Dispossession (40 page)

Item: When they buried Marlon, there must have been a
body in the box. A body in the right condition at post-mortem, with a likely
cause of death.

If I remembered rightly—which I did, absolutely—cause of
death had been suffocation, following aspiration of his own vomit when
unconscious through drink.

o0o

Scimitar had taken a lot of bad press, but they’d kept their
contract, ferrying prisoners to and fro. That had surprised no one, I thought,
despite the shock-horror stories and the ranting editorials; the policy was too
new to be reversed, and whatever the official enquiry concluded the government
wasn’t likely to revoke a contract on the basis of one mistake.

Which presumably had been a significant factor in Scimitar’s
calculations, what made the job worth while. ‘We’ll take some stick, but we’ll
get off with it in the end,’ they must have said to each other before they said
yes to Mrs Thomas, or whoever it was who’d approached them with a proposition.

Even so, it was hard for me to see why they’d accepted.
Money, of course—Marlon had raided a string of building societies, he’d got
away with over a hundred grand and almost none of it had been recovered—but
Scimitar’s major contracts would be worth millions, and any security firm
trades largely on image. Taking a serious dent in that image, even for a
pay-off in the high fives, didn’t seem such a good move to me.

Still, they’d done it. They must have done, this scam wouldn’t
work else. With them on the team, it was almost easy. Leave the court building
with Marlon aboard; then at some remote spot en route pull up next to another
vehicle, and do a quick swap. Boy out, body in. Marlon goes off free and clear;
the van doesn’t even finish its journey to the nick. The guards drive straight
to the nearest hospital, say they heard noises, checked, found him apparently
unconscious and this bottle with him, doctor...

They identify him, and so of course does the grieving
mother. If they need fingerprints for official confirmation, it’s in their
hands to collect them, so that’s easy done; they do it once there in the
morgue, under the doctors’ eyes for witness, then they tear that set up later
and get another from Marlon.

The difficulty, of course, would be the body. Not a
look-alike, necessarily, but they’d need a kid of the right age and like
enough, so that no one at the hospital would question it when the papers
printed photos of the dead boy. And he’d need to be freshly dead and
convincingly so, vomit-choked throat and his blood full of alcohol, no
significant signs of other damage.

Not impossible, but this at least was not easy. I wondered
if Mrs Thomas knew anyone who could supply it, who could pick a kid off the
street and kill him reliably and to specification; or if Scimitar had perhaps
taken that also upon themselves. They’d have the organisation, after all. They’d
named, traced and collected one protestor out of a colony, they could certainly
find a shaven-headed muscular lad for body-double duties. There were enough
around.

And from what I knew, had heard and had guessed already
about them, Scimitar had the ruthlessness also. Weak on motive, maybe, but the
rest was there.

Things were falling into place a little, questions were
starting to be answered. I’d uncovered a scam that must have included a murder;
not enough evidence to go to the police with it, but no real wonder if I’d
wanted to investigate a little on my own account.

It still didn’t tie in with Nolan, though, or my mother. Nor
with Luke and his trees, nor Suzie and her brother’s terrible death.

I turned back to the computer, and paged up to read the next
screenful of my notes.

o0o

Item: Vernon Deverill’s work-crews don’t speak English.
They live in camps like navvies, don’t mix with the locals, don’t visit the
pubs. There are Scimitar guards on the camp gates, to keep the men inside and
visitors out.

That seemed odd, but I didn’t immediately understand the
implications. And of course I hadn’t spelled them out, when I’d written these
notes. Why would I need to? I knew why facts were relevant, and I wasn’t the
world’s fastest typist; I wasn’t going to explain things to myself. Alas...

There was a sudden burst of conversation on the stairs,
voices and laughter. I glanced around, and saw a bunch of lads in the doorway.
Cues in hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, “the club’s closed tonight.”

“Oh? Why’s that, then?”

“Lee’s sick.”

“Where’s Suzie?”

They weren’t aggressive, exactly, just disappointed at
having their evening spoiled. I gave them a smile, and, “Suzie’s busy. I’m her
husband,” added before they could ask.

“Yeah, we know that. Seen you here with her. Lucky man,”
from one of them. “Can’t you turn a table on for us?”

“Sorry. I’ll be locking up in a minute.”

Grunts and mutters, but they went away like good lads. I
thought maybe I should put a notice on the door and lock myself in; but I didn’t
think I’d be here long. And it was better for business, probably, to apologise
and explain in person if anyone else did come along. Last thing I wanted was to
see Suzie’s business hurt.

o0o

If Deverill was using foreign workers, and keeping them
penned in, chances were their papers weren’t in order. Illegal immigrants, most
likely. Cheap labour, no union troubles, no insurance payments and he could
skimp on Health and Safety except when the inspectors came around. Though
inspectors, of course, could be bribed, as could their bosses. That was
Deverill’s real area of expertise in any case, knowing who was vulnerable and
who could be made amenable, where a little money could exert a lot of
influence.

If anyone did get hurt, they could be whisked away from the
site as quietly as they’d been whisked in; and what better way to whisk them in
and out, than in a security van? No windows, to say who or how many it carried.
Invisible transport that was, for any number of men.

That would be how they came into the country, too. The ‘I’
in SUSI stood for
International
; doubtless
their vans ferried to and fro across the Channel every day. So long as the
paperwork stood up, no customs officer would expect to search such a vehicle.

The only real surprise was that my mind hadn’t tracked this
way before. I hadn’t had the details, okay; but the opportunities were so
obvious suddenly, with hindsight. A bent security firm must be a priceless
asset, to its owners and to any bent company that employed it.

Though it would need to be bent all the way, right up to the
very top...

Item: Vernon Deverill set up Scimitar Securities in the
mid-eighties, shortly after he married Dorothy Tuck. It may have been her idea;
she was on the board from its inception, and took an active role in running the
company. And when they divorced in ’91, she took SS as settlement in full,
though she could have screwed him for a lot more.

Since it passed into her sole ownership, SS became SUS
became SUSI in quick succession. It’s raised its profile enormously, landed
several juicy contracts—govt and private sector both—and made a small fortune
for Dorothy. No question, it’s her baby.

o0o

Oh, fuck.

o0o

Item: Lindsey Nolan is a computer buff. He’s not just
Deverill’s chief accountant, he’s the tech adviser also; he set up all the
systems that launder Deverill’s dirty money. He also approves and supplies
finance for everything. Which means he knows all Deverill’s most dangerous
secrets, which is why Deverill is so keen to get him out of jail.

And also to find out who put him there; because Deverill
is right, Nolan is far too good at hiding things to get caught in so obvious a
scam. If he was ripping off a charity—which he might, he might well, he
presumably has no conscience or he couldn’t do the job that he does—he’d at
least do it clever, not stupid. He’s a clever man.

o0o

Item: My mother is a stupid, stupid woman. She was
tumbling Nolan before he did a runner, but only because she’s writing up
Deverill for the Journal. She never asked him about SUSI.

o0o

Well, no. Why should she have?

I was trying to figure that out, trying to second-guess
myself, when I heard someone else on the stairs. No voices this time, just one
person in a hurry.

I looked round, ready to turn them away with a smile and
another apology; but it was Suzie who appeared at a run, already turning for
the last flight up to the flat before she registered the open door and the
lights. Suzie who checked abruptly, who stared in and saw me.

I went around the bar to meet her halfway, and for a moment
I thought she was going to hit me again.

“Jonty...” No violence this time after all, but she gripped
my shirt in both fists and there was a break in her voice, almost tears in her
eyes as she said, “What are you doing here? I’ve been ringing and ringing and
you didn’t answer, I was
scared
, I thought
they’d come back...”

So I found myself apologising after all, though I’d done
nothing to apologise for. I hugged her close, because she so obviously needed
that, and said, “I’m sorry, love, I didn’t think. I found the keys, and I
wanted the computer. How’s Lee?”

“He’s going to be okay,” she muttered. “I wouldn’t have left
him, only I phoned my mum when I couldn’t get you and she came, she’s with him
now. She’ll take him home when they let her, feed him chicken soup and fuss him
to death, he’ll be fine.”

She pushed me onto a bar-stool and climbed into my lap, no
weight at all; and yes, her cheek was definitely wet where she was rubbing it
against my shoulder, and I had the taste of her spiky hair in my mouth as I
said, “I thought chicken soup was just a Jewish thing.”

“Nah, chicken soup’s universal. What are you
doing
down here?”

“Learning things,” I said. “I cracked that password.”

“Oh. Good. What things?”

Too much to explain, it felt like, but I’d never get away
with that. “Deverill’s ex-wife,” I said. “She owns Scimitar.” It was too
confusing, to say SUSI.

“Christ. Where did you get that from?”

I couldn’t tell her, the file didn’t say. But, “Public
records, probably. It wouldn’t be a secret.”

She just grunted, then slipped off my knee and went to look
at the computer screen. Me, I stayed where I was, thinking how ironic it was.
There was Vernon Deverill, hiring me to find out what had happened to Lindsey
Nolan but having no secrets from his ex; and there was me playing private
investigator, having apparently already uncovered or deduced some connection
between Nolan and SUSI that I must have thought significant, and I couldn’t
tell him because I’d known it would get straight back to her. The pawn pinned,
the spy ultimately compromised...

“Hey,” Suzie said softly.

“What?”

“This.
Item:
” she read
aloud. “
Jack Chu was buying a property that
overlooked SUSI’s compound. SUSI wanted it, but the property was a church and
the Church Commissioners preferred to sell to a project that would use the
building rather than demolish it. So Jack Chu won; and Jack Chu is dead.
What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said quickly, though I was suddenly afraid
that I did. “I guess I was just putting in everything I could find out about
Scimitar. Just making lists, that’s all. It might only be a coincidence.”

Nothing but silence to that; she didn’t think so, any more
than I had. Any more than I did now.

Then, “There’s something else,” she said slowly. “The
evening paper today, I was reading it in the hospital while they did their
tests on Lee,” and she had it with her, pulled it out of her jacket pocket now,
rolled into a tight cylinder.

“What?”

“You’d better look.”

She laid it out on the bar between us, turned it round so
that I could read it, held the edges flat for me.

Not the headline story, but the second lead:
GIRL DIES IN FALL
, it read.

The body of a young woman was discovered this morning, in
woods near the Leavenhall Bypass development. First indications are that she
died of massive internal injuries, after apparently falling from a tree. The
police have not yet named the woman, and they said they couldn’t be sure yet
that her death was an accident; her body shows other injuries inflicted before
the fall. They are appealing for witnesses.

Leavenhall has been the focus of continued protest
against the road-building programme. An unconfirmed report says that the dead
woman had been an active member of the protest group.

We looked at each other across the bar-top there, and now it
was me that wanted the mute reassurance of a hug. She didn’t give me that,
though. Instead she gave me words, the same words that were in my own head that
I didn’t want said out loud.

“Luke,” she said. “It was Luke, wasn’t it? They let her go,
like you said they would, and it was Luke who killed her.”

“We don’t know that,” I said weakly, “we can’t be sure.” But
I was horribly afraid that we could. Trees were Luke all over, we’d seen
already today how he liked to tree his victims. And that made better sense than
the alternative, that Dean had killed her after all. At least, if you could
look at the world through Luke’s cold eyes, it made sense. She was a tree-killer,
therefore he killed her. But before she died—as he dragged her up the tree,
perhaps, as she desperately pleaded for her life—she would have said,
“Not me, it wasn’t me, they made me do it. It was that
man, that Dean. They took me to this place, Arlen Bank it was called, and they
did, they did such things to me, Luke, I couldn’t help it, I’d have done
anything to make them stop...”

But nothing stopped Luke. He took her up the tree, and
dropped her down; and then he came looking for Arlen Bank, for Dean. And I took
him there, and I brought them together. I even yelled out Dean’s name, to give
Luke the identification he needed; and how much responsibility, how many deaths
could one man carry on inadequate shoulders...?