Scotland Yard, London, England
DI Dewar was at his desk, looking though a large, brown dossier, reading only the sheets marked with a red pen. The name on the dossier was Lord Arthur Selwyn Savage Dudley.
Underneath was written,
AKA:
Sir Sydney Lynx-Scarborough,
The Right Honourable Harold Scott-Jamieson
Percival Livingstone-Smythe.
He hadn’t expected such an abundance of information so quickly. Flicking through the pages Dewar couldn’t believe the man hadn’t been incarcerated on many occasions. Although using aliases wasn’t strictly speaking a crime, using them for fraud, smuggling, confidence tricks and other nefarious activities certainly was. It seemed that Dudley was clever enough to be just beyond the ‘reasonable proof’’ requirement in a great number of prosecutions and had never been amongst those jailed. Many of the convicted criminals were known to the policeman for various felonies, including trafficking of endangered creatures, smuggling contraband, sanctions busting, securities fraud and embezzlement and armed robbery. Somehow Dudley had remained at liberty while others paid for the crimes he had visibly helped to perpetrate.
Even his real name was a fraud. Arthur Dudley had been a technical college teacher until he had ‘found’ the money to acquire a title from a company that sold them on behalf of impecunious members of the aristocracy. According to the file he had paid five thousand pounds for the Lordship of Caistor, in Lincolnshire. Armed with this title, he changed his name by deed poll from Rex Thompson to Arthur Selwyn Savage Dudley and thence to Lord Arthur Selwyn Savage Dudley. Somehow an MBA in Computer Sciences became attached to his name in place of the modest BA in languages he had actually earned. It seemed the Board of Governors of Cambridge College of Digital Computing was duly impressed by his qualifications and pedigree and offered him the post of Senior Lecturer in Telematics in 1994.
On this occasion the Board had judged rightly. Dudley proved to be a visionary and a pioneer in the development of Machine to Machine, (M2M), Communications. Within a few years the College was on the front page of every industry magazine and many more far reaching esoteric publications devoted to the enablement of machines to talk to each other. A new industry was born and Dudley, now Professor of Connected Machines Eco System Studies, was one of the godfathers. Several start-ups were incubated in the College tech labs and one of these went on to be a dotcom darling in a billion dollar IPO. EzeTracker, a ubiquitous tracking system for labelling, following and finding anything that moved, won a multimillion dollar contract with the US Home Security Department in the post nine eleven anti-terrorist panic. Equipment, products and people could now be tracked from Spain to Singapore to China to New York by the insertion of a simple GPRS SIM into a plastic device attached to them or to a container. The markets loved it. After all, terrorism was a growth business.
The brain child of this technology, Dewar’s student friend, Simon Pickford, had become, much to the policeman’s chagrin, an exceptionally wealthy man and, as he knew, greatly indebted to Dudley, his College Master and mentor. Dewar was not in the same research stream and had hardly known the man, since he was unfortunate enough to be involved with Personaliti, a social media start-up which failed miserably years before Facebook became a global phenomenon and was discarded by its backers almost before it was launched, which was when he opted to follow in his father’s footsteps in a career with the Metropolitan Police.
There but for the grace…. he regretted, as he looked at the photograph of Dudley’s large smiling face and read the last paragraph of the bio. Apparently it was a badly concealed secret that the ‘professor’ had been asked to resign in 2003 after several complaints over a period of years in respect of his inappropriate relationships with both male and female students. It seemed the man was corrupt through and through.
Dewar’s rapid rise to seniority in the force was due partly to his retired father’s brilliant reputation but also to his own instincts. Instinct to spot a potential connection and instinct to act decisively and quickly. He looked up his International Contacts list and called Chief Superintendent Johannes Hendricks, Head of the Homicide Unit in Johannesburg.
London, England
Lord Arthur Dudley was in a taxi on his way to meet the others at the Park Lane Hotel when he received the call from his contact in Marseille. “Cent mille de plus? A hundred thousand more? That’s about what I expected. It’s not a bad offer.”
It was Friday16th and the shipment was due in on Sunday 18th. That left very little time to haggle any further over the commission. In any case, he reflected, a bird in the hand… “Très bien. Je suis d’accord. Very well, with the same pro rata compensation then I agree. You can confirm it to them immediately. But I want the additional funds in a different account. I’ll send you the details by email later today and you can forward them to Geneva.”
Dudley ended the call and sat back in his seat, reflecting on the current situation. Even if the Leo Stewart business fell by the wayside, he would suffer no personal loss, in fact he had already appropriated a part of the funds budgeted for non-existent costs and he was insulated from any fall out. This morning’s arrangement would bring an additional substantial commission into his account in the Bahamas and more than compensate him for his efforts in the abduction transaction.
Marbella, Spain
Jenny had spent the last half hour speaking to Valerie Aeschiman and Philippe Jaquelot at the Banque de Commerce in Geneva. As she had feared, sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to South Africa was a virtually impossible task in these days of compliance and money laundering avoidance. They didn’t have a sister bank there and opening an account with a new bank would take weeks of complicated paperwork. Even then, making large withdrawals in cash would prove impossible. The only solution was to do what she had dreamt of last night; to take the money from Geneva to Johannesburg in cash. Mme Aeschiman was prepared to provide her with the cash but flying it down to South Africa would require hiring a private plane, to avoid the security checks. She put the matter aside for the moment. It was Friday and nothing could be done before Monday. We don’t even know for sure where Leo is. At least I have one option that works.
She went back out to the terrace where Emma was typing away on her laptop. “What are you up to?”
“I’m actually writing. Alan just reminded me that I’ve got a book to deliver by November 30th so I can get my next advance, otherwise Leo’s Christmas is going to be rather frugal.”
“Alan Bridges, your publisher, stroke, on-off boyfriend?”
Emma laughed sheepishly. “He called a few minutes ago. He’s feeling neglected and I don’t blame him. We haven’t spoken since I left for Johannesburg. I haven’t been in the mood.”
“But all’s well on the Bridges Front?”
“He should be so lucky. While I’ve been stressing and worrying my head off down here, he’s lapping up the sun in the South of France.”
“You didn’t say anything about our problem?”
“Not a word. Too dangerous. When I get Leo back I’ll make sure he doesn’t divulge anything either.”
“Alan must be doing quite well to afford holidays on the Côte d’Azur.”
Emma laughed. “He’s not that well off and you’re forgetting that he’s Scottish. One of his authors is Mike Pringle, you’ve probably heard of him, much better known than me?”
Jenny shook her head and she continued, “Anyway, Mike has a hotel apartment near Nice and Alan gets invited down a couple of times a year. I was there two years ago. It’s a fabulous place, restaurant, pool, everything at hand and right by the beach.”
“That’s something to aspire to, so you’d better keep on writing. What’s the new book about?”
“Oh, nothing very original. It’s called Red Sky over Orkney, with the same boring characters doing more or less the same boring things, just in a different place. I told you, I’m running out of fresh ideas, that’s the problem. I just kee
p writing and hoping that something new and gripping will come out of it but so far it hasn’t. I’m really not that good a writer.”
“I like the title. Anyhow it’s good to see you thinking positively and writing again.”
“I was thinking about something else before he called, actually,” Emma said. “How long have you known Leticia?”
“I first met her at Ellen and Charlie’s house-warming party when she was working for them. That was seven years ago. The next time was the following year, at Ellen’s funeral.” She paused, unwelcome memories flooding back into her mind.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” Emma said.
“It’s alright, just not something I like to dwell on. Anyway, I didn’t get to know her until after Charlie’s death, when I found out about her and Charlie and Emilio. That was a bit of a shock, but she was so honest and naïve that I couldn’t imagine anything wrong about their relationship. And her son is such an adorable child, he thinks of me as his aunt, which makes me really happy.
“Then we had that awful business with d’Almeida that I told you about yesterday. That’s when we became very close. I think I’m like an elder sister to her, the way you are to me. So I felt I had found a new part of my family, after losing Ron and both his parents.” Oh dear, she thought. That wasn’t very tactful of me.
Emma shook her head. “I don’t think of myself as an older sister to you. On the contrary, I feel younger. You’ve experienced so much more than me and you have a way of getting things done, despite any obstacles or objections. But I know what you mean about family. We didn’t see much of each other when Leo was young. I was writing every day when I wasn’t rushing from one book shop to another to sign future priceless first editions. I was probably a bit obsessed with my own life and not looking in your direction.” She paused, looking guilty. “I’m sorry, Jenny. It seems that it’s taken some really serious problems for us to come together again.”
“It’s just the way things work out. You were living in the North and I married someone with a business in Ipswich. Life throws changes at you. You just have to take them in your stride and get on with it. The main thing is that we’re back in touch and we’ve got a mutual objective to accomplish. Getting Leo back, with Coetzee’s help!”
Emma nodded. “I just hope he’s with him. Now that we’ve sent the others a holding message, I’m praying we’ll get a reply from Coetzee this morning. At least something that proves Leo is with him. It will probably be in the form of a counter-offer. It’s like an auction, you can’t stop bidding until you’re successful.”
Jenny said, “Why did you ask me about Leticia?”
“Oh, I was just trying to think through the people involved in this awful business and her name popped into my head.”
“In what connection?” Now Jenny was intrigued.
“Well, think about it. She’s the only person who knows about your fortune and that I was taking Leo to the football. I was looking for a common denominator, as Pedro calls it, and I thought of her.”
“It’s certainly half a connection, but she couldn’t have known about your story because you say that no one did. She knew I had a sister, but nothing personal about you, never mind that you have a Rwandan son, so I’m not sure about the common denominator.”
Jenny remembered her conversation with Leticia word for word. It had only occurred yesterday. Emma had been upset by the event and she had shrugged it off. Leticia had said, ‘I heard you talking about it’.
Could she possibly have found out about Leo’s birth? Could Leticia be the common denominator between past and present? She pushed the thought away, it wasn’t conceivable. Then the last discussion she’d had with her came to her mind. Last night she had asked her to look at some financial papers, only to change her mind after she had spoken to Patrice that morning.
Uneasily she thought about their other conversations. Another memory came to her, another phrase that had sounded out of place, when she was talking about buying something in the South of France, ‘I couldn’t afford anything big now’. Why did she say, ‘now’ and why had Patrice not wanted her to show me the papers?
Once again she rejected the idea, only to be confronted by a vivid memory of her dream the previous night. The woman who had taken the money had Leticia’s face. She shivered at the thought. It wasn’t possible, or was it?
London, England
“Bensouda has offered one hundred thousand more and the Marseille people have accepted. They’re sending me bank details for the transfer. Everything is back on course for Sunday.”
Dudley supressed a laugh. He had just paid off the taxi and was entering the Park Lane Hotel. “Well done, M Jolidon. Our arrangement is becoming more profitable by the minute. I’m in rather a hurry at the moment, but I’ll leave you to handle everything with your usual efficiency. Thank you for your call.”
He put the US phone back in his pocket. One intermediary in Geneva and the other in Marseille and never the twain shall meet. Arthur Dudley was feeling quite pleased with the terms of the transaction and it was only going to get better.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Johannesburg, South Africa
Espinoza had taken a cab directly to Chief Superintendent Hendricks’ office. He had caught him on his mobile and been invited to go over immediately. He was still mulling over his call with Jenny and Emma and the message they had now sent to ARGS. This investigation was becoming more and more complicated and he needed time to think about the various pieces of the jigsaw and how they fitted together. Maybe he would learn something from the policeman.
He saw on arriving that Hendricks was stressed out at having two suspicious deaths on his hands at the same time. As usual, the top brass were piling on the pressure for an announcement, any announcement. He was summarising what they’d learned to date when the call came from DI Dewar in London. Hendricks’ eyes widened when he was told who was calling. Two European contacts in the same week as two mysterious deaths. What was this all about?
He listened to Dewar’s information in silence, making notes with a cheap ball point pen on a pad of shoddy recycled lined paper. Espinoza’s ears pricked up when he heard, “You say that the trace followed them from Polokwane to Phalaborwa then down here to Delmas? Is that where they are now?”
He listened again for a moment. “Good, please email the details and I’ll follow it up. Here is my private email address.” He dictated the information. “Thank you for your assistance, Detective Inspector.”
“News about our investigation?” Espinoza asked ingenuously.
“Possibly, but I doubt it. Apparently someone in England has been tracing mobile phones in South Africa. I can’t see why that would be connected. I’ll wait for the email. Now, as I was saying, the death of the hotel manager, Lambert, seems definitely to be murder. The receptionist said he went upstairs with a Sergeant Bongani from Forsburg Central and next thing he was lying dead in the car park. The problem is that there is no policeman in Forsburg or even in South Africa with the name Bongani. The woman couldn’t give a good description of him and there are no other witnesses, so we have no idea whether it was actually a police officer or an imposter.”
Espinoza didn’t comment, but he was certain it must have been Nwosu. “And the second death, in Polokwane?”
“We think it was also a murder, because of blood traces and tyre tracks on the nearby ground and there was no identification on the body. But we have nothing to go on. The corpse had been savaged by wild animals and the face was unrecognisable. We’ve done house to house visits in the area, but no one knows anything. Or if they do they’re not saying.”
“Have you done a DNA analysis?”
“I’m waiting for the result. It should be here this morning. But if it’s not on our data base we’ll still be in the dark.”
Again the Spaniard made no comment. He was still putting two and two together from the snatches of speech he’d heard during the call. “Why do you think an English police inspe
ctor would be interested in a phone call trace in Polokwane?”
Hendricks seemed irritated with the logic employed by the other man. “I have no idea why he called. Something to do with a fellow called Lord Arthur Dudley. Can we please concentrate on my murders that’s the priority right now.”
An English Lord! Espinoza’s curiosity was now really aroused. Emma had said the ARGS messages might have been written by a member of the aristocracy. He didn’t believe in coincidences and he didn’t believe that simultaneous events in South Africa and England were not somehow related. Both Emma and Lambert were English and he had suspected from the start that the epicentre of the conspiracy might be in the UK.
“Right.” Hendricks’ voice interrupted his reverie. “Please tell me about the case you’re investigating and how these deaths could be connected.”
Espinoza began a long and convoluted fabrication about drug smuggling, prostitution and human trafficking between the UK and Spain. It was an anodyne story that could have occurred anywhere in the world and Hendricks looked suitably bored until he said, “I identified Lambert during my investigation in Spain and I’m convinced he fled to South Africa to save his skin when the net started to tighten.” Here he strayed somewhat from the truth, but said to himself, The end justifies the means.
“So you think he was murdered because of his involvement in the Spanish business?”
“According to my information they have interests over here too. I believe he was killed by an ‘associate’ to prevent him from betraying the organisation.”
Now the South African was becoming interested. “We’re aware of the links between our country and Europe. I hear there’s a lot of organised crime in the South of Spain. What do you know about the ‘associate’?”
“I’ve heard a name and I’ve seen a photograph. It’s a long shot, but I would recognise him if I saw him again.”
“Is there a connection with the other body, in Polokwane?”
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