48 Hours - A City of London Thriller (17 page)

“
Well, really! Surely you haven’t made me wait here just
because I expended a few thousand pounds that the client will pay
anyway?” Richard tried to sound angry.

“
No. That isn’t the real problem. Nicky here tried to clear
the warning by raising an exception notice, which you could have
signed in your own time, and all would have been well. But the
system wouldn’t accept the exception notice because your purchase
was for land in the Seychelles, but the bank account you paid the
money into was in Switzerland and belongs to an art
gallery.”

Richard had no idea who owned the account that ‘Sam’ had
nominated for his million pound payoff. He had automatically
assumed that it would be Sam’s own account. The banker needed time
to think. He tried a bluff.

“
Michael, you know what things are like here. They change by
the minute. About five minutes after I typed the request and sent
it, I had a call to say that the land was off the market and so I
diverted the investment into fine art for the client. I managed to
pick up a marginal sale, and so Mrs Patterson pays one million and
four thousand pounds, plus our fees, and she gets artwork worth
approximately one point one million. We all win.”

“
Richard, we are not questioning your judgement. I am sure you
will make the bank and the client money. No, the problem is the
artwork itself. It appears that you arranged to pick it up in
person.”

Richard was now in deep water but he had to propagate the lie.
“Yes, I wanted to deliver it personally.”

“
Well, that’s the problem. Nicky checked your swipe card. You
haven’t left the office since mid-afternoon.”

“
That’s right.” Richard wondered which direction this was
going, and whether he was clever enough to stay ahead of the
security chief.

“
When Nicky rang the gallery to confirm they had received our
transfer, the owner told him you had already picked up the
painting. The description the owner of the gallery gave of his
Richard Wolsey Keen does not fit you. It appears that our artwork
has been stolen. We need to call the police.”

Richard said nothing. The colour drained from his face. The
security director squeezed his shoulder gently.

“
Don’t you worry, Richard, we will get to the bottom of this.
We’ll get your artwork back.”

The security team left, and Richard dropped his head into his
hands. It was all over. Tomorrow the whole story would come out. He
was ruined.

The phone rang. He answered it.

“
Hello, Richard. This is Callum Rogerson of UK Newspaper
Group. We were wondering whether you had any comment on tomorrow’s
front page.”

Richard knew all too well that UKNG owned two scurrilous
tabloids as well as their broadsheet papers and radio
interests.

“
How would I know? I haven’t seen it, and even if I had I
wouldn’t give you the time of day.” He slammed the phone down. How
much longer would the debacle at Northern & National Bank make
front page news? When he checked he saw that new mail had arrived
in his inbox from Callum Rogerson. He wanted to ignore it, but he
knew he couldn’t.

Richard clicked on a PDF file attachment called ‘Front Page’
and a piece of software called Adobe Reader opened on his desktop.
Slowly a facsimile of the newspaper front page built before his
eyes. The headline was bad enough:

“
The Fabulous Banker Boys!”

Below the headline was a telephoto shot of the young Arabic
boy touching Richard’s tie. The photo was taken from such an angle
that the boy’s face was obscured, but such was the young man’s
short build that he looked even younger from behind. The soft,
puppy dog expression on Richard’s face made the photo even more
damning.

The text of the article had been carefully worded.

“
....assignment on Clapham Common at a place known to be a
regular haunt of older men looking for younger partners.” “Dinner
at the intimate Carannas Restaurant where the clientele is almost
exclusively male...”

The reference to further photographs inside chilled the banker
to the core.

Richard realised that more damage would be caused by what was
not said than what had actually been written. Readers already
enraged at his big payoff wouldn’t hold back; they would fill in
the blanks with their own sordid story. Couldn’t people see that he
was treating these poor boys, not exploiting them?

The banker did not know how he could hope to face his wife or
children again, especially his teenage son, when they had no idea
that he had a predilection for attractive young men. His friends
and colleagues would not understand, either. They would be shocked,
possibly disgusted, and he foresaw only social exclusion and
humiliation.

Richard took off his overcoat and jacket. His shirt was
stained red at the back but he didn’t care about that any more. He
opened his desk drawer extracted a half full bottle of whisky and a
smaller bottle.

Within a short time, the banker was lying down on the sofa in
his darkened office. The whisky bottle in his hand was almost
empty, and tears streamed down his face.

Chapter 3
5

Vastrick Security Offices, No 1 Poultry, London. Tuesday
8am.

We had spent much of yesterday afternoon with the City Police,
and so I was surprised to get a call from DS Fellowes on the stroke
of eight the following morning. The young policeman wanted to meet
with us urgently, and would be bringing along an ex colleague. He
was reluctant to say what this was all about on the phone, and so
we invited him around.

Dee and I were gradually becoming more intimate as the days
passed. I was hoping that this was a continuing trend, although I
did occasionally have doubts when I remembered that sick people
sometimes fell in love with their nurses. I wondered if the
Florence Nightingale syndrome extended to bodyguards.

We sat in the operations room, each at our own console,
working through the evidence until our visitors arrived. We
gathered in the conference room and the Detective Sergeant
introduced us to a former police inspector who now worked in
private security.

“
Josh Hammond, Dee Conrad, this is Michael Grazeley of the
London Mercantile Investment Bank.” We shook hands and sat down.
“I’m going to let Michael explain, and then we can decide what we
need to do.”

We sat back as Michael Grazeley explained that at nine o’clock
last night he had been called back to the office because Mr Richard
Wolsey Keen was discovered lying dead in his office, with an empty
whisky bottle and an empty bottle of pills. A note apologising to
his wife and rambling on relatively incoherently lay on the printer
in his office. It was an apparent suicide.

The police, in cooperation with Michael and his assistant,
sought answers as to why the banker might have taken his own life.
Their first thoughts centred on the loss of a painting which he had
bought for a client, but that was before they looked at his phone
and computer.

Martin Grazeley opened his briefcase and removed a printed
copy of the front page of one of the country’s most scurrilous
tabloids. The story was sordid and suggestive, probably ruinous for
the banker’s career, and yet the photos were relatively innocent on
the surface, more suggestive than explicit. Nonetheless, the
message was clear; rich banker exploits young men for sexual
favours.

Dee spoke out first. “I saw the front page of that paper on a
news stand on the way in this morning, and it had a different
headline.”

“
Yes. When we found the front page we rang the paper and asked
them where they got the photos. They were emailed anonymously
from...” Michael looked down at the file to find the domain
name.

“
[email protected]?” Dee suggested. She was brilliant at
this.

“
Absolutely right. The name used was Sam,” Martin said,
looking impressed.

“
It would seem that, in view of the circumstances, even this
awful excuse for a newspaper decided it would be in bad taste to
run that front page,” DS Fellowes added.

I was now full of questions and so I cut in quickly. “Was
there any indication of a specific threat to his life, or was it
just the pictures?” Michael looked at DS Fellowes for permission
before he answered. The DS nodded his assent.

“
He had been threatened by Sam around forty eight hours
earlier. The pictures were first mentioned in a text yesterday.
Someone - we believe it was Sam -shot Mr Wolsey Keen three times
with a paintball gun. His shirt and jacket were stained and his
back was bruised.”

“
We know the blackmailer as Bob,” I added. “How much did he
ask for?”

“
He asked for a million pounds to be express transferred to a
Swiss bank account in the name of a London art gallery. He then
picked up the painting yesterday, claiming to be Richard. We appear
to have lost both the money and the painting. There’ll be hell on
in the office today.”

“
Let me guess,” said Dee. “The man was around six feet tall,
slimly built, bad toupee, moustache, glasses and an East End
accent.”

Michael showed less surprise this time. “Almost right, except
that he had a strong West Country accent.”

“
It seems His Lordship changes his accents with his names.”
Those of us who knew what she was talking about nodded in
agreement.

Fellowes spoke. “That makes three suspicious deaths now, and a
small fortune in ransoms paid. The Chief is really on our backs
over this. In fact, the inspector is probably being bawled out at
this very moment.”

Dee looked thoughtful, and then she smiled as she passed
comment. “Either the man is reckless, or he has no idea that we
know who he is. That has to be in our favour.”

Chapter 3
6

City of London Police HQ, Wood Street, London: Tuesday,
11am.

We were back upstairs in the more lavishly appointed part of
the police HQ. On this occasion we sat at a large walnut conference
table which held a tray of different kinds of mineral water and two
plates of biscuits. I had never really thought about the police
sitting around a conference table having the same kinds of boring
minuted meetings that were held in the rest of the City. There was
also a video projector on the ceiling and one of those black
conference table telephones with microphones on four
sides.

I was sitting with Dee and DS Fellowes. Sitting opposite us
was DCI Coombes of the Metropolitan Police, along with his sidekick
from Friday night, Detective Sergeant Scott. The bigwigs were
outside in the corridor, talking.

After a few moments the door opened, and Inspector Boniface
entered followed by two uniformed policemen with plenty of silver
decoration on their blue serge tunics. One of them had his highly
decorated hat under his arm.

The two uniformed men took their seats at the head of the
table and Boniface sat next to me. I recognised the first uniformed
man, and recalled that he was the London City Detective Chief
Superintendant, DCS Boddy. He stood and introduced himself and then
his uniformed counterpart from the Met, Assistant Commissioner Bryn
Evans, former Assistant Chief Constable for South Wales. Boddy sat
down, and Assistant Commissioner Evans took the chair and spoke
clearly and concisely in that pleasant sing song manner associated
with soft spoken Welshmen.

“
Gathered around the table here today we have representatives
of the two London Police Forces, and one of the victims of this
blackmailer and possible murderer. To date the Metropolitan Police
have restricted their investigations to the death of Andrew
Cuthbertson, with the City Police looking into the blackmail
allegations. These two cases are strands in the same rope, as far
as I can see.” The AC picked up a sheet of paper. “We also have two
other deaths to consider. The death of Sir Max Rochester, which the
toxicology reports suggest may be a suspicious death, and the
apparent suicide of Richard Wolsey Keen.”

The Welshman paused to look around the table. “Whilst the
toxicology report indicated high levels of potassium in Sir Max’s
blood, Sir Max suffered from heart problems and had recorded high
potassium levels previously in routine blood tests. Nonetheless, we
are not ruling out foul play, especially in the circumstances. Mr
Keen’s demise, on the other hand, is probably what it appears to
be, which is suicide. Excessive amounts of alcohol were found in
his bloodstream and stomach, along with a huge number of
painkillers. The pills he took were prescribed to him by his
doctor, and they contained codeine, which can apparently convert
into morphine in the human body. As few as six could kill, and he
had taken almost four times that amount. I’ll now hand you over to
Inspector Boniface, who has some new information.”

Inspector Boniface passed around a profile of a man we all
recognised, although his photo did him no justice.

“
This is the profile of rock star and humanitarian Don Fisher.
He came to prominence in the late 1970s with his band ‘London’s
Burning’. After one major mainstream hit they played mainly to
their own fans. At that point they may have faded into obscurity if
Don had not married a high profile bleached blonde rock journalist
who was making a name for herself by swearing on mainstream
television in a popular punk rock programme. Three oddly named
children later, he teamed up with a few others and launched one of
the most successful charities in recent history. Anyone under forty
will probably not remember his singing career, but they will
certainly know him for his charity work and high profile
daughters.”