Preface to Murder, M Morris [best selling autobiographies TXT] 📗

‘But there’s something else,’ said Jake.

‘Yes?’

‘She also received monthly payments from a company called Per Sempre Holdings. These payments vary from month to month, but they are way in excess of what she earned from the university or her publisher.’

‘Do you have the bank statements?’ asked Bridget.

Jake passed them to her. He had highlighted the mysterious payments in orange marker pen. Bridget’s eyes widened at the sums of money. No wonder Diane Gilbert had been able to fill her kitchen with high-end appliances.

‘I checked out her tax return too,’ said Jake. ‘These payments have been going on for several years, getting steadily larger. She declared them on her tax return as company dividends.’

Bridget looked again at the bank statements. ‘What do we know about this Per Sempre Holdings?’

‘The company’s registered in the Cayman Islands, so it’s not entirely straightforward to get the details. I’ve put in a request for disclosure, but it’s still pending.’

‘Per sempre is Italian for “forever”,’ said Ffion.

‘Italian?’ Ryan’s interest picked up. ‘Do you reckon it’s a mafia outfit?’

‘Could these payments be a bribe?’ asked Andy.

‘Or was Diane Gilbert blackmailing someone?’ suggested Harry.

‘Let’s keep an open mind on that, shall we?’ said Bridget. ‘At least until Jake’s found out a bit more about this company.’

She turned next to Ffion, who had so far said nothing about her own progress. ‘What’s the news with the phone and laptop?’

‘Not much,’ said Ffion. ‘Her phone is full of personal and work messages, as well as those steamy romance books I mentioned before.’

At the back of the room, Ryan sniggered and nudged Jake in the ribs. Jake immediately turned pink.

Ffion continued, taking no notice of the men’s behaviour. ‘Her emails and messages were mostly with family members and work colleagues.’

‘Anything of particular interest?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. Diane made frequent attempts to reach out to her son, Daniel, but he always had an excuse for avoiding her. She doesn’t appear to have had many friends, but she met up with her sister regularly, and her ex-husband too, which I have to say I find a bit odd. As for work, the exchanges between her and her boss at the Blavatnik confirm what we already knew – that there was a fair bit of hostility between the two of them.’

‘And the laptop?’

Ffion’s face fell. ‘It’s encrypted. That means I can’t read any of the data on the hard drive unless I can work out the password.’

‘Okay,’ said Bridget. ‘Well, keep trying.’

She sensed they were all waiting to hear about her trip to London, so she gave them a summary, relating everything that her anonymous and pseudonymous contacts had told her. Which, now she recounted it, was tantalisingly little.

‘So they both deny any involvement,’ concluded Jake.

‘Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?’ said Ryan.

‘So does that get us anywhere?’ asked Andy.

Bridget had been giving a great deal of thought to that same question. ‘My contact at the embassy suggested that the death threat might not have been serious, but simply intended to frighten Diane.’

‘So the person who sent her the letter may not have been the same person who murdered her?’ said Ffion.

‘It’s a possibility,’ conceded Bridget. ‘Or it might just be a way of putting us off the trail. Another possibility is what MI5 hinted at. That a rogue agent might be operating in Oxford, and took it upon themselves to kill Diane.’

‘They didn’t admit to having an informant?’ asked Andy.

‘No, but I don’t think they would have suggested it if an informant didn’t exist.’

‘So they were nudging you in the right direction without actually confirming the existence of an agent.’

‘Yes. Or else nudging me in the wrong direction.’ Bridget’s introduction to espionage and counter-espionage had proven to be an extremely frustrating one. In that murky world, friends and foes were indistinguishable, and equally unhelpful. At least her contact at the Saudi embassy had been courteous. MI5 hadn’t even offered her a cup of tea.

‘So all we have to do is find the MI5 informant and we’ve solved the case?’ said Andy.

‘Professor Al-Mutairi at the Blavatnik,’ suggested Ffion. ‘He fits the profile. Well-placed, with lots of contacts. Sympathetic to the British government’s policy in the Middle East. Directly opposed to Diane Gilbert’s activities, and believed that she was bringing the Blavatnik into disrepute. After the argument when he threatened to fire her, she sent him an email to say that if he did that, she would expose him.’

‘Expose him for what?’

‘The message didn’t say.’

‘Well, he’s certainly the most obvious candidate,’ agreed Bridget. ‘Al-Mutairi might have sent Diane a death threat to try to stop her from publishing her book, or he might simply have had personal reasons to want her dead. But if he is an MI5 agent, he’s not likely to admit it, and neither will MI5.’

‘What should we do then?’ asked Jake.

Bridget smiled. ‘Let’s go and rattle his cage and see how he reacts.’

21

‘Inspector Hart, this is a surprise.’

This time, Bridget had arrived at the Blavatnik School without an appointment, aiming to wrongfoot Professor Al-Mutairi by not giving him advance warning of her visit. But if she had hoped to find him engaged in sending encoded messages to his MI5 handler, she was disappointed. Instead he was busy giving the yellow-flowering plants in his office their fortnightly feed using a tiny watering can with a long, thin spout. She had already forgotten the Latin name of the plants. Al-Arfaj, he had called them. They certainly weren’t going to get too much water the way he was dribbling tiny amounts into their pots.

Bridget studied him closely. Was he a little less relaxed than last time? Was his charming manner a little more forced? ‘I have some more questions to ask you regarding the murder of Diane Gilbert,’