by Karl Holton
His father had died saying that this man had the best art collection in the world and no one had ever stolen from him. Celso had grown up with his father telling him the stories of those that had tried and failed.
“You said the paperwork was redacted. Do you have any details about the paintings … do you know what they are?” Celso asked, slowly trying to control himself.
“We found out something; one’s a Renoir and another is a Sisley,” said Davidson. “The other one was completely secret, but we know it’s a bigger painting than the others.”
Celso had walked into his ultra-modern kitchen. He stared at the placid lake in the distance and tried to let this mirror in his disposition. “Where’s it arriving from?”
“The flight is starting in Dubai.”
He pressed the speaker button on his mobile and placed it on the sleek Italian marble kitchen top. “How exactly is the journey happening?”
“They’re arriving on a private plane. We’re not being told all the stops it’s doing, but the final leg of the journey is from Munich to London. It’s coming to City Airport in London.”
“Is there protection for the package?” asked Celso, letting the questions follow each other quickly.
“We’ve been told that there are two people on the plane with the paintings.”
“Do you have their names?”
“Yes.”
Celso smiled. The bribe to Davidson had been more than worth the money, he thought. “Do you know who’s picking this up at the airport?”
“I do,” Davidson said. “I asked some more questions to find it out.”
He noted Davidson’s request for praise. “Excellent. What did you discover?”
“There’s a specialist firm picking the package up direct from the plane. They’ll go to a part of the airport that deliveries like this go… they’re being given special access,” said Davidson.
“You have all the details?”
“Yes.”
Celso walked up to the closed glass doors at the back of his house and looked out into the morning brilliance. “You need to send this all to an email that I’ll send you in five minutes by text. I need everything. All the paperwork, names, everything.”
“Of course, I understand.”
“Once I have this, you’ll need to answer any questions I have,” Celso stated. “You need to be available on this phone permanently for the next forty-eight hours. I’ll let you know if I need to meet you.”
“Understood.”
Celso could feel Davidson’s greed mixed with the thrilling fear. He tried to calm the echo of excitement inside him. “Did you find out anything else?”
“When we first spoke you mentioned that it would be useful to know where the items are being delivered. I asked for the paperwork about the delivery and it was sent to me without being redacted by accident. I know where it is going once it leaves the plane,” said Davidson, sounding more excited as he spoke.
“Where is it?” asked Celso.
“Narrow Street in London.”
Chapter 10
Day 8
Bruton Street, Mayfair, London
10.15 a.m.
Benedict stared at the piece of modern art on the wall. He tipped his head to the left and squinted. The edges of what looked like numerous boxes stuck on the panel had been painted in a variety of lurid colours. He let his mind try to find a pattern in the cacophony, but it appeared random. That’s really shit, he said to himself.
The space that Curt Garrett had worked in was the standard restyling of a Mayfair office that was trying hard to be trendy. But like all of them, this was a disguise for the reality; the truth was hidden away behind the façade. He’d learned this on a case when he first became a murder detective with the Met fifteen years ago. The element needed in this human zoo that was always cloaked was greed.
The receptionist who had greeted him with a forced smile was tapping on her keyboard. She paused and checked her jet-black nails before returning her gaze to the PC screen. He’d noticed that she had her Facebook page open when he walked in. Her focus towards the bottom of the screen said she was using the messenger and enjoying what she was reading.
He heard two voices coming from the corridor over his left shoulder.
“Hello,” said one of the men. “It’s Mr Benedict, isn’t it?”
He stood up and turned to face the two men he’d just heard talking as they walked towards him. Both men were well dressed but casual. Benedict sensed their comfort in these surroundings. “Please, just call me Benedict. Thank you for agreeing to meet here today at such short notice.”
Benedict had called his old boss, Detective Superintendent Watkins, and asked if this case could be given to Detective Inspector Wallace. She was the officer he’d worked with over the last few days and even in that short time he knew she was far smarter than the average officer. Watkins, however, had made it very clear that she was staying in the Flying Squad and working robbery. As was normally the case with Watkins when he made a request like this the end of the call was an argument.
The three men exchanged platitudes about the weather as they walked back down the office corridor towards a meeting room. The taller dark-haired man walked in first, sitting at the head of the large meeting room table. Benedict sensed this man was upset.
The shorter man held the door open for Benedict. “We were told that an inspector would be here with you.”
Benedict recalled Jardine moaning about London traffic in the conversation they’d had late last night. “No, sorry; I’m not quite sure where DI Jardine is at the moment. Do you mind if we just carry on?”
The shorter man smiled an agreement as he sat. “Of course,” he said. “Introductions first; I’m James Stubbs and this is Peter Clayton. We’re Curt’s partners. The three of us created the business.”
Benedict had sat facing Stubbs, with Clayton on his left staring at his hands. “Thank you, Mr Stubbs. I’m familiar with the structure of the business. I also understand that both of you were responsible for trading and portfolio management. Curt was responsible for gaining new investors into the hedge fund. I believe the word for it is ‘origination’. The business is very successful with offices here in London, New York and Hong Kong.”
The two partners glanced at each other.
Stubbs forced a smile towards him. “So how can we help?”
Benedict remembered the last words of Watkins. Try not to scare the shit out of them, understand? “Is there anything to do with the business that might have led to Mr Garrett getting his head blown off?”
The two men tried not to glance at each other but could not stop themselves. Benedict knew the question should have created a reaction. He could feel that they’d agreed to create a wall of silence; he’d seen it many times before.
“Everything was fine,” Stubbs said. “We are sorry —”
Benedict sat forward. “Until?”
Stubbs’ eyes tightened. “Sorry, what does that mean?”
“You said ‘was’. It was fine until when … exactly?” Benedict asked. Both men stayed quiet as he read the fear oozing out of them.
Benedict sighed. “You may be thinking, who is this arsehole? But here’s the thing — you can either answer my question or I can go and get the Fraud Squad and the guys from the regulator over here. Now, those guys are arseholes.”
Stubbs pushed his hand across the table. “Alright, alright; look there has been a few odd things happening over the last month or so. But we haven’t had the time to investigate them yet. We wanted to discuss it with Curt this week but now …”
“Now you can discuss them with me,” stated Benedict.
Clayton turned towards him. “How can we discuss them with you?”
“You’re going to tell me what they are and I’ll look into them and decide whether they’re relevant to what’s happened.”
“We’ve just discovered that he was sleeping with at least three of the women in the office. Do you think
that’s relevant?” Clayton asked, shaking his head.
Benedict sensed both men’s disapproval. He raised a hand and scratched his forehead. “Tiring maybe; relevant unlikely.”
Both men looked at him, surprised by the quip.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, guys. I can tell when someone has something to tell me. Why don’t you tell me what I need to know?”
Stubbs stood up and walked over to the large window, keeping his back to them. “We have a business issue that we needed to discuss with Curt. It really can’t have anything to do with his murder.”
“I suggest you let me decide that,” said Benedict.
Clayton sighed loudly. “Tell him, James.”
Stubbs turned back towards them, staring at Benedict. “We’ve had quite a bit of money pulled out of our funds across the globe in the last three months … we’re not sure Curt was being totally honest with us about why.”
“How much money has come out?” he asked.
Stubbs closed his eyes and let them open slowly. “The net decrease is about two hundred million dollars. We’ve had new investment money of about fifty million, so …”
“Quarter of a billion has gone out,” Benedict said, before turning towards Clayton. “What percentage of your total funds was this?”
Clayton squeezed his hands together, his fingers white with the force. “About fifteen percent of the total … but there’s nothing to say that this has anything to do with what happened to Curt.”
Stubbs returned to his seat at the table, nodding at his partner’s words. “Exactly; this could just be a coincidence.”
Benedict noticed the two men’s eyes connect. The look between them bared them to him and in their nakedness the avarice poured out into the room. “There’s a reason you felt the need to mention this to me; what is it?”
Both men avoided eye contact with Benedict, who enjoyed the moment’s torment inflicted by the silence. He turned to the huge window and smiled. “You really do need to tell me what’s happening. One word to your regulator that I think you were involved and you’re both fucked.”
Stubbs pointed a trembling finger at Benedict. “But we told you we didn’t think that he was being honest with us. He’d not told us.”
“Not told you what?”
Clayton looked at his hands, faintly shaking his head.
“When we started the business …” Stubbs paused, trying to get Clayton to support him. “Look, the reason we brought in Curt was because he promised us a huge initial investment into the business. He told us he had big investors who would immediately give us a start.”
Benedict forced himself not to smile at the attempted testimony. He recalled a debate in Cambridge; Life is crammed with good excuses for doing bad things. The trick is not listening to bad excuses for not doing good things. “Were you fully aware of Curt’s background when the business started?”
Stubbs’s brow twisted. “What sort of question is that?”
“One you’re going to answer.”
Stubbs recoiled. “Of course we were ‘aware’. We’d worked with him before; well I had and … he was a good salesman and very smooth with clients and professional when needed. We knew about his family, but he’d had nothing to do with all that. He’d gone to a good school and university and got himself out of all that.”
Benedict’s head turned faintly but his eyes remained locked on Stubbs. “You had no reason to suspect anything about Curt?”
“No reason at all,” Stubbs said.
Benedict sat forward with his hands clasped together. “Who’s the investor that’s pulled out the money and what did Curt not tell you about them?”
Both men’s faces allowed the shock of the question to show.
“Tell him,” said Clayton.
Benedict turned to Stubbs with an expectant grin.
“All we know is it’s some of the first ever investment money that we had when we opened London and it’s the first money we had in our US funds.”
Benedict allowed his gaze at Stubbs to cut deeper. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
Stubbs let his head drop, like a yielding animal. “We know the corporate investor but we don’t know the identity of the owner. Curt never officially put it on record.”
Benedict sat back in his chair and unconsciously his right hand went inside his jacket, feeling the scar on his chest under his shirt. “If this was one of your first investors how did you not know?”
Stubbs looked up at him. “We trusted him. Curt told us it was fine and that his real client wanted proper anonymity. But whoever it was used a proper corporate structure that made everything look fine. But now this investor has pulled out all of their money.”
Benedict placed his fist softly on the meeting room table. “You lied to me.”
Stubbs looked like he’d been thrust back in his chair. “No … no, I haven’t.”
“Yes you fucking did … do not add another lie on top of it.”
“What did I say?” said Stubbs, trying to spot his mistake as he flashed the conversation through his mind.
Benedict stood up and started walking towards the door. He placed a hand on the door handle as he allowed a brief laugh out. “You knew it was an unknown investor who this money has gone back to but you tried to make out you had no idea. If this person was so desperate to keep their identity secret the fastest way of ensuring that happened was killing the one person who knew it.”
Stubbs stood up. “You’re going to tell the regulator, aren’t you?”
Benedict smiled at him and shook his head. The greed of the two men sitting down was palpable. “Are you scared of the damage they’ll do to your business while they’re looking into what went on here?”
Clayton turned in his chair and looked up at Benedict. “We’ve spent eight years building this business to where it is today. Of course we’re scared of what the regulator will do.”
Benedict raised his eyebrows as he opened the door. “Someone killed your partner and you don’t know who it is … I’d be more scared of them.”
Chapter 11
Day 8
Erasmus Street, London
2.04 p.m.
Raske poured the precious sake into the small glass. He turned the bottle in his hand and stared at the gold leaf kanji writing on the label. He remembered Richter raving about this particular brand. ‘Perfection’ was the word his friend had used.
He picked up the glass and saluted the set of samurai swords set neatly on their stand across the room. Richter had been obsessed with samurai way of life known as ‘bushido’. When they had both left Korps Commandotroepen (KCT), the Dutch Special Forces in 2010, they initially went to Japan to train.
They had joined a samurai school together, which suited Richter who saw himself as a real soldier; an infantryman. Raske was a sniper and he left after six months and started taking contracts for killings via a presence on the Dark Web. Raske found that the highest demand for their services was in Europe, so he left Japan and based himself in Iceland.
His eye was taken by the smaller stand to the side which was empty. His dead friend’s favourite dagger was missing and he suspected the person who killed him now had it. That knife represented Richter’s soul. He felt the determination to return the weapon burn inside as he lifted the glass and drank the pungent rice liquor.
He refilled the glass, looked around the flat and smiled. The neatness of the room matched exactly with the fastidious cleanliness of his psychotic friend. The purity of this flat was in total contrast to the events after their first meeting in early June 2007. They were both in the KCT team that had taken part in the Battle of Chora in Afghanistan. Subsequently they’d undertaken numerous special operations together, with Raske as the sniper. He recalled Richter complaining about the dust and dirt on his uniform, while happily ignoring his blood-soaked limbs from the knife kills he’d inflicted each day.
The sunshine glinted off the emerald green bottle pulling him out
of his memory. He stepped over to the table and put the bottle and glass down beside the rifle case. His hand touched it, sensing the firearm inside, which had served him well the day before.
As he started to sit down there was a knock on the front door.
His instincts immediately kicked in and then calmed. He knew it could only be one person; only one would come to this flat and not have to use the security entry system to get into the building. He walked to the door and opened it.
Lomax stepped into the flat and shut the door quietly behind him. “Raske. I thought I might find you here.”
The two men walked back into the main room of the flat.
Raske faced him but, as always, he couldn’t read the emotionless Lomax. “I’ve killed the mark.”
“Yes and very efficiently.” Lomax nodded approvingly before pointing to the rifle case. “Our weapon was helpful?”
“Yes, it was ideal for the job.”
Lomax noticed the bottle and smiled. “Juyondai?”
Raske was surprised by his recognition of the brand. “You like sake?”
“I’ve enjoyed some great times in the Far East, but especially Japan.”
He stared at Lomax. Maybe Richter had been right; this simple liquid radiated some strange spiritual hold over anyone who drank it.
He found a second glass in the kitchen, placed it on the table and refilled both of them. They both drank the contents in one and put the glasses back on the table.
Raske sat down. “What’s next?”
“I need to leave the country briefly, but I’ll give you the contact for one of our men here in the UK. He will explain to you the exact details of the next task.”
“What about ‘quid pro quo’?” Raske asked, placing a hand on the rifle case.
Lomax smiled without making eye contact. “Of course, you’re Fortinbras.”