The two women sat back and sighed. Sylvia clapped her hands and asked Helen if she’d like a coffee, or something stronger, opening her desk drawer and bringing out a half bottle of unidentified liquor. Helen accepted a small glass and necked it.
Chapter 26
Helen took the stairs down to the fourth floor to pay Hilda in Fraud another visit. Her step was light with the giddiness of apprehending their first suspects.
She’d already introduced herself to Hilda yesterday, after Sylvia’s recommendation, and found her officious but more than cooperative. Two junior officers, one an intern, had been tasked with number-crunching information on Nabil Tradings, and Helen wanted to see how far they’d got and if anything stood out. The fact that Ahmad Azzine was associated in any way, no matter how spuriously, with Fawaz Nabil was at best ominous, and at worst, terrifying for Hakim.
She needed to find a motive that might potentially connect Fawaz and Khalil, but at the same time follow the evidence. She went over what she had in her head so far as she trotted down the empty staircase. Everyone took the lift, but she preferred the physical exercise, which kept her alert. Even going up and down one flight perhaps five times a day was better than nothing when she didn’t have time to get out for a run.
Sir Conrad had asked her to look into anything that might compromise the security surrounding the NATO summit at Versailles next week. His motivating factor was intelligence that Fawaz had become more active between North Africa and Europe, so Helen rewound and started from the beginning. The intelligence on Nabil Tradings was extensive. Not only had Operation Lionfish investigated him, the CIA had kept an eye on his multibillion dollar corporation for the last ten years, and Fawaz himself hadn’t tripped up once. The cost of the inquiry was huge, but it wasn’t Interpol’s budget, it was America’s. With all this information at the disposal of multiple agencies, either Nabil was clean or mistakes had been made. It happened. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes on any inquiry breathed life into it.
She reached the fourth floor and went through the door, walking along the corridor until she reached Hilda’s office. Hilda herself wasn’t at work today but one of the juniors tasked with searching through information and business dealings going back decades was, and he looked suitably caught up in mind-boggling detail. He was young, maybe in his twenties, and he had a mop of shaggy hair, which he ran his hand through frequently, and glasses perched on top of his nose. He was attractive, with looks suggesting some Italian heritage, and Helen thought that bumping into him on a hot summer morning was a happy interlude. She chided herself that he was probably ten years her junior. He recognised her name and held out his hand confidently. His handshake was strong and certain.
‘Angelo,’ he said.
‘What have you got for me, Angelo?’ she asked.
He beckoned her to follow him and he led her to an incident room, where a whole board was covered in bits of paper. She smiled; it was how she’d trained as an investigator on the Special Branch course: the old-fashioned way, where visuals were everything and people relied less on computers.
‘Fawaz stepped back from a lot of his business involvements five years ago when his son died,’ Angelo began. ‘Which is why it’s curious that his activity has increased again. Apparently he’s taking more of an interest now. The corporation is made up of divisions and each one of those is headed by a trusted employee of Nabil Tradings, all of whom have been working with him for over ten years.’
‘An inner circle? Nepotism at its finest,’ she said.
‘Exactly. That’s the way he likes to work: he keeps people close. But I started with each division and went through them one by one, and I found this,’ Angelo said, gesturing to his computer.
Helen peered towards the desktop screen where Angelo had been working. He tapped a few keys and worked the mouse. The figures and names on the screen meant nothing to her. It was something about canning and argan oil.
‘A quarter of Nabil’s exports go to Spain, and another quarter goes to France. His shipping lanes have been routinely and non-routinely searched for years. Operation Lionfish launched a major inquiry in 2015 but it was cancelled last year. They must have spent millions of dollars on it.’
‘They don’t normally screw up,’ Helen said. It was true; when the joint services within Interpol were requested to come together on such a huge operation, it was usually for a good reason. This time, though, it had come to nothing.
‘They concentrated on Nabil Tradings’ exports of argan oil going into France, beginning in Tangier and landing in Marseilles, but I think they were looking at the wrong channels. Look, his canning industry exports to San Sebastián.’
‘He sends ships all the way around Portugal to land there?’ Helen asked.
‘That’s the thing, they show they do, but I checked the arrival logs and no ships delivering canned goods landed there.’
‘What? How is that even possible?’ Helen asked.
‘Well, if you look at the logs of goods for export and you have paperwork suggesting that it was received, then it all looks legitimate, but if you go further and check Spanish purchases of those goods, then there are none.’
Helen screwed her face. It was as if he was talking in a foreign language. Her head was built for spotting immediate danger, not following paper halfway around the coastline of Portugal. These transactions were imaginary, unsubstantial and floating around in the world of global trade. She couldn’t see the ships, or the goods, and she struggled to conceptualise why somebody would use such complicated tricks to conceal them. She knew, of course, that this was exactly how criminals operated; it was something that had been honed to perfection over the past few decades. A criminal activity is performed,
