‘As long as it is valued lower than three hundred and twenty-five thousand and you don’t have a few million pounds in an account at your local building society, then you're all right.’
‘Nothing to worry about there,’ Wendy said.
‘Mind you, a lot of people don’t realise that they could be liable. If your house is worth a million pounds, for instance, then nearly six hundred thousand pounds of it could be liable for a forty per cent tax on your death.’
‘Hell,’ Larry exclaimed.
‘Don’t worry too much. There are ways to reduce the liability, give some of your wealth to your children, your wife, and so on. And besides, it only applies at death.’
‘What has Grenfell done?’
‘He’s taken more than fifty per cent of the Grenfells’ money and put it into overseas accounts. Not strictly illegal, but I can almost certainly guarantee that he was the only person with the knowledge of how to access it.’
‘And now he is dead,’ Isaac said. ‘What does this mean?’
‘Someone knows how to access it.’ Keith Dawson stood proudly as he announced the first of his great works of deduction.
‘What do you mean?’ Isaac asked.
‘Someone has been accessing the money since his death.’
‘But how?’
‘Someone has found out the details and the password.’
‘You have?’
‘No. I have found out how to access the account and download a statement. There is another more complex password for withdrawing the money.’
‘Are you inferring that Montague Grenfell gave it to someone else?’ Isaac said, momentarily not annoyed with Dawson and his manner.
‘Given, taken or forced!’ Dawson emphasised.
‘A motive,’ Wendy said.
‘It looks good,’ Isaac said.
Keith Dawson returned to his seat. Isaac reasserted his seniority and stood where Dawson had previously. Wendy was confused about some aspects of Dawson’s presentation. She would ask for his opinion on her financial status later.
‘Let me get this right,’ Isaac said. ‘Without the password, it would not be possible for anyone to access the money?’
‘The account is listed in Grenfell’s records, although it is cryptic.’
‘Cryptic?’ Isaac asked.
‘What was he like?’ Dawson asked.
Isaac, the only person who had met him when he was alive, answered. ‘Pedantic, probably obsessive. His handwriting was extremely small.’
‘Some paranoias there,’ Dawson replied.
‘You never answered my previous question.’
‘He often reversed the words and the numbers. For instance, “word” became “drow”, and “12658” became “85621”.’
‘What the hell for?’ Larry asked. His passwords were his wife’s birthday.
‘The hard part was knowing when he was using a cryptic variance and when he was not. And then he would vary which variation to use. Sometimes, it would be the reverse, at other times transpose one letter to the right, one to the left. It’s easy once you know what to look for.’
‘A nightmare,’ Isaac said.
‘The password to withdraw from the offshore account was not there. He must have memorised it.’
‘The money would have been lost if he had not given it to someone?’ Larry asked.
‘Not entirely. It may have taken some time to access, years maybe, but it was not completely lost. Let me rephrase. As long as someone knew about the account.’
‘His executor was Mavis Richardson,’ Isaac said.
‘She may know the password. You’d better ask her,’ Dawson, who had taken little interest in the department, said.
‘She’s dead,’ Wendy said.
‘Murdered?’ Dawson asked.
‘Natural causes.’
‘It’s very convenient.’ Dawson’s usual morose style of speech had returned.
‘I’ll give Gordon Windsor a call,’ Isaac said.
‘I attended her funeral,’ Wendy said. ‘You know that.’
‘I know,’ Isaac replied, aware that the woman’s body may need to come up again, a lengthy process with endless paperwork.
Chapter 29
‘I don’t give a damn what Dawson said. The woman died of natural causes,’ Gordon Windsor said when Isaac phoned him up. Isaac had known the man for many years, and this was the first time he had known him to be angry. With the London Met, Isaac realised that Gordon Windsor had a flawless record, and Dawson’s aspersions, purely based on Montague Grenfell’s records, were reflecting on his professional judgement, and that of the pathologist who had conducted the autopsy of Mavis Richardson.
‘It’s only an idea.’ Isaac tried to calm the man down.
‘You’ll never get the permission anyway, and if you did, what tests do you want us to conduct?’ Windsor said, his previous outburst slightly mellowed.
‘Toxicology?’ Isaac suggested. Even he had to admit that the possibility of Mavis Richardson dying of anything other than old age seemed remote, but he had to sound out Gordon Windsor.
‘The woman was eighty-five. She had led an active life and drank a little too much at times. There were signs of smoking, although minor. Clearly, her blood pressure was a little high.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Tablets in her bathroom. We checked with her doctor, standard procedure, and he confirmed.’
‘Until we have further reason Mavis Richardson stays where she is.’
‘Messy business digging up the dead, although she’s not been buried long,’ Gordon Windsor said. Isaac could only agree.
Gordon Windsor hung up the phone. Isaac regretted calling him, regretted reminding him that he had made a mistake once in the past, where he had confirmed that the man had died of self-inflicted wounds but it was later found out to be murder.
Isaac was well aware that he had made mistakes over the years, pursued one person believing him to be guilty only to find that the unattractive and ill-mannered man was innocent, whereas the attractive and agreeable person turned out to have personal issues and a desire to kill.
Isaac knew that a police officer was fallible, the same as everyone else. He understood the need for procedures and paperwork as they maintained a
