had said or done, while Shaka showed no emotion at all. Alisa’s husband was fifteen years older than her, and Kathy thought that if she had known nothing about the three of them she might have supposed that Shaka and Vadim were the older generation, more worldly and hardened, and Alisa young enough to be their daughter.
When Kathy was finished she got to her feet and Alisa came over to her, head bowed, and said, ‘I don’t know what I will do without Papa.’
Vadim, whose impassive frown had hardly altered throughout the interview, showed Kathy out. At the front door she said, ‘Do you trust Freddie Clarke, Mr Kuzmin?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ll be relying on him to access Mr Moszynski’s fortune.’
He eyed her coldly. ‘Let me give good advice, Detective. Let the experts come up with the theories.’ He swung the door open and stepped back into the shadows, watching her go.
Let me give good advice, Kathy thought as she got into her car. It was a phrase from the letter to The Times.
TWELVE
K athy was in two minds about phoning Sean Ardagh, expecting a cool response, but he sounded brisk and helpful.
‘A chat? Sure. Now?’
‘If you can spare the time. Thanks.’
‘No problem. Let’s meet in Victoria Tower Gardens across the road from my office. Give me an excuse to get out.’
The gardens formed a long thin strip along the Thames Embankment close by Thames House, the MI5 building. Kathy spotted him straight away, on a timber bench, reading the Evening Standard.
They shook hands and he said, ‘So, how can I help you?’
‘I think you know more about some of the people I’m looking at than I’m finding on the files.’
‘Could be. Who are you thinking of?’
‘How about starting with Freddie Clarke.’
Ardagh smiled. ‘The boy genius? Oh, they don’t come any smarter than young Freddie.’
‘What’s his background?’
‘Classic East End barrowboy who turned out to be a financial wizard. Supposed to have a photographic memory, maybe high-function autism. He got a job as a messenger boy in the City and by the time he was twenty he was a star of the trading room, making money big-time. Then something happened, I’m not sure what exactly, probably upset somebody important. Anyway, he headed off to Luxembourg and joined Clearstream, the clearing house. You’ll have heard of them.’
‘Vaguely.’
‘Look them up. At Clearstream he got to manage some of the big accounts of the Russian oligarchs. He did very well, but his mum got cancer and he wanted to come back to London. Mikhail Moszynski got to hear and offered him an exclusive deal to handle his affairs. He bought Truscott Orr for Freddie, who is now, what, thirty, thirty-one?’
Kathy scribbled in her notebook. The late afternoon was balmy, two children further down the park playing tag around their motionless parents. ‘So where will Mikhail’s death leave Freddie?’
‘Whoever inherits will be utterly dependent on Freddie to tell them what’s going on.’
‘Really? Surely there’ll be documents, contracts?’
‘They say it’s all inside Freddie’s head. So if you’re thinking of going after Mikhail’s financial records, forget it. It’s been tried.’
‘By you lot?’
Ardagh said nothing, face expressionless.
‘Well, let’s hope Freddie doesn’t have an accident.’
‘Indeed. It’s all immensely complicated, deliberately so. Mikhail was paranoid that the Russian government would try to take his money away from him. That’s what Freddie was for, to build an impenetrable financial castle complete with false rooms, dead-end corridors, hidden passages and secret chambers.’
‘RKF?’
‘That’s just the gatehouse at the front that everyone can see. Behind it there’s a maze stretching from Luxembourg to Bermuda to Labuan to Belize, and on and on.’
‘Freddie says Alisa will inherit the controlling share.’
‘Makes sense. Keep it in the blood line. Mikhail would have wanted that.’
‘He says Shaka will be taken care of. But will she be content with that?’
‘From what I’ve seen of her, I’d say she’ll be sensible. She’s like Freddie, another tower block kid. Her old mum still sells T-shirts at the East Street Market down in Walworth. And like Freddie, it’s the game that drives Shaka, not the money. She wants to be the best, the most famous, the most glamorous.’
‘It sounds as if you’ve done quite a bit of work on these people.’
‘Not really. These are just my impressions.’ He gave a careless shrug, which Kathy didn’t quite believe.
‘How about Vadim?’
‘Okay,’ Ardagh said, ‘your turn. What do you make of Vadim?’
‘Cold, guarded, hostile. My guess was that he’d be quite controlling with Alisa.’
‘So you’re thinking that he’ll take effective charge of Mikhail’s fortune, and therefore has a motive for killing him?’
‘You must have had the same thought, surely?’
He nodded. ‘And the letter to The Times would point the same way, what with Vadim’s links to the FSB.’
‘So you agree he could have been a party to the killing?’
‘In theory. But you’d have a hell of a time trying to prove it.’ He thought for a moment. ‘And to be honest, it doesn’t feel like the FSB to me. They’re highly professional, using sophisticated encrypted phones, stuff like that. I can’t see them having anything to do with a small-time crook like Danny Yilmaz.’
‘Maybe to put us off the scent?’
‘Well… I could speak to Six for you if you like. I know someone who would tell me what they’ve got on Vadim.’
‘Thanks.’ Kathy thought he’d get more from MI6 than she would. ‘I’d appreciate that.’
‘Anything else? What about Mikhail’s friend down the road?’ He nodded along the length of the park to the tall Gothic edifice of the Victoria Tower.
‘Parliament? You mean Hadden-Vane? He’s been hard to contact today.’
‘He’s got other things on his mind.’ He opened his newspaper and pointed to an article headed mp denies cash for citizenship claim.
‘That’s him?’
‘Here.’ Ardagh handed her the paper. ‘I’d better go. I’ll call you if I get anything useful.’
Kathy thanked him and remained on the seat, reading. Sir Nigel Hadden-Vane has denied a report that he accepted a substantial sum of money from the murdered Russian businessman Mikhail Moszynski to facilitate his daughter Alisa Kuzmin’s application for British citizenship, which was approved last year. He said that the claim, first made on westminsterwhistleblower. com, was completely without foundation. Sir Nigel was known to be a personal friend of Mr Moszynski, and was a guest at the lavish wedding of Alisa Kuzmin in 2006 on Mr Moszynski’s private Caribbean island, Little Ruby Cay, in the Bahamas.
As she walked back through the park towards her car, Kathy passed Rodin’s monumental sculpture The Burghers of Calais, with its six haggard figures standing in chains on the pedestal, and imagined Hadden-Vane up there, plump and sleek, among them.
‘Who’s behind westminsterwhistleblower. com?’ Bren asked.
‘I think we’d better find out,’ Kathy said. ‘Zack?’
