Death's Door bs-17

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Hardly. A million is nothing to that man.’

  ‘Hey, that’s a sea change,’ Steele exclaimed. ‘A couple of days ago you were kissing his arse. Today, he’s “that man”. He’s denied you, hasn’t he?’ He glanced at Stallings. ‘That’s right, Becky, isn’t it? You interviewed Boras and he told you that if Barker had bribed anyone he had done it on his own initiative, and expressly against his orders.’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘We haven’t. I was going to, but I had orders to leave him alone.’

  ‘Orders? From whom?’

  ‘Upstairs; to be exact, from Deputy Assistant Commissioner Davies, the director of operations in the Specialist Crime directorate. He’s overseeing this operation and he set the parameters. He told me that Boras was off limits.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Steele was incredulous. ‘You’re saying that he’s behind the bribing of a public official and you can’t touch him? I know he’s a business leader and all that but . . .’ His eyes flashed along the table and locked on to Rhonda Weiss. ‘Your lot are pulling the strings here, aren’t they? That’s why you’re here. You’re not interested in some middle-ranking twerp who sold information for money. It goes deeper than that.’

  ‘I can’t comment on that,’ the woman replied, quietly.

  ‘Well, I can.’ Keith Barker’s voice was laden with bitterness. ‘Through his company, Davor Boras is a major supporter of the Labour Party. Through his charitable foundation, he backs the Tories. He helps both of them, plays one off against the other. Some of the things he’s asked me to do, people he’s asked me to check up on, had nothing to do with business.’

  ‘And yet you’ve been fired, Keith, for doing his dirty work. You might as well tell me: we could find a journalist in around two seconds who’d call the Continental IT press office and confirm it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lancelot Hamilton. ‘Formal notice of dismissal was delivered to my client’s home late last night.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Redundancy, I believe.’

  ‘That was quick off the mark, considering your client hasn’t been charged yet.’

  ‘What were the severance terms?’ Ray Wilding asked quietly.

  ‘That information’s privileged.’

  The sergeant glared at the lawyer. ‘Do you think I’m an idiot? It’s fuck-all privileged. You’ve just said that it was delivered from Boras to your client’s home, not to your office, and not through you. The Met have already searched the place; they have an existing warrant so they can go back any time and pick the document up.’

  ‘Two years’ salary, in lieu of notice,’ Hamilton muttered.

  ‘Louder, please, for the tape.’

  He repeated the terms of Barker’s sacking.

  ‘What’s your annual salary, Keith?’ asked Steele.

  ‘My business.’

  ‘Who paid you? Boras personally, or Continental IT? If it’s the latter we can find out easily.’

  ‘Okay! Two hundred and fifty thousand.’

  The inspector whistled. ‘So you’ve pocketed half a million. And I bet a good chunk of it goes into your pension fund to minimise tax. If that’s the going rate for gross misconduct, I’m strongly tempted . . .’ He grinned and broke off. ‘No, I’d better not say that with the tape running.’

  Barker shot him a half-smile. ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘Where does that take us?’ Steele went on. ‘You’ve been bought off. Clearly, you can’t work for Boras any longer, not after this. You might even have to do a year or so inside, unless the Home Office leans on the Crown Prosecution Service too, but it’ll be worth it to you, won’t it? I can fire questions at you all day and you’ll keep your mouth shut.’

  ‘That’s the way it is,’ the man said cheerfully. ‘And it serves you bastards right, for implying to the press that I’m somehow mixed up in these murders.’

  ‘Hey, Mr McGuire implied no such thing. All he said was “no comment”. He let you off lightly. Of course your arrest was linked to our investigation. You were trying to trace our prime suspect, on behalf of your boss . . .’ Barker made to interrupt, but Steele cut him off. ‘Save it, we’ll just take that as read. The follow-up question is, what would have happened if you’d found him? After Boras’s statement at our press briefing on Thursday, we have grounds for thinking that his life would have been in danger.’

  ‘Why were you trying to trace him?’ Ray Wilding asked. His intervention seemed spur-of-the-moment, but he and Steele had conducted many interviews together.

  ‘You’re wasting your time too.’ Barker looked back at the inspector. ‘Look, can we please wrap this up? Mr Hamilton has secured an agreement that I be bailed after this interview and I really would like to catch some of the play at Lord’s.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Steele, pleasantly. ‘I can imagine; it’s a nice day for it. I have to get back to my wife too, Becky and Ray are going for lunch and I’m sure that Rhonda has to fit in Sainsbury’s before she reports back to her bosses that you haven’t said anything that would land any of them in trouble.’

  He started to rise, then seemed to change his mind. ‘But, Keith,’ he murmured, ‘while you’re in the Tavern stand watching Middlesex whack it around, there’s something you might want to think about. That funny Jack Frost bank account of yours, the one the Met uncovered when they searched your place . . .’

  ‘Winnings on the horses, old boy.’

  Steele looked at Stallings and laughed out loud. ‘Of course. And I’m sure you’ve still got the betting slips. You’d better have them.’ He paused, for long enough to allow the first crack to appear in Barker’s mask of control. ‘You’ve moved a total of ninety thousand pounds through your personal account into old Jack Frost over the last three years. I’m a betting man too, Keith, and I’ll wager that you haven’t paid a penny in tax on any of it.

  ‘So, while you’re slurping your Greene King, or whatever it is you drink out in St John’s Wood, think of the line that the Inland Revenue takes with people who evade thirty-six grand’s worth of tax, and the national insurance as well. I’m afraid that, unless you can account for all that cash, the tax man will nail you, and there will be nothing that Boras’s friends in dark places will be able to do about it. There’ll be personal humiliation and jail time, there’ll be a huge fine, and there will be the back tax due, all liable to interest at a rate that will make you cry.

  ‘But how will the taxman find out about it, you ask me? How? Because we will fucking tell him, that’s how. Becky and I will dump your bank statements right down his insatiable, rapacious maw.’ He grinned and rose quickly to his feet. ‘Enjoy the cricket, pal. I hope you haven’t bought any Test-match tickets for the next few years, though. I don’t imagine they have satellite television in the nick either. Personally, I think it’s a disgrace that cricket was taken off the terrestrial channels.’ Steele reached across and switched off the recorder. ‘Interview terminated,’ he said.

  He was less than halfway to the door when Barker called after him: ‘You’ve made your point, Mr Steele. Please come back.’

  The smile had gone from the inspector’s face by the time he turned around. ‘Will it be worth my while?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll answer your questions, if that’s what you mean.’ He looked along the table. ‘But I would feel more comfortable if it was just you and me.’

  Steele shook his head. ‘I can’t do that, Keith, I’m afraid; this has to be formal. But I can ask Ms Weiss to leave if that would make you feel better.’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ the Home Office woman protested.

  ‘You’re going out of this room, now,’ said Becky Stallings, firmly. ‘Your presence here is no longer in the best interests of the Scottish investigation.’

  ‘I’ll call my section head.’

  ‘You can call the Home Secretary, as far as I’m concerned, but from outside this building.’ She looked at Wilding. ‘Ray, would you do me a favour and take Ms Wei
ss downstairs to the front office? Tell the staff there to make sure that she leaves.’

  ‘My pleasure, Becky.’ He beckoned to the woman. ‘Come on, Miss, do as she says.’

  ‘I want my memo stick,’ she snapped. Steele took the device from his pocket and handed it to his sergeant. He and Stallings watched as the pair left the room.

  ‘I’d like to reach an understanding,’ Lancelot Hamilton announced, ‘that the interview that is about to take place will deal purely with the matters under investigation in Edinburgh.’

  ‘That doesn’t work either,’ Steele told him. ‘We’ve got your client, sir; he knows it and you do too. If we throw him to the Revenue it’ll all get very sticky for him. My only interest is in the murders, and the recording of this discussion will be going back north with me. If anything comes up that crosses over into the other matter, it’s for Inspector Stallings to handle that as she thinks fit.’

  ‘That’s all right, Lance,’ Barker told the solicitor. ‘Let’s proceed.’

  ‘If you’re ready,’ said Steele. He switched on the recorder once more and repeated the location and list of participants. ‘Interview resuming with DI Steele questioning Mr Barker. Sir, did you cause enquiries to be made of the passport service, seeking information about a man named Dominic Padstow?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘On whose instructions?’

  ‘Those of my employer, Mr Davor Boras.’

  ‘How were those instructions conveyed?’

  ‘In a conversation in Mr Boras’s suite in the Caledonian Hotel, Edinburgh.’

  ‘Was anyone else present?’

  ‘No. Mrs Boras and Miss Britto, her secretary, had gone to the funeral director’s office to make arrangements for Zrinka.’

  ‘Arrangements?’

  ‘To choose a coffin and make sure that she was properly . . .’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘When did you receive your instructions from Mr Boras?’

  ‘On Thursday afternoon, at approximately four p.m. That was not long before Mrs Boras and Miss Britto returned, and shortly before we left for the airport to return to London.’

  ‘You’re sure about that timing?’ asked Steele, as Wilding re-entered the room and took his seat at the table

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘Are you aware that Mr Padstow’s name and image were not released to the press until late on Thursday evening?’

  ‘I am now.’

  ‘You were also present at a discussion in the same place that morning, when Detective Chief Superintendent Mario McGuire and I interviewed Mr and Mrs Boras.’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘Do you recall Mr Padstow’s name being mentioned at that time?’

  ‘Yes, I do, by Mrs Boras. She said that was the name of a man who had lived with Zrinka for a while, in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Had you ever heard the name before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘To the best of your knowledge, had Mr Boras?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe he had. When we returned to the hotel, after the press briefing with Mr McGuire, he asked me if I had any idea about this man before, and if I knew anything about him. I told him that I hadn’t, and that I didn’t. He looked puzzled, concerned.’

  ‘When he gave you your orders, did Mr Boras tell you why he wanted to trace Mr Padstow?’

  ‘No, all he told me was that I should trace him as quickly as possible and obtain a photograph of him.’

  ‘Did he tell you how to go about this?’

  ‘Yes he did. He told me to contact Patrick Dailey, in the Home Office, and ask him to use his influence to obtain the necessary information and photograph from the passport agency.’

  ‘For the record,’ said Steele, ‘Mr Dailey tried to comply with this request, but was apprehended. Those circumstances are under investigation elsewhere and are not directly relevant to our enquiries. So, Mr Barker, you obeyed your boss’s instructions, without asking questions.’

  ‘You don’t question Davor Boras. You may advise him professionally, but ultimately, if you work for him, you do what he tells you, and that’s an end of it.’

  ‘Did you ask yourself any questions? Did you wonder why he might want to trace this man?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘What was your conclusion?’

  ‘The obvious one: that Mr Boras wanted to find out for himself whether Padstow knew anything about Zrinka’s death.’

  ‘With respect, Keith, that isn’t obvious to me. My first assumption would have been that he intended to use his contacts to help the police investigation.’

  ‘Then you didn’t know Boras. He is not a sharing type. Why do you think his son left him to set up his own business, in competition with his father, and why are they now bitterly estranged? I’ll tell you, because that much I do know. Davor simply assumed that his son would join him in Continental IT, and for a while that might have happened. Only Dražen asked his father to draw him a career path, putting a rough date on when he would retire and hand over control of the business. Davor told him that would never happen until God made it so. In other words, as long as he was alive, Dražen would always be subordinate to him.’

  ‘How do you come to know this?’

  ’Because Dražen told me. I met him once after he struck out on his own, and I asked him why he had done it. He came right out with it, chapter and verse.’

  ‘Did it surprise you, what he told you?’

  ’Not when I thought about it. Dražen and Zrinka were very much alike, from what I knew of them. Neither was prepared to stand in anyone’s shadow for ever. He had plans for Zrinka too: he wanted her to run both of his art galleries; her brother told me that as well. She managed to deflect him, though. She persuaded him that nobody in the art world would respect her until she had established herself. She was supposed to settle in Edinburgh not just to paint but to find work in a national gallery, and gain experience there. Once she got up there, she forgot about that side of it, conveniently.’

  ‘So back to Padstow: you’re saying that Boras wanted to get to him himself, to get information out of him. How would he have done that?’

  ‘I do not know, and I do not care to speculate.’

  ‘Would he have used physical persuasion?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you believe him capable of it?’

  Barker glanced at the recorder, then back at Steele. ‘I believe that if he has succeeded in finding Padstow before you, and if he is convinced, as you seem to be, that he murdered Zrinka, then you have a better chance of finding Lord Lucan than of catching up with the bastard. Boras won’t leave a single trace of him.’

  ‘Just as well that the Home Office woman didn’t hear that,’ Stallings murmured.

  ‘Maybe she should have,’ Steele replied quietly, his head turned away from the recorder. ‘Maybe she knows things about him that could point us in the right direction.’

  ‘Want me to go and get her back?’ Wilding whispered.

  ‘Except,’ said Barker, startling them all, ‘that there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that.’ They turned back towards him. ‘Now I’ve seen Padstow’s image, I know why Boras wanted me to find him. I should have worked it out for myself straight away, but I didn’t.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Steele.

  ‘Almost three years ago now,’ said the prisoner, ‘not all that long after I went to work for Boras, I became aware that someone was asking questions about us, about the business, about Boras himself, about me and what I had been recruited to do for him. Word filtered back to me, from employees, from suppliers and from former associates of mine.

  ‘I had no idea who the man was, but I knew that he was hostile, as such people almost invariably are. I made that assumption because no approaches were ever made to me, to any of my subordinates in the press office or in the consultancies that we use. At that point in time, I didn’t want to go to Boras, as I knew him well enough by that time to understand that you didn’t bring
him suspicions, you brought him facts. So I began to seek the man actively, and to build up a dossier on what he was up to. I intended to trace him myself, but I never did. He was too good, too thorough. Finally, I decided that he was probably an industrial spy, hired by one of our smaller European rivals or, more likely, by an American outfit. That I had to take to the boss.’

  ‘How did he react, when you didn’t bring him hard facts?’

  ‘To my surprise, he was fine. He thanked me and he told me to leave it with him. A week later, he called me into his office. I should tell you that he never discusses anything sensitive outside his room at Continental; he has the place swept every day for listening devices. He showed me a folder and said, “That’s our man.” It contained photographs and a complete biography of a man called Daniel Ballester. He was a journalist, that sort of spy.’

  ‘Where did the information come from?’

  ‘He told me he’d hired a private security firm: its name was Aeron, according to the heading on the report I saw.’

  ‘Did he say whether he had acted on it?’

  ‘I asked him if he wanted me to do that, but he told me that the Aeron people had been instructed to talk to him, tell him that we knew who he was and to stop being bloody silly. That alarmed me a little; I asked if they would do anything physical, but Boras just laughed, a rarity for him, and said that he wasn’t worth it.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘Yes, I did. As it happened, Ballester was all over the press himself just a little later, after coming spectacularly unstuck by doing a piece on Diana, on the basis of bogus evidence that he fell for.’

  ‘Then three years on, you find out he had moved on from that setback to get onside with Zrinka.’

  Barker nodded. ‘As soon as I saw the image you released, I knew who he was.’

  ‘When did you see it?’

  ‘In The Times, yesterday morning.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘The obvious. I took the newspaper straight into Boras’s office, but he’d already seen it. I said to him, “You know who this is, don’t you?” and he nodded. I said that Aeron obviously hadn’t been persuasive enough. He replied, “Maybe they’ll be more efficient this time.” I warned him not to cross the police, but he told me not to worry. Then he took out the folder he’d shown me three years ago and shredded it before my eyes.’