh says, ‘You didn’t explain where you were that Wednesday night.’

  ‘He called me. Aldridge. He wanted to meet me.’

  ‘At St Paul’s Walk?’

  ‘No fuckin’ way. Down at Cannon Street. He didn’t show up, so I went back to the office.’

  Hugh tells him he’d better think of something a little more believable before he sees Inspector Ryan. Owen’s mouth drops open.

  Hugh nods to the phone in the hallway. ‘No skiing for you this weekend. You want to call and cancel?’

  Owen is absolutely gutted. The terrible reality has descended on him at last: after twelve months of pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, he has finally been caught. He stands gaping, then like a sleepwalker he wanders out to the hall. We watch him make the call.

  Lowering his voice, Hugh says, ‘Worst piece of acting I ever saw.’

  ‘You think he’s lying?’

  Hugh rolls his eyes. ‘The man’s a crook, of course he’s lying. What else can he do?’

  ‘What about Aldridge?’

  ‘Bollocks. You employed me to catch your fraudster.’ He points to the hall. ‘That’s him. And if you ask me, he’s probably the murderer too. But once we take him down to Ryan, my job’s over. Whatever else Ryan or Penfield can shake out of him isn’t my concern.’

  Perhaps not, but it might well be mine. I ask Hugh if he’d consider staying with this for a couple more days.

  He looks at me very directly. ‘No,’ he says.

  I can see there’s no point arguing, he’s had enough of this case. Enough too, I suspect, of me.

  ‘And by the way. The next time you want to choke someone to death, leave me out of it.’

  We hear Owen’s conversation ending. I rise, asking if Hugh minds taking Owen on alone to see Ryan.

  ‘I’ve got some business to sort out with my father. Take Owen in my car, you’ll have the driver.’

  Owen overhears this as he returns from the hall. ‘Take Owen where?’ he says.

  A thin line of blood trickles from one nostril. Hugh picks up the kitchen towels and shoves them into Owen’s stomach.

  ‘The Met,’ Hugh says. ‘Close your eyes, you can pretend you’re in Geneva.’

  Once they’ve gone, I call my father. He’s still with Eric Gifford, they're coming to terms on a final price for Carltons.

  ‘We’ll need your signature too, Raef,’ he says, adding that he’s taking Gifford to the Bankers’ Association function tonight. ‘We should have an agreement in principle ready by then. If you sign it, we’ll make the announcement there.’ He sounds dejected. He doesn’t mention the likely price, and I don’t ask.

  ‘Is Charles with you?’

  ‘Went home ten minutes ago. He’ll be there tonight though.’

  I wish him luck with the negotiations, and ring off. I do not have much time. Running out into the street, I whistle down a passing taxi.

  18

  * * *

  Who wins? The question came to me quite suddenly, right in the midst of Owen Baxter’s cock-eyed explanation. Who wins?

  When my father retired, Charles Aldridge lost out to Sir John in the contest to run Carltons; but now he stands on the brink of the Chairmanship of any merged entity that arises from my father's agreement with Gifford. And that story of Owen’s about checking our systems, far from being implausible, as Hugh imagines, I can see just how it might have occurred. Aldridge thrives in the shadows. Say he approached Owen, wined, dined and flattered him, and then made a suggestion in that confidential way he has. ‘The Board has a problem we think you can help us with. Discreetly.’ Owen, being what he is, would bite. But after a few weeks he would realize something was up, a systems check wouldn’t need to go on that long.

  So then what? Could Aldridge have implied that for convenience’ sake Twintech’s profits might be held in a Swiss bank account? An account controlled by Owen? Or could it be even simpler? Could he have just paid Owen to do what was required? Either way, what did Owen have to lose? If the deals were discovered, he could explain, as he has done, that he thought it was a system-check ordered by Aldridge. Provided the money was still there, and he handed it back, he could gamble on riding out an investigation. He might even have deluded himself that Aldridge would stand by him.

  Or is this all completely crazy? Charles Aldridge? Maybe - possibly - I’ve just been spending too much time with Hugh.

  Aldridge presses the buzzer, and I shoulder his door open and enter.

  ‘In the study, Raef,’ he calls.

  At the far end of the hall, I turn. He beckons me in. He’s at his desk, pen in hand, the phone to his ear, so I stand by the shelves and wait. It’s much like my father’s study at Boddington: leather-bound books, floor to ceiling, a big work desk and a few armchairs. A gentleman's room. Sir Charles finally puts down the phone.

  ‘Gifford’s screwing us on the price,’ he says, and starts to give me a blow by blow account of how negotiations have gone.

  I raise a hand. ‘Owen Baxter’s been taken to see the police.’

  He pauses. ‘Owen who?’

  ‘Baxter. One of our dealers. He’s been up to no good.’

  Charles frowns. He asks me how bad it is.

  ‘Not too bad. And it’s capped. Don’t worry, it won’t scupper the deal with Gifford.’

  He lets out a long breath, and I study him for a moment, my father’s old friend. But that is all I see: Charles Aldridge.

  ‘He’s named you as an accomplice.’

  He lifts his head, startled. But then his surprise seems to turn to amusement. ‘How interesting. And did he name anyone else? Your father perhaps?’

  ‘Just you.’

  ‘Well then.’ He closes a file. ‘What do you suggest? Can he afford to fight a slander action?’

  ‘He’s been taken to see Inspector Ryan. It’s possible Baxter had a hand in Daniel’s murder.’

  ‘One of your own dealers?’

  ‘It’s possible. Ryan'll have to figure it out from here. I just thought I’d let you know. It might help if you get down there and have a word with Ryan before Owen says his piece. Nip the lie in the bud.’

  He agrees that it might be a very good idea. He asks me to give him a moment, he just wants a quick word with Sir John.

  While he calls, I step out into the hall to wait. If Owen had accused me of complicity in the fraud, I wonder how I might have taken the news. Not well, I expect. Not well at all. But then again, Charles Aldridge isn’t me. A minute later he comes out of his study to join me.

  ‘John’ll give himself an ulcer one day,’ he says.

  We go to the front door, but as he steps out I turn back. ‘Left my briefcase. Won’t be a second.’

  And a second is all I have in his study. I scoop up my briefcase from under the chair where I left it, and then I cross to his desk and hit the last-number redial on the phone. The number flashes up in the crystal display. A number I know; but not Sir John’s.

  ‘Raef?’ Charles calls.

  I lift the receiver and replace it gently before hurrying back out to the hall. Charles makes no objection when I tell him he’ll have to make his way down to the Met on his own.

  The taxi driver asks me, ‘Where in Whitehall?’

  ‘The DTI.’

  I give him the address then lean back, continuing to turn it all over. Who wins? Owen, if it all went smoothly, would end up with a nest-egg in Switzerland. But it didn’t go smoothly, instead Daniel was killed. Last Thursday morning, with Inspector Ryan and his crew descending
on the bank, and the news of Daniel’s murder filtering out, Owen would have known he was in very serious trouble. And then the dive Hugh and I caused in the CTL paper. No wonder Owen was departing for Switzerland.

  And Charles Aldridge, my father’s friend, the Carlton family’s confidant: how in the world did it take me so long to see?

  I call Becky on the taxi driver’s mobile, and ask her for Johnstone’s number. I’m still on the phone to Johnstone when the taxi stops outside the DTI. At the end of I our conversation I offer Johnstone his job back, and a he accepts. Then I give the driver a tenner and go up to find Gerald Wolsey.

  19

  * * *

  It will all be over very soon. Coming home from Whitehall, it was drizzling, but now the rain drums against my bedroom window like pellets of ice. Hugh called fifteen minutes ago, he’s on his way here. He tells me he has a big surprise.

  Showered and changed, nothing more to put on but my bow tie, I lie on my bed and sip my whisky. Tonight I will sign the papers. Tonight the Carlton family will make its unexpected departure from the City. I can face that now. Leaning across to the bedside drawer, I dig out a framed photograph of Theresa and Annie: it was taken in Annie’s first summer. She is a baby here, cradled in Theresa’s bare arms. The picture propped on my thigh, I study it, and drink my whisky. These days Theresa has more lines, and Annie’s much bigger: she’s a child now, and still changing. But this won’t ever change, what I see now in the picture, the thing I never noticed all that time: Annie has Daniel’s eyes.

  When the doorbell rings, I put the picture aside and go down and let Hugh in.

  ‘Owen’s with Penfield and Ryan,’ he says, watching me fix my bow tie. ‘Penfield says he’ll see you tonight.’

  ‘Is he sending in the Unit?’

  I glance at Hugh’s reflection in the mirror. He turns his head.

  ‘I told him I’d been right through it,’ he says. 'Twintech’s closed out now. That’s it.’

  So with Penfield, at long last, our slate is clean.

  ‘Do you know how lucky you were?’ Hugh sees my twisted smile in the mirror, and laughs. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Really.’ He sits on the arm of the sofa. ‘Your friend Owen would have lined up Twintech for a big one in the end. One big hit, then he’d have been in Rio and you’d have been down the pan.’