But that was all in the past and Esther always looked to the future. Now it was time to send her emails. She reread them one last time, checked the attachments then pressed Send. That should create some surprises, she thought to herself.
SIXTY-NINE
Marbella, Spain
“That’s how the whole plan started. The common themes were Nice and gambling casinos. On this occasion a poisonous combination.” Espinoza was at York House with Jenny and Emma. Leo had also been invited into the discussion since he was the principal character in the plan. The Spaniard didn’t yet have final confirmation of the last details but he had just explained his theory about Esther’s involvement and how and why Nwosu, Coetzee and Lambert were involved.
He confirmed that Nwosu had been found dead in his apartment but didn’t mention that Jamie had probably been abducted in the place of Leo. Nothing could be done about it and it would only cause upset and feelings of guilt. He also said nothing of his suspicions about Dudley for the moment. If he was right, that might complete his jigsaw puzzle, but he still had no real proof.
“In Johannesburg the whole matter is now filed away in Hendrick’s successful solving of the triple murder case, so if we ignore Coetzee’s apparently unwilling participation, the only other culprit we are certain of is still at large; Esther Rousseau.”
“Incredible!” Jenny said. “After two years she’s still blaming me for d’Almeida’s death and still trying to get her hands on my money.” She turned to Emma and Leo. “I’m so sorry. I feel terribly responsible for what’s happened.”
Espinoza replied. “You’re underestimating your contribution to Emma’s escape and to the ultimate outcome. Your dream was prescient, as usual. Esther has turned out to be as ingenious as her late lover. We’re fortunate they weren’t working in tandem again. The outcome might have been different.”
“Where is she now? Have they managed to catch up with her?”
“For the moment we don’t know where she is, but it’s possible that we’ll have further news of her later.”
“You worked all that out? They should call you Sherlock Espinoza.”
The Spaniard laughed. “That’s generous praise, Leo, but the truth is that my detective powers have not been quite up to the task.”
“How come?”
“There is still one link that I haven’t been able to connect. We still don’t know how Esther or Dudley knew about your trip to South Africa and it’s causing me an immense amount of annoyance.”
Leo looked thoughtful. “I think I might know that. It could be really simple.” He went to fetch his laptop from the kitchen. “Look.” He scrolled back up the timeline on his Facebook page to December 2009 and showed them the status update:
LEO’S MIND-BOGGLING CHRISTMAS GIFT. MY BRILLIANT MOTHER IS TAKING ME TO THE WORLD CUP IN JULY! WHO SAYS EXAMS ARE RUBBISH?
“And by that time Esther was obviously following your account.” The Spaniard shook his head in disbelief. “So simple and so obvious and I never even thought of it.”
“Welcome to the digital world, Pedro. Everyone knows everything and understands nothing.” Emma said. “Except that Esther understood exactly what an opportunity it was to kidnap Leo while we were in a hostile and unknown environment on the other side of the world. You’re right. She’s an ingenious woman.”
Espinoza’s mobile rang and he got up to leave the room. “Excuse me, I’m waiting for one last piece of information and this may be it.”
A few minutes later he returned, a resigned expression on his face. “I think my reputation as a detective may have been redeemed, although I’m very unhappy at the price. Now I can continue with the rest of the story.”
He sat next to Emma and took her hand. “There is no easy way to tell you this, but Nicole Forrester and her boyfriend, Harry Slater, have just been arrested in Nice for the murder of Tony Forrester and three other people in Australia in the airplane crash in 2008.”
Espinoza paused to let everyone cope with their shock and distress. The first to speak was Jenny, “That’s dreadful news about Tony, but I think we’re all trying to work out how Nicole fits into the abduction scheme.”
“And this man Slater,” added Emma. “We have no idea who he is.”
The Spaniard put his notes in order. “I’ll explain as simply as I can,” he said.
“The story starts in Perth, where Tony and Nicole were running N-Jet, their private airline business. In late 2007, a young Englishman joined the company. His name was Robin Little. He was a pilot and engineer, good looking, ambitious and apparently what you would call a lady’s man. He started an affair with Nicole Forrester, his boss’s wife, and she became infatuated with him. Early in 2008, they hatched a plot to get rid of Forrester so they could start a life together. It was a diabolical plot.
“The company had a weekly flight arrangement with a large oil firm which had regional offices in Perth, Hobart and Sydney. In the first week of July they were flying two executives from Perth to Hobart, then on to Sydney. Forrester and Little were scheduled to fly the plane in tandem. On longer flights they always had two pilots on board in case of sickness, fatigue or other possible problems. A young woman cabin attendant would also be on board. The weather forecast was predicting severe storms, which are common in winter time at that latitude.
“The morning of the flight was stormy, as the forecast had warned. It was not a good day for flying but Forrester knew his passengers were used to conditions of this kind and it wouldn’t put them off. A couple of hours before the flight Little rang to say he had food poisoning and had been ordered by his doctor not to fly. In addition he couldn’t risk bringing a viral infection onto the plane. Forrester didn’t want to fly alone and asked Nicole to find a replacement for him. She pretended to make several calls and told him there was no one available at such short notice, but another pilot could join him in Hobart to complete the flight. This wasn’t true of course, but Forrester believed her. The flight time to Hobart was only four and a half hours so he decided to fly the first leg alone then take the other pilot on from Hobart to Sydney. Nicole and Little had counted on that decision, which turned out to be a fatal one for Forrester.
“As I mentioned, Little was an engineer and the previous night he had interfered with the aircraft fuel supply, so that it would fail about half way into the flight when they were at the most vulnerable point, far out over the deepest part of the ocean, hundreds of kilometres from land. And that was what happened. After two and a half hours, Nicole received an emergency call from Forrester to say he was having problems with his fuel supply, just as Little had calculated. She informed the coastguard and the aviation authorities and opened up the call to their wavelengths. It was difficult to hear clearly because the transmission was broken up by the effects of the storm. All they could make out was that the fuel supply was failing. Then within a few minutes the call was cut off. They heard nothing further from Forrester; his plane had come down in the Indian Ocean.”
The Spaniard paused again, waiting for this terrible news to sink in. No one spoke, they sat in silence, mesmerised by the story, waiting for him to continue.
“Nicole had ensured that the paper work for the previous day’s prep and service of the aircraft were in order and had filed the flight plan showing that her husband and Little were flying together that day. The various emergency services were deployed to look for the plane but as we know, it was never found and nor were any survivors. The ‘accident’ had been perfectly planned and executed and Tony Forrester and three other innocent people had disappeared.
“So Nicole organised these deaths just to go off with this man, Robin Little?” Jenny interrupted. “I don’t understand. Why go to all that trouble to get rid of Tony? All she had to do was to divorce him and marry Little.”
“That leads us to the motive, Jenny. You know my theory about motives and crime and that’s why I asked for the file from Perth. As is so often the case, it was simply money. Tony Forrester was wel
l aware of the risks of flying small jet planes, so when he set up N-Jet, he took out a life insurance policy in favour of his wife for one point five million dollars, with a double indemnity clause for accidental death. Six months after Tony died in the air crash, Nicole collected three million dollars.”
Emma shuddered and took a deep breath. “I can’t believe it. How could anyone be so callous? To execute the premeditated murder of four innocent people in cold blood, just for money.”
“Unfortunately it’s true. Both Jenny and I have previously come across similar crimes. You can’t imagine what people will do in such circumstances.”
“So that’s insurance fraud to be added to their list of crimes as well.”
“It’s becoming a very long list.”
“And now Little is living with Nicole under the name of Harry Slater? How does that work” Leo was intrigued by the cast of characters.
Espinoza took out his jigsaw puzzle and list of questions and laid them on the table. He ticked off the second last item. “We have almost come to the last remaining square on my puzzle. That was a question I wondered about a lot – where and how does Constance fit into the plan and why was he fired from several jobs if he was so competent?
“The first answer is that Constance and Nicole knew each other before they went to Rwanda. They had both worked for SOS Médicale in Paris and he arranged for her to come down to replace Emma and that’s when she met Tony Forrester.”
Emma put her hand to her mouth. “I thought he’d been having an affair with her in Paris. I’ve misjudged him all these years.”
“Whatever the case, he jilted you and married her, so I don’t think you misjudged him too badly. Anyway, Constance had kept in touch with Nicole while she was in Australia and she knew he had changed jobs several times and was now working at the St Christopher Clinic. And she knew why. He was an excellent plastic surgeon, but also an inveterate gambler. He gambled more than he earned and found a way to supplement his income to finance his losses.
“That brings us to the second and key reason. When Constance left Rwanda he went to work in Toulouse and played in one of the casinos there. He met a local fraudster who was involved in people trafficking; immigrants, young girls, etc. The man was a forger, creating false documents to permit the movement of people across borders. They went into partnership together, Constance would change people’s looks and his partner would provide them with a new identity. They carried on this business for several years, but he was very indiscreet under the influence of alcohol and he was found out and fired from several hospitals. He was never prosecuted because they didn’t want any scandal and they had no concrete proof. But that was how Nicole learned about his part time occupation.”
“And that’s how Robin Little was transformed into Harry Slater.”
“Exactly. After Forrester’s death, Little stayed in hiding in Perth while Nicole came over to France and acquired a fake passport for him through Constance. He then installed himself in Nice, as Slater, waiting for Nicole to cash in the insurance and join him. It took six months, but in the end the plan worked perfectly. Until they made a terrible mistake.”
“They got involved with Esther Rousseau.”
“Yes, Jenny. Nicole became bored and got a job in the casino. She became friends with Esther and they swapped stories. When Esther and Dudley came up with the idea of the abduction, knowing Nicole had come into a fortune, she seduced Slater and he became her lover. She was already preparing the ground to finance the plan if Dudley would agree to go ahead. When he did, she and Slater convinced Nicole to provide the funding. Constance was already in Johannesburg with a new passport so everything was in place to carry out the abduction.”
“How did you get the story in such detail?”
“Slater broke down and started talking. Marcel told me they couldn’t shut him up. Nicole is a very tough nut but she finally cracked when she knew he’d told them everything.”
“So the police know about the abduction plan. What about me and Leo? Will there be any repercussions for us?
“Not in France. It may seem cruel and heartless, but Marcel Colombey isn’t concerned with Leo’s abduction. He doesn’t know why it was planned and since Leo is safely back home, it’s of no importance to him. He has helped to solve a multiple murder case in Australia and isn’t interested in anything else, especially a boy and his mother in the UK.”
Emma breathed a sigh of relief. “And what happens to Slater and Nicole now?”
“They’ll be held in France until Mac gets the paperwork ready to take them back to Sydney for trial. It’s in his jurisdiction now, so he’ll get a lot of brownie points. He’s a very happy Aussie. Marcel gets a lot of credit too. The French helping the Australians; that’s quite a coup.”
“I’d better get back to Malaga now and leave you and your family to absorb all this news. I’m afraid it has upset Emma a lot. She feels guilty for bringing all this upon her family and is very upset about what happened to Forrester.” Espinoza and Jenny had left Emma and Leo together and were talking in the hall.
“There’s something I realised during your explanation,” she said. “Our research into Mutesi’s experience with Galaganza was actually irrelevant. They seem to have known very little about it, only that Mutesi had a child, probably by a genocidist and Emma took him illegally to England.”
“You’re partly right. Because of Dr Constance and Nicole Forrester’s involvement we assumed that it was an important event, and in reality it was just a red herring. Against my own experience and convictions I have to admit that the timing of Galaganza’s death and the organisation of the abduction was purely a coincidence. He may not even have been Leo’s father; we just don’t know. But your overall analysis was correct and it helped us in many other ways to work out what was going on in South Africa. In the end though, the whole abduction scheme and the deaths of many people were caused by nothing more than a fortuitous conversation in a casino and a combination of greed, sex and revenge. What a sad indictment of our civilisation.”
“All the more reason to never mention anything about Galaganza to Leo. He and Emma need to put this behind them and get their lives back on track. You’ve solved this case brilliantly, Pedro. Emma and I can never thank you enough. Leo is safely back and doesn’t seem to have come to any harm; in fact I think he enjoyed the experience in a perverse way. We now know why it happened and some of the people responsible.
“But there’s one thing we haven’t discussed. You remember our agreement, ‘get Leo safely back and then bring the culprits to justice’. We know the participants who have been arrested or killed were not the brains behind this plan. Esther Rousseau was definitely one of them, but she must have had help to carry it out. What are the chances of finding and punishing her and the other culprits?”
Espinoza took her hand and in a conspiratorial whisper, he said, “Wait until this evening and we’ll see what happens. Hasta luego, Jenny.”
SEVENTY
Nice, Côte d’Azur, France
Robin Little, alias Harry Slater’s laptop was in the data retrieval room at the National Police Commissariat in Nice. An IT technician was interrogating the machine for any information relating to the murder of Tony Forrester and the subsequent cover-up and counterfeiting of passports and other documents.
An incoming email flashed across the screen and he opened it up. It was from someone called Esther and came from an ISP in Thailand. There were several attachments, including a recorded conversation. The material didn’t seem relevant to his search criteria but the technician transferred everything onto a memory stick and sent it up to the fifth floor, addressed to Inspector General Marcel Colombey.
London, England
Lord Arthur Dudley was watching the midday news when a message arrived on his laptop, it was from Esther. He grunted with surprise when he saw she had used an ISP in Thailand.
He read the short message and opened up the various attachments with an increasing sense
of anger. That unfaithful hussy. She led me to believe she had feelings for me and now she’s resorting to blackmail! Once again his perverted sense of justice distorted his reaction. Blackmail against a common foe, such as Emma Stewart, or Jenny Bishop, was acceptable, they were the opposition and fair game to be targeted. But he and Esther were partners; they had worked together in a united cause and he had developed feelings for her which he thought were reciprocated. It was simply unacceptable for her to act so spitefully.
He considered the situation. If she disclosed this information to the authorities he might be compromised, although he had never failed to escape from such situations before. His London lawyers, De Franco & Berlinger, were the most expensive and sought after criminal defence firm in the UK. She couldn’t risk confronting him in person, since she would be equally compromised. In addition, he was wealthy and she wasn’t. He would wait and see what transpired. Probably nothing, he decided. It’s a last futile attempt to get money from me. He deleted the message and its attachments twice from the machine. Thanks to the scrambling software there would be no incriminating messages to be discovered, if ever it came to that.
There was another nagging worry in the back of Dudley’s mind. He’d received a call the previous evening from his contact in Harare. The two agents sent down by them seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. There was no trace, neither of them nor their car. One of them was an old and experienced agent, personally known to the President and he was likely to ask questions. The man did not want to incur his wrath, he needed to find them, or risk suffering serious consequences.
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