The Hollow Man Page 28

  46

  Belsey found Devereux’s last bottle of vodka in the freezer. He sat in the study in front of the bloodstain, drinking. No SAR, he thought; what the hell had Ridpath been playing at? And then he didn’t care anymore. He was exhausted; the raised hopes had led him to a crash. Now perhaps he could sleep. He raised a toast to Pierre Smirnoff; comrade, old friend. The phone began to ring. Belsey drank. He was sick of the sight of the place. The phone kept ringing and Belsey picked it up.

  “What’s going on?” a man said.

  “Nothing,” Belsey said. “It’s fucked. Get out of here.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Who is this?” Belsey said.

  “What’s going on?”

  Belsey hung up. He answered again when it rang a second later.

  “Mr. Devereux?” a different voice this time.

  “Speaking.”

  “Nothing you said was what you promised it would be.” The caller was struggling with the English; thin vowels, Latino or maybe even Chinese. Furious, which didn’t help.

  “That, my friend, is life,” Belsey said. “C’est la vie. Así es la vida.”

  “Nothing at all. Now a lot of people are unhappy.”

  “A lot of people are always unhappy,” Belsey said. He put the receiver down on the desk.

  “Hello?” it said. “Don’t fuck me around.”

  Belsey lay on the floor and shut his eyes. When he opened them there was a man standing in the doorway.

  47

  “It was open.”

  Detective Inspector Philip Ridpath paused with his black oxford raised where it had prodded the door. It took him a moment to recognise the individual on the carpet.

  “Detective Constable Belsey,” he said finally.

  “Detective Inspector Ridpath.” Belsey got up. There was no way of doing it elegantly. Ridpath had his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat. He appeared more crumpled than before, and smaller than Belsey remembered, but with the same animal-like inquisitiveness. He stared at Belsey, then at the receiver on the desk, still cursing: “You mother fuck, you die . . .” then back to the front door, to The Bishops Avenue, his expression melting very slowly from suspicion to concern.

  “Welcome,” Belsey said.

  Ridpath stepped over the threshold of the study like a priest entering a brothel. He looked around the shelves, peered at the bloodstain, then went back through the hallway to the living room. Belsey dropped the phone in its cradle and followed. Ridpath nudged a fallen decanter with the toe of his shoe.

  “Looks like he went out with a bang,” Belsey said.

  “How did you get in?” Ridpath demanded.

  “With a key.”

  “Do you have a warrant?”

  “No.”

  The inspector winced. “Have you touched anything?”

  “Hardly at all,” Belsey said. “What brought you here?”

  Ridpath walked to the French windows and tried the handle. “What have you learned about him?”

  “He had a nice house and not much else, as far as I can tell. He liked his towels tied with ribbons.”

  Belsey sat at the breakfast bar and tried to sober up. He watched the inspector circulate the ground floor. Ridpath put on a set of forensic gloves to open the doors. At each door he turned the knob, paused, then opened it. Then he stood in the doorway, staring. Belsey watched him go upstairs, then he picked the decanter up off the floor, took a final swig and placed it back on top of the cabinet. He went up to the first floor where he saw the inspector kneeling at the side of Devereux’s bed like a child in prayer. Ridpath rose, stiffly, arms tensed by his side, and walked to the master bathroom, looked along the line of aftershave bottles, then punched the door frame.

  “Are you OK?” Belsey said.

  “Yes.”

  Belsey went back to the living room and half considered running. Running and never stopping. He heard Ridpath call.

  “Look at this.”

  Belsey found the inspector in Devereux’s garage standing beside the pile of leftover goods.

  “Someone’s tried to strip the place.”

  “The Egyptians used to load up the dead with possessions, for the journey.”

  “He wasn’t Egyptian. And there’s no car.” He turned a full circle, then seemed to fully grasp Belsey’s presence for the first time. “What are you up to here?”

  “What’s Project Boudicca?” Belsey said.

  “What do you know about that?”

  “I know you’re going to talk to me about it while we have a drink, about why you’re working a case in secret and faking SARs; you can tell me why no one knows you’re working it and you’re still chasing a man after his death. Then I’ll leave you alone.”

  Ridpath held on to an expression of righteous defiance. “I don’t drink on duty,” he said.

  “I don’t think you’re really on duty,” Belsey said.

  48

  Ridpath had a battered Volvo parked outside Devereux’s home. They climbed in. Two a.m. in the north-London suburbs didn’t present many options for a nightcap. Belsey directed them to West End Lane, to a basement bar called Lately’s, a divorcee pickup joint with a shutter in the door through which they assessed your eligibility. The detectives must have looked rich or desperate because the door opened and they were nodded downstairs.

  The nightclub was very dark and close to empty. Small tables nudged a dance floor big enough for two or three. Sticky booths with UV lights lined the side of the room. The lights picked out curling photographs of previous partygoers, arms around the old owner. Ridpath scrutinised the place.

  “Is it safe to talk here?”

  “It’s about the only safe thing you can do.”

  Belsey set up some overpriced beers and let the inspector gather his thoughts. When he spoke, Ridpath was still looking at the empty dance floor, his eyes deep with memory.

  “You want to know why I’m still pursuing Alexei Devereux?”

  “Yes.”

  “He ruined my life.”

  Belsey nodded. Already he had the sense that this was Ridpath’s big moment, and he was providing the audience. “How did he do that?”

  “I’ve read every report on Devereux, every transcript. Not just ours, but those in Paris, Rome and the scraps that Washington will share. I’m saying this because I want you to know that I’ve been interested in Devereux for a long time.”

  “OK. So what do you know?”

  “Where do you want me to start?”

  “Start at the beginning.”

  There was a wicked twinkle in Ridpath’s eye, like a man holding a flush when the world thinks they’re bluffing.

  “Born Alex Demochev, Odessa, 2 February 1957. His parents were local party stalwarts. Their loyalty wasn’t repaid. They were killed by the secret police in 1963, after a show trial. By all accounts they were passionate about the cause. But it seems there were party wranglings. Loyal sacrifices to Stalinism.

  “Under the name Alexei Devinsky he becomes a young ideologue. At sixteen he’s writing speeches for local party Communists, very brilliant, tipped for top things in propaganda. But he got in trouble for organising a gambling racket among the local workers. They used to race rats. At seventeen, he escapes a reformatory in Leningrad and smuggles himself to Paris. He began forging connections in the banking community, worked for an underwriter, changed his name to Devereux. Became an entrepreneur.”

  Belsey wondered at the obsession in Ridpath’s eyes. They caught the coloured lights of the basement bar, as did his gleaming brow. His little moustache twitched. He looked a long way removed from his own life; alive, by proxy, through Devereux.

  “Everyone who met him—in Paris, Prague, Amsterdam—they all say how intriguing he was. How charismatic.” Ridpath made the word sound glutinous. “He ha
d beautiful manners—apparently he bedded several wives of local captains of industry. That may be why he left both Paris and Prague at short notice. He went back to Russia in 1992. People say he funded perestroika from afar. But he got back in time for the kill. Do you know much about the oligarchs?”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “People in the right place and time for the sell-off of a superpower. Everything must go. The summer sale included its military.”

  “Right.”

  “The world’s second largest military complex divided up between four or five individuals who happened to have the cash and connections at the right time. Dmitri Kovalevski got a lot of uranium, Vladimir Shchepetov the hardware. Devereux asked for the sports facilities.”

  “The sports facilities,” Belsey said. Ridpath drank his beer and licked his lips.

  “Hundreds of Red Army gyms, tracks, sports equipment. That’s what he wanted. People thought he was mad. Then he bought up floodlights. The army had a lot of floodlights, first used in the film studios after the revolution, then to blind the Nazis on the battlefield. He bought them. No one knew what he was doing.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “He saw that you didn’t need anyone at a racetrack except the jockeys and the horses and a camera. It meant he could run them through the night and broadcast live images to the UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore. He knew people who needed to sink money—money from embezzlements, money from sharp trades in weaponry and natural gas—and he persuaded them to sink it into these tracks. His first big international partner was the Iroquois tribe in New York State. They built a racecourse for him on their reservation. Last year he bought up a stretch of the Margow Desert in Afghanistan for a combination mall, track and casino. That was when he got the reputation for disaster capitalism. The U.S. still pay him to hold the land. Six months later he set up a casino resort on the site of an old Pennsylvania ore pit, which he bought for a cent.”

  “And how did this ruin your life?”

  Ridpath took a deep breath and a long swig of beer.

  “I was investigating him. Once. This was two years ago. I wasn’t always doing my current job. I was head of International Liaison. That was the capacity in which I met him.”

  “You met him?”

  “I interviewed him. As far as I know I’m the only UK officer to have done so, maybe the only European one. He visited London for a weekend in spring 2007 and I was told to pay a discreet visit. We met at a hotel. It was an interview of sorts, one I’ll never forget, though I’m not sure who was interviewing who. Nothing came of it. Then, two months later, I was suddenly tasked with coordinating his arrest on tax evasion and theft charges. He was flying into City Airport on a private jet and I had forty men in place. That took a fortnight of planning. Devereux landed at Biggin Hill instead. He sent a decoy to City Airport—a team of gymnasts. The charges were dropped a week later. I don’t know why, but I have a few guesses and most of them have zeros on the end. Subsequent to that episode, I was moved from the department. Sideways they call it. There’s no such thing as sideways. I got a card from Devereux saying good luck in your new job.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Apart from a bastard? The most oddly charming person you’ll ever meet. I remember that he spoke in an incredibly measured way, never raising his voice—and he’d meet your eyes and appear interested in all you had to say in turn. Because he was interested, you see. He thought he could profit out of everyone he met. But he revealed nothing of himself. You only realised this afterwards. It felt as if you might not have really met him at all.” The inspector paused, as if still wondering. “Then, two weeks ago, I heard he was here again. I wanted to know what was going on.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Nothing. So I knew he’d arrived.”

  Belsey saw the inspector more clearly now. All detectives know that you can fall into an investigation and get stuck. Sometimes, out of nowhere, a case you didn’t even think you were that invested in starts spreading its tendrils—into your home, your bed, your dreams. At police training college, before every exercise, one of the instructors liked to say: When you’ve finished, stop. It was his only joke, and the best advice Belsey received.

  “Ever thought of getting your revenge?” Belsey asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cutting his throat, maybe?”

  Ridpath levelled a stare. “Are you suggesting I’m involved in Mr. Devereux’s death?”

  “I haven’t. But I could, I suppose.”

  “I’m a police officer.” Belsey laughed. Ridpath said under his breath: “I’m not like you.”

  “What’s that meant to mean?”

  “What would you call it? Bold?”

  “We see bad people get away. That’s frustrating.”

  “If they get away it’s because we haven’t built our cases properly.” Ridpath sat up straight. “He lost me my job. I’m not going to have him lose me my freedom and my dignity. That’s not my idea of justice.”

  “Got an alibi?”

  “Look—”

  “Relax. I’m not serious.”

  But the inspector was fired up now. A red flush spread from his throat to his cheeks.

  “What were you doing there? What the hell were you doing in his house, Detective Constable? On the floor. With vodka. Explain that.”

  “Maybe I’m on an investigation of my own,” Belsey said. Ridpath snorted. Belsey persevered. “What was Devereux up to in London?”

  “I never got the chance to find out.”

  “This wasn’t just exile,” Belsey said. “He came over with a plan.”

  “He always said he loved England, the English countryside.”

  “Sure, the sense of humour.”

  “The sense of humour, the political freedom.”

  “He wasn’t here for the sense of humour. He’s just over, moved in, barely back from IKEA when he’s hustling. He’s been cosying up with the Corporation of London who seem to like the idea of a new billionaire friend. He came to London for a reason. I think he might have come to Hampstead for a reason.”

  Belsey saw a reluctant admission of curiosity in Ridpath’s eyes. Now they were doing business.

  “I think you’re right,” Ridpath said.

  “How slippery was Devereux?”

  “He was clever. But he was a man of his word.” Ridpath conceded this reluctantly.

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “He told me he was a man of his word and that was why he used so few of them. He had a personal code of conduct. That’s what set him apart from the rest.”

  “Devereux met a man called Pierce Buckingham at a club called Les Ambassadeurs the week before last,” Belsey said. “It was Buckingham’s haunt but Devereux gets membership. In fact he’s there with a couple of girls, one of whom he passes on to Buckingham while they celebrate a new business opportunity. Over the next few days Buckingham raises a lot of money for Devereux. Buckingham’s a middleman, he runs between investors with bad names and investments with good margins.”

  “Devereux had certain principles. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t sharp. He didn’t let opportunities slip.”

  “It looks to me as if he might have made them up himself.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t mean in an entrepreneurial way. I mean pluck them out of thin air. I mean persuade people to invest in projects that weren’t as solid as they sounded.”

  Ridpath considered this, before shrugging noncommittally.

  “That’s not the Alexei Devereux I knew. You seem to have got an idea into your head. OK, you’re not the first to come up with theories about Alexei Devereux.”

  “Pierce Buckingham’s on a slab now. So is one of the girls there that night, Devereux’s one. She’s called Jessica Holden. You’ve heard of he
r.”

  “The Starbucks girl.”

  “That’s what they’re putting on the headstone. Know of a firm called PS Security?”

  “I knew Chris Starr when he was in Flying Squad.”

  “They were keeping an eye on Devereux. My guess is that it was on behalf of some men who were passing a lot of money in the Russian’s direction. Now the money’s gone missing and so has one of their investigators. He was on Devereux’s tail in Hampstead and took some photographs. I spoke to Chris at the agency yesterday. No sign of him or the precious photographs. Something’s gone wrong. The blood around Devereux’s body was from a dog, which makes me think the suicide was either rather elaborate or a fake. Devereux was murdered because of Project Boudicca. It would be useful for me to know what it was.”

  “Why would it be useful to you?”

  “That’s my business.”

  Ridpath digested all this. Belsey could see the cogs turning.

  “Gangsters build their reputations on murder. That’s what they are: the threat of violence. Why would they kill Devereux and then pretend it’s a suicide?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Neither did Ridpath, it seemed. He frowned, picked up his beer bottle without drinking, and after another minute of reverie said: “I don’t know what Project Boudicca is. But something’s still going on now. Something survives him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Someone’s been messing around with Devereux’s belongings. A toerag called John Cassidy was picked up last night skipping bail in a hire company Porsche Cayenne that was last signed out to a Mr. A. Devereux. I don’t think he knew anything about the car but someone did. That might be the someone who’s signing for Devereux’s plastic—in a souvenir shop in Camden, a chemist’s in East Finchley. All this might be low-level identity theft, but they’ve stolen the wrong identity. And I think they might know more than is good for them.”