Inhuman Remains (29 page)

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Authors: Quintin Jardine

Tags: #Fiction, #Crime, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Scotland

BOOK: Inhuman Remains
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His eyebrows rose; that’s about as dramatic as he gets. ‘That’s fairly typical of her, I’m afraid. Adrienne always was a law unto herself. She has the odd beliefs that flamboyance entitles you to be rude, and that unacceptable behaviour can be explained as eccentricity. The arrival of her son was a classic example of that.’
‘She isn’t all bad.’
‘Nobody is, my dear. She was a damned good agent for your mother when she started to write her children’s stories.’ He smiled. ‘The trouble is, the woman still sends me a copy of every book published by every one of her clients. They’re filling up my damn shelves. Take some of them when you leave, please, Primavera, for Tom, and yourself.’
I promised that I would. We finished breakfast, and I did the dishes, while he went off to work. He’s a craftsman carpenter, designing, carving and painting chess sets, and other pieces, like the cuckoo clock he gave to Tom and me.
When I was done . . . Dad doesn’t have a dish-washer because it never occurred to Mum and him to buy one . . . I called Fanette, in Adrienne’s office. She became a bit standoffish when she realised it was me, not having forgiven me for ripping strips off her in our previous discussion, but eventually she told me that, no, she hadn’t heard from Adrienne and, yes, she had been expecting her back in the office that morning. Of course, without her, she was terribly busy, so if I’d excuse her . . . I did, with a private vow that I would sort her out when I had time.
I’d brought my aunt’s mobile with me from Spain, as a temporary replacement for my own. I used it to send texts to my number and to Frank’s, a pointless gesture, as I neither expected nor received replies, but one that I felt I had to make.
Dad doesn’t have a computer either, but he does have the
Courier
, the
Herald
and the
Scotsman
delivered every morning. I read through their news pages, but none of them was keeping tabs on the story of two missing English tourists. (If they had been from Dundee, Glasgow, or Edinburgh, that would have been another matter.)
I felt helpless after that, frustrated that there was nothing more I could do. I kept it from Dad, though, as I devoted myself to looking after him, not that he needs much. My mother was a formidable cook, and after her death, I’d had recurring visions of poor old widowed David living on a diet of Tesco ready-meals and Wall’s ice-cream. Those notions were banished in the spell when Tom and I lived with him, before moving to Spain. I discovered that he had taken over Mum’s mantle: the vegetable garden and the fruit bushes were as well tended and productive as ever, and in fact he was cooking so damn much that every so often he’d have to deplete the stock in the freezer by catering for a church evening function.
The main way in which I cared for him was simply by listening to him as we sat together over meals, or in the garden, providing a ready ear, and an alternative viewpoint when I disagreed with him. That was how he and Mum had lived out their lives, and that was what he missed most of all. As we talked, I discovered he was not as solitary a figure as I had thought. He and Mac Blackstone, Oz’s retired dentist father and Tom’s other granddad, kept in touch, and visited each other frequently. It didn’t surprise me when he told me, for Mac’s a good man, but I was delighted to hear it.
It wasn’t until the third day of my visit that I thought about Mark Kravitz, and realised I owed him a call. I rang his land-line. As always he was brisk and business-like when he answered.
‘Mark, it’s Primavera. I’m in Scotland, at my dad’s.’
‘You’re safe?’ he exclaimed. ‘Thank Christ for that.’
‘Didn’t Susie tell you I was?’
‘Yes, but it didn’t stop me worrying, especially when I saw a report in the
Telegraph
on Saturday morning about a missing English couple. Them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it as bad as it read?’
‘Yes. They haven’t found any bodies yet, but I’m having trouble looking on the bright side.’ I paused. ‘Mark, are you still up for checking a couple of things for me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then would you please look into a French mining company called Energi, and find out what you can about its ultimate ownership, and its finances, especially about a twenty-million-euro investment in Hotel Casino d’Amuseo. Also, find out, if you can, whether there is any money still held in the company bank account in Luxembourg.’
‘Will do.’
‘Thanks. Hey,’ I added, ‘remember Lidia Bromberg?’
‘Yes. You didn’t go to meet her, did you?’
‘I didn’t have to. The bitch tried to kidnap me in Sevilla, her and Councillor Caballero.’
‘I’m not going to say I told you so,’ he murmured, after a few seconds’ silence. ‘Oh, hell, I am. How did you get away?’
‘Frank rescued me.’
‘Frank?’
‘Yes. He and Hermann Gresch were planted in the operation by Interpol. He was recruited in prison by MI5.’
‘You what?’ he gasped.
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘Prim, nothing about those people surprises me. Mind you . . .’
‘In that case here’s another for you: someone on the inside sold them out. Frank reported back to his controller and he was betrayed.’
‘With seventy-seven million euros in the pot that doesn’t stun me either. Leave all that with me, Prim. I’ll make those checks.’ He paused. ‘But tell me: what are you going to do with this information when you get it?’
‘I don’t know for sure, but one way or another it’s going to help me get even with whoever did this to my aunt and my cousin.’
Thirty-six
M
ark called me back next morning, just as Dad and I were about to head off on a shopping expedition to Perth. I still have a few items of clothing at his place, but I’d exhausted the summer stock.
‘I’ve done your digging,’ he began. ‘First and foremost, the money’s been moved out of Luxembourg. Pintore and Company, the lawyers, weren’t for telling me anything, so I had my London solicitor call them and imply that they were representing an investor in the project who was getting worried about his cash. They admitted that the funds had been transferred to a new account, in the Cayman Islands, outside their control. It was done legally and above board, on the basis of a written instruction signed by the chairman, Alastair Rowland, over the company seal. It was delivered to their offices by courier last Thursday, and the money was transferred the same day.’
‘More or less as I thought. What about Energi?’
‘As you said, they stand to lose twenty million euros if the project collapses. But don’t read too much into the transfer: there may have been a legitimate reason for it. The test is what happens to the money next.’
‘Come on, it’s a scam. Frank told me as much.’
‘Maybe, but I haven’t found any proof of that, not yet at any rate.’
‘Why did Energi make the investment in the first place?’
‘On the instructions of the nominal owners of the company, the Banovsky Corporation.’
‘That fits with what Frank told me he found when he broke into Emil Caballero’s house.’
‘He broke in? Your cousin was full of surprises, wasn’t he?’
‘Much good were they to him. What have you found out about Banovsky?’
‘At the moment, not a hell of a lot. It’s based in Bratislava, but as a corporate entity it doesn’t really exist any more. It’s an old family business going back several generations. That’s all I know for now, but I’m going to do some more research to build up the complete picture.’
‘Who runs Energi?’
‘Hired hands. There’s a CEO, a director of mining operations, and an accountant, none of them shareholders. I’ve spoken to a French mining-sector specialist. He told me that Energi is highly geared; currently it has over seventy-five million in bank debt, and that’s just about its turnover. That borrowing is supported by the book value of its assets, but the cost of servicing it has pushed it into the red for the last few years. The time-bomb, though, is that its mines are approaching exhaustion, and they don’t have any reserves to tap, so those assets are actually significantly overvalued. Its future is tied to the success of Hotel Casino d’Amuseo.’
‘Won’t they be able to write off the twenty million against tax? Wouldn’t that help?’
‘No. If the owners of the company, the Banovsky Corporation, could come up with seventy-five million euros to eliminate bank debt, that would help. Otherwise the plug will be pulled.’
I frowned. ‘Seventy-five million,’ I repeated. ‘More or less the sum that’s just been moved out of the Hotel Casino d’Amuseo account.’
‘Yes, but again, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Whoever owns Energi, whoever owns the Banovsky Corporation, they could have set up the scam themselves, to keep the business afloat. Couldn’t they?’
‘They could,’ Mark conceded, ‘if it is a scam. If it’s not, it’s a corporate gambler’s last throw. Even if it is bent, it can be presented that way.’
‘So,’ I asked, the seventy-five-million-euro question, ‘who does own the damn thing?’
‘Not “who”, Primavera, “what”. This much I do know: the owner of Banovsky is a private numbered trust established through a Swiss bank, and it would take an order from a judge to reveal who the beneficiary is. To make that order the judge would have to see strong evidence of likely criminal involvement.’
‘Well?’
‘How often do I have to say this? There is no such evidence. Energi will say that it made the investment in d’Amuseo as a step towards securing its future by diversifying into other sectors.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because my contact has already asked the CEO, and that was his reply. Energi is just another investor. If this does turn out to be a fraud, and the owner of Energi is behind it, we have a perfect circle, pretty much a perfect crime.’
I sighed. ‘So that’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘How about Lidia Bromberg? Does she have a past?’
‘Not one that I can uncover.’
‘And Sebastian and Willie, where do they fit in?’
‘Who the hell are they?’
I’d forgotten he didn’t know; I explained.
‘Hired heavies,’ he declared, at once. ‘Hit-men, bought and paid for. You’ll never find them either. Nor,’ he continued, ‘will you ever find a trace of Frank and his mother, if they’ve been as efficient with that end of the operation as they seem to have been with the rest.’ He must have heard my reaction. ‘Sorry, Prim. They’re your family. I shouldn’t have been so blunt, but it’s the truth, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s a truth I’ve been trying not to face,’ I admitted. ‘But I can’t avoid it any longer. They’re gone, and the door’s closed on the affair. I suppose all I can do now is thank my lucky stars that they didn’t kill me too when they had the chance.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mark asked sharply. I filled him in on the only relevant piece of the story that he didn’t know (I’ll never give him all the detail; not the personal stuff), and added Alex’s view of the reason I’d been spared.
‘You are undoubtedly crazy,’ he told me, when I’d finished. ‘You are also very lucky, for I don’t buy your pal’s theory. Suppose you had disappeared along with the others? Yes, it would have made news, but given your history, when no bodies turned up, it would have been written up as Primavera buggering off again. A lot of money was spent searching for you once before, remember. I don’t believe that would have happened twice.’ I could almost hear him shake his head. ‘A taser,’ he murmured. ‘Jesus.’
‘Hey,’ I retorted. ‘I was shot with the fucking thing. Now I know for myself how effective they are, I’ll be getting another one.’
‘Not in Britain, please. They’re illegal.’
‘Why should the bad people have all the advantages?’ I protested.
‘Because that’s the way real life is,’ Mark replied seriously. ‘Look at the thing we’ve just been investigating. We think it’s a crime, but it isn’t, not yet at any rate. We’re no further forward.’
As I thought about that, I realised he was wrong. ‘We are,’ I countered. ‘We might not know who Alastair Rowland is, but we’ve got a sample of his handwriting, in that law office in Luxembourg.’
‘You know,’ he said, ‘sometimes you can be smarter than you usually act. Leave that one with me. I’ll call you if I make progress.’
‘Okay. If it’s more than a couple of days, you’d better use my temporary mobile. I’m heading home on Thursday.’ I gave him Adrienne’s number.
‘Thanks, but . . . there’s something else. When you go back, could you do it via London?’
‘That’s what I am doing. I could rearrange my flights, I suppose, and stop over.’
‘Do that. Come to my place, but let me know when you’ll be arriving.’ He gave me an address, and said it was near Paddington.
‘I’ll do it,’ I promised, ‘but what’s this about?’
‘Someone wants to meet you, that’s all.’ If I hadn’t known him as well as I did, I might have thought he was being evasive.

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