Suzie and the Monsters (13 page)

‘Look, just fuck off, will you. We both know there’s no way I’m walking out of here, so just get it over with.’

‘Suit yourself.’ I shove his sliced up boxer shorts into his mouth, and wrap cord around his head, and between his teeth, to make sure they stay there. ‘In twenty four hours, people will arrive here for work. Monday morning. This lift will go up and down all day. And you see this cord?’ I pull it upwards sharply, making him scream through his gag. ‘It’s attached to the lift. You’ll be fine so long as no one goes higher than the first floor. I think you can imagine what will happen when they do.’

He shouts furiously at me through the gag. I put my finger to my lips and wait until he quiets down. ‘I will return only once. Think about my offer, John Smith.’

I blow him a kiss as I climb out of the elevator shaft, then remove the screwdrivers so that the doors can close. I leave him there in pitch blackness to contemplate a horrible fate.

*

Back at my flat, unobserved as far as I can tell, I get a couple of hours’ sleep before waking, heart racing, from dreams of terror, darker and more intense than usual. I take a long shower, aromatic with almonds and carnations, to wake up and ease the tension from my muscles, then sit down for a few minutes with a mug of hot, sweet coffee to plan my life.

One thing is certain at least. I can’t stay in this flat. Cradling my coffee, I sit at the computer and start backing up everything important to an encrypted disc image on the external hard drive. I also start copying my CD collection onto the external drive. It’s going to take hours to get through the collection.

Eventually the coffee cools, and with that excuse gone I make myself go through the rest of the house sorting out what can be left for charity and what really needs to be thrown out. The Meteoritas and Tributes, much as I love them, have to go, but there’s a large collection of designer clothes and footwear that can be left. I can’t take everything with me.

I pack a suitcase with what I consider to be essential, including the dark goddess ensemble from last Saturday, the black corset, gold-studded Dior sandals, the Oroblu Milly hold-ups and Dolce and Gabbana black tiered skirt. I also pack my backpack and my stripper gear, a couple of T-shirts and lots of make up. The one thing I’m missing is trousers. I’ll keep wearing the Dolce and Gabbana floral print dress for now, although it’s a little crumpled and stained from the wet grass and the dirty elevator shaft, and the Burberry sandals. And Cleo’s pink jacket, even more precious to me now, although it’s a stark mismatch.

With that all sorted and decided, I get to work cleaning the house, removing as far as possible all evidence of who has lived here. From what I’ve seen in CSI, it certainly wouldn’t stop the forensics experts finding plenty of DNA, and they’d have a field day in the stairwell, but I’m not really expecting them to come looking. I’m just being cautious, and it’s one way to make absolutely sure I haven’t accidentally left something important behind.

Finally, about two o’clock, I’m happy with the place, and have one last shower to take the smell of cleaning chemicals and dust away. By three o’clock I’ve finally finished with the CD collection, packed the external hard drive in the suitcase, and erased the internal hard drive. After thinking about that for a moment, I remove the internal drive from the computer and throw it into the black bin bag that I will be taking to the skip. I check my iPhone one last time before switching that off and throwing it into the bin bag too.

The were several messages from Alia, all about the contents of the briefcase and security chest, the earliest last night, the latest saying that Peony and Andy were round at her place helping. It’s all quite cryptic.

*

I met Peony through Waterfront Dave. I call her the queen of the underworld, because she knows everyone. She’s forty-something, quite attractive but quiet, unobtrusive, so that she often just fades into the background, untouched by the arguments that cascade around her. She often appears distracted, lost in thought, frequently forgetful, unaware of subtlety and innuendo, and she will react to verbal abuse with an innocent confusion. But this is just her Clark Kent disguise, because hidden behind the glasses is a mind of steel that observes everything and forgets nothing. She is also a money launderer with a large international network of agents who can distribute cash and create ghost companies.

I’ve gotten to be good friends with her, as good as two people can be who keep deep secrets. She has given me lots of advice on how to maintain and create my various alternative identities. The whole problem of biometric passports, for example. Through me, she and Alia have got to know each other quite well.

Andy is Jamie’s little brother. He and I studied computer science at Edinburgh University back at the turn of the millennium, and even shared a flat for a couple of years. As nerds go he’s pretty cute, and I enjoyed flirting with him and going out with him on ‘not a date’ dates. When he tried to push the relationship further, despite it being clear I was generally only interested in girls, I told him, ‘I’m not, and never will be, your girlfriend or your lover, but you can give me oral any time you like.’ Which turned out to be really very often, whenever he didn’t have a real girlfriend, and sometimes then also. In return, I was quite happy to advertise his linguistic skills to all my girl-friends.

It was at one of our Christmas parties that Alia and Jamie met, and they’ve been inseparable ever since, which is great for Alia but rather a problem for me. Both Jamie and Andy knew me as Sarah Bartlett twelve years ago, and here I am as Suzie Kew, not having aged a day. Jamie is darkly suspicious of me, while Andy is just full of curiosity that I can usually divert into other entertainment.

When I arrive at Alia’s flat at five o’clock, having been first to the skip and then to check into a suite at the Renaissance St Pancras, it’s Andy who opens the door excitedly, and within seconds our lips are locked, French kissing hungrily in the open doorway, a familiar contest to see who will break away first. A few minutes later, Alia grabs my ear and pulls me away, leaving Andy to bring in the two jute bags containing my wine collection which I’ve brought as a gift for Alia. ‘Come on,’ she says, ignoring my plaintive mewl, ‘and please try not to piss off Jamie too much. I’m the one who has to sleep with her.’

The other two women are seated at the dining room table. I may be hundreds of years older, but I always feel a bit like a guilty teenager in situations like this. I am much better at dealing with people on a one-to-one basis. Peony acknowledges me with a glance and a wave of her fingers, but stays focussed on the conversation she’s having quietly over the phone. One of her hands is scrolling through screens on her iPad, while the other taps intermittently on the keyboard of her Sony Vaio. Jamie ignores me, glaring furiously at the pages of her novel — Atonement, I think.

Alia sits down in front of her laptop, between Jamie and Peony, and I can’t see what she’s working on. Scattered across the table are the remains of a third laptop, the hard drive having been removed and attached somehow via USB to Alia’s computer. This is obviously Andy’s handiwork.

‘Charlie cut open the box and briefcase yesterday,’ Alia explains. ‘When you didn’t respond, I picked up the contents. The box contained about fifty thousand pounds, mostly in twenties, a lot of it sequential, and there was a laptop in the briefcase. I’ve sold the cash to Peony for a clean forty, and I’ve promised Charlie five. What do you want done with the rest?’

‘Fifty-fifty? Half for me, half for the agency?’

She nods. ‘Good. Thanks. We need it. Andy has bypassed or cracked Alex’s passwords. The only thing of interest is spreadsheets going back five years which Peony and I have been working through. We think we may have figured out what he was up to. The really interesting thing is that there are account details, including names, passwords, security questions and answers, for well over a hundred accounts. Eighty six of these are active, all with a balance over one hundred grand.’

‘So Alex has access to eight and half million pounds?’

‘Closer to twelve million. All transfers from these accounts go to two accounts. The large payments go to an account in the Caymans, a company called Victoria Carlos Investments. The smaller payments are marked “bank charges” but match payments made to Alex’s personal account.

‘So, we think Alex has been giving preferential treatment to these selected accounts within his wider portfolio, although it’s never obvious. On any given day, only a few will profit massively, while the others may take a hit, but the average interest rate across these accounts is significantly higher than the average across the other accounts in his portfolio.’

‘So in a way he’s stealing from his other clients to make a larger profit for Victoria Carlos Investments, whoever that is.’

‘It’s just a shell company,’ Peony says. ‘The money bounces elsewhere and disappears.’

‘So was Alex funding this himself, or is this just a sophisticated money laundering operating?’

‘Looks like the latter,’ Alia says. She’s obviously quite excited by this investigation. ‘The way it works is, about once a month a new trading account is opened with Alex, with a hundred thousand pounds initial capital. Over time, this accumulates interest at, let’s say, two percent each month, it varies of course, and after three years the balance reaches two hundred thousand and the account is closed.’

‘I wish my ISA had that interest rate,’ I joke. ‘So why take the money out?’

‘Probably because all these accounts are based on stolen identities,’ Peony explains, ‘and the bigger the account the more likely someone is to start paying attention. This is a nice little earner, and if one of the accounts gets spotted by the authorities then, well, it’s not a huge loss. It’s a really nice scheme, in a way, but it does rely on having a quick-thinking trader to manage the accounts like this without being detected by the company’s internal watchdogs.’

‘So what did Alex get out of this?’

‘That’s not so clear. Whenever an account was closed, only two hundred thousand was transferred to the Caymans. Anything remaining was transferred to Alex’s account, but we’re only talking a few thousand pounds a month, and that only during the past couple of years. But whoever’s behind this was willing to trust Alex with a lot of money. Millions.’

‘Have you worked out why Alex has been so paranoid recently, or why someone has been after him?’

‘No, but it looks like the Eurozone crisis has made his investment strategy more erratic over the past few months.’

My head is starting to hurt from all this talk of finance. Technology is fun, and I enjoy keeping up with developments, but finance and politics are a different matter, full of manipulation and deceit. It’s no surprise that the word ‘vampire’ (or ‘vampyre’, if you prefer) entered the English language in 1732 as a political tool, an attack on the ruling nobles — by the Tories, of all people. I think it was Voltaire who wrote that, in Paris and London, ‘there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces.’

Still, it’s strange to think that the Eurozone crisis may be responsible for my getting shot on Friday night. ‘So,’ I say, ‘twelve million pounds... Can I have it?’

‘There’s nothing to stop you taking it,’ Peony replies indifferently. ‘Just be prepared that whoever this money belongs to will come looking for you.’

‘They’re already looking for me. Suzie Kew needs to disappear anyway. She may as well disappear rich.’

‘As long as she stays disappeared,’ Jamie mutters quietly, not looking up from her book.

‘You’ve got a Caymans account?’ Peony asks. I nod. ‘Good. If you’re going to take it, do it now, before whoever owns it decides to move it somewhere else. I would have moved it already, myself, but you’ve got lucky. Maybe. Transfer it to the Caymans account, and I can help you make it disappear from there.’

The printer whines into life, and pages and pages of account details start sliding out. Eighty six accounts. It takes Alia and I, hunched up cosily next to each other, in front of her laptop, about half an hour to figure out how to do the first one, during which time Peony tidies her stuff away and finishes her tea. Andy gets bored and wanders away to watch television, and Jamie, radiating tension, hides away from us in her bedroom, making Alia sigh heavily.

‘Good bye, Suzie honey,’ Peony says as she leaves. ‘You be extra careful, okay?’

‘I will. Thanks for everything, Peony.’

Having worked out the system, Alia divides the accounts between us, and I use Andy’s laptop. It takes us about five minutes to work through one account each, so it will take hours to get through them all. By eight o’clock, fatigue is setting in, making it difficult to focus, so we agree to take a half-hour break. We make a pot of tea, and when Alia disappears into her bedroom to chat with Jamie, I join Andy in front of the television. He doesn’t need any encouragement to explore my secret garden or drink from its sacred pool.

Afterwards, relaxing side by side on the sofa, I ask, ‘So, how’s it going with Nina?’

He sighs. ‘I really like her, and the sex is great, but we’re arguing more and more.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s really frustrating. One minute she’s all over me, and the next she’s pushing me away.’

‘She’s aromantic, you idiot. Just treat her like a best friend that you fuck from time to time.’

‘I know, but sometimes I just want to grab her and kiss her, which pisses her off. And I can’t keep up with her in bed. I hate that I’m lying next to her after we make love, if you can call it that, completely exhausted, and she’s lying there wondering which of her other fuck-friends she can call.’

‘Well, maybe you should exercise more. Go for a run in the mornings, build up some stamina. And for God’s sake, if you really like her then stop thinking of her as your girlfriend.’

*

At eleven o’clock I return again to the warehouse on Riverside opposite Dodgeson Home Security. I approach carefully, making sure that the security is still disabled, that no one has gone in or come out, which they haven’t. As far as I could work out, the place contains tonnes of plastic lawnmower components. I don’t know if anyone will appear for work here on Monday morning. Certainly the lift won’t go any higher than the first floor — there is no second floor. I summon the lift down to the ground floor, then send it back up again, before cautiously forcing open, and jamming, the lift doors.