I’d never heard of Mulholland & Steer, Private Bankers. I wondered what Cross was doing with a private bank account. There was a bulge in the bottom on the envelope. I peered in. It was hard to see by torchlight, but it looked like torn-up pieces of paper. Possibly, I thought, the letter the envelope had contained. I pocketed the envelope and continued my search. I found nothing else of interest in the dustbin.
I replaced the contents of the dustbin item by item. Then I retraced my steps round the back of the house, down the passage and out through the gate. I listened for any passing traffic before walking quickly down the drive and out into the street. I hurried to the tram shelter to meet Shirley.
The shelter was empty. I looked up and down the street. Nobody was about. I called Shirley’s name softly. Then more loudly. I walked back to the car in the side street. She wasn’t there. My mind was racing. What had happened to her?
She’d not made the signal. In real danger, she could have shouted for help. I didn’t know what to think. I walked back to the main road. Walked two hundred yards up and down the road. She had vanished. I could only think of one explanation. She must have been spooked by the whole experience. She’d chickened out. Walked back into town. She’d be back at her flat. Tucked up in bed. Sound asleep. That had to be the answer.
She’d tired of hanging about and bunked off home. But there was no point being angry about it. I’d accomplished what I set out to do. Mission completed. And successful. I had a lead into Cross’s financial affairs which I could follow in the morning. I glanced at my watch. Of course, it was already the morning.
I walked back to the side street, climbed into the MGB and drove back to my flat. I was eager to take a closer look at the envelope and the paper it contained. I’d call Shirley in the morning. She’d feel happier after a good night’s sleep in her own bed.
I walked into my flat just after three o’clock.
It was so late even the Widow had gone to bed.
I felt tired but I had to examine the paper in the envelope before I could sleep. I tipped the pieces of paper out onto the table. It looked as though they had originally consisted of one sheet of paper which had been torn four or five times. I started by putting them all the same way up. Then it was just like doing a jigsaw puzzle except there was no picture on the lid of the box for guidance.
Within five minutes I’d assembled the pieces into the original sheet of paper. It was a sheet of quarto-sized notepaper from Mulholland & Steer. It contained a letter to Mr Derek Cross and it read:
Dear Mr Cross,
This is to inform you that the sum of £1,000 received from Beaupassin & Cie has been transferred to Traverser Nominees c/o Séjourné & Associates, notaries, Luxembourg.
It was signed by a squiggle which could have been anything.
I’d never heard of Beaupassin & Cie or Traverser Nominees or Séjourné & Associates. But as soon as I’d had a few hours’ sleep, I was going to find out.
Chapter 15
I was awake, showered and dressed by half past six the following morning.
The envelope with the torn letter I’d liberated from Cross’s dustbin was on my bedside table. I picked it up and put it in my jacket pocket. While I was shaving, I’d been puzzling some more about how I could pick apart Cross’s tangled financial dealings. I would have to make it my top task when I reached the office.
But first, I decided to thank Shirley for her help last night by going round to her flat and taking her out to breakfast at Marcello’s. Last night, I’d been annoyed that she’d cleared off and left me without back-up. But driving home after my raid on Cross’s dustbin, I’d realised that I’d asked too much of her. It hadn’t been fair to ask her to lurk around in the street like a nark.
It was another sunny day. I drove along the seafront in the open-topped MGB and turned into West Street. A cleaner was washing the steps outside the ice rink. An early-morning dog walker dragged a reluctant Labrador towards the beach. As I passed the clock tower, the copper who patrolled the junction was adjusting his white summer helmet.
A few minutes later, I pulled into the kerb outside Shirley’s flat. I looked up at the second floor where Shirley occupied flat five. The curtains in her bedroom window were already drawn back. She must be up.
I climbed out of the MGB and made my way into the building and up the stairs. My shoes clunked on the bare boards. Somewhere, one of the tenants was frying bacon.
I knocked on the door to number five. There was no sound from inside the flat. I put my ear to the door. In the morning, Shirley listened to the radio. It wasn’t turned on. I knocked again and shouted through the door. “Shirley, it’s me.” No response.
I stood on the landing thinking about my next move. It seemed unlikely that she’d gone out so early. But it was just possible. I was wondering whether to wait or come back later when the other door on the landing opened. A dark-haired girl with sleepy eyes stood in the doorway. She was wearing a mauve dressing gown over a yellow nightdress patterned with tiny teddy bears, and fluffy pink slippers.
She said: “Were you looking for Shirley?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the second person asking about her this morning.”
“I am?”
“I was woken up at half past five.”
“By whom?”
“It was the police.”
“Looking for Shirley?”
“Not looking for her,” she said.
“What then?”
“They wanted to confirm that she lived here.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s at Brighton Police Station.”
“Did the police officer say why?”
“I understood she’s been arrested.”
She closed the door. I stood on the landing staring at the door with my mouth hanging open.
Confused thoughts tumbled through my mind. How had Shirley been arrested? And when? Why were the police holding her?
I ran down the stairs. Sprinted for the MGB. Jumped in, started the car and screamed off towards the police station.
I parked about a hundred yards from the cop shop and ran towards it.
By the time I reached the front office counter, I was breathing heavily. I recognised the sergeant on duty but couldn’t remember his name. He was a chubby man with flabby cheeks and thick lips that twisted upwards in a kind of smirk.
I leaned on the counter to get my breath back and panted: “I believe you’re holding a Shirley Goldsmith in the station.”
He slid off his stool and pushed through a frosted glass door marked “Private”. He looked back over his shoulder and said: “Wait there a minute.”
I paced back and forth in the office while I was waiting for him to come back. He returned with the smirk glowing more brightly than before.
“We do have Shirley Goldsmith here,” he said. “She’s in the cells. Apparently, she was arrested last night for loitering with intent.”
I said: “Is Detective Inspector Ted Wilson in the station? If so, I want to see him. Now.”
His smirk twitched and his eyes bulged unpleasantly.
“I’ll see,” he said.
He disappeared through the glass door again.
I thought about Shirley languishing in the cells with the usual collection of tramps, drunks and street-corner tarts. I was thinking about what I was going to say to her when Ted Wilson came through the door with the sergeant. Ted wasn’t smiling. And the sergeant wasn’t smirking.
Ted walked round from behind the counter and said: “Here’s a nice mess you’ve got Miss Goldsmith into.”
I said: “You can leave the Laurel and Hardy impression for later. Have you seen Shirley?”
“I’ve just been to see the custody sergeant. He’s releasing her now.”
“Without charges?”
“Without charges,” he said.
“Why was she arrested in the first place?”
“She was found by a couple of patrolling officers in
a tram shelter in Dyke Road Avenue around half past two in the morning.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“No.”
“So why the arrest?”
“Apparently, when they asked her what she was doing, she got a bit mouthy. So they decided to teach her a lesson.”
“That’s outrageous.”
“Possibly. In any event, the officers will be spoken to and told they’re not to pursue private vendettas.”
I wondered how much Shirley had told the police.
Anxiously, I asked: “What did Shirley say she was doing?”
Ted said: “According to her, you’d both been going for a late-night drive when you suddenly remembered you had to have a private meeting with one of the paper’s contacts. You left her at the tram shelter while you went for the meeting and were going to pick her up later.”
He raised an eyebrow to indicate he didn’t believe a word of it. The tension I’d felt eased a little. Shirley hadn’t given me away.
Ted pulled me over to the far side of the office. Looked back to make sure the sergeant couldn’t overhear. An elderly woman had come in and was bending his ear about something. She was wagging her finger in his face and berating him about cyclists who rode on the pavement. He wasn’t smirking.
Ted lowered his voice: “What I’d like to know is what the pair of you were really up to.”
I winked at Ted. “You know I can’t betray my sources.”
Ted frowned. “To be frank, I’d like to give you a piece of my mind. But as Shirley will be up from the cells in a minute, I think I’ll leave it to her. Somehow, I don’t think I could match her passion. Or vocabulary.”
Shirley was blazing like a bushfire when she came up from cells.
She ransacked the dictionary from A to Z to describe me, my plan, my profession, my personal life, and my performance in bed. Then she went back to the beginning of the alphabet and started again. The sergeant with the smirk loved every minute of it. Ted had the decency to go back to his office.
Eventually, the bushfire burnt itself out. Shirley collapsed onto my shoulder and started to sob. I put my arms round her, held her close and whispered comfortingly in her ear.
“Everything’s all right now,” I said. “And I’ll make it even better.”
Through tears, Shirley said: “You bastard.” But she held me tighter.
We left the police station and drove to Marcello’s. By the time we were sitting inside and drinking steaming cappuccinos, Shirley seemed more cheerful.
Over scrambled eggs and bacon, we talked about how she’d been arrested and what it had been like in the cells. I tried to persuade her that her sacrifice had been in a noble cause. But Shirley had had more than enough of noble causes. So I pointed out that the expedition had given me a lead which might finally help me to expose Cross and stop Darke in his destructive tracks.
I said: “If I can crack the story this morning, I think it will make me the front-runner at the Daily Mirror interview this evening. I’d be a shoo-in for the job.”
“If that’s what you want,” she said.
“It is.”
I ate some scrambled egg. It was creamy and savoury, just how I like it.
I said: “I’ve had an idea. Why don’t we plan a celebration? I owe it to you.”
Shirley sipped her cappuccino. “What have you got in mind? A night in the torture chamber at the Tower of London?”
I grinned. “Better than that. We’ll have a night to remember in London after my interview. We’ll go to a show, have supper at the Savoy Grill afterwards and then stay in a swanky hotel. We’ll meet at Piccadilly Circus at half past seven this evening.”
“You’re tempting fate. You might not get the job.”
“If I can land this story, it’s in the bag,” I said. “And if I do, we’ll take a trip to Paris as soon as I can get some time off. Then you can go up the Eiffel Tower.”
Shirley grinned. “You certainly know how to bribe a girl,” she said. “I don’t know why but I’m willing to risk a foreign trip with you.”
“Why risk?”
“Knowing you, you’re probably one of those people who’ll lose the airline tickets and forget your passport.”
I put down my knife and fork. “You can keep the tickets and, as for the passport, I always have it with me.”
I reached inside my jacket and fished out the blue-bound document.
“Weird,” Shirley said. “Do you need it before they let you into Hove or something?”
“Old journalist ploy,” I said. “If your press card doesn’t get you in somewhere you need to be, your passport will. Nobody likes arguing with Her Britannic Majesty’s principal secretary of state,” I said.
“Well, when you’ve got that job, Paris here we come,” Shirley said. She drained her cappuccino.
“I could do with another,” she said. “For some reason, they don’t have a coffee bar in the cells.”
When I reached the Chronicle offices, I went in search of Susan Wheatcroft, the paper’s business correspondent.
I found her carrying a mug of coffee and sticky bun back from the tea room.
“Can you spare a minute?” I said.
“As many as you like, honeybunch,” she said.
Susan was a chubby five foot nothing with curly red hair which she tied back with a ribbon. She had a big smile and a couple of wobbly chins. Her fawn slacks strained in creases around her waist.
We threaded our way through the newsroom to her desk. It was at the far end of the room from mine. She sat down in her chair and I perched on the edge of her desk.
She took a big bite out of her bun. It was a large pastry with plenty of currants and a lot of sugar on top. The Clipping Cousins would have loved it.
I said: “Have you ever heard of a bank called Beaupassin & Cie.”
She said: “No, but it sounds like a Swiss bank. The ‘& Cie’ bit is the giveaway. It means ‘and company’ in French.”
“And Swiss banks are renowned for their secrecy?”
“Switzerland: not so much a country, more a private club,” Susan said.
“Which only the rich can join.”
“That’s about the size of it. And it helps if you’re a renegade Nazi, an African dictator or a South American drug baron. The Swiss have no qualms about minding dirty money and charging you a princely sum for doing so.”
Susan took another large bite of the bun. Bits of sugar cascaded on to her desk. She brushed them on to the floor.
“Is there any way I could find out who owns a particular account in a Swiss bank?” I asked.
“No way,” Susan said. “When the Swiss say something’s secret they mean it. The names of the account holders are locked up tighter than Frank Figgis’s wallet.”
I laughed while Susan had a slurp at her coffee. “Another question. What would you make of a company called Traverser Nominees registered at a lawyer’s office in Luxembourg?”
Susan took a huge bite of her bun. She had so much in her mouth her cheeks wobbled in and out.
She swallowed, took another noisy slurp of coffee and said: “Name sounds foreign. Nominee companies in Luxembourg are often the front for some big wheel who wants to hide his money away from the tax man.”
“A sort of front company?”
“Exactly. The company won’t actually do anything except provide a smokescreen for the big wheel’s private wealth.”
“A kind of personal piggy-bank,” I said.
“Beauty of the arrangement is that only the lawyer knows who owns the pot of cash in the nominee company. And Luxembourg law says that he doesn’t have to tell.”
I slid off Susan’s desk. “That’s very helpful,” I said.
“Don’t mention it, honeybunch,” she said. “Hey, where are my manners?”
She held up the remains of the bun.
“Like a bite?” she said.
“I’m trying to give them up,” I said.
“Oh, well. If you
ever feel like a nibble, you know where to come.”
And she sent me on my way with a big fat wink.
I sat down at my desk and took out the pieces of the Cross letter.
I arranged them in order. I read the brief text again. I tried to get clear in my mind what I knew as fact and what remained as speculation.
The letter described a clear set of actions. A sum of one thousand pounds had been sent from a Swiss bank account to Cross’s account at Mulholland & Steer in Leadenhall Street in the City of London. The City boys had then transferred the same sum into the account of Traverser Nominees, a company fronted by a Luxembourg lawyer.
I was as sure as I could be without him admitting it that the Swiss account must belong to Septimus Darke or one of his front companies. But I couldn’t think of a way to prove it. If Susan was right, there was no way I’d be able to penetrate the secrecy of a Zurich bank from a newspaper office in Brighton. I considered trying to blag information out of the bank over the telephone. But there would be a high risk that I’d fail. Then the bank would warn the account’s owner – presumably Darke – that someone was making enquiries. It wouldn’t take him long to work out that it was me. Fat Arthur would be on my case. Which was the last thing I needed at this stage.
So I had to try and crack the mystery from the other end. Why was Cross transferring the money from his Mulholland & Steer account to Traverser Nominees? I thought I knew the answer to that question. To get it out of the clutches of the tax man. But why not just transfer the money from Switzerland to Luxembourg and leave London out of it completely? Perhaps Cross didn’t want the lawyer handling Traverser Nominees to know where the money originally came from. A lawyer who made a career out of being a front man for nominee companies wouldn’t necessarily be a shining example of honesty and probity. In fact, he might well be as bent as the people he was representing. Probably was. Perhaps he was not averse to picking up a little extra in blackmail pay-offs on the side. Maybe Cross feared that danger and used Mulholland & Steer as a cut-off between him and the original source of his funds. That was a clever move.
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