‘The money went into his private account.’
‘I expect you’re right.’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘Not then I didn’t, not in February. It certainly didn’t go into one of the business accounts, otherwise I’d have spotted it.’
‘How about your financial controller?’
‘We don’t have a financial controller. We have a woman who looks after the books, and she’s bloody good. We retain an accountant as well, of course, but only on a needs-must basis. Jonno was clever. He disguised it well.’
‘So who spotted it? In the end?’
‘The accountant. The loan was secured against a number of freeholds. A situation arose where we might have suddenly needed to liquidate a couple of those assets. The accountant discovered we couldn’t.’
‘Because they were collateral for the loan?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And when was that?’
‘Some time in May.’ Benskin nodded at Suttle’s paperwork. ‘It’ll be down in your little list somewhere.’
Suttle nodded, then sat back in his chair. So far, thought Faraday, he hasn’t put a foot wrong.
‘Two and a half million pounds constitutes a serious fraud, doesn’t it Mr Benskin?’
‘It’s a lot of money, sure.’
‘So how did you feel when you found out?’
‘I was extremely pissed off. We had a conversation. Then he paid the money back. Plus interest.’
‘Did he tell you why he wanted the money in the first place?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what was the reason?’
‘First he said it was a loan to the New Labour lot. Then he changed that into a donation. There was going to be a school involved. Either way, he said it was going to help us get the inside track on the Tipner thing, you know, the dump. And once that happened, and we laid hands on acres and acres of extra land, right down by the water, then we’d make squillions of quid.’
‘How would that work?’
‘It wouldn’t. I told him straight off. I said he was out of his mind. He seemed to think a whack of money into their war chest would buy him some civil servant in the Ministry of Defence. In fact to him it wasn’t a donation at all. More like a business investment.’ He studied his nails a moment, then shook his head. ‘He could be naive sometimes, Jonno. His own worst bloody enemy, to tell you the truth.’
There was a long silence, broken at length by Faraday.
‘So Mallinder, your partner, lied to you.’
‘Obviously.’
‘To the tune of two and a half million quid.’
‘Yes. And you know why? Because there was no bloody way I’d ever have agreed that kind of loan in the first place. Bunging a bunch of politicians? You have to be joking. Jonno thought different. He genuinely expected to make on the deal. Big time. I don’t doubt that for a moment.’
‘But his judgement … ?
‘… was crap.’
‘And his honesty?’
‘That shocked me. I can’t pretend it didn’t. I knew he could be …’ he frowned. ‘… inventive when it suited us, like in a negotiation for instance. But this was the first time he’d tried it on me.’
‘What does inventive mean?’
‘It means … oh, come on, you know what it bloody means.’
‘Tell me.’
The solicitor, this time, was firmer. She blew her nose then said that this line of questioning, in her view, was oppressive. Not simply that but potentially prejudicial. Benskin, once again, ignored her.
‘It means he sometimes lied. Small lies. White lies. Evasions. Untruths. Whatever. Anything to put us in the driving seat. It mattered to Jonno that we won. It was going to be the same with the Tipner deal. He’d raised the cash. He’d made the investment. And sometime soon we’d buy the whole lot off the current developers, cash in the favour with New Labour, the MoD, whatever, access all that extra land, and walk away laughing. By then I’d probably have discovered about the bank loan but that didn’t matter because by that time we’d both be seriously rich. It was bonkers but he believed it.’
‘Unlike you.’
‘Too bloody right.’
‘So how did that affect the partnership afterwards?’
Benskin thought hard about the question. Faraday could see he knew exactly where it would lead. At length, he shrugged.
‘I was pissed off. Anyone would be.’
‘So what did you do about it?’
‘I told him I wanted the money back. Plus I said we had to tighten up. I meant in terms of accounting procedures. No way was that going to happen again.’
‘And how did he react?’
‘He agreed. Not that he had any choice in the matter. You’re right. Technically, he’d committed fraud.’
Faraday permitted himself a smile. He could imagine the conversation only too well. No wonder, in the aftermath, Mallinder began to build himself a solo career.
Suttle wanted to know more about the collateral. Just what kind of freeholds secured a loan of this size?
‘They were properties we’d acquired a while back. They belonged to a chain of hardware stores. Gullifant’s.’
‘Is this the same place as in Farnham?’ Faraday remembered mention of an ironmonger’s the first time he and Tracy Barber had talked to Benskin.
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re saying there was a chain of them?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘And you bought the lot?’
‘We bought the firm, yes.’
‘And whose idea was that?’
‘Jonno’s.’
Mallinder, he said, had spent the best part of a fortnight driving across the south, visiting each store. All the premises were freehold, wholly owned by the Gullifant family. At least half of them had potential value in the event of major town-centre redevelopment, a fact seemingly lost on the company’s management.
‘So you bought the company?’
‘Yes. It was complicated but … in essence … that’s exactly what we did. And it turned out Jonno was right. As a going concern, Gullifant’s was crap, but the freeholds - if we were clever - could be worth a fortune. In fact three of them we’ve sold already and you know what? We made back more than we paid for the firm in the first place. Maybe that’s why Jonno thought he had some kind of right to use the rest as collateral. It was always going to be his baby.’
Faraday stirred. Time was moving on.
‘Mallinder was spending more and more time down in Portsmouth,’ he said carefully. ‘You told us before you assumed it was the Tipner project. Now you say there was no chance of that ever happening. Especially once he’d paid back the loan. So what did you think he was really doing down there?’
It was a good question. For a second or two Faraday thought Benskin was about to draw a line under the interview, confer with his brief, bring proceedings to a halt, but he didn’t.
‘I think he was putting space between us,’ he said. ‘I think he was finding life in the office difficult to handle.’
‘Because of you?’
‘Because of what had happened. I’d be lying if I said things just carried on the same.’
‘Did you trust him?’
‘No. And I didn’t trust his judgement, either. Not after that. Not after he’d gone off with two and a half million quid, right under my nose.’
‘And he knew that? About you not trusting him?’
‘Yeah. I think he did.’
‘So what was he doing down in Portsmouth?’
‘Looking for opportunities, bits and pieces, like he always did.’
‘For the partnership? For the pair of you?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘But he’s your partner, isn’t he? He’s fifty per cent of your working life, of your prospects, of who you are. If he decides to pack it in, what happens then?’
‘We split the busines
s, fifty/fifty. It’s written down. It’s in the agreement.’
‘Had you discussed that?’
‘No.’
‘Had you discussed anything?’
‘Not much.’
‘Bit of a break-down, then?’
‘It wasn’t ideal, sure.’
‘Bit of a threat?’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘You’re not with me?’ Faraday, with a smile on his lips, let the question die. Then he reached for Suttle’s timeline. ‘You’ve built the business between you. You’ve turned it into a real success. You’re the perfect double act. Then you realise that what makes your partner a brilliant negotiator might after all be a bit of a liability. Not only that, you realise as well that he might come knocking on your door wanting half of the business back. I’ve no idea what the partnership is worth, Mr Benskin, but I bet it’s a lot of money. Half of a lot of money is still a lot of money. In that kind of situation you’d have a problem, wouldn’t you? And problems, as we coppers like to say, need sorting out.’ He offered Benskin a cold smile. ‘Isn’t that the case?’
The dining room at the Royal Trafalgar was Bazza’s pride and joy. The Victory Banqueting Suite, as he preferred it to be known, occupied at least half the length of the first floor. It was a deep, handsome, high-ceilinged room and the tall picture windows, draped in red velour, offered a near-perfect view across Southsea Common to the milky blue wash of Spithead beyond.
This view, which featured heavily on Bazza’s new website, was framed on the one side by the squat grey battlements of Southsea Castle and on the other by the tall stone pillar of the seafront war memorial. In his more expansive moods, Bazza liked to imagine these features as personal bookends, explaining to his guests how chapter after chapter of British maritime history had played itself out on this unique stretch of water.
He’d conjure up the bulky figure of Henry VIII watching the capsize of his beloved Mary Rose. He’d point out where the Monarch had lay at anchor, awaiting the execution of the disgraced Admiral Byng. He’d describe, with some approval, the various dodges dreamed up by the stroppy matelots who’d organised the Spithead Mutiny. And finally, his party piece, he’d pray silence for the memory of Nelson’s glorious three-deckers, putting to sea under full sail to give the French yet another hiding.
The fact that Pompey had so successfully elbowed its way into the history books gave Bazza enormous pleasure and when the brandies arrived and table talk turned to violence of a different kind, the city’s apprentice hotelier was only too happy to add a footnote of his own. Just now, as Winter had half-expected, Bazza was at full throttle. No one had told him that Michael Lander was a Crystal Palace fan.
‘Best firm in London, no question. Some of the happiest rucks of my life were against your lot. One time we were heading up north, Leeds away. Palace were showing for us at Waterloo as we got off the train. Classic, that was. Half nine in the morning, out by the taxi rank, hundreds of the bastards, really wanting some, the Old Bill nowhere. After that we had it at Elland Road, before and after the game, then on the way back, sweet as you like, Palace were showing again, King’s Cross this time, mob-handed. Four rucks in one day? Shit …’ He beamed across the table at Lander, using the salt and pepper pots to plot their various moves, one bunch of football hooligans ambushing another, real life pushed aside for a whole day of unrestrained mayhem. No wonder it was Pompey lads who manned the guns at Trafalgar, he said. Blokes in this city were bred to be violent. Imprinted in the genes.
Lander had looked, if anything, amused. He was tall and slightly stooped, with a mop of curly black hair lightly threaded with grey. He wore jeans and a faded denim shirt and talked in a soft drawl that Bazza undoubtedly regarded as posh. He’d come down on the train with Brodie and after the third bottle of Côtes du Rhône he’d stepped across to the grand piano Bazza kept beside the tiny stage, taken a mock bow, and launched into a series of smoky jazz improvisations that had drawn a round of applause from even Bazza himself.
‘I know that fucking tune,’ he’d said on Lander’s return, ‘Give us a clue.’
‘Rule Britannia.’ Lander had laughed. ‘Heavily disguised. ’
‘Yeah? To fox the fucking enemy, eh?’
Winter, watching, had raised a glass to Bazza’s gleeful toast, still trying to work out whether Lander was another plant or not. Now, the meal over, he’d decided he wasn’t. No copper he’d ever known could play the piano like that.
Winter glanced at his watch, aware that he needed to get to Southampton for his meet with Parsons. In terms of any kind of agenda, the lunch had achieved very little. Brodie had tabled a list of basic costs, Lander had nailed down a rough outline of a running-order for the weekend, and there’d followed a spirited discussion of the kind of visual opportunities generated by an event like this.
Bazza himself had designed an oblong-shaped two-mile course with a tight chicane on the landward leg. Pressed by Lander to describe exactly what it was he wanted to create, he’d settled on a Roman analogy.
‘It’s chariot racing afloat,’ he’d said. ‘Think Charlton Heston. Think Russell Crowe in a wetsuit. You’re sitting on the beach and these bastards are coming at you at a thousand miles an hour and suddenly there’s two buoys, bang-bang, two markers like a gate, fifteen metres apart, maybe less, and it’s chaos, collisions fucking everywhere, blokes in the water, big screens on the beach for the close-ups, brilliant, can’t fail.’
At this, a smile of the deepest satisfaction had settled on Lander’s face. Offshore racing starts at Cowes, he’d said, were very similar, millions of quids’ worth of high-performance yachts all fighting for position at the start line, inches to spare, going about and going about, the snap of filling sails, the bellow of helmsmen calling for water, the clatter of choppers overhead.
Mention of helicopters had lit another fire under Bazza. He’d pushed the empty plates aside and described how he wanted live pictures beamed down to the big screens from aerial cameras, and tracking shots of the jet-skis from feet above the waves, and on-board cameras in the blokes’ helmets, building a firestorm of live action he could unleash on the thousands of watching punters ashore. He knew what these people wanted, what people everywhere wanted. They wanted what the 6.57 had wanted. They wanted to be in the thick of it. But without the prospect of getting hurt. Or even wet.
Lander, with his sleepy grin, twirled a hand. The gesture had all the grace of a formal bow.
‘It’ll be a pleasure … ’ he said ‘… to lay it on.’
Quite how this was to happen was left to another day, to more meetings, but Winter knew that this didn’t matter because the business on hand was of a different order completely. Bazza, in the end, was an animal. He had to sniff people out. He had to look them in the eye. He had to decide whether they were worth it or not, whether they were up for a laugh or two, whether their company would further brighten the already glittering prospect of the months to come. On every count, and seemingly without effort, Lander had won himself a big thumbs-up, and once Bazza had dispatched him in a cab to the railway station, he pronounced himself a happy man.
‘Dunno where you found him, Kath, but the guy’s the business. Funny as fuck. And that stuff he played on the piano? Love the man to death.’
Brodie, reaching for her coat, was equally glad it had worked out. She’d also been thinking about the offer of free accommodation at the hotel and was happy to accept it. It made a great deal of sense, she said, to keep the people who matter under the same roof. Bazza shot Winter a wink. More good news.
Next door, in the lobby, Bazza drew Winter aside. Winter had already mentioned his hospital appointment in Southampton.
‘How are you getting there?’
‘Train. And then I’ll cab it.’
‘No need, mate. I’m going over to Southampton myself. I’ll drop you off. Behave yourself, and you might even get a lift back, too.’
‘You were good, son. He’s not an easy man, Benskin, but yo
u did well.’
It was early afternoon. Faraday, at the wheel of his Mondeo, had taken a detour en route back to Fareham. He’d talked to the duty Inspector at Southampton, sounded him out about dispatching a small task force of D/Cs for house-to-house checks in Thornhill Park, and wanted to get a feel of the place before raising the actions with the Outside Enquiries D/S in the Billhook incident room.
Suttle was still thinking about Benskin.
‘There’s a problem, though, isn’t there boss?’
‘Tell me.’
‘He could have said nothing. He could have left it to his brief. He could have brought the whole thing to a halt and walked out. But he didn’t do any of that. Quite the reverse. We asked for an account and that’s exactly what he gave us.’
‘Not at the start he didn’t. He told us he knew about the loan when in fact he didn’t, not at the time. How honest was that?’
‘But it was still a game at that stage, a negotiation if you like. Once he knew we’d done the homework, there was nowhere else for him to go.’
‘My point exactly. And you did the homework.’
‘Sure, but it turned out we were pushing at an open door. You remember what he said at the off? He wanted to get shot of us. And that’s exactly the way he played it. He doesn’t want to see us again, ever.’
‘Of course he doesn’t. But ask yourself why.’
‘Because he’s got better things to do with his life. And because, come the finish, he’d decided that Mallinder was a bit of a liability.’
‘Quite.’
‘But that doesn’t put him in the frame for the killing, not in my book.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he wouldn’t want the hassle. Mallinder was already backing out of the partnership. Why not let events take care of themselves?’
‘Maybe there was a financial problem. Maybe Mallinder taking his share of the business would leave a bloody great hole in the kitty.’
‘Yeah, but even with Mallinder dead, he’s still going to lose that same whack of money. It’ll form part of his estate. It’ll go to his widow.’
The Price Of Darkness Page 23