48 Hours - A City of London Thriller Page 8

  Boniface extended his hand and Luc shook it. I shook hands with the young man too as we made to depart. Just before we left Boniface said, “Where are your parents, if that is not a rude question?”

  “If you watch the news tonight at ten o clock, you will see them. They are with the French contingent celebrating with the remaining Battle of Britain pilots in Kent. They will be back tomorrow if you need to speak to them.”

  “No, that’s OK, Luc. You have been very helpful.”

  It was true he had been helpful, but we hadn’t, and he must have been left wondering what our visit was all about as we left the house.

  “Well, that was a washout,” Boniface said, when the front door had closed and we were walking down the path. “Let’s hope the other two are having more success.”

  As keen as I had been for one of the Houliers to be Bob, once we had seen the photo of Luc and his father, at a Baccalaureate awards ceremony, we knew Leon Houlier was not our man. He was a rotund man, at best five feet six inches, a good six inches shorter than his son. Dead end. The search continued.

 

  Chapter 21

  Atkins Garretson Palmer, College Hill, London. Friday, 6pm.

  DS Fellowes had decided that walking would be the quickest way to get to the late Andrew Cuthbertson’s offices. A phone call an hour ago had confirmed the news that Andrew was dead, and his colleagues were in shock. All had agreed to stay until they had been questioned by the Detective Sergeant.

  Dee matched the young detective’s long stride and they arrived at AGP on the dot of six. Five minutes later they were sitting in the Partner’s office discussing AGP’s staff and clients. An hour earlier they had made certain requests and the Partner, though initially reluctant, had arranged for a full print out of the Personal Tax Group’s staff and clients to be made available to them.

  A young blonde girl entered the office and placed the lists on the conference table between the DS and Dee, who were facing Anthony Craven, partner responsible for this group.

  “You don’t have anyone on these lists called L Houlier, do you?” Dee asked. DS Fellowes had introduced her as a consultant on financial crimes.

  “No, no staff called Houlier at all, no personal tax clients called Houlier. We did have a French corporate client called Bernard Houlier, but he has returned to France now that we have sold his business.” Dee made a note.

  Tony Craven, Dee and DS Fellowes scanned the lists for any LH. After ten minutes or so they had found only two people with those initials. They were Lucy Huang of the Singapore Office and Lars Halvorssen from Helsinki office. A quick check with the relevant offices showed that Lucy Huang had been at the office all day but had left six hours ago, as Singapore was eight hours ahead of London, and Lars was still at his desk.

  No clients had the initials LH, so just to be thorough they also checked the initials HL and came up only with Harriet Levershulme.

  Dee Conrad was convinced that someone connected with AGP was involved, probably someone at the Partners’ conference, otherwise how would they have known about Andrew and the Thai girl?

  “Tony, do you have a list of people who attended the partners’ conference in Bangkok recently?” she asked, hoping that this would help.

  The accountant reached into his desk and pulled out a table menu. On the reverse of the menu were seating assignments. This was the definitive list of Partners who attended. It seemed that attendance was compulsory at such events, if you valued your future.

  They scoured the list for clues but all to no avail. DS Fellowes collected together all of the data, including the menu, and looked across at Dee. Her face wore a defeated expression. They were about to leave when the Detective decided to try one more approach.

  He pulled out the spreadsheet with the list of Breitling Old Navitimer owners without saying what the list showed.

  “Do you recognise any of the names on this list, by any chance?” he asked.

  Tony Craven studied the list with concentration. He really wanted to help find the person who had driven Andy to suicide.

  “Only one, I’m afraid. At least, I’m assuming it’s him.” He pointed to A Hickstead of Leeds. “If it’s who I think it is, the A stands for Arthur. He should be on the client list but he is also on the Management Board. He’s a much admired character in here, despite his having been a left wing trade unionist in his early days.”

  Dee’s interest was piqued. She asked, “Wouldn’t he have been at the conference too?”

  “Yes, of course, all of the management board were there.”

  “It’s just that he doesn’t appear on the seating list,” she noted.

  “No, he wouldn’t be on the list, as he was on the top table. When he comes into the office he insists on being called Art, and he acts like one of the lads, but when he’s on company business it is Your Lordship all the way.”

  Dee Looked Puzzled. “His Lordship?”

  “Yes of course. Arthur Hickstead. You must have heard of him, surely? Lord Hickstead of Brighouse.”

  DS Fellowes raised his hand for a high five and Dee slapped it as they both spoke simultaneously. “LH. Yes!”

  Tony Craven looked at them, trying to work out what he had said that was causing so much jubilation.

 

  Chapter 22

  Atkins Garretson Palmer, College Hill, London. Friday 7:35pm.

  The car was silent as we drove back into town. I think we were both disappointed at what had seemed to be a firm lead. We were heading towards College Hill to meet up with the others when Inspector Boniface’s phone rang. It was DS Fellowes calling. The Inspector pressed the loudspeaker button and answered.

  “OK Fellowes, you’re on loudspeaker. We’re just coming into College Hill. I’m afraid we hit a dead end.”

  There was an electric excitement on the other end of the phone that transmitted across the ether just as surely as did the voices.

  “We think we might have found LH,” Fellowes said, almost in harmony with Dee. They were keen to tell us all, but Boniface asked them to save it for the car as we were pulling up the AGP’s offices.

  A few moments later Dee and DS Fellowes virtually sprang out of the doors and headed to the cars, laughing and chatting as if they were having fun. I felt a pang of jealousy.

  They opened the car door and slid into the seat next to me. As soon as they were seated they began explaining how they had uncovered an LH after all, and when they explained that the L signified Lord and was not in fact a name, both Boniface and I took a sharp intake of breath.

  It seemed incredible that a Lord would stoop to blackmail. Moreover, why choose me? Lord Hickstead. It was unfathomable. Yet something seemed to tug at the furthest recesses of my memory. I knew that name from somewhere, I was sure. Then something clicked, the realisation hitting me like a train.

  “Oh, no, no, no!” I said out loud, and everyone in the car looked at me.

  “What is it?” asked Dee. “Are you all right?”

  I was fine, but I had just put the pieces together and it hit me like a revelation. I now knew why a peer of the realm would target me, a mere loss adjuster.

 

  Chapter 23

  Dyson Brecht Offices, Park Street, Leeds: Friday 15th June,

  6pm. Nine Years Earlier.

  Some people go Barbados for the summer. Some go to Spain. I get to go to Leeds. Now, there is nothing wrong with Leeds. It’s a great city; plenty to do, plenty of women, but somehow I would have preferred Barbados. Unfortunately, as Toby explained to me, the Barbados office didn’t have a manager in hospital with a burst appendix, whereas the Leeds office did. That was how I found myself standing in, holidays on hold, looking forward to a few weeks in Yorkshire. My main regret was that, as the football season had already ended, I would not get the chance to watch Leeds United at Elland Road.

  Norman was the last to leave the office on that particular day, as he usually was. A typical dour Yorkshireman, he was steady and reliable.
If I were in Toby’s shoes I would have left him in charge rather than sending in a relatively inexperienced 23-year-old Londoner. I packed my briefcase and headed towards the door. The Balti House on the ground floor was opening up in readiness for its evening customers, and the cooking smells wafted in through the open windows. Up on the sixth floor it smelled delicious.

  I closed the last window as the phone rang. It was the landline. I reluctantly picked it up, dread hanging heavy in the pit of my stomach like an undigested meal. “Dyson Brecht, good evening.”

  “Josh, Josh, Josh, you’re a lifesaver!” The voice was heavy with local dialect. I recognised it as belonging to Eddie from Dale County Insurance, the Leeds office’s biggest customer.

  “I haven’t agreed to anything yet, Eddie,” I replied.

  “I know, but you’ll help us out on this, won’t you, lad? It’s my anniversary this weekend, and I promised the wife I’d take her somewhere nice. You know how it is. Anyway, that fire I’m supposed to be looking at, well, I can’t really do it, but you can, can’t you, lad?”

  I sighed. Another excuse. Two weeks ago it had been his daughter’s birthday which had prevented him from attending to his work duties. I wondered what he might come up with next. I hoped his grandmother was in good health, or she might well be the reason why he couldn’t cover the weekend yet again, in two weeks’ time. Grannies do tend to have a habit of passing away at inconvenient moments, especially when a good excuse is required.

  “OK, Eddie. Give me the details, and please tell me it’s not out in the wilds.” I looked at the address I had written down. It didn’t get much wilder. But hey, it was a balmy evening, almost midsummer. It wouldn’t be fully dark until nearly midnight, if it got dark at all. It seemed like a great opportunity to go for a nice drive in the green, rolling hills of Yorkshire.

  ***

  The road up to where the house was situated wasn’t even on my map, and I would have struggled to find it at all without the pall of smoke and flashing blue lights to guide me. A makeshift sign read Cobben Lane, and I was looking for Crest House. I drove up the badly rutted road that mainly served farm vehicles, worrying every inch of the way about my deposit on the hired Volvo. At the very least the suspension would be wrecked, and at the worst I would tumble down the hillside, the edge of which seemed to be no more than six inches from my wheels.

  I drove past a stone built longhouse, typical of the rural buildings in this area. The longhouse had proved to be the ideal farmhouse in days gone by. The animals would be stabled in stone barns either side of the house, the warmth from their bodies providing extra heat as well as a wind barrier to the human habitation in the middle.

  Ahead of me stood the smouldering remnants of a house. The occupants had clearly enjoyed a magnificent view across the valley from their windows. I parked up and strode over to the firemen who were cooling down the embers. I didn’t recognise anyone, so I hand signalled ‘who is in charge’ knowing that my spoken words would be lost amidst the noise of the pumps and the gushing water, and would not penetrate the protective headgear of the firemen. They nodded towards the second fire tender. As I passed the fire engine I spotted the red van parked on the tarmac. Inside was Rodney Killip, the area fire investigator. He signalled for me to join him in the van. I climbed in. He was filling in a pro forma fire report that was bulldog-clipped to a piece of plywood.

  “Can’t they give you a proper clipboard, then?” I asked frivolously.

  “Spending cuts,” he grumbled. “They’ll be asking us to bring our own water next, you mark my words. By the way, why did you come down that old rutted track? Why didn’t you use the tarmac road? Much better for your fancy car, I’d have thought.” Rod pointed to a beautiful tarmac road leading off into the distance. He smiled when he saw the frown on my face.

  We sat and chatted for around five minutes. It seemed that the lady of the house had been clearing rubbish and had decided to pile it all up and start a bonfire; not a great idea when the landscape is tinder dry, after a particularly dry winter and spring. In Rod’s view she hadn’t built the fire properly, and when the wind swung around it blew flaming debris and flying sparks onto the roof of the single storey extension. The flat roof was still littered with dried leaves and twigs from the previous autumn, and these quickly caught fire. The lady panicked and, instead of securing the house, she ran next door for help. By the time help arrived, in the shape of the fire crew, the flat roof was well ablaze and flames had leapt in through an open window and ignited the curtains. There was little left to save. At least no lives had been lost. The owners had moved out earlier in the week, and the lady of the house had been tidying up the grounds for the new owner.

  “You’ll be needing to speak to Brenda; she’s the owner and the policyholder. She’s next door with Mrs Withers,” Rodney told me without lifting his eyes from his report.

  ***

  Brenda was a slight woman unsuited to her name, in my opinion. I don’t know why, it just seemed to me she would have suited a more delicate name like Emma or Florence. She had obviously been pretty in her younger days but she had aged quickly. She was forty seven years old but could have been ten years older. Perhaps her appearance owed more to her distress over the house burning down. Her eyes were puffy and red with crying. Her face was smudged with soot.

  Obviously in this business you learn to show sensitivity as you are often dealing with people who have suffered a loss of property, and sometimes a loved one. I eased into the questioning by asking Brenda if she had lost anything irreplaceable in the fire, although I already knew that the house was empty. She brightened immediately as she began to realise that, disastrous though the fire had been, she had lost only a house that they were vacating in any event. Her belongings had been moved out, and were all safe.

  After more, gentle questioning I was able to determine that the house had been sold and contracts should have been exchanged last Friday. She told me that she should have been in Brussels by now. Unfortunately the exchange had been delayed and was now due to take place on Monday. Somehow I couldn’t see that happening.

  “Brenda, this is the situation,” I began. “Once contracts are exchanged, the new owner is responsible for insuring the property, and so if you had exchanged last Friday it would have been their problem and probably a legal argument would have ensued. To be honest, this way is simpler. Can you tell me what you insured the buildings for? The rebuilding costs, I mean?”

  “Yes, the insurance is set at half a million pounds, for buildings only,” the weepy lady replied.

  “OK, Brenda. That should be more than enough. I think that the RICS Rebuilding index will probably suggest around a hundred and seventy five thousand, but we need to add around twenty five per cent to that because the house is so far out in the countryside. Even so, we’re only talking two hundred and twenty five thousand or so, depending on the standard of finishing you had inside.”

  “Oh, it was beautiful inside, always was, and Brenda had all the bathrooms and the kitchen done last year, didn’t you, Brenda?” Mrs Withers interjected helpfully. Brenda looked close to tears again as she nodded her agreement.

  I discovered that Brenda was due to fly out to Brussels to join her husband, who had bought a flat in the Belgian capital so that he could fulfil his new role as the EU Commissioner for Labour Relations. I was impressed.

  My phone rang, which was amazing way up here in the hills.

  “Josh, are you alone?” It was Eddie from Dale County Insurance, Brenda’s insurer.

  “Hold on,” I said as I excused myself from the presence of the two middle aged women. “OK, I’m outside, and I’m on my own.”

  “Josh, I’m sorry to do this to you, mate.” I knew what was coming and I dreaded it. “The duty staff at head office have dug out the policy and they thought that they had better call me at home.”

  “Come on, Eddie,” I sighed. “Don’t tell me there’s a problem with the policy. The poor woman is in pieces already.
”

  “Look, mate, I’m going to see what I can do, but she doesn’t have a policy with us anymore. She wrote to us last month, cancelling the policy as of last Friday, and we have already refunded the balance of her premium.”

  I sighed, and swore under my breath. When would people learn? They decide to terminate their insurance, the sale date slips and they aren’t insured against loss. I see it time and time again. People save fifty pounds on the premium, but then something goes wrong and suddenly they are faced with a bill of tens of thousands.

  Eddie and I spoke for a few moments more and then, feeling sick to my stomach, I went back inside to see Brenda.

  ***

  It was a month since I had seen Brenda driven away in the ambulance. I had tried to be positive and I explained to her that the insurers would see what they could do, but to no avail. Brenda started hyperventilating and then she passed out.

  In the intervening period the insurers had been under extreme pressure from the new EU Labour Relations Commissioner, and they may have given in had it not been for a stubborn refusal by the underwriters to accept the loss.

  I personally took calls from the local MP, a Minister at the DTI and the Insurance Ombudsman. Nothing could change the facts. Brenda had cancelled the policy a week before the fire.

  Eddie rang, his voice panicky. The tone of his message was that Brenda was back in the UK, staying with her sister whilst her husband calmed down. He blamed her, the grasping insurers and the unconscionable loss adjusters, according to Eddie, who had just put the phone down after a tirade from Brussels.

  “You’re next on his list, buddy. Prepare yourself.”

  I reviewed the papers on the case. The house was due to be sold for four hundred thousand pounds, and as the owners had neither the time nor the funds to rebuild, the plot was now being offered for sale, with the plans, for just one hundred and fifty thousand.

  Between the three of us - Eddie, Brenda and me - we were bearing the brunt of the blame for the loss of a cool two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

  The phone rang and I picked it up. “Josh Hammond speaking.”

  “Please hold for the European Commissioner,” a slightly accented female voice requested. A moment’s silence followed, and then barely controlled anger.