Faraday 01 The Gigabyte Detective (33 page)

“Poor bloke, my foot,” burst out Paulson. “I hope you’re going to throw the book at him. If he’d come forward and told us the truth last year, all these problems wouldn’t have happened.”

“Come now, Stafford,” said Charlotte with a smile. “If he’d come forward a year ago you’d have arrested him and he’d have been inside doing his fifteen years by now.” He opened his mouth to protest but she went on, “Even if you’d believed his story and tried to investigate it, Lasham would have stopped you dead in your tracks. You know his attitude - put a tick in the record book - it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got the wrong man as long as someone’s inside for it.”

There was a grin on Paulson’s face as he nodded. “You seem to have learned quickly about our revered boss. What are you going to say about him in your report to the DCC?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“And what about these other women? We’ve solved Cynthia Adams and have sorted out Julia Hillman. That’s a bonus. Now what do we do about the other three?”

“Wow, you have got your tail up.” Charlotte made as if to ward him off. “Seriously though, the only possible suspicious death of the three is Joanne de Billiere and there’s no apparent link to Cynthia Adams. We’ll have to go back to the computer and start from square one when we’ve tidied this one up.” She laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t try and solve the lot in one night.”

He chuckled. “All right. Let’s go and sort Harris out and then go home.”

* * * * * * *

Richard Harris looked at Faraday and Paulson a trifle nervously as the two police officers entered the interview room.

“Right, Mr Harris,” said Charlotte as she sat down opposite him, “I think you’ve got a few questions to answer.” She felt Paulson take the seat beside her.

Harris sat upright, anxious. “Before you start a formal interview, I think there’s something you ought to know.”

“What’s that?”

He looked from one to the other. “Which of you is in charge, please? I mean - er - who is the senior officer?”

“I am.” Charlotte looked at him suspiciously. “Why?”

Harris was looking at Paulson for confirmation. The inspector inclined his head in assent. He turned back to Faraday and took a piece of paper out of his pocket which he passed across the table for her to read. She saw it had a New Scotland Yard letter heading.

The letter simply said, “Mr Richard Harris is known to me. Please refer to me before giving assistance or taking further action,” and it was signed, “Charles Garbutt, Commander.”

She raised her eyebrows and passed the paper to Paulson. “That’s unusual.”

“Who’s Garbutt?” asked the inspector as he handed it back.

“Fraud Squad.”

An unmistakable air of tension had entered the room. Charlotte paused for a moment’s thought. Then she looked up at Harris.

“Well,” she said, “I can’t check this out now. But I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t have an informal question and answer session. Then we can do the formal interview on Monday. Do you object to that?”

“OK,” he agreed.

“Can you first of all explain to us what this note means?”

“Very well,” said Harris, “but I must accentuate that none of this is to go any further without reference to Commander Garbutt.”

Charlotte eyed him coldly. “You can rely on that.”

“Thank you.” The man allowed himself the ghost of a smile. “Well - briefly - I’m an investigating accountant.”

“Who do you work for?”

“A private firm in the City of London called Henstridge and Athelney. They specialize in investigatory work. They have a long list of blue-chip clients - multi-nationals, foreign governments, public utilities, government departments in this country and abroad. We look into all sorts of things, from individuals who are suspected of having their hands in the till to fraudulent liquidations to directors’ behaviour in take-over battles.”

She nodded. “I’ve heard of them.”

“Why don’t the fraud squad do this work?” Paulson wanted to know.

“Three reasons,” said Harris. “Firstly we can cut corners where the police would get bogged down by red tape. Secondly we can go anywhere in the world provided we have the permission of the clients we are working for. Thirdly we are very confidential - much more so than the police can ever be.”

Stafford Paulson sniffed. “I don’t like the sound of this. In my view these characters committing the fraud should be investigated by the police and stuck up in court. How is it that they let people like you look at their confidential papers?”

The other man grinned. “I can tell you, when a bank threatens to withdraw support for a company unless they co-operate, they decide to be helpful pretty quickly.”

“I still don’t like it.” The inspector shook his head. “It smells to me like some kind of secret, back door justice where everything’s swept under the carpet.”

“That’s up to the client,” said Harris. “Of course, if the criminal law has been broken, we advise the clients that they should call in the police and make all the evidence we have amassed available to them.” He shrugged. “In many cases they decide not to follow that route. I’m sure you’re aware that taking such matters to court is very slow, very expensive and extremely uncertain as well as resulting in publicity which the client often wants to avoid.”

Paulson still sniffed, but Charlotte privately had to admit there was truth in the man’s comment.

“So,” she intervened, “what exactly is your interest in Torquay which has resulted in your becoming mixed up in murder?”

“I was not involved in the murder of Cynthia Adams or Julia Hillman. In fact I’d never heard of Mrs Hillman until tonight.” Harris looked at her frankly. “I was recruited about two years ago to look into suspicions which had come to light about the management of the Henry Adams Trust Fund.”

“Recruited?”

“That’s right. I was approached because I had once worked for Henry Adams and had been sacked by him when I refused to do certain things he instructed me to do in connection with the trust fund.”

“A whistle-blower,” sniffed Paulson.

“What were you asked to do?”

Harris ignored Paulson and answered Charlotte. “I was asked to audit falsified accounts of the off-shore Trust. It needed the signature of a Chartered Accountant, and at that time, Giles Adams wasn’t Chartered.”

“When were you sacked by Henry Adams?” she asked.

He looked into the distance and was quiet for a long time. Charlotte could guess at the memories which were passing through his mind.

At last he answered. “It was the best part of six years ago.”

“Just before your wife committed suicide?” Charlotte was watching him closely for an angry reaction, but he just nodded. “It seems to have been a long time before you were approached by this company.”

“I suppose it was,” he agreed. “In the first place that was my fault. For some months I was knocked sideways by what had happened. I managed to get another job quite quickly. But it was in Plymouth and I was very poorly paid. So in the autumn I left them and moved to the London area. It was the following spring before I got round to talking with the secretary of the Professional Practices Committee at my Institute. At the time he simply told me that he would pass on the information. He pointed out that I couldn’t make any positive accusations because I didn’t have any actual documentary evidence. It was another two years before Henstridge and Athelney came back to me.”

“And what did they want you to do?” asked Charlotte.

“Well, for the first few months I was just amassing evidence about the trust - copies of the last fifteen years accounts, copies of any share transactions I could run to earth, company records from the off-shore registrars.” He pulled a face. “Some of these off-shore tax havens are pretty casual about record keeping, you know. And I wasn’t only working on this one. I was given a number of other matters to investigate once they decided I was suitable for the type of work.”

“What did you find out about the Adams Trust?”

Harris watched her carefully, presumably weighing up how much he should tell her. “It was likely that a large part of the Trust income had been diverted into secret bank accounts and the actual income was much understated.”

“By how much?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “We haven’t got enough information yet to be sure, but we think it’s several million a year over a period of perhaps at least fifteen years. Henry Adams operated his fraud very successfully when he was living abroad.”

“So,” asked Charlotte, “what happened next?”

“It was decided that I’d got as far as I could in London and I was sent down here to try and get information direct from the people involved without rousing too many suspicions.”

“So you latched on to Cynthia Adams,” said Paulson.

Harris looked at him hard but didn’t react. “By then Henry Adams had died, but it seemed as though Giles was continuing where his father had left off. The other trustees appeared to be ciphers and weren’t any help to me. I guessed that Cynthia wasn’t aware of what was going on, but might be willing to co-operate. So I got in touch with her.”

Paulson snorted. “Was taking her to bed a necessary part of your investigations?”

“Not necessary, no.” Harris smiled in recollection. “You may not believe this, but that side of our relationship was largely proposed by her. I think her life had been pretty boring over the last few years. When I first contacted her and asked her if she would help me to get information about the Trust, she almost fell over herself to agree. It was her suggestion that we should meet in a hotel bedroom, where we wouldn’t be over-heard, so that she could tell me what she’d found out. When I arrived in the room, the state of her dress made it clear that she was interested in more than just financial information. My instructions were to use any legal method to obtain what we required.” He grinned self-deprecatingly. “And she was a most attractive woman. So I had no objection. I don’t think she’d had much affection in the last few years.”

Charlotte hurriedly changed the subject. “What information did she manage to get for you?”

“Well, to start with it was current stuff about the Trust accounts.” He grinned. “She went along to the office and asked for the files about the Trust. When Giles turned up and wanted to know what she was doing, she told him a story that I had invented for her. She said she was thinking of getting married again and needed to know what her financial position was going to be in future.”

“What response did she get from her son?”

Harris shrugged. “I don’t think he was happy about it, but he couldn’t refuse to give her the information she wanted. After all, on paper she was the primary beneficiary of the Trust. I was able to tell her the right questions to ask and to specify what papers she wanted to see.”

“Did you realise?” asked Paulson, “that you were putting her in danger?”

“Of course I didn’t.” The man turned on him. “I had no idea that Giles was a homicidal maniac as well as a fraudster. Most people who commit fraud are very unlikely to take physical action. It’s usually foreign to their natures. They are the types who manipulate things behind the scenes. Until tonight I hadn’t even been sure that it was her son who killed her.”

“And you didn’t hang around to find out, did you?” the inspector accused.

“What do you mean?”

Paulson was getting angry. “I mean,” he said, “that we’ve spent the last year and many thousands of pounds trying to find the man who was bonking Cynthia Adams so as to charge him or rule him out of our investigations. Lots of local people have been unnecessarily upset. My superiors have been tearing their hair out with frustration, and it’s bloody nearly got me the sack. That’s what I damn well mean.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” said Harris, not looking in the least sorry, “but when I returned to the hotel and saw all the fuss, the first thing I did was phone my boss. He told me to high-tail it straight back to London and report to him.”

“That’s not good enough,” shouted Paulson. “Who do you think is the authority round here? It’s not your bloody boss.”

Harris shook his head. “I’m sure he gave a detailed report to Commander Garbutt. We knew we wouldn’t get anywhere without the co-operation of the police. He wouldn’t have risked damaging that relationship.”

“Then why didn’t anything filter through to me?”

“All I can suggest,” said Harris, “is that they were trying to avoid alerting Giles Adams to the fact that he was under investigation.”

Paulson sounded as though he was about to explode. “Are you trying to suggest that the clod-hopping, bloody locals aren’t clever enough to even be warned about what was going on?”

“Wait a minute,” intervened Charlotte. “I think that’s for me to sort out on Monday morning with Garbutt. There’s no point in our getting up-tight without a good reason. However, now you’re here, Mr Harris, I’d be grateful if you would tell us exactly what you know about Cynthia Adams’ death.”

Richard Harris looked nervously from one police officer to the other. “All right,” he agreed, “on the same basis as I provided the other information.”

“Of course. Now then, what time did you last see Cynthia alive that evening?”

He thought a moment. “Er - about six-thirty, I should think.”