‘She does?’
‘Of course. Higgins Holdings has no outside shareholders; Eden and Rachel own the company, fifty fifty.’ She looked at me as if she was considering how much she could tell me, then made a judgement. ‘It goes back a long way, to the start of Dene Furnishings, the original business. Rachel’s father loaned Eden the start-up cash; the deal was that everything that flowed from it would be jointly owned between husband and wife, on the record.’
Funny, I thought, that Eden would tell Luisa all that and yet say nothing about Alison and me. ‘You really do have his confidence,’ I remarked.
‘Oh I do,’ she replied, ‘but I didn’t get all of it from him. The share split’s on the record at Companies House; it’s public information. Rory told me the background.’
Did he, by God? From speculating about her having a thing with the boss, I moved on to wondering whether she might have moved down a generation.
Either she read my mind or she knew that she’d been too frank, for she gave a quick laugh. ‘That sounds awful,’ she exclaimed, ‘as if I pump him for information. That’s not how it was; he and I were going over the company annual report when it arrived from the auditors. The shareholder information’s set out there, and he just came out with it. “You know why that is?” he said, and then he volunteered the answer.’
‘That must have pleased you, in a way,’ I suggested. ‘After all, it shows that you have the complete trust of the son as well as the father.’
It occurred to me that it showed also that Rachel had Eden by the balls, suppose Luisa did harbour ambitions there. But I didn’t say that; I said nothing, and allowed her to carry on being frank.
‘I suppose,’ she admitted, ‘although Rory really is only learning the business. His father’s bringing him in gradually, with a view to retiring in five years or so. As it is, Rachel already lives in Monaco for quite a few months out of every year. It’s an easy commute,’ she added. ‘The company has its own plane. ’
All of that set me wondering once again about her and Eden, with the cat being away so much, but I let it lie. I hadn’t come to interrogate Luisa; that had been a bonus. She’d started talking; all my experience has taught me that when people do that, if it’s news to you, shut up and listen.
‘Mr Hurrell,’ I said abruptly.
‘Yes.’ She too snapped back to the reason for my visit. ‘He’s in his room, waiting for you. He has nothing to do until Eden’s return flight gets in from London this evening.’
She led me towards a door, next to her own and two away from Eden’s office, rapped quickly on it and opened it. ‘Walter,’ she called out, ‘Mr Skinner’s here to see you,’ then stood aside to let me past.
If I’d been expecting a little man in a chauffeur’s uniform, I couldn’t have been further from the reality of Walter Hurrell as he stood up to greet me. He was around the six foot mark, in the same age bracket as Luisa McCracken, late thirties, and was dressed in a grey suit so sharp that if you’d seen Eden and him side by side you’d have assumed that he was the billionaire.
He was lean, and I suspected that the expensive tailoring covered a powerful build; he was clean shaven with a perma-tan, and his thick dark hair was brushed back from his forehead. His only irregular feature was a conspicuously broken nose that reminded me of Inspector Drake in Ripper Street. There wasn’t a hint of a smile as he looked at me, and his eyes were cool and appraising. We shook hands; I was prepared for a crusher grip but it didn’t come. Instead those grey eyes stayed fixed on me. ‘Ex-Navy,’ Eden had told me, but this was no everyday sailor. The guy’s body language was yelling ‘Special Forces’.
‘SBS?’ I asked.
Hurrell relaxed a little and finally I saw a flicker of a smile. ‘That obvious?’ he answered.
‘It was the suit that gave you away,’ I joked.
The room was small, and so he didn’t have a desk, just a side table and three chairs. I took a seat that faced the window, with its view of Princes Street.
‘Were you a commando?’
‘No, I was Royal Navy, not Royal Marines.’ His accent was English; south of Birmingham, west of Southampton, I guessed. ‘I was a petty officer on a minesweeper. It bored the shit out of me, so I applied for Special Boat Service training. It’s a less common entry route, but it is possible.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘You’ve encountered Special Forces before?’
I nodded. ‘Several times. I had a friend who did the whole tour; SAS, Defence Intelligence, you name it.’
‘Is he still in the service?’
‘Note the past tense. He isn’t anywhere any more.’
‘Ahh, I’m sorry,’ Hurrell murmured. ‘Killed in action?’
‘Of a kind: I’m sorry to be mysterious,’ I added.
He whistled. ‘Spooky stuff? I never did any of that.’
I hadn’t gone there to talk about my past, and certainly not that chapter in the story.
‘Suppose you were going to steal the Princess Alison,’ I asked, abruptly. ‘How would you go about it?’
The grey eyes narrowed, grew colder again. ‘Are you hinting at something?’
‘Hell no,’ I laughed. ‘I don’t take you for an idiot. It was a straight question.’
‘Mmm.’ He didn’t look one hundred per cent convinced, nor should he have been. I knew nothing about ex-Petty Officer Hurrell, nor did I know how thorough Eden’s vetting had been. ‘In that case,’ he replied, ‘all I can say is that I’d have done it the same way they did. Cut the phone line, in fast, blind the sensor, and out of there as soon as the boat was powered up.’
‘You agree with the thinking that whoever did it had advance knowledge?’
‘Up to a point. They might not, depending on their hacking skills. The detailed plans of the boathouse will be on the local authority website. The schematic of the alarm system, that’ll be somewhere too.’
‘How would they know how to open the doors?’ I asked.
‘From the planning application; that detail would be there. Also, there’s a manual override of the remote opening system.’
‘But the door was closed again after the boat was taken.’
‘Maybe that was a bonus,’ Hurrell suggested. ‘Once you’re on the bridge and at the controls, the remote control device is bloody obvious; it’s right there beside the wheel, in a holder. But if not, if the operation was planned down to that last detail, the name of the door supplier is right there on the outside and its IT system will be accessible too. As for the layout of the Princess, she’s a piece of work, but she’s not unique. She doesn’t have many sisters but there are some.’
‘Are you telling me, Walter,’ I quizzed him, ‘that the police assumption that the theft involved insider knowledge is all wrong?’
‘No, I’m saying it’s not a safe assumption to make.’
‘I get it. Let’s move on. Do you have any thoughts on what’s happened to her?’
‘Thoughts maybe, clues no. I might imagine her cruising around the Black Sea, crowded with dodgy Russians quaffing champagne and Beluga caviar, but I’ve got no reason to believe that.’
‘Could she have been loaded on to a ship?’
‘No,’ he declared, emphatically. ‘First, it would need to be a bloody big ship, and second, it would have to be done in a dock, given the size of crane you’d need to lift the Princess.’
‘But it’s not impossible?’
‘It’s not,’ he admitted, ‘but are you going to steal a yacht then show her off in a public place, before loads of witnesses?’
‘Understood,’ I said. ‘Could she be sunk?’
‘She could, but why?’ Hurrell leaned back, looking at me. ‘I know, you’re suggesting that that somebody hates the boss, and stole his boat to piss him off, then scuttled her. The problem with your theory is that nobody does hate the man, or has any reason to. He makes people rich, and they love him for it. On top of that, he’s a genuinely nice bloke. You of all people must know that. From what I hear you were practically family at one point.’