Rhonda Weiss. ‘Your lot are pulling the strings here, aren’t they? That’s why you’re here. You’re not interested in some middle-ranking twerp who sold information for money. It goes deeper than that.’
‘I can’t comment on that,’ the woman replied, quietly.
‘Well, I can.’ Keith Barker’s voice was laden with bitterness. ‘Through his company, Davor Boras is a major supporter of the Labour Party. Through his charitable foundation, he backs the Tories. He helps both of them, plays one off against the other. Some of the things he’s asked me to do, people he’s asked me to check up on, had nothing to do with business.’
‘And yet you’ve been fired, Keith, for doing his dirty work. You might as well tell me: we could find a journalist in around two seconds who’d call the Continental IT press office and confirm it.’
‘Yes,’ said Lancelot Hamilton. ‘Formal notice of dismissal was delivered to my client’s home late last night.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘Redundancy, I believe.’
‘That was quick off the mark, considering your client hasn’t been charged yet.’
‘What were the severance terms?’ Ray Wilding asked quietly.
‘That information’s privileged.’
The sergeant glared at the lawyer. ‘Do you think I’m an idiot? It’s fuck-all privileged. You’ve just said that it was delivered from Boras to your client’s home, not to your office, and not through you. The Met have already searched the place; they have an existing warrant so they can go back any time and pick the document up.’
‘Two years’ salary, in lieu of notice,’ Hamilton muttered.
‘Louder, please, for the tape.’
He repeated the terms of Barker’s sacking.
‘What’s your annual salary, Keith?’ asked Steele.
‘My business.’
‘Who paid you? Boras personally, or Continental IT? If it’s the latter we can find out easily.’
‘Okay! Two hundred and fifty thousand.’
The inspector whistled. ‘So you’ve pocketed half a million. And I bet a good chunk of it goes into your pension fund to minimise tax. If that’s the going rate for gross misconduct, I’m strongly tempted . . .’ He grinned and broke off. ‘No, I’d better not say that with the tape running.’
Barker shot him a half-smile. ‘Perhaps not.’
‘Where does that take us?’ Steele went on. ‘You’ve been bought off. Clearly, you can’t work for Boras any longer, not after this. You might even have to do a year or so inside, unless the Home Office leans on the Crown Prosecution Service too, but it’ll be worth it to you, won’t it? I can fire questions at you all day and you’ll keep your mouth shut.’
‘That’s the way it is,’ the man said cheerfully. ‘And it serves you bastards right, for implying to the press that I’m somehow mixed up in these murders.’
‘Hey, Mr McGuire implied no such thing. All he said was “no comment”. He let you off lightly. Of course your arrest was linked to our investigation. You were trying to trace our prime suspect, on behalf of your boss . . .’ Barker made to interrupt, but Steele cut him off. ‘Save it, we’ll just take that as read. The follow-up question is, what would have happened if you’d found him? After Boras’s statement at our press briefing on Thursday, we have grounds for thinking that his life would have been in danger.’
‘Why were you trying to trace him?’ Ray Wilding asked. His intervention seemed spur-of-the-moment, but he and Steele had conducted many interviews together.
‘You’re wasting your time too.’ Barker looked back at the inspector. ‘Look, can we please wrap this up? Mr Hamilton has secured an agreement that I be bailed after this interview and I really would like to catch some of the play at Lord’s.’
‘Yes,’ said Steele, pleasantly. ‘I can imagine; it’s a nice day for it. I have to get back to my wife too, Becky and Ray are going for lunch and I’m sure that Rhonda has to fit in Sainsbury’s before she reports back to her bosses that you haven’t said anything that would land any of them in trouble.’
He started to rise, then seemed to change his mind. ‘But, Keith,’ he murmured, ‘while you’re in the Tavern stand watching Middlesex whack it around, there’s something you might want to think about. That funny Jack Frost bank account of yours, the one the Met uncovered when they searched your place . . .’
‘Winnings on the horses, old boy.’
Steele looked at Stallings and laughed out loud. ‘Of course. And I’m sure you’ve still got the betting slips. You’d better have them.’ He paused, for long enough to allow the first crack to appear in Barker’s mask of control. ‘You’ve moved a total of ninety thousand pounds through your personal account into old Jack Frost over the last three years. I’m a betting man too, Keith, and I’ll wager that you haven’t paid a penny in tax on any of it.
‘So, while you’re slurping your Greene King, or whatever it is you drink out in St John’s Wood, think of the line that the Inland Revenue takes with people who evade thirty-six grand’s worth of tax, and the national insurance as well. I’m afraid that, unless you can account for all that cash, the tax man will nail you, and there will be nothing that Boras’s friends in dark places will be able to do about it. There’ll be personal humiliation and jail time, there’ll be a huge fine, and there will be the back tax due, all liable to interest at a rate that will make you cry.
‘But how will the taxman find out about it, you ask me? How? Because we will fucking tell him, that’s how. Becky and I will dump your bank statements right down his insatiable, rapacious maw.’ He grinned and rose quickly to his feet. ‘Enjoy the cricket, pal. I hope you haven’t bought any Test-match tickets for the next few years, though. I don’t imagine they have satellite television in the nick either. Personally, I think it’s a disgrace that cricket was taken off the terrestrial channels.’ Steele reached across and switched off the recorder. ‘Interview terminated,’ he said.
He was less than halfway to the door when Barker called after him: ‘You’ve made your point, Mr Steele. Please come back.’
The smile had gone from the inspector’s face by the time he turned around. ‘Will it be worth my while?’ he asked.
‘I’ll answer your questions, if that’s what you mean.’ He looked along the table. ‘But I would feel more comfortable if it was just you and me.’
Steele shook his head. ‘I can’t do that, Keith, I’m afraid; this has to be formal. But I can ask Ms Weiss to leave if that would make you feel better.’
‘It would.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ the Home Office woman protested.
‘You’re going out of this room, now,’ said Becky Stallings, firmly. ‘Your presence here is no longer in the best interests of the Scottish investigation.’
‘I’ll call my section head.’
‘You can call the Home Secretary, as far as I’m concerned, but from outside this building.’ She looked at Wilding. ‘Ray, would you do me a favour and take Ms Weiss downstairs to the front office? Tell the staff there to make sure that she leaves.’
‘My pleasure, Becky.’ He beckoned to the woman. ‘Come on, Miss, do as she says.’
‘I want my memo stick,’ she snapped. Steele took the device from his pocket and handed it to his sergeant. He and Stallings watched as the pair left the room.
‘I’d like to reach an understanding,’ Lancelot Hamilton announced, ‘that the interview that is about to take place will deal purely with the matters under investigation in Edinburgh.’
‘That doesn’t work either,’ Steele told him. ‘We’ve got your client, sir; he knows it and you do too. If we throw him to the Revenue it’ll all get very sticky for him. My only interest is in the murders, and the recording of this discussion will be going back north with me. If anything comes up that crosses over into the other matter, it’s for Inspector Stallings to handle that as she thinks fit.’
‘That’s all right, Lance,’ Barker told the solicitor. ‘Let’s proceed.’
‘If you’re ready,’ said Steele. He switched on the recorder once more and repeated the location and list of participants. ‘Interview resuming with DI Steele questioning Mr Barker. Sir, did you cause enquiries to be made of the passport service, seeking information about a man named Dominic Padstow?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘On whose instructions?’
