Little Knell Page 9

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What your money-launderer wants more than anything,’ said the delicious voice, ‘is for all his financial transactions to look absolutely straightforward and above board.’

  ‘Yes, mi— Jenny.’ She, of course, was speaking as if all wrongdoers were male. ‘I can understand that but what…’

  ‘You see,’ she explained, ‘your bad boy has only got two choices about what to do with all his ill-gotten gains: hide them or legitimize them.’

  ‘If he hides them,’ said Sloan vigorously, ‘we’ll never find them. That’s for sure.’

  ‘If he hides them then there’s very little point in his having acquired them,’ she who was called Jenny came back smartly. ‘He might as well have not taken all the risks.’

  ‘So he attempts to legitimize them,’ conceded Sloan. That surely let Horace Boller off the hook; he wouldn’t know how. Probably foreign to his nature, too.

  ‘Which is when his danger moment comes,’ said the forensic accountant, wise in her generation. ‘So your money-launderer tries to do it in stages and in ways that don’t leave an audit trail. Or, better still, he arranges to pay tax on the money. Nothing authenticates assets quicker than that.’

  ‘Money talks,’ said Sloan obstinately.

  ‘But it can say different things when it does,’ she said, adding sweetly, ‘And it doesn’t have to shout.’

  He wanted to say something about it being the singer not the song that mattered to his Criminal Investigation Department but she was still talking.

  ‘In our experience, Inspector, one of the favourite conduits in the first instance for this sort of money is classic cars.’

  ‘Classic cars can be sold on fairly easily,’ agreed Sloan, the vision of a certain beautiful green Bentley coming into his mind.

  ‘So can most items bought in the fine art market,’ the girl said.

  ‘And no questions asked,’ said Sloan. He was sure she was only a girl. She sounded quite young – and as pretty as a picture herself, fine art notwithstanding.

  ‘It’s more a case,’ she said, ‘that there will usually be no questions asked about where the money came from to buy the articles in the first place rather than in the second.’

  ‘That’s their danger point, is it?’ The green Bentley would have to be accounted for, that was for sure.

  ‘And then there is always smurfing – thanks to crooked Bureaux de Change.’

  ‘They were the first places we looked,’ Sloan hastened to tell her. ‘Especially one near the station here that we thought might be dicey, but we found no great numbers of small sterling notes being converted into high denomination notes in other currencies.’

  ‘And,’ she sighed, ‘some solicitors and accountants report nothing even when they should – such as large sums going to offshore accounts. Overseas connections are what your money-launderer likes. The more the better.’

  Sloan still didn’t see where the Lake Ryrie Reserve in Lasserta could come in. If it did. He wanted Jenny to go on talking though.

  ‘Banks and building societies are much better at telling us about suspicious transactions,’ she said, ‘than accountants and solicitors are.’

  ‘I expect it’s because they tend to have a closer relationship with their clients,’ said Sloan solemnly, suppressing any facetious suggestions about there being honour among thieves. He’d seen case-hardened solicitors in court give their clients the convincing impression they really cared that they had lost their clients’ cause. ‘The personal touch.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Jenny cheerfully. ‘You might keep an eye open, though, for another popular way of using up a lot of cash in one fell swoop.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Finding someone who owns something that’s quite legitimate – a winning sweepstake ticket or an endowment insurance policy – and offering them over the odds for it. That sort of thing. Money’s no object in drug-dealing circles, remember. They’re not like the forces of law and order; they’ve got infinite resources. Make ours look like chicken-feed.’

  ‘I suppose funds aren’t a problem,’ said Sloan, ‘when you’re rich beyond the dreams of avarice.’ He didn’t know who it was who had first said that but he did know who had said the love of money was the root of all evil. His churchgoing mother often quoted St Paul: ‘It’s quite a difficult concept – being too rich.’

  The accountant’s voice sounded suddenly quite sultry. ‘Drug dealing is like having the Midas touch twenty times over.’

  ‘That must have its dangers,’ he said, prosaically.

  ‘And, Inspector, don’t forget that a money-laundering method founded on trust between drug dealers – word of mouth – is the hardest of all to trace.’

  ‘Nothing in writing would be safer all round,’ he agreed. It was the so-called gentlemen’s agreements that caused most trouble in the business world, though.

  ‘They like the anonymity, too.’ She gave another of her merry little laughs. ‘It has its advantages for us though.’

  ‘It does?’ He couldn’t match the accountant’s detachment. He’d noticed that working with figures all the time did that to people. They lost interest in the human race.

  ‘If there should happen to be a breach of that trust between any of your money-launderers, then you won’t have to worry, Inspector.’

  ‘They get taken out?’

  ‘They do. There’s justice among thieves as well as honour. But it’s pretty rough.’

  Sloan wondered for a fleeting moment if poor Jill Carter had overstepped the mark somewhere along the line, but the forensic accountant was still speaking in her attractive gurgle.

  ‘What you have to remember most of all, Inspector, is that diamonds are still the money-launderers’ best friend.’

  * * *

  The only aspect of life about the top apartment in the house in Park Drive, Berebury, which had changed since Detective Constable Crosby had last been there was the mien of its occupant, Colin Thornhill.

  Now the whole physical bearing of the man projected total dejection and lassitude. Even police questioning had failed to arouse him. He was sitting at the table, his shoulders hunched up and his head sunk low between them. And the act of raising his head to respond to Sloan’s calculatedly low-key interrogation appeared to call for more physical strength than he could conjure up.

  Of emotional strength, Thornhill appeared to have none left at all. The answers he gave Sloan were monosyllabic and almost those of an automaton.

  ‘No,’ he repeated as often as the question was put to him, not moving his sunken head from between his hands. ‘I’ve told you time and again that I haven’t seen Jill since that day at the Ornum Arms, and that’s the truth. Yes,’ he insisted in the same low monotone. ‘We were very happy together. Very.’

  The only questions which did seem to stir him were about the row over the curtains. Probings there roused him very quickly. ‘Whoever told you that, Inspector, got it wrong. We were only talking about them. Not arguing. Hell, what does the colour of curtains matter, anyway?’

  Detective Constable Crosby, bachelor, nodded his agreement and murmured something to his superior officer about ‘a domestic’. Detective Inspector Sloan was not quite ready to agree to this: by the same token William Shakespeare’s Othello could possibly be dismissed as a fuss over a handkerchief.

  And it wasn’t.

  ‘No,’ said Thornhill dully to Sloan’s next question. ‘Jill hadn’t mentioned this guy Nigel Worrow much. He was one of her bosses, but they were all brother and Bob and Christian names at her work. To listen to her you couldn’t tell who was a partner and who was the caretaker. It didn’t mean a thing. They just thought it gave a more friendly image to accounts.’

  ‘More trendy, too,’ contributed Crosby, who had always resented paying lip-service to those higher up the police hierarchy.

  Detective Inspector Sloan said nothing but he did make a note. In the police book there was being friendly and being too
friendly; more especially where pretty young women were concerned.

  ‘Never heard of him,’ said Thornhill in response to the casual trawling of Colonel Caversham’s name across the conversation.

  Interviewing an actor was not the easiest of undertakings. The uncontrolled, unpremeditated reaction was the one Sloan wanted, but actors were trained to tailor their physical responses and expressions exactly to the emotions they wished to exhibit. What Sloan wanted was the spontaneous and unguarded bounce back. He didn’t get it.

  ‘Or him either,’ said Thornhill, when Marcus Fixby-Smith’s name was mentioned. ‘Who are these guys when they’re at home, anyway?’

  Sloan ignored Thornhill’s riposte and carried on with his questioning.

  ‘No, Inspector,’ said Thornhill wearily for the fourth time, ‘I do not know of any reason at all why Jill should have been murdered. And it doesn’t matter how many times you ask me, I still don’t know.’ He then added with a complete absence of histrionics, ‘I do know that nothing matters now. Nothing at all, whatever you say. I’ve lost the only person who mattered.’

  The only time Colin Thornhill moved from his classic mourning position was when the interview was ending. He tottered to his feet like an old man, presenting an image far, far removed from the nimble athletic stage figure of before.

  ‘I can tell you people one thing for free,’ he said in a chillingly controlled way, ‘and that’s if I find either of those two guys you mentioned – Caversham or Fixby-Smith – had anything to do with murdering my poor Jill then they’ll have me to deal with, too.’

  * * *

  ‘Customs and Excise, Kinnisport,’ boomed the voice down the telephone. ‘Jenkins here. How can I help you, Inspector?’

  ‘Just checking.’ Sloan began his litany: ‘There’s a man called Nigel Worrow…’

  ‘The Berebury Belle,’ said Jenkins promptly.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The Berebury Belle is the name of his yacht.’

  ‘Oh, is it?’ Sloan paused for thought.

  ‘Nice boat. Very trim.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I can see that it might be.’

  ‘Meant to be named after his wife, or so he says when asked.’

  ‘You know it then?’ asked Sloan. He didn’t know whether Jill Carter had been pretty – a Berebury Belle too – or not. He thought she had been much loved but that was something different. Quite different. And sometimes even more dangerous.

  ‘We know nearly all the yacht club craft,’ said Jenkins with due professional modesty.

  ‘Anything known about the man?’ asked Sloan more specifically.

  ‘Not exactly known,’ said the customs officer cagily. ‘But…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But we’ve been keeping an eye.’

  ‘With good reason?’

  ‘He takes his vessel about quite a bit.’

  ‘Across the Channel?’

  ‘Who knows where they go, but quite often enough for pleasure.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘With his wife as crew. She’s a good sailor.’

  ‘Pretty?’

  Jenkins gave a short laugh. ‘I wouldn’t say pretty, exactly. Weather-beaten, more like. Wears the trousers, too.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan’s thoughts went soaring off on another tack. ‘Accountants do themselves pretty well then…’

  ‘They say she’s the one with the money.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan made a note. Marrying money was exactly the sort of legend that money-launderers wanted to accrue around those who had much more of this world’s goods than could be accounted for by their usual circumstances.

  He amplified this fact afterwards for the benefit of Detective Constable Crosby. ‘There’s plenty of ways of explaining sudden wealth away,’ he said to that conscionable young officer, who never had any money whatsoever to spare at the end of the month. ‘A big win on the lottery is the most popular.’

  ‘Could happen to anyone,’ agreed Crosby wryly.

  ‘Premium Bonds.’ Sloan knew them all by now. ‘A bit of good fortune on the pools…’

  ‘Rich relations?’ put in Crosby, showing interest in the theory.

  ‘Sometimes, but most people know that great expectations can be a snare and a delusion.’ This reminded him to tell Crosby to locate one Peter Caversham in Luston.

  ‘Will do,’ promised Crosby, brightening. The road between Berebury and Luston was the best in the county.

  ‘And last wills and testaments can be checked a bit too easily with the probate office for your really experienced money-launderer,’ warned Sloan, returning to his theme. ‘But a lot of people are fooled by someone with a reputation for having a sharp eye for the stock market.’ Any spare funds in the Sloan household economy went straight into the building society against a rainy day. At the moment they didn’t amount to enough to withstand the lightest of showers.

  ‘You can be lucky with horses,’ suggested Crosby.

  ‘So they say,’ agreed Sloan, who knew how rare a commodity a really good eye for horseflesh was. ‘Don’t forget bookies know who has big money, and they don’t easily forget who’s won it off them…’

  ‘But, sir,’ said Detective Constable Crosby incontrovertibly, ‘that Derek whose wake we went to last night had got loadsamoney some other way still.’

  * * *

  Behind the scenes the Greatorex Museum presented a very different picture on committee days. Today was that of the monthly meeting of the Museums and Amenities Committee of Berebury Council, and Howard Air was in the chair, flanked by his chief officer, Marcus Fixby-Smith. Hilary Collins, the latter’s deputy, was therefore holding the fort in the outside world, and it was she who took the message that the mummy had been found in Whimbrel House.

  ‘Undamaged, I hope?’ asked Fixby-Smith anxiously as the two men came quickly out of the Committee Room. ‘No one’s touched it, have they, Hilary?’

  ‘It had been stood on end, that’s all,’ Hilary Collins assured him.

  ‘That’s all!’ exploded the museum curator. ‘Why, that could have done untold damage. Don’t the police know better than that?’

  ‘Steady on, Marcus,’ said Howard Air, still a little out of breath from hurrying back to the curator’s room. ‘Remember, it might not have been the police who stood it on end in the first place.’

  ‘It might have been the same person who killed that poor girl.’ Hilary Collins was sufficiently plain, capable and conscientious to feel free to speak her mind.

  ‘It almost certainly was,’ pointed out Howard Air realistically.

  Marcus Fixby-Smith collapsed like a pricked balloon. ‘I hadn’t thought of that…’ His voice trailed away into silence.

  ‘You can’t afford not to face facts in my business,’ said Air. He had the lined features of a man who looked as if he had not so much faced facts in life as met them head-on. ‘And nor can you in yours, Marcus. This means more trouble.’

  In contrast with the stocky businessman, Marcus Fixby-Smith looked a bundle of nervous affectations. He had been struck by yet another unattractive thought. ‘You do realize, both of you, that from now until the end of time, whatever we do, the public will be coming to see Rodoheptah for the wrong reasons.’

  In a voice totally devoid of inflection, Hilary Collins said, ‘Just think, Marcus, what that will do to our visitor numbers.’

  As always, unsure which way to take what she said, he ignored it. ‘What I can’t understand is why the body and the mummy were switched.’

  ‘I can’t help you there,’ said Howard Air, scrubbing his brow in thought. ‘But there will have been a reason. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.’

  ‘And,’ wailed Fixby-Smith, ‘what on earth are we going to do about the press now? They’ll have a field day when they hear about Rodoheptah turning up in a broom cupboard.’

  ‘Oh, it was in a broom cupboard, was it?’ remarked Howard Air. ‘I didn’t hear you say that bit, Hilary.’ />
  ‘I didn’t say it,’ she murmured quietly, her eyes on Marcus Fixby-Smith.

  ‘It must have been in the broom cupboard,’ protested the museum curator. ‘It stands to reason. There wasn’t anywhere else near enough in the house to hide something like that.’

  Marcus Fixby-Smith might not have known what Hilary Collins had been thinking the minute before. He had no doubts at all now what was in her mind at this minute.

  Or in Howard Air’s.

  Chapter Ten

  Creased

  ‘I trust Squeak is still doing well, Inspector?’ Alison Kirk waved the two policemen into the kitchen at the Calleshire Animal Sanctuary ahead of her, shaking a finger at an Airedale and a West Highland terrier both of which were barking at the policemen. ‘Down, Rover, down, Rags … these are friends.’

  ‘Squeak’s fine,’ said Sloan warmly, ‘except that he scratched Crosby here the last time he was at the house.’

  ‘Some cats don’t like the attention that visitors get,’ she said seriously.

  ‘And the scar hasn’t quite healed yet.’ Detective Constable Crosby extended his wounded left wrist for her inspection. ‘Look, you can still see where he did it.’

  ‘Jealous,’ contributed Jennifer, the younger of the Kirk sisters. ‘They like being top cat in the household.’

  Alison Kirk indicated two spare chairs and sat herself down at the kitchen table. ‘Now, Inspector, don’t tell me that you came over here just to talk about a black tom-cat with a white waistcoat and four white paws.’

  ‘No,’ said Sloan. ‘We came to talk to you about your late nephew.’

  ‘Derek?’

  ‘Derek,’ agreed Sloan. ‘Or, more precisely, about the rather large sum of money of which he would seem to have become possessed not long before he died.’

  ‘Very large sum,’ Alison corrected him unexpectedly. ‘It absolutely amazed us.’ She turned to her sister. ‘Didn’t it, Jennifer?’

  ‘We didn’t think it was safe for him to have all that money in cash in his house.’

  ‘Quite dangerous, really,’ said Alison.

  ‘But he said he hadn’t anything to lose.’

  ‘You see,’ said Sloan, choosing his words with care, ‘it might help us over some other inquiries to know exactly where all that money came from.’