‘Ooh, I’ve never seen that before. Can you hear us?’ asks Joyce.
‘We can hear you now, Mum,’ says Joanna. ‘Hallelujah. Hello, everyone.’
She gets hellos from everyone in return. Elizabeth recognizes the boardroom of Joanna’s office, with its table made from the wing of an airplane, and its expensively terrible abstract art. She also recognizes Cornelius, Joanna’s American colleague, who has a large pile of papers in front of him. The financial records from the trial.
‘And hello, Cornelius,’ says Joyce. ‘Did Joanna tell me you’re getting married?’
‘No, my wife is leaving me,’ says Cornelius. ‘Close enough.’
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ says Joyce. ‘I knew it was something.’
‘Mum, you’ve got us for fifteen minutes,’ says Joanna. ‘Shall we start?’
‘Of course,’ says Joyce. ‘Would you like to say hello to Alan?’
Joanna’s mouth moves to form the word ‘no’, then Elizabeth sees the faintest trace of a smile. ‘OK, but quickly though.’
Joyce pats her dining-room table, and Alan puts his paws up, excited about whatever it is that might be happening now. Joanna and Cornelius wave. Alan licks Ron.
‘Leave it out, Al,’ says Ron, though Elizabeth notices he doesn’t push him away.
‘I’ll kick this off,’ says Cornelius, and places his palms each side of the pile of papers. ‘Here are the headlines. This scam pulled in upwards of ten million pounds in three years, very quickly, and all tax-free. The money goes into a single account, in the name of Heather Garbutt, then heads off into all sorts of directions. Jersey, the Caymans, the British Virgin Islands, Panama, all over.’
‘Still in Heather Garbutt’s name?’ asks Joyce.
‘None of it in Heather Garbutt’s name,’ says Cornelius. ‘None of it in anyone’s name.’
‘Well, except …’ says Joanna.
‘Yes, except …’ says Cornelius. ‘But we will get to that.’
‘It’s basic money-washing,’ says Joanna. ‘The money goes all over the world, into different accounts, all in places where you can keep your banking secret. Made-up companies, anonymous directors. You’re not suddenly going to find the name of her killer here. We can only look for clues.’
Cornelius rifles through a few of the papers. ‘Here’re just a few examples for you, all from a single month in 2014. Eighty-five thousand paid to Ramsgate Cement & Aggregates, sixty thousand to Masterson Financial Holdings in Aruba, one hundred and fifteen thousand to Absolute Construction in Panama, seventy thousand to Darwin Securities in the Cayman Islands.’
‘And when you look into these companies?’ says Elizabeth, knowing the answer already.
‘Nothing,’ says Cornelius. ‘Just a registered office, and no accounts available to access. Unless you’re the world’s greatest expert on money-laundering, which I’m not.’
‘Don’t do yourself down,’ says Joyce.
‘And that’s where the trail goes cold,’ says Cornelius.
Elizabeth takes charge. ‘So there’s plenty we don’t know, and you were right to start with that, but that’s a big pile of papers, so I’m hoping there are some things we do know.’
‘Right as always, Elizabeth,’ says Joanna, which Elizabeth knows is designed purely to wind up her dear mother. ‘We know a couple of things. Heather Garbutt’s bank records were made available to the court, and, as far as we can tell, she didn’t see a penny of the ten million. There are no unusual outgoings, no big purchases. She stays in the same house, she drives the same car, her mortgage remains the same. If Heather Garbutt was the one laundering all this money, she hasn’t spent any of it.’
‘And what else?’ asks Elizabeth. She is distracted by her phone.
I have sent the photographs to Viktor Illyich. The clock is ticking. Two weeks. You kill Viktor, or I kill Joyce. Tick tock. Tick tock.
One thing at a time please, thinks Elizabeth. I’m solving a murder here.
Cornelius steps up again. ‘All in all it’s a pretty slick operation. The lawyers couldn’t untangle it in court, and I couldn’t untangle it. But the further back you go, the less sophisticated it becomes. That’s usually the way. The longer a scam goes on, the better the scammers get at hiding the money. So the earlier in the scam you look, the more chance there is of spotting a mistake.’
‘What sort of mistake?’ asks Ibrahim.
‘The most common one is this,’ says Cornelius. ‘Obviously you have to invent names for all these imaginary companies. The rookie error is to choose a name that has some significance for you, however tangential. Now, the first few payments, and this is in the early days of the scam, were paid to a series of secret accounts in Jersey, namely Trident Capital, Trident Investments and Trident Infrastructure International.’
‘We did a little more digging,’ says Joanna. ‘And we found another company registered in Jersey, called Trident Construction.’
‘And that company,’ says Cornelius, ‘is completely legitimate. Information publicly available.’
‘Trident Construction had only one director,’ says Joanna. ‘Can you guess who?’
‘Heather Garbutt!’ says Joyce, rising from her chair.
‘No, Mum,’ says Joanna, and Joyce deflates.
‘Jack Mason,’ says Ibrahim.
