The White Gallows (35 page)

Collier looked up with suspicious eyes, automatically tugging the hair back into place. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, relief in his voice. ‘You wouldn’t believe the morning I’ve had. I had to get out of the office.’

‘So your secretary said. I don’t think she’s enjoying holding the fort very much.’

‘That’s what I pay her for,’ Collier said without compassion. ‘She should be glad she doesn’t actually have to deal with them.’

‘I’m not sure that’s how she’d see it,’ McEvoy said, feeling compelled to defend the surly, middle-aged woman who’d reluctantly pointed him towards the hotel. ‘At the moment she’s the only one having to deal with them.’

‘Parasites.’

‘The papers or the beneficiaries?’

‘Both! Can you believe they’ve printed this rubbish?’ Collier asked, jabbing at the papers. ‘I knew Albert Koch for over forty years. He could be a hardnosed bastard when he wanted to be, but there’s no way he took part in any medical experiments. He was a family man.’

‘Nobody’s saying he wasn’t a family man, but the evidence doesn’t look good. The papers wouldn’t print this stuff if they didn’t think it was true.’

‘Ach!’ Collier exclaimed dismissively. ‘They’d print any old shite if they thought it would sell a few more papers. It’s just a smear campaign. It’s easy to falsify some documents and slip them into the archives. He was no more a war criminal than I was.’

‘I’m not going to argue with you, but I think his lawyers are going to have their work cut out for them. And that’s probably only the tip of the iceberg. Albert Koch seems to have a pretty shady past.’

‘As I said, it’s just a smear campaign,’ Collier said indolently. ‘His family’s lawyers will make mincemeat of this lot.’ He tapped the papers again.

‘And what about the will?’

‘What about it?’

McEvoy placed the will he’d taken from Francis Koch on the table. ‘Is this his last will and testament?’

‘I’m not at liberty to discuss his private matters until his killer is caught.’

‘I’m not asking you to discuss them. I’m asking you to say whether this is his last will and testament. A simple yes or no. I can get a search warrant if you want. It might take me a few hours but I will get one.’

‘Where did you get this?’ Collier asked, deflecting McEvoy’s question as he reluctantly picked up the papers and scanned the front page.

‘Francis Koch. Apparently it’s been sent to all the family members.’

‘To everyone listed as a beneficiary,’ Collier corrected. ‘The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. Parasites,’ he repeated.

‘And?’ McEvoy prompted.

‘Yes, it’s the last version before he died. Or at least it looks like it.’

‘And you still think he’s innocent despite listing half-a-dozen Jewish war charities?’

‘He was a good man, Superintendent. You might not believe that, but he was.’

‘And your judgement isn’t clouded by the huge fee you’ll extract for being the executor or the fact that you yourself are a beneficiary?’

‘My judgement’s fine. You didn’t know the man. I don’t believe he did the things the press are saying he did. Yes, he was German, and yes, he fought in the war, and yes, he might have felt guilty about
Germany
carrying out the holocaust, but that doesn’t mean he was an active participant. And I think they are going to find it difficult to prove that he was.’ He jabbed at the papers again.

‘I take it that you didn’t send out the will?’

‘No. I want his killer caught first so they can’t benefit if they are a named beneficiary.’

‘So who did send it out? Who’d have access to his will?’

‘Myself and my secretary. Frank Koch and Maurice Coakley were witnesses, but they didn’t read it, or get copies, they just signed it.’

‘No one else?’

‘No.’

‘And did you type it up or did he draft it?’

‘He emailed it to me. I just tweaked it.’

‘He emailed it to you?’

‘Yes. We did most of our correspondence via email. He adapted with the times; ran his business from home using a laptop. Without it and Stefan Freel he wouldn’t have been able to carry on building and running his business empire. He could get online and monitor share prices, the property market, financial news, do whatever he needed.’

‘So the draft of his will was on his laptop?’ McEvoy asked, wondering where Koch’s computer presently was.

‘I suppose so, yes.’

‘And I don’t suppose you know where it is, do you?’

‘It should have been in his house. In his study. It wasn’t?’ Collier asked, concern in his voice.

‘I need to get that checked.’ McEvoy had asked for the whole house to be checked for missing items. No one had mentioned a laptop. He needed to talk to George Carter. ‘I’m sure it’s still there,’ he said, wondering if they did have it and whether anyone had had the foresight to turn the thing on and check what was on it. If they didn’t have it, then whoever did had probably killed Albert Koch.

‘Who had access to Koch’s laptop?’ he asked.

‘I’ve no idea. Stefan Freel, Roza his housekeeper, Marion, Charles, anyone visiting the house, I don’t know.’

‘Jesus. Tell me about Ostara Trust,’ he said, torn between finishing the discussion and ringing George Carter.

‘He wanted to keep the whole group together. By putting everything inside a trust he could portion the value of the assets to individuals and groups while making sure Ostara was not divided up and sold off.’

‘And who runs the Trust?’

‘He made Stefan Freel the chief executive officer and James Kinneally chairman of the shareholders’ board for the first five years. After that there’s a procedure for appointment. It’s all set out in the appendices. He wanted people he could trust to do right by Ostara Industries.’

‘And what about his family?’

‘What about them?’

‘He gave hardly anything to them and they don’t inherit Ostara outright or even run the trust.’

‘I wouldn’t say nine per cent of one-and-a-half billion euros is hardly anything and he didn’t think they were capable of running Ostara’s diverse interests. The man was a pragmatist and he wanted his legacy to continue. He did what he thought was best.’

‘I don’t think he needs to worry about his legacy. Everyone on the planet will know all about him shortly.’

_{* * *}

Albert Koch’s laptop had been found in the top desk drawer on Sunday and taken back to the Garda Technical Unit’s lab for analysis. It had sat there untouched for the past four days. And it would probably sit there untouched for another couple more because there was no one available to boot the thing up and have a good poke around. Which meant whoever printed off Koch’s will had a copy of their own. As Henry Collier had noted, that could be any one of the half-dozen people who had access to his office.

The question for now was whether the person who sent the will was also the killer? Did they actually find what they were looking for on Saturday night and now they were sharing that information? Or was it someone trying to flush the killer out into the open? Or someone playing a different game? Perhaps they were letting the world know the truth about Koch’s crimes by revealing who his beneficiaries were? Perhaps they were worried that the beneficiaries would be changed after the fact to hide his criminal past?

As far as McEvoy knew, everyone who had access to the computer had benefited in some way from the will – Koch’s family received modest percentage stakes, Roza ended up with a small fortune given her modest background, Stefan Freel had become the CEO of a multi-billion trust fund, and holocaust groups and charities gained access to huge finances. Of course, the person searching the house might not have been a beneficiary at all. 

McEvoy tried to push the thoughts from his mind and called Colin Vickers in Trim.

‘Yeah?’ the boredom was evident in Vicker’s voice.

‘It’s Colm McEvoy, any developments?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Is it going to be worth my time to drive over there?’

‘Probably not,’ Vickers said without enthusiasm. ‘It’s up to you.’

‘I’m up to my neck here. Just keep things ticking along, okay? If there’s any developments give me a ring.’

‘Yeah, no bother.’

McEvoy ended the call. Vickers and the rest of the Trim team had already given up hope. Without Whelan to drive the investigation along, the whole case had ground to a halt. Vickers’ idea of keeping things ticking along was probably gossiping with the local guards and slowly pushing pieces of paper around while waiting for the instruction to wind things up and to file under ‘Unsolved’. He exited the hotel and headed back to his car.

_{* * *}

Cathal Galligan was lying in wait just inside the clubhouse. He practically exploded with rage before the doors had closed. ‘What the fuck’s going on, McEvoy! First, I’m bypassed on the media front, now you’re organising the Garda arrangements for Albert Koch’s funeral. The local district is responsible for local policing. As of now, any arrangements for the funeral will be organised through my office.’

McEvoy pulled to a halt, immediately bristling at Galligan’s ambush. ‘Let’s get one thing straight. You’ve been doing the media because I have better things to be doing. Only you’ve proven to be a complete pain in the arse. And you won’t be organising the funeral arrangements. This is a murder investigation and
NBCI
is in charge. The funeral is part of that investigation. We’ll be relying on your guards to help out, but if we tell you to stay away, you stay away.’

‘Like fuck we will! You’re a fuckin’ gombeen, McEvoy!’ Galligan ranted. ‘You hear me? You think you’re the big fuckin’ shot coming out here lording it over us, telling us what to do, but you’re wrong. This is my patch and you’ll fuckin’ respect me and you’ll recognise our jurisdiction.’

‘I hate to tell you this,’ McEvoy replied, trying to suppress his anger, ‘but you’re clearly delusional. I’m in charge of this investigation. End. Of. Story. And if you don’t like it, go and cry to your assistant commissioner or whoever the hell you’ve been brown-nosing.’ He brushed past Galligan and headed for the incident room.

‘You’ve picked the wrong fight,’ Galligan snapped at McEvoy’s back. ‘You’re a dead man walking.’

McEvoy ignored him and exited the passageway.

Everyone in the incident room watched him walk over to Kelly Stringer.

‘I guess you all heard that?’ he asked, his face flushed red.

‘Bits of it,’ Stringer said, smirking. She was dressed in a two-piece grey suit, over a pale yellow shirt, a small gold cross lying just below her neckline. Her hair was twisted into a knot at the back of her head, but the alluring perfume remained. ‘I take it you were building bridges with the locals.’

‘Torching them more like. The guy’s an eejit. Does he really think we’re going to organise ourselves around them?’

‘He’s jealous and he feels threatened by you.’ Stringer paused. ‘Plus he’s a grade one asshole.’ Her smile lit up her face.

‘An asshole that’s on the warpath. Two to one on, Bishop will be on the phone within the next hour. So, what’s the score?’ he said, trying to move the conversation along.

‘I had Kevin Townsend do a bit more digging in the newspaper archives. He found this.’ She opened a brown file and passed a grainy imagine to McEvoy.