The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

been long enough for the woman to slip a tracking device like the one used in King’s holdall into Amanda’s coat pocket. Amanda Cunningham had been oblivious. She would not see the woman again, because the team would rotate. The woman would change wigs, take off her pair of tiny glasses, change her coat and take off her heels in favour of trainers that would clash with her active wear and she would jog past to re-confirm a visual when Amanda left the building. The bicycle courier would put his bike in the rear of the van and put on a pair of overalls and a beanie and take the wheel, while the driver would throw on a jacket and walk past. The next visual would mark another regroup, a rotation, another approach. The teams were fluid, their scenarios almost exponential.

The man driving the van parked up. He was facing away from the building, the rear-mounted camera was filming the entrance and he was watching the image on the fake satnav mounted on the dashboard. He picked his mobile phone and dialled. When the call was answered, he spoke with a clip tone to a woman he did not know and would probably never meet. “The target is inside,” he said, “The tracker has been activated and your app should be picking it up now.”

***

Caroline ended the call and opened the app on her mobile phone and watched the steady intermittent red dot. She could hear a bleep, but turned down the volume. She could see that Amanda Cunningham was stationary. She would have enough notice of her movements. Enough time to do what she needed to do.

Caroline inserted the pick into the lock and used the pair of torsion prongs to work the lock. It was a Chubb lock. A solid design with four tumblers. She worked her way through the gates and had the lock open inside two minutes. She replaced the tools into the pocket of her handbag, took a cursory look around, then opened the door and stepped into Amanda’s flat.

45

 

Simon Mereweather already had his secretary digging into Sir Hugo Hollandrake’s past. He had organised two researchers to assist her, and a technician to navigate the web and intercept the man’s emails. This would be done through GCHQ’s database and the technician had already opened a portal and started work on thirty-thousand emails, running them through an algorithm that would pick up emails using a hundred or so key words Mereweather had fed in. There was no way a person could collate data manually over the given period. Mereweather had chosen the start point six months before Hollandrake’s public support for the Goliath intercontinental ballistic missile system (ICBM). There had to be a starting point, and that seemed as good a time as any.

Mereweather was now meeting with the forensic accountants. These were like regular accountants, only beiger and even more by the book. After meeting with them for less than ten minutes, he was quite sure that the two men were autistic. Gifted, but not operating on the same level as most; a higher plain entirely. They could not understand sarcasm or inference. But they could see answers in numbers that other people would not. The lines of accounting figures spoke to them like well-written prose. It meant something, encouraged them to read on, look deeper. To Mereweather, the accounts, the banking figures, the off-set taxes, the endowment policies, hedge-funds and accrued dividends looked like a tortuous experience to wade through, but for the two accountants, it was a dream-come-true.

“Anything?” Mereweather ventured.

“Threads,” said one of them.

“Starting to unravel,” said the other.

“But do they lead anywhere?” Mereweather asked impatiently.

The two men smiled at each other. One of the men was in his thirties, his hair receding and growing an ample paunch. The other man was virtually identical. Merewether could barely distinguish between them. He noted one had a cheaper-looking suit. He didn’t know how cheap it was, but guessed the other was supermarket-bought, so he could only hazard a guess. He adjusted the cufflink on his shirt cuff, suspected his own shirt alone cost twice as much as the suit at a conservative estimate. His suit, as much as fifteen times more. He had ten more like it in his wardrobe at home. Another two in his office. But then again, he was a lot higher up the ladder, and reflected that he barely had need to touch a single salary payment and couldn’t remember the last time he had. He looked at the two men in turn. He was becoming impatient. He was damned if he was going to indulge them in a big reveal.

“Spit it out, you’re either up to this task, or not,” he said.

“Sir Ian Snell had various shell companies,” cheap suit said, a little tersely for Mereweather’s liking. He seemed to realise this and mellowed a little as he added, “It’s all about paying as little tax as possible, and declaring costs more than once. Routed through a shell company with large fees and operating costs, and the money shrinks. On the screen, at least. By the time it makes its way to the Inland Revenue, or HMRC as they’re called now, the profits have whittled down and the taxes to be paid are smaller. Sometimes none-existent. The VAT submission figures and rebate seems consistent though, even with smaller turn-over and profits declared.”

“Which means?” Mereweather asked impatiently.

The other man spoke. He had a tinge of Welsh to his voice. “Snell claimed back more VAT than he should have.”

“But I want to know about Sir Hugo Hollandrake.”

“Sir Hugo is company secretary to some of these shell companies. His wife is down as company secretary to others. That is a term for an indirect business partner, say at ten percent. That means they get a share of the profits commensurate with