The Maggie Bainbridge Box Set

by Rob Wyllie

  Chapter 20

  Frank swiped his debit card in the direction of Atlee House's new high-tech drinks dispenser and took grateful delivery of a grande double-shot Americano. Alongside, a sophisticated whirr from the equally hi-tech vending machine signified that a Mars Bar and a packet of cheese and onion crisps was about to join it, completing his lunch order. Scooping them up, he smiled to himself, reflecting on his earlier brief encounter with Hugo Morgan, and how excellent it was that he had caught him lying. An easy slip to make, not that he sympathised in any way, but now the connections were beginning to rack up and he loved it when that began to happen in a case. The Oxbridge Agency had supplied both Chardonnay Clarke and Luke Brown, and despite his denials, Morgan clearly knew of them both. And actually by an admittedly small margin, Luke was the more interesting of the two. Alexia Life was a mutual and therefore it was off limits as far as Brasenose's activist investor MO was concerned. So why would Morgan know of some insignificant intern in an organisation he had zero connection to?

  Back at his desk, he pulled out an A4 pad from his drawer and began to doodle. He wasn't any sort of an artist, he knew that, but somehow these indecipherable sketches helped him organise his thoughts. The connections. Two identical murders made to look like suicides, the stand-out good looks of the victims, the Oxbridge Agency, the modest backgrounds, the billionaire Hugo Morgan. It all had to mean something, and he'd figure it out soon enough.

  On a whim, he picked up his phone and called Ronnie French. It rang nearly a dozen times before he answered, Frank assuming that the fat turd was probably snoozing in a favourite lay-by somewhere off the beaten track. But he was wrong.

  'Guv?'

  'Where are you Frenchie? I need you to do something for me.'

  'Me? I'm in Atlee. On the top floor with your pal Eleanor Campbell.'

  'What, with Campbell?' This was a surprise to Frank, because he couldn't think what business Ronnie could possibly have with the young forensic officer.

  'Yeah guv, there's been a bit of a development with my mate Mo and your pal is helping me instead. With that Guernsey bank account. You know, Rosalind Holdings.'

  'Right, stay there and I'll come and join you as soon as I've finished my lunch.'

  Five minutes later, he was at her desk and pulling up a chair alongside them.

  'You're keeping some dodgy company these days Miss Campbell.'

  She shot him a sardonic smile. 'Yeah, like you for instance. But look at this,' she said pointing to the wide-screen laptop that seemed to cover half of her desk. 'It's running this Fraudbreaker app with sixty-four-bit decryption and eight-layer packet tracing straight out of the box. Ronnie got me it. It's like awesome.'

  'I got it from Mo,' Ronnie said in way of explanation. 'He doesn't need it at the moment due to him being sort of incapacitated. So I sort of borrowed it.'

  'Along with all his passwords,' Eleanor said helpfully.

  Frank grimaced. 'Christ Ronnie, I thought you said your Mo Ahmed guy works for the anti-terrorist division.'

  'Yeah, so? We're not doing nothing wrong, are we?'

  Frank could think of a dozen things they were doing wrong, starting with theft of valuable government property, which got him pondering how Ronnie had managed to sneak it out of MI6's offices over on Albert Embankment in the first place. For the second time in a week, he wondered if he might be guilty of underestimating the corpulent slug.

  'Anyway guv, what did you want me to do for you?'

  Frank smiled. 'That can wait for a bit. I want to watch what's going on here first. It looks interesting.'

  'You can watch, but you won't understand any of it,' Eleanor said, matter-of-factly.

  'I won't,' he answered, smiling. 'That's why we pay you your pittance. But how come you got a hold of this piece of kit? Frenchie, tell us what happened to your mate Mo.'

  Ronnie shrugged. 'Well you know these Pakis, them honour killings and all that. Well our boy Mo got caught with his trousers down. With his wife's sister. A bit of a doll so I've heard. Anyways, word got out in the community and he had the shit beaten out of him.'

  Frank gave him an angry look. 'Ronnie, I've told you once and I'll tell you again, if I hear any more of that bloody Paki stuff from you or anything like it, I'm going to haul you up in front of HR so fast that the skin will be scraped off your arse on the way. I won't bloody have it on my watch, you hear?'

  He gave another shrug. 'Loud and clear boss.' In one ear and out the other more like, and it was too late to do anything about it now, no matter how many courses they forced the fat twat to sit through. But he meant what he said. One more strike from Frenchie and he was out.

  'So you say he's incapacitated then?' Frank said, trying to calm himself.

  'Yeah, and some. Stuck in the Royal Free and looks like he'll be in there for a week or two. But he gave me his pass and so I just wandered in to pick up his stuff.'

  'What, you just waltzed into the headquarters of MI6, and then waltzed out again with a laptop the size of a wide-screen telly?'

  French looked puzzled. 'I had a pass,' he said simply.

  'God save us,' Frank muttered under his breath.

  Frank noticed for the first time that Eleanor was holding something in her hand, a slim plastic device that looked a bit like an old-school iPod music player.

  'What's that?' he asked.

  'It's for two-factor authentication. I've told you about it before but you won't have remembered.'

  'That was Mo's too,' French said. 'You know when you're paying someone new on your banking app, or you're logging on from a different device it sends an authorisation code to your phone? Well this is a fancy gizmo that lets the spooks intercept the code. Some stonking software behind it and make no mistake.'

  Frank gave him a look of astonishment. 'So you're an IT geek Frenchie? Who'd have thought it.'

  French smiled. 'Not really guv. My lad's a programmer and I've picked up the lingo from him.'

  'Are we like ready?' Eleanor said, not bothering to hide her impatience.

  'Aye sure,' Frank said. 'Let's go.'

  She hammered a few keys of the laptop, bringing up what looked like a bank statement.

  'See, that's Chardonnay's and there's the six thousand you guys are interested in.' She moved her mouse so it hovered over the line in the statement. Immediately, a box popped up containing three rows of text. Account Name, Sort Code, Account Number.

  'See, that's the account details of who paid it in. The Fraudbreaker software retrieves that from a high-security mega transaction database shared by the banks.'

  'Don't tell me,' Frank said, stifling a laugh.

  'What?' Eleanor said.

  'It's awesome.'

  'Well, like, it is,' she said, in a tone that questioned why anyone could possibly think otherwise.

  Punching in a few more characters caused a dialogue box to pop up in the centre of the screen.

  Welcome to Internet banking.

  Enter user code and password.

  'We don't need to worry about this.' A few seconds later, the device in her hand gave a gentle vibration. Immediately the lap top display changed.

  Enter one-time access code.

  She glanced at the device and carefully keyed in the six-digit number. 'We're in,' she said, pointing to the display, which was showing another statement, this time for Rosalind Holdings, an account held with Guernsey Bank.

  'So does this work globally?' Frank said, vaguely aware that organisations and individuals often tried to hide their financial affairs behind a complex web of international accounts.

  'Pretty much, according to the system docs.'

  'Mo gave us them too,' French said, with no hint of apology.

  'Although not Russia or China,' Eleanor continued, 'defo not, but then, guys take their money out of these places, they don't put it in.'

  'Sweet.' It was one of her favourite expressions and Frank liked to drop it into conversation just to annoy her. But this time she chose to ign
ore him, continuing to manipulate her mouse around her desk.

  'So, this is like interesting. I've scrolled back a few months and look...' She clicked to highlight a line.

  'RGBX. No idea who this is but they're paying forty thousand Euros a month into this account.' She clicked on the line and the same dialogue box as before popped up.

  'Looks like a Santander account. That code's for their Spanish branches. The IBAN. So it's in Spain.'

  'So this maybe explains where Rosalind gets some or all of their funding,' Frank said, surprising himself that for once he actually seemed to understand what she was talking about. 'Now you can use this mega database thing to get to RGBX's account, and then the Fraudbreaker stuff and that wee iPod gizmo gets you in. Or is it the other way around?'

  Eleanor looked equally surprised. 'You're sharp this afternoon, aren't you? Yeah, like you're right, exactly. But maybe there'll be lots of layers in the web, so it might take a while to get back to the original source. And there will probably be a few false trails. Or maybe the trail will go cold. So it's not that simple.' Frank knew her well and was able to read between the lines. Stop looking over my shoulder and let me get on with my work in peace.

  He gestured at French. 'Come on, Ronnie, she doesn't need an audience. Let's wander downstairs and chew the fat about the case whilst she's working on it.'

  'Yeah, sure guv. Off you go and I'll catch up with you in a minute.'

  Frank got up and headed towards the stairwell. Taking a glimpse back, he saw Ronnie scribble something on a piece of paper then give Eleanor a thumbs-up, which she returned with her normal disdainful look. Intrigued, he waited for him to catch up with him.

  'What was all that about Frenchie?'

  'What? Aw, nothing guv, just a thought I had. Eleanor's going to take a look but as I say it might be nothing.'

  It seemed that he wasn't going to give anything more away, so they went back down to Frank's office where he updated Ronnie on his interesting interview with Hugo Morgan, conscious of a growing respect for his DC. Sure, Frenchie was the laziest man ever to be issued with a warrant card, but when it came to sniffing out a wrong 'un, as he might put it, it seemed his instincts were of the highest order. Frank wondered what he would make of Morgan, whether he would see through the effortlessly smooth facade, whether he would sniff out the lies that hid behind it. Because that's the job he had pencilled in for his colleague. Put the shambolic detective constable in front of Morgan and see if the billionaire, to his cost, underestimated him too.

  Out of the blue, French said, 'So who do you think is behind this guv? These payments I mean.'

  So Frank told him who he thought was responsible, and French, amiably disagreeing, gave him his contrary view, and then they agreed a modest wager on the outcome. Thirty-five minutes later, Eleanor Campbell appeared, laptop under her arm and a deep frown on her forehead, which Frank knew from experience meant that she had cracked it, and after a lengthy preamble describing the mountainous difficulties she had overcome, settled the bet. Forcing Frank to reach into his wallet and withdraw a crisp new ten-pound note.

  ◆◆◆

  'There's something else guv,' French said, after he'd tucked the tenner safely away in a trouser pocket. 'I asked her to look at the other one too, that Brown lad.'

  Eleanor nodded. 'Fraudbreaker's got awesome search. You just like key in a name and it brings up every account they have. Luke Brown's only got one.'

  'Don't tell me,' Frank said, excited. 'He was getting six grand a month too.'

  'What?' Eleanor said, looking puzzled. 'Like, no way. He gets nineteen hundred a month from the Oxbridge Agency. That's like not much more than minimum wage.'

  Eleanor was exaggerating of course, but this was nothing like the seventy-five grand that Chardonnay Clarke had been receiving. And then he remembered. We also provide them with a nominal salary whilst they are on deployment. That's what Sophie Fitzwilliam had told him, and nineteen hundred a month, or twenty-three grand a year, was certainly nominal. But there had to be something else. Because Luke Brown had been murdered in exactly the same way as Chardonnay Clarke. It was just a matter of finding it, that was all. He'd give it to Frenchie and wee Yvonne Sharp for forty-eight hours' max, and if that didn't work, he would have to dive in himself. Not a problem, that.

  ◆◆◆

  Fair play to Ronnie French, he hadn't tried to take the credit for it himself. That nudged him up a notch in Frank's estimation, although it didn't balance the fifty he'd gone down on account of him being a racist twat. But credit where credit's due, and it hadn't taken forty-eight hours, in fact it had barely taken forty-eight minutes.

  'She spotted it right away guv,' he had said when he called Frank with the good news. 'On the bank statement. You see, Yvonne knows the threshold is twenty-one grand a year, so she says, why isn't this Luke paying nothing back? So we gives them a call up in Glasgow, all official like, and they confirmed it, sweet as a nut. Paid off in full it was. Nearly forty grand. Nine months ago. Lucky sod, that's what Yvonne said, to have your student loan paid off just like that.'

  Aye, lucky sod, apart from the fact Luke Brown was dead. But now he had something more solid to work with and that was good. He knew Chardonnay was pulling down seventy-five grand and now he'd found out that the dead boy had his student loan paid off. Now that they more or less knew who, that just left one big question to be answered. Why?

  Chapter 21

  Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. Everybody knew the quotation, and everyone knew what it meant, although Maggie, with no little smugness, reflected that not everyone knew it was Sir Walter Scott and not William Shakespeare who had come up with it in the first place. What a bloody mess you get yourself into when you pretend to be somebody else entirely. That might be a better way of describing the situation she now found herself in, or to be more accurate, they found themselves in.

  Felicity Morgan, the bitter ex-wife, had decided to challenge the settlement that everyone involved thought was long done and dusted, and was now asking for another seventy million on top of the thirty million she had already been awarded. On the basis that a journalist - the trouble-maker Gary McGinley -had seemingly discovered that her ex-husband had squirreled away a tidy fortune over in the Channel Islands, out of sight of the authorities. And now Asvina Rani, having failed in her technical bid to prevent the original deal being contested in court, and getting some serious grief from her client Hugo Morgan as a result, had to come up with a Plan B. Which was to find out how much the ex-wife really knew. Or rather, to get Bainbridge Associates to find out for her.

  The only problem was, Maggie Bainbridge was now Magdalene Slattery and Jimmy Stewart was James McDuff. And the former Mrs Morgan had met them both, which left them with only one option if they were to win the trust of Mrs Morgan, enough to get her to share confidences. An option that Jimmy was probably not going to like. But to her surprise, he didn't object at all.

  'I thought you were going to ask me to seduce her'.

  Maggie laughed. 'Seduce her? How delightfully old-fashioned.'

  'And I was going to say no way. The next Mrs Morgan, that was bad enough, but the old one, that would be a step too far. That sort of stuff's not in my employment contract you know.'

  'Of course it isn't.' They both knew no such document existed, but that didn't stop him referring to it whenever she asked him to do something he didn't like. 'But you'll do it then?'

  'Aye, no bother. But no seduction stuff, ok?'

  'Of course not. All we want is to find out where's she coming from. See if she really has anything concrete about Hugo's finances so we can report back to Asvina.'

  So he picked up his phone and called Felicity Morgan.

  'Felicity? This is James McDuff, we met at that auction a couple of days ago, do you remember? What it is, I think your man's cheating with my lady.'

  Two hours later, he was back in the entrance atrium of the Park Lane Hilton, just a few weeks aft
er attending that eventful quarterly update of the Brasenose Investment Trust. Arriving ten minutes early, he found a seat tucked along a wall of the room and settled down to read that day's Chronicle which a previous occupant had left behind. Absorbed in a story about cuts to military budgets, he failed to notice that twenty minutes had passed and there was still no sign of Mrs Morgan. Glancing at his watch again, he was about to wander over to the reception when he caught her out the corner of his eye, dressed in the same skinny black jeans, leather blouson and stilettos as in their previous brief encounter. But unexpectedly, she wasn't alone.

  Today, trailing a metre or so behind her and wearing an archetypal teenage scowl was a young woman who he assumed must be her daughter. Felicity Morgan marched up to the reception desk and, ignoring a Japanese couple who were in the middle of checking out, said loudly. 'I'm meeting someone. A Mr James McDuff.'

  The young receptionist, obviously displeased by the interruption, gave her a cold look then nodded wordlessly towards where he sat.

  'Thank you. Come on Rosie.'

  She tottered over to him and sat down opposite.

  'This is my daughter Rosie. We're booked in for lunch at one, so I haven't got long. Family time is so important, don't you think?'

  Rosie Morgan was attractive, although it was difficult to tell under the layers of Goth-punk make-up. Her eyes were encircled in black mascara and her lips coated in a deep navy gloss. She wore purple Doc Martins, ripped fishnets and a skirt so short it barely covered her bottom. In a different way from her mother, she too looked amazing. But she wore a look suggesting she regarded the date as duty rather than pleasure. And then he remembered that the kids had chosen to live with their father rather than their mother. One day he would try to find out why they had made that choice, but today wasn't that day. Whatever the case, her presence was going to make the meeting a bit awkward. But he'd been on some tough missions in his time, and by comparison this would be a walk in the park. So he got straight on to it.

  'Aye, I'm in a hurry too. So, I was checking my lady's phone. I always do that when she's not around. Doesn't even have a pin code, stupid bitch. That's when I saw them. Texts, loads of them. I thought you should know.'