Flawed (14 page)

‘You
think
he got that wrong?’

Terry Walsh's accountants were the London firm of Findhorn
&C
Carraway. Voss made an appointment to see the senior partner and travelled up to town in the late afternoon, as everyone else was coming the other way.

Mr Findhorn greeted him with polite wariness and set about walking the tightrope between client confidence and public obligation. ‘What you must understand, Sergeant, is that I am not at liberty to discuss client affairs except where expressly required to do so by legal authority.’

‘I do understand that,’ Voss assured him. ‘What you have to understand is that these are not trivial matters. I'm not interested in whether he claimed his wife's car against his income tax or wrote off his daughter's pony as a business expense. I'm investigating matters specifically designated as serious organised crime.’

Findhorn should have been shocked at the very suggestion. Perhaps he was just good at hiding his feelings, but Voss thought it wasn't the first time he'd heard it.

He could have declined to answer any questions until Voss produced lawful authority. The fact that he didn't suggested
Findhorn wasn't going to hold the pass for Terry Walsh. Soon it became clear why. ‘I'll be as helpful as I can. If there are some questions I can't answer, it's not because I want to obstruct your inquiry. But we owe all our clients’ - the words
even Terry Walsh
didn't actually cross his lips but that was what he meant - ‘a duty of confidentiality that doesn't end when we cease to act for them.’

Voss pricked an ear at that. ‘Mr Walsh has changed his accountants? When?’

‘He closed his account with us last July.’

‘Why?’

Mr Findhorn's smile was wintry. ‘He felt it was in his interests to set up an in-house accountancy department.’

‘After you'd done his books for - how long?’

‘Some twelve years,’ said Findhorn.

‘What made him want a change?’

‘There was…a little unpleasantness,’ admitted the accountant.

It was after nine when Voss got back to Battle Alley. But Detective Inspector Hyde was still at her desk so he told her what he'd found out. ‘Findhorn's firm were Walsh's accountants but it wasn't Findhorn handling the account, or even Carraway, but a guy called Leslie Vernon. He lives in Worthing so it made sense.’

‘You said “was”,’ said Hyde. Voss had her full attention.

‘Yes. Three things happened. Vernon stopped being Terry Walsh's accountant. He left Findhorn's firm. And Walsh set up his own accounts department. In July - seven months ago.’

Hyde was frowning, trying to piece it together. ‘What
changed? Walsh has been in the paper business for fifteen years - if using chartered accountants was good enough for the first fourteen, what changed in June?’

‘Findhorn described it as a bit of unpleasantness. He claimed not to know the details but Walsh and Vernon stopped seeing eye to eye. Findhorn blamed Vernon and let him go. Maybe he thought Walsh would reconsider if he offered Vernon's head as reparations. But Terry had already made other arrangements.’

Hyde was watching the rerun on the inward cinema screen that was her mind's eye. ‘So after years of a mutually satisfactory business relationship, suddenly Walsh and his accountant were at odds. In an effort to keep his business, Vernon's employers sided with the client, but Walsh had had enough of sharing his secrets with outsiders. What do you suppose they fell out about?’

‘That'll be my first question,’ said Voss, ‘when I see Mr Vernon tomorrow.’

If it had been Deacon, he'd have asked, ‘Why not tonight?’ But Alix Hyde used a little less stick, a little more carrot. ‘Nice work, Charlie. I have a good feeling about this.’

Voss was worried about disappointing her. ‘We shouldn't count our chickens yet, boss. They may not have fallen out over Walsh's activities. Maybe Vernon just isn't a very good accountant.’

Hyde shook her head decisively. ‘If Vernon was no good Findhorn wouldn't have put him in charge of Terry's account. No - Vernon saw something or heard something he didn't like. He challenged Terry on it and Terry pulled the rug out from under his feet.’ She let her gaze wander off round the
room as she thought about it. ‘A man would naturally feel aggrieved about that, Charlie. Losing his job because of a crook. I bet, given a bit of encouragement, he'll tell you all about it.’

She picked up her coat and headed for the door. ‘You earned your pay today, Charlie Voss,’ she said appreciatively. ‘Earn it again tomorrow.’

In the event, the girls’ night out wasn't quite the riot that had been planned. Brodie explained what had happened before she closed the office up, and Marta plumbed her vocabulary for epithets appropriate to violent men, to men in general and to lawyers in particular. Which cleared the air nicely but didn't restore the necessary mood. So they had a meal, and Marta fluttered her eyelashes gamely at a couple of puzzled commercial travellers, and they went home about eleven.

Brodie found Daniel at the computer in the corner of her living room. One glance at the screen told her what he'd been doing. He'd also printed out a number of articles relating to child abuse.

‘You're going on with this then,’ she said quietly.

He sat back, nodding. He wasn't angry any more. His pale round face was calm and determined, and Brodie knew that when he looked like that you could bounce bricks off his obstinacy.

‘I have to,’ he said simply. ‘He's a child, Brodie. He's twelve years old. And he's being struck by a man who could lift
me
in one hand, never mind Noah. And I don't know this but I suspect he's hitting his wife as well. Well, she's an intelligent adult, she has the right to decide whether to put up with it or
not. But a child can't make those kind of choices. He needs help, and I'm the one he came to. I'm not going to shrug it off and say I tried, and hear next week that he's in Dimmock General with a fractured skull.’

Brodie pulled up a spare chair and sat facing him. ‘Everything you say is true. But this is not an easy situation to deal with. Not as easy as pointing the finger and waiting for the law to take its course. If it was, there would be no child abuse.’

‘The evidence is there,’ said Daniel. ‘Printed on that boy's face.’

‘Bruises on a child mean nothing,’ said Brodie. ‘You know that, Daniel. How often have you seen Paddy black and blue the day after her riding lesson? Falling off things and running into things is a normal part of childhood. You can always explain away a few bruises. Hell, I could be hitting Paddy and only
telling
you she fell off a pony. You wouldn't know.’

‘I know
you
.’

‘And there'll be plenty of people who think they know Adam Selkirk better than to suppose he's hitting his son. Realistically, with a twelve-year-old boy, it'll come down to whether he wants to protect his father. If he does, all your efforts will achieve nothing except making the man even angrier. You could be making things worse for Noah. You've told Adam you know what's happening. Possibly, the best thing you can do now is back away and give the pair of them space to sort it out.’

‘I'd love to see them sort it out,’ nodded Daniel. Brodie believed him. ‘But what if they don't? What if next time I see Noah he's sporting new bruises? What if he has his wrist in
plaster or a tooth missing? How long do I keep backing away?’

It was an impossible question. There were a lot more ways of getting this wrong than getting it right, and any decision he took now could precipitate disaster. But Brodie didn't agonise long over her answer, for the simple reason that she knew his course was already chosen. There was no point honing her arguments when she knew this was one of those occasions when nothing she said would deflect him by so much as a degree. He was on a moral crusade, and blind to the fact that all crusades leave casualties in their wake.

She gave a graceful shrug. ‘You must do what you think is best. But if this degenerates into a battle of wills between you and Adam Selkirk, the one who'll suffer most is Noah.’

Leslie Vernon worked for himself these days. But Voss had seen Findhorn's office, and seeing Vernon's in a slightly faded residential street in Worthing it was hard to see it as a career move. He was a man of about forty with a fractionally downat-heel air. He didn't have a receptionist but answered the door himself, looking quickly both ways up the street as if worried his visitor might have been recognised. A detective at the door brings out the worst in most people, the innocent as well as the guilty. Voss was accustomed to causing little ripples of anxiety.

Once they were inside Vernon relaxed a bit; and relaxed more when Voss explained the reason for his call. As if there were dealings in his portfolio that were more problematic than his relationship with Terry Walsh. Or perhaps it was just that it would be easier to discuss an
ex-client - this one at least - than a current one. ‘So what do you want to know?’

‘How long did you act for Terry Walsh?’

‘About six years. I can get you the dates if you need them.’

‘And how long before that were you with Mr Findhorn?’

‘Four years.’

‘Then, after ten years, you parted company with both of them.’

Vernon nodded, his lips a thin line. ‘It wasn't my idea. At least, leaving Findhorn's wasn't.’

‘What happened?’

He didn't answer immediately. Voss thought he wanted to, was weighing the likely cost. ‘Listen,’ he said in a low voice, T don't want any trouble. Not with you, and not with Terry Walsh.’

Voss did ingenuous well. It was something to do with the ginger hair and freckles. ‘Why should there be any trouble? I'm not asking you to divulge professional secrets. All I want to know is if there was something shady going on - if that's why you felt you couldn't act for him any more. I have the right to ask that. You have the duty to answer.’

Vernon thought a minute longer. For eight months he'd been putting distance between himself and a hard place: now he'd bumped into a rock. He was going to have to say something. Policemen don't go away just because you ask them to. The best he could hope for was to make clear his own absolute non-involvement in anything not covered by the accountants’ code of practice.

‘I didn't know what kind of a man he was,’ he insisted. ‘Right up to the moment that I found out - and then it was all
I could do to get far enough away to feel safe. I don't want Terry Walsh turning up on my doorstep after midnight.’

‘I don't know how you think these things work,’ said Voss mildly. ‘But what we don't do is pick up the phone and say,
Leslie Vernon is saying these things about you, Terry, what's your response?
If you feel threatened by Terry Walsh, the best thing you can do is help me. He won't do you much harm from inside Parkhurst.’

‘You're serious this time? You're serious about putting him away?’

‘This is a Serious Organised Crime Agency investigation. What do you think?’

Leslie Vernon had been a promising young accountant (so he claimed) when he went to work for Findhorn
&c
Carraway. He was smart, competent and imaginative - which Voss wouldn't have considered a virtue in an accountant except for the pride with which Vernon said it - and he was developing a solid client list. When he was offered paper magnate and East-Ender-made-good Terry Walsh, he grabbed with both hands.

‘So what went wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ said Vernon. ‘At first. He's an amiable sort of guy, he was good to work for. And he was on the up. Maybe he sailed a bit close to the wind sometimes, but that was who he was - a bit of an operator. I swear to you, I had no reason to think his business was anything other than what it appeared to be.’

‘Until?’

Vernon exhaled a long, edgy sigh. ‘It's complicated. Does the name Achille Bellow mean anything to you?’

Some names are more intrinsically memorable than others. Monitoring the crime scene of the Balkans was not, thank God, any part of Charlie Voss's remit, but every police officer in Europe knew that Achille Bellow was a major player. Until his bullet-riddled corpse washed up on a French beach in the middle of the summer. ‘The Greek godfather?’

‘Is he? I was told he was from Serbia. Anyway, that's him -some kind of Euro-thug. I didn't know him from Adam until I happened to overhear Terry Walsh talking about him. Talking in the past tense, Mr Voss.’ He cast the detective a hunted look. ‘I was too stunned to take it all in, I can't quote him verbatim, but what he was saying - the gist of what he was saying - was that he took Achille Bellow out on his yacht, shot him and threw him over the side.’

Voss had come here looking for evidence of criminality on Walsh's part. But that was like turning over a stone and finding an elephant. He stared at the man in barely disguised disbelief. ‘He said that? In front of you? Out of the blue, he told his accountant that he'd murdered someone.’

Vernon shook his head. ‘It wasn't like that. He thought I'd left. He was on the phone to someone. I heard him laughing. And then he said—

‘Look,’ he said then. ‘Let me tell you what happened. Everything that I can remember. Then, if you don't believe me…well, Norman Findhorn didn't believe me either.’

They had a meeting at Walsh's house on the Firestone Cliffs at the beginning of July. Nothing out of the ordinary - routine business between a client and his accountant. They completed it, had coffee, then Vernon took his leave and headed out to his car. But he wasn't out of the drive before he realised he
needed another signature, on a share certificate. He went back the way he'd come.

Walsh was still in his office. Vernon could hear his voice through the closed door. He was laughing. Vernon realised he was on the phone and waited for him to finish. ‘I wasn't listening,’ he insisted. ‘I was just waiting for him to put the phone down so I could knock and get him to sign for the shares. If he'd kept his voice down I wouldn't have heard what he said. But he was enjoying himself. Boasting. And what he said was, essentially,
Don't worry about Achille Bellow, he isn't a problem any more, he came out on
The Salamander
and tried to walk home.