Concealment (21 page)

‘Totally,’ I agreed, puzzled as to why Isabelle would have even discussed Smithies’ sex appeal or lack of it with her friend if they weren’t having an affair.

‘Well, why suggest it then?’

‘Sorry. Go on.’

‘It was the promotion. Smithies promised her the promotion if she kept quiet.’

‘About what?’

‘OK, I guess I can trust you,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘and I really
need
to tell someone, in confidence.’

‘Go on,’ I said gently.

‘It was all to do with her client—JJ Slate.’

The nicotine rushed to my head.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

‘The client accused Pearson Malone of making an error, but Issy discovered that wasn’t true, and was keen to defend the firm.’

‘Yes—I know.’

‘But then, this Smithies guy tells her to drop it, that the client had screwed up but everyone had agreed to keep it under wraps. He told her a key competency for a senior manager is discretion when required. He didn’t say explicitly that the promotion depended on her keeping quiet, but you get the general drift.’

Smithies would have phrased things sufficiently ambiguously as to render the whole conversation deniable, for sure, but the intention was clear.

‘But there wasn’t an error,’ I said.

She stared at me, astonished.

‘How did you guess?’

‘I didn’t guess. It’s my client, and I checked.’

‘So did Issy. You know her style—mad keen to find the client’s mistake, to ensure it didn’t recur on a future project.’

Why else? It was somehow fitting and faintly amusing that Isabelle’s death might have resulted from her painstaking thoroughness. I mean, whoever would take the time to review someone else’s cock-up?

‘And did she tell Smithies what she’d found?’

‘God, no. He’d lied to her, and she didn’t want to lose her promotion. But she obviously asked herself
why
he’d lied…’

‘And?’

‘She said she thought there was a problem with the accounts.’

Just as I had.

‘When she tell you this?’

‘It was the Tuesday before she died—we went for a drink. She told me that after she’d checked the file, she realised there might be a problem with the debtors, and she asked my advice.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I advised her to leave well alone, particularly as Issy thought that Smithies might be aware of whatever was going on. But she was horrified at the thought that she might have covered up a crime to get a promotion, and she was determined to find proof.’

‘Why didn’t you tell the police about this?’ I’d tired of the cigarette and chucked the remainder of it into the flowerbed.

‘I didn’t see any connection with Issy’s disappearance,’ she said.

That didn’t stack up. How could she
not
see a connection?

‘That’s not the real reason, is it?’

She flushed visibly.

‘I couldn’t tell,’ she said. ‘I’d lose my job.’

‘Why?’

‘I work at head office at a major bank,’ she said, grinding the stub of her cigarette into the ground with the toe of her black patent shoe. ‘Issy said she believed JJ were churning out false invoices to a customer. The company banked with us and well, it was all totally improper, but Issy asked me to get hold of the bank statements.’

‘What was the name of the customer?’ I asked, ninety-nine point nine percent sure of the answer.

‘Parallax Projects.’

I nodded in a non-committed kind of way.

‘And did you give her the statements?’

She shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

‘It wasn’t easy, I can tell you. Everyone thinks banks run amok, but in fact we have strong internal controls. Anyway yes, I did get them for her—I gave them to her the next morning.’

‘And where are they now?’

‘That’s just it—I have no idea. Which worries me, because someone might work out where she got hold of them.’

I wasn’t clear if she was worried for her safety or her job—perhaps both.

‘So in your view, what happened to Isabelle?’ I asked.

‘Well, I’m not too sure what she found, but she said it wasn’t what she’d originally thought, but something was wrong. She told me she was going to speak to someone she trusted about it before deciding what to do.’

‘Who?’

‘Not a clue.’

‘Pity.’

‘But somehow, either before or after she spoke to this person, I think the JJ lot cottoned on to what she’d found out and murdered her. Which really upsets me.’

I must say, she didn’t sound upset at all. And what could Isabelle have found? I wondered. The debts had been cleared, so there was definitely more to all this than a simple inflation of profits.

‘So man up and come forward.’

‘What good would it do? Nothing can bring Issy back.’

‘No—but it may help them catch her killer.’

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said, touching my arm. ‘I feel rotten about Ryan dying too, absolutely rotten, but I can’t bring him back either, can I?’

No
, I thought,
but you could have prevented him from being arrested
. She was as cowardly as me, worse even.

‘And now he’s gone, no one’s interested anymore are they?’

She was right on the money there.

‘Why are you telling me all this?’

‘Because it seems so unfair. Ryan was charged with a murder he didn’t commit and nobody cares.’

‘So report your suspicions.’

‘I’ve told you why I can’t do that,’ she retorted. ‘But I was thinking—it might be better if you checked it out—see if there’s anything in it.’

First Ryan, now Chloe. Why, oh why, did everyone ask me to act as an unofficial investigator into something undoubtedly best left alone?

‘There isn’t.’

‘You can’t be certain of that—you’re curious—I can tell. And you’re not surprised by what I’ve just said either, are you?’

‘Maybe not, but with those papers gone we’ll never know what Isabelle uncovered. Unless you’d care to provide another copy of the statements.’

I’d expected her to balk at the prospect, but I’d read the situation wrongly.

‘I have copies of everything,’ she said. ‘Issy was worried someone might try to steal the originals and she mailed me copies the day before she died. If you promise not to tell where you got them, I can let you have them.’

Isabelle’s efficiency was relentless. I tussled with my conscience, inquisitiveness and reluctance to get involved. Curiosity won.

‘OK—bring them to my office tomorrow.’

‘Actually,’ she said, producing an A4 envelope with a flourish from her handbag, ‘I have them here.’

***

Game set and bloody match to Chloe Fenton—another “butter wouldn’t melt” ice maiden with a flair for manipulation. I’d sleepwalked into her ambush and was now back on the hook, while she’d neatly wriggled out of all responsibility.

Isabelle’s antics had been equally annoying. Fancy checking out someone else’s mistake, and keeping copies of incriminating evidence. If she hadn’t checked, she’d still be alive. And if she hadn’t kept copies, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.

As I poured out the meagre contents of my miniature gin bottle on the Heathrow flight from Cork that evening, I pondered on what to do.

Of course, I’d be perfectly justified in ignoring the latest developments—the Fenton girl was in no position to complain. I hadn’t yet opened the envelope—a deliberate decision. Once aware of its contents, I might be obliged to take action. So the obvious answer was to dispose of it intact—chuck it in a litter bin at Heathrow, or shred it at home. I flagged the stewardess down as she passed and asked for two more gins. She regarded me with thinly disguised contempt, although I was nowhere near being drunk.

The funeral should have marked a turning point, allowing me to process the whole sorry sequence of events and move on. But each time I tried to extricate myself, I was sucked back in. It felt as if some divine force was driving me forward, but to where?

As the second and third drinks slipped down, my hostility towards Chloe Fenton mellowed. She’d bent the rules to help her friend, and how could she have foreseen how disastrously it would all end? And which of us would have the moral courage to disclose a wrongful act that would cost us our jobs? In fact, how was I any better, sitting here contemplating the destruction of whatever information I now possessed?

I was convinced it all came back to Smithies. He’d instigated the lie about the tax losses, presumably to protect his brother-in-law. He might genuinely believe that Goodchild had made an error, or he might know more. And while Chloe seemed certain Isabelle hadn’t discussed her suspicions with Smithies, he had an uncanny knack of finding things out, as I knew to my cost.

Could I imagine Smithies killing in cold blood? Yes—if he felt he’d get away with it, and it would best further his own interests. Ever since, and even before, all this started, Smithies had set out systematically to wreck my career. For him, other people were mere pawns to be sacrificed. Wasn’t murdering someone a natural next step?

I ought to have been frightened, but I was stronger than he knew. And if that bastard had murdered Isabelle, I would bring him down.

Faced with diverse reflections of Smithies loitering in my doorway the next morning, my newfound boldness wavered.

‘Can we have a quick catch up?’ he asked, closing the door behind him.

Taken at face value, the request wasn’t unreasonable—but I feared what lay behind it. His X-Ray vision seemed to home in on the unopened envelope on my desk.

‘How did the funeral go?’

‘Oh, pretty grim,’ I said. ‘But what can you expect?’

‘Well, I certainly appreciate you attending, in all the circumstances.’

Only Smithies had the ability to make such a superficially innocuous thank-you so heavy with meaning.

‘So Lisa’s off to the partnership assessment centre next week.’

‘Yes.’

‘I hope you’ve helped her prep for it—so many candidates fall down because of poor preparation, sad to say. Such a shame when it happens.’

He sighed theatrically; presumably aware I’d done nothing.

‘All in hand,’ I lied.

‘And how are you, Amy, in yourself? Are you any better?’

Up until a few minutes before, I could honestly have said yes. But the paranoid sense of foreboding that had defined all our meetings to date now resurfaced.

‘
Don’t let him wind you up,
’ counselled Little Amy.

Don’t worry; I won’t
, although I wished she’d piss off.

‘Much better, thanks,’ I mumbled.

‘I heard you had a funny turn last week—in the slate mine.’

I noticed he used the same words as Lisa.

‘Yes—a kind of claustrophobia.’

‘Odd,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope Eric Bailey doesn’t find out about this—you know how he hates weakness…’

Naturally, Smithies would find a plausible reason to tell him.

‘Have you seen a doctor?’

‘No—that’s not necessary.’

‘And how is your mother doing?’

‘As far as I know, OK.’

‘What—you haven’t seen her?’

‘No.’

‘Did you take my advice and organise a little spring clean round the house?’

Either he was trying to belittle the issue for his own ends or hadn’t grasped the scale of it. I honestly couldn’t tell which.

‘I did.’

‘She must be very grateful.’

‘I guess so.’

I wondered how my efforts had in fact been received. Gratitude was the least probable reaction. A meltdown was possible, but surely Cynthia would have told me. Most likely my mother would play the martyr and enjoy complaining to her so-called friends about how her busybody daughter had chucked out all her precious things. And even those who now realised she was a hoarder would indulge her in the fiction, because they were all too polite to challenge her. And then she’d start to hoard up once more.

‘If you need time off…’

‘Thank you, but no.’

‘Strange,’ he said, taking in the surroundings. ‘Your office is unnaturally empty—must be a form of rebellion against your mother.’

‘I’m complying with the clear desk policy,’ I said acidly, peeved by his amateur psychology.

‘Still, moving out will be a doddle.’

He said this with the hint of a threat—he seldom missed a trick in the mind games.

‘I don’t plan to move out anytime soon,’ I replied in a deadpan fashion.

‘Well, I’m glad to hear you tell me you’re flourishing. And remember, we’re all here to comfort you in your time of need.’

I asked myself what the purpose of the meeting had been. Smithies would claim that concern for my welfare had prompted him to see me, but I knew different—he’d been continuing in his efforts to psych me out.

That settled it—the instant he’d gone I did what I could put off no longer, and ripped open the envelope.

***

In addition to the bank statements, there were debtors’ schedules, identical to the ones I’d blagged from our audit department. Isabelle had traced the payments from the bank through to the post year-end receipts. The client had evidently undertaken a big tidying up exercise just before the auditors arrived, suspicious in itself.

I now saw clearly that my assumption that debts paid off equals no racket, had been an oversimplification to justify me abandoning my enquiries.

Next—a copy of an interesting calculation in Isabelle’s handwriting. The slate quarry and mine were valued on the balance sheet based on the estimated reserves of slate left in them. Each year, the value was written down. From this, and information on JJ’s website, she’d approximated the tonnage of slate extracted during the year. But dividing the slate mine’s sales by the market price of slate yielded a much larger amount. Even when stock movements between the beginning and the end of the year were taken into account, there was still an anomaly. In broad terms, they’d apparently sold far more slate than they’d mined.

Finally, came a bunch of invoices addressed to JJ Slate from a company called Evans Haulage. I speculated on how Isabelle might have obtained them—not from the audit team for sure, as the entire haulage cost would have been immaterial from an audit perspective. Maybe the client had unwittingly handed them over on some pretext. The invoices related to various customers of JJ, but two referred to Parallax Projects. She’d ringed round the numbers of both invoices, which were way out of sequence with other invoices raised in the same month.