West got up when they came into the room.
“Hey guys. Are you ready for some answers? I’m sorry it’s been so long.”
The three of them sat down, and were encouraged to help themselves to the pastries, and West got up to pour them each coffee. Then she introduced the man they didn’t know.
“This is Special Agent Bernard Chow, he’s an expert in fraud and financial crime. He’s been sitting in with us over the last couple of days.” Chow smiled a good morning. “I’ve asked him here as well to help explain what this has all been about.” West directed her gaze to Billy, and Chow did the same, but Billy was silent. After a while he nodded.
Amber watched, but couldn’t stay quiet herself. “Well? Did it work?”
The three agents hesitated. Then Black spoke.
“Did it work? It worked like a charm, a goddamn charm!” He burst into a smile. “Cocky bastard was enjoying the whole thing. Then we hit him with the fake video, and bam! You should have seen his face.”
“Well actually you can see his face,” West interrupted. “Since we have his entire confession on tape.”
“He confessed?” Amber said. “He actually confessed?”
“Oh yeah.” Black answered. “We spoke to Magnuson first. When he saw the fake tape he totally cracked, blamed the whole thing on Richards. So then we took the real tape of that, played bits to Richards, and he started blabbing too. Pretty soon we had both of them admitting to involvement, only saying it was the other one’s idea.”
West took over the explanation. “That actually happened pretty early on. Which gave us the option of holding them both. After that it was a matter of unwinding what it was all about. That’s what took so long. But yeah. Long story short. We now have the both of them admitting their involvement, and exonerating you. It’s quite the result.”
“That’s fantastic,” Sam Wheatley said, his jaw open. He looked at Billy.
“You should see the guy’s face,” Black said again. “The moment we showed him the fake tape. He looked like the whole ground underneath him just disappeared away.”
“So what is the story?” Amber asked. “Why did they do it? It couldn’t all be just to frame Billy, over that girl, Lily?”
“No. It might have ended up that way, but that’s not how it began.” West looked across at Chow. “Perhaps you could explain?”
“Sure.” Chow leaned forwards, and his eyes sparkled in the morning sunlight that streamed into the room. He looked to be the only one who wasn’t exhausted. “What we have here is a good old family feud.”
Chow stood up and walked across to the coffee pot, and poured himself a top up. He began his explanation as he came back to the table.
“Lily Bellafonte’s father and uncle, Claude and Jacques Bellafonte are business rivals, each running sizable chemical companies, which they both inherited from their father, the tycoon Arthur Bellafonte. Billy, you probably know this already, but maybe the others don’t.” Chow smiled at Billy, who said nothing, but listened, his face dull.
“You’re also no doubt aware that Jacques Bellafonte’s company EEC, has recently completed a hostile takeover of Claude’s business, Fonchem?” His eyebrows rose in a question, and when he saw the confusion on Amber’s face he explained.
“A hostile takeover is where company A buys company B, even though the directors of company B do not wish it to be bought. In this case EEC – controlled by Jacques Bellafonte – made an offer to Fonchem’s shareholders to purchase fifty-one percent of Fonchem shares, but with the condition that the Fonchem board of directors be dismissed and replaced by a new board loyal to EEC. Does that make sense?”
“I guess.”
“Good. Now you might ask, why would the Fonchem shareholders be willing to accept such a deal, if the board was against it?” He was looking at Amber now, and she shrugged.
“The answer is due to the depressed price of the Fonchem shares. They were trading at well below what they had been fetching in the five previous years. Which leads us to a new question. Why? Why were the Fonchem shares depressed?” This time he waited for an answer. Amber looked to Billy to provide it, but he was silent. She turned back.
“The bombings?”
“Exactly!” Chow grinned.
“Over the last year there’s been a series of bomb attacks on Fonchem sites. Every time there was a new attack, the share price dipped. For each individual attack, the effect was not significant, but cumulatively… It added up. And every time the share price dipped, Jacques Bellafonte bought a few tens of thousands more shares in Fonchem. Not enough to attract attention, but enough to help him to persuade and push through the takeover.”
Chow turned to Billy and smiled again. But still he was silent.
“I still don’t understand,” Amber said, after a while. “What’s any of this got to do with James and Oscar? If they did the bombings, why did they want to help Jacques Bellafonte?”
“Ah, well this is the clever bit. They got something else out of it too. Have you ever heard of shorting stock?”
“No.”
“OK,” Chow took a moment to consider.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t get this either,” Black interrupted, looking at Amber. “In fact I still don’t.”
“It’s really simple,” Chow ignored him. “A short is when you borrow a stock from a broker, and sell it immediately at its current price. Then you hope the stock’s value falls, so you can buy it back at a lower price. You then return the shares you borrowed to your broker, and you keep the difference in price. Do you follow?”
Amber looked at Sam, and knew he wasn’t clear either.
“You don’t. Let me give you an example,” Chow went on. “Imagine I want to short stock from ABC company, which has a current price of $10. I borrow one share, and sell it immediately at $10. I have $10 now, but I owe my broker the one share I borrowed. Then let’s say the share price
