by Janet Neel
No, indeed it wouldn’t; in the frenzied atmosphere of current politics, no one would have time or interest in the details if there had been a fraud in the company. A triumphant Opposition would make the most of this, and Mr Arnold’s own side would not even go through the motions of defending, not in the present climate of opinion.
‘So he’s in the frame. Mine, I mean,’ he said, reaching the end of his line of thought.
‘And in mine. If he was involved. We weren’t sure he was. It’s possible he was just doing a PR job for them and had no idea of what was happening. He didn’t work from that office after all, and might never have seen a customer.’
‘If ever I bought a timeshare and found anything dodgy about it I’d go straight for the MP who had his name on it,’ McLeish objected.
‘Assuming you knew.’ She was leaning forward, chasing an idea. ‘You might not, he isn’t on the notepaper or on the accounts at Companies House, except as “consultancy fees”. Doesn’t say who they’re paid to.’
‘But once I knew, I’d go for him.’
‘Yes.’
They both sat back, pleased with each other.
‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked, and saw her hesitate so that he became self-conscious again. ‘Is that the time?’ he asked theatrically, staring at the clock above her head. ‘Sorry, I’ve left it too late, I’m expected.’ He sounded like a caricature of a genial uncle, he thought savagely.
‘I expect Francesca gets back earlier than you,’ Catherine said, pleasantly.
‘Sometimes. Tonight anyway.’ He managed, just, to avoid giving details of his wife’s timetable, and to concentrate on making sure he had got what he, or rather the investigation, needed.
‘So, let’s see if I’ve got it. You … your people think that Mr Price and his associates were running into a siding, too many paid-up customers chasing too few places. And when they hit the buffers, Mrs Price, Mr Fleming and Mr Arnold were all going to be spattered alongside him. So, from my point of view, all three of them might have found it useful if Mr Price was derailed first.’
‘That’s what we wonder. But if you could let us in to have a look at the books, then we can tell you what’s really going on. You’ll know then whether you’ve got three people with a good motive.’
‘I’ll need to think about that. But don’t worry about losing evidence. Everything’s locked up, we did that straightaway.’ He considered the familiar beauty before him. ‘Tomorrow do you?’
She smiled at him. ‘Oh heavens yes, John, there are a few other things around on my desk.’ She put her cup down and rose, so that he scrambled awkwardly to his feet as well. ‘Thank you for tea.’
‘Thank you for coming.’
He escorted her to the lift and strode off down the corridor, feeling the need to catch up with the investigation before he went home. He knew he was lucky only to be involved in one; had he been in post for more than a week he would have been dealing with two at least, and indeed another might come in at any moment. It was therefore, he reminded himself, the more important that he did not do all the work himself on this case.
All was however in good order, in fact in excellent shape for this early in an investigation. A control room had been set up and was fully staffed and a reassuring amount of activity seemed to be going on. Detective Chief Inspector Johnson had been posted to the job since lunchtime and he stopped to talk to him; the man would be the key to this job. And he probably was uncomfortable being sandwiched between Davidson and a detective chief superintendent, who had worked together several times before. Johnson was a small, wiry Yorkshireman with stubby blond hair cut apparently with nail scissors, youngish and keen to impress. He and Davidson probably did not get on all that well, but that was tomorrow’s problem. He asked cautiously where Davidson was and got shown the board with everyone on the team’s current whereabouts marked.
‘We can’t see Mrs Price till tomorrow, seemingly. Mr Antony Price is available tomorrow. He identified the deceased for us but he said he had to do his operating list. So Dennison let him, but got his consent to search his flat.’ Johnson looked at him for reassurance while McLeish, who had been momentarily transported back to Hull by the familiar flat accent with the consonants spat out, reflected on the contrast with the London accent in which a consonant was a rare occurrence.
‘No, quite right,’ he said, emerging hastily from this consideration. ‘We know where to find him, and he’s had since Friday to destroy evidence if he needed to. Tomorrow will do. Anything from Forensics?’
‘Report on its way, I understand. Only thing they did say, while it’s being typed, is that they looked for footprints where you thought – outside the window. Nothing showing.’
Now that was important, and he was glad to see that Johnson had grasped it. ‘Whoever it was could have been in there, or come through the front door then,’ he suggested, just to make sure.
‘Mebbe.’
Now that was Yorkshire for you, he thought, amused. Just like the men of Hull. ‘Where are you from, Johnson?’
‘Goole. Hear you were in Hull.’
‘I was.’
Both men observed a respectful silence for Hull, where John McLeish’s report had resulted in a wholesale clearance in which no one had been allowed to retire early on grounds of ill health.
‘Who are we going to send to Majorca to find Mr Fleming?’
‘Oh me, of course. Needs a senior man. The bugger is we’ve found him. He’s getting on a plane now.’ Johnson was grinning.
‘I might as well go home since you’ve got it all in hand. You know where to find me.’
Johnson confirmed that he did and McLeish got out the car and drove home. He would be on time for supper, and early enough to see William. On the days she worked Francesca had instituted a system of a long rest in the afternoon, which suited their young nanny, so that William could stay up to see her from five thirty when she got home and with luck have some time between seven and eight with his father. McLeish felt guiltily that he might have preferred a stiff drink and a comfortable chair in front of the TV to reading with actions and gestures to a demanding small son, particularly when he had already entertained said son for much of the night. But that was family life, and he was lucky to have it.
‘William’s asleep, sorry,’ she said, meeting him on the door-step, and he felt a guilty lift of the heart. ‘And Susannah is just off.’
He greeted their young nanny punctiliously and wished her a good evening, then padded into the kitchen following the smell of cooking. ‘Dover sole?’ he said, enquiringly, knowing what they cost.
‘Mm.’
‘And wine?’
‘Yes.’
He considered his wife, who had poured wine for them both. Even with two professional salaries coming in they were not in a position to buy Dover sole and wine every day, not after paying a nanny, a cleaner and a mortgage on a house big enough to hold a flatlet for living-in help. Francesca was looking preoccupied and tired.
‘The lads all right, I hope?’ He decided to head into the likely area of trouble.
‘Yes, I think so.’ She sounded surprised.
So it wasn’t the brotherhood. He cast his mind back and slowly remembered. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to ask. German measles. Did you have it?’
‘Ah. That. No, or rather I don’t know, but it doesn’t blessedly matter. I had the injection for rubella, and it would be really unlikely apparently that I’d get the disease. So that’s OK.’
‘When did you find all this out? Why didn’t you tell me? You were upset this morning.’
‘Oh darling. I only worried for three hours, until that kind boy who works as the Refuge lawyer – Matthew – sorted me out.’
‘That fierce arrogant New Zealand lad you told me about?’ McLeish asked, struggling to get his facts straight.
‘All of that, but a kind boy too. Fed me lunch. Now, do sit down and eat your lovely supper.’
He sat, gratefully, just as the t
elephone rang. He listened, watching the table and his wife’s set expression, put the phone down and started to eat, rapidly.
‘You have to go back.’
‘I’m sorry. Yes, I do.’ He reached a hand over to take hers, but she was not mollified. ‘It’s always like this the first day of a case. You remember.’
‘Can’t it wait?’
She knew the answer to that, he thought, angrily, she’d known it when they married. He ate doggedly, the beautiful food tasteless in his mouth.
6
Tuesday, 12 April
As the plane taxied slowly to the stand, the tall man sitting in the front for the leg room reached for his jacket. He stood up to put it on, defying the painstaking instructions not to move from his seat, or undo his seat belt.
The speaker system rustled into life. ‘We have a message for Mr Luke Fleming. Could Mr Fleming please identify himself to one of the cabin staff?’
The man tensed, all his anxieties crystallising, and looked over to where two members of the crew, wearing fixed expressions of bright helpfulness, were standing in the corridor between him and the door, which was now being manoeuvred into place at the air jetty with a set of metallic bumps and crashes.
‘It’s me,’ he said, hauling his jacket on.
‘Mr Luke Fleming?’ one of the helpful young men asked, as if there might be several of him. ‘You’re being met on the air side, I understand. Would you come with us? Excuse me, sir.’ He held back, civilly but firmly, a hopeful Majorcan who wanted to find himself on English soil as soon as possible. ‘Do you have baggage in the hold?’
‘No. Just hand luggage. This.’
The young man took his case and Luke Fleming followed. He was expecting to find a policeman at the other end of this process and was mildly surprised to find himself and his luggage handed over to a man in the uniform of the British Airport Authority, who opened an unmarked door by the edge of the air jetty and took him down a ramp to a waiting Airport Authority car.
‘Luke.’
‘Miles. What are you doing here?’
‘In a minute. They want your passport.’
Luke handed it over, and the man who had met him examined it carefully before handing it back. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I wanted to have a talk before you got to the office,’ Miles said, levering himself into the back of the car and jabbing a warning finger at the driver’s impassive back. ‘We’re going to the VIP lounge – it’s quiet there.’
It was, Luke conceded. The place was enormous, and comfortable with chairs and sofas grouped so that you could talk, and enough space between each grouping to give privacy for any conversation conducted below megaphone level. And it was empty but for a small group of men in long robes and keffiyeh, who sat, contained and silent, in one corner. Coffee arrived instantly; Miles Arnold drank his thirstily while Luke sipped his and considered the room.
‘Easiest way out of an aeroplane I’ve ever found at Heathrow,’ he observed. ‘Can MPs always do that?’
‘No. I asked a favour. It’s done for ministers of course all the time.’
Luke noted the change of tone; long years of working in contracting in countries all over the world had made him acutely sensitive to the sound rather than the words. He had always assumed Miles Arnold to be ambitious, and now he knew how much and for what.
‘Who found him? Bill, I mean.’
‘I did. It was awful. What did they tell you?’
‘The Garda? Not a lot other than that he had been found dead yesterday. I tried to speak to Sylvia but she was laid up, poor girl, and I couldn’t find you.’
‘They reckon he’d been dead since Friday. Margaret Howard said goodbye to him at four o’clock on Friday, so he was OK then.’
Luke Fleming waited, but Miles Arnold seemed to have said all he was going to. ‘So how did he die exactly?’
‘I found him hanging from the ceiling with a bag over his head, wearing stockings and a pair of silk knickers. And smelling not very nice.’
‘Poor bugger.’
‘I’ve never asked you, Luke, but did you like him? Or was he just someone you worked with?’
‘I didn’t think about it that way. He was a bloody good salesman, no doubt about that. He messed you around if you let him, but everyone does that in the building trade. And he was a good laugh, you know, went to the clubs, people liked him. Drank a bit too much, but we all do down there.’
‘How did you meet him?’
Luke needed urgently to get to the office and talk to the bank, but he had been around long enough to know you could only do business when everyone involved was comfortable. ‘It was about eight years ago. Bill came to look at a flat in a development I’d just finished for Wimpey. He didn’t like the one we had so I took him off to another one. He didn’t like that either. He travelled around a bit – Syliva was with him by then – looking, and after, what, about a couple of weeks he came back and bought me lunch.’
‘And?’
‘And said he had sold his business and was looking for another. He had looked everywhere for a flat down there and kept thinking that it really wasn’t quite what he wanted. He loved the place but he didn’t want the bother. He’d looked at conventional timeshares and he thought that was OK but a bit limited. So he came up with this idea. Said what he wanted was to be able to get into somewhere nice, in a place he knew, whenever he wanted to. So why wasn’t there a company that owned enough places to offer that?’
‘And that’s what we sell?’
‘That’s right. You pay a premium sometimes, but most of the time we can give you a flat in one of the thirty we’ve got down there when you want it, and at the worst we can get you into one of the hotel flats. It’s worked pretty well so far. But you know all this, surely?’
‘Not the details.’
Luke, who had not thought his description of the business detailed, found a previous conviction confirmed. Miles Arnold was paid a salary that would have enabled the business to afford a second site agent in Spain, and had done very little for it other than advance Bill Price’s social ambitions. And Sylvia’s, he conceded, reluctantly.
‘I mean, the customers have all been pretty satisfied, haven’t they? No one’s found themselves in a building site, or anything?’
‘We’ve had times when we got the plumbers out about an hour before the punters arrived, but that’s not unusual down there.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Miles Arnold MP was struggling. ‘Look, I’m trying to ask if everything is all right – financially,’ he added.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well …’ Miles Arnold poured himself coffee, mouth tight in concentration. ‘I suppose I’m asking, are the assets for which the customers have paid actually there on the ground? I’ve seen most of them, but…’
Indeed he had, Luke Fleming thought drily, on several free holidays, some with his wife, some with other women. ‘Most of them.’
‘What?’ Miles Arnold’s hand jerked as he poured milk into his coffee.
‘A business like this has debts, as you know.’
It was gratifyingly clear that Miles Arnold MP wished he had not embarked on this line of enquiry, and Luke watched him wriggle. Well, it was no time for weak brethren.
‘All right, Luke. Tell me the full strength.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m in a certain amount of shit already and I’d better know where the next lot is coming from. And because it turns out some of my money is in this business.’
‘Now that I did not know.’
‘Nor did I. I thought my cash had gone into buying shares, in companies quoted on the Stock Exchange. I’m not an entrepreneur, what I understand is how to earn money from putting people in touch with each other. And I wanted it safely invested so I’d have an income behind me if I got into the government. You know what they pay a junior minister? About the same as a junior bag carrier in a merchant bank, and you have to give up all your other jobs. I’ve seen
too many of our lot come to grief if they don’t have a bit behind them.’
Luke thought his way through the information and went back to the key point. ‘So how much of your cash is in the business?’
‘About £80,000. Yes, well, I’m not actually that careless.’ Luke supposed he must have been looking as incredulous as he felt. ‘The thing is, about a year ago I had £20,000 from a fee, and for once in my life I didn’t immediately need it, so I invested it through Bill. He turned it into £50,000. No, he did, I saw the certificates. That was all right.’
‘Then you gave him some more?’
‘I left that with him and gave him £30,000 more. Another fee.’
‘Nice money.’
‘Legitimate, therefore taxable – I mean, I owe the tax on both of them now. Twenty-four bloody thousand. When we say we’re the party of low taxes it’s only relative to the other lot, you know.’
Luke ignored this expedition into fiscal policy. ‘What did Bill do with it?’
‘He told me he’d put the lot into shares in three of the water companies, and sold at a £50k profit. The certs were with the brokers and £20,000 in cash was in the safe. He said – but the brokers don’t have certificates. Indeed, they’d never taken an order for any shares, all the money from the sale of the last lot went to Bill. As I’d instructed, more fool me.’
Luke, in silent agreement with this judgement, thought for a minute. ‘Why the cash? I mean, why didn’t he send you a cheque if you wanted some of it out?’
‘Ah, well.’ Miles Arnold leant forward, the fair hair flopping over his forehead. ‘I wanted cash to pass on.’
‘Where to?’
‘A friend of mine.’ Luke stared at him and he flushed. ‘A lady friend.’
‘A pay-off?’
‘No, no. So she could get her own flat.’ Miles Arnold was staring at the coffee table, jaw set, back teeth clenched.
Luke remembered sharply a much-needed subvention of £80,000 arriving, five months before. He had been worried sick, but Bill had seemingly worked his usual magic, and this £80,000 had enabled him to blag enough cash out of the local bank to get the place finished and trigger the next lot of payments from the punters.