He picked up Mickey Mouse and looked towards Sarah. ‘May I?’
‘Be our guest.’
Ten minutes and two telephone calls later Martin was finished. ‘Airway is easy. I’ll have that by 9.00 a.m. The Telecom task involves more work but my woman there says she’ll try to have what we need by midday And she didn’t moan at all.’
‘Good fella. Get word to me as soon as you have anything on either one. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to break the good news to the Chief. This business has got to the point where he needs to be told.’
54
A police car took Skinner to the Abbey National Building Society for his 10.15 appointment with the manager, a small neat man, curious as to the reason for Skinner’s visit.
Skinner accepted black tea in a thick, ugly cup. ‘Thank you for seein me at such short notice, Mr Needham,’ he began.
‘I believe that Mr Michael Mortimer, an advocate, was, until his recent death, one of your depositors.’
Needham nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. And a mortgage holder.’
‘I’m looking into his financial affairs. I have some of his personal records and I want to cross-check these with his account information here. I know that you have no obligation to assist me, but the matter is urgent, and the man is dead, so I hope that it won’t be necessary to go through formal procedures. I’d rather keep this completely off-the-record.’
Needham held up his hand in an affirmatory gesture. ‘That doesn’t caus me a problem, Mr Skinner. I take it that you want the details of both investment accounts.’
‘Both?’
‘Yes. He had two. One was used for regular monthly transfers from the Royal Bank, as a sort of business account, I think. From memory, the balance stands at almost thirty thousand pounds at the moment. The other is joint, in the names of Mr Mortimer and Miss, or is it Ms, Rachel Jameson It was opened in June, with a cash deposit of five thousand pounds.’
Successfully, Skinner concealed his excitement. ‘Any payment since then?’
‘Yes, in October a further fifteen thousand pounds was deposited again in cash.’
‘Can you give me the exact dates of these transactions?’
‘Of course.’ Needham rose from his chair and crossed to a four-drawe filing cabinet. He opened the second drawer from the top, looked inside and withdrew a folder. ‘Here we are. The account was opened by Mr Mortimer and Miss Jameson on June the twenty-first. The second deposit was made by Mr Mortimer on October the sixteenth.
‘I shouldn’t, but I’ll give you photocopies of these, and of the other account transactions for the last twelve months. Back in a few moments.’
When the door closed behind the little man, Skinner whistled to himself. Twenty grand! A tasty fee; but for what?
Needham reappeared a few moments later, and handed him a large brown envelope, sealed.
‘Thank you, Mr Needham. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘My pleasure.’ He escorted Skinner to the door.
55
In the back of the police car, Skinner looked at the photocopied pages. Twenty thousand, deposited in joint names, in two tranches, after the London visits. Cash deposits, not cheques. Money laundering? A drugs pay-off? Any lawyers with criminal practices made some dubious contacts. But surely these two couldn’t have been bent. Not the Scots Law Times Couple of the Month.
Yet there it was, and it had to be viewed with suspicion. Skinner knew that all advocates’ fees were collected by Faculty Services, which took a levy off the top for administrative expenses. Could Mike and Rachel have been cheating their own company?
The searchers into files and effects were still only at the start of their painstaking tasks when Skinner called at the New Town apartments. Mackie had the tougher job, since Mortimer had been a stickler for detail. He was picking through the Amstrad disks when Skinner arrived.
‘How does it look, Brian?’
‘Green, boss. This bloody screen goes for your eyes. Apart from that it’s bleak. There was one personal file on this thing, full of letters to relatives, thank-you notes to hostesses, and a Christmas-card list ready for printing out on labels. None of the names look promising. The others were all business records. There are actually fewer files than there might have been. Some of the disks are almost empty. If he had a filing system, I haven’t figured it out.’
‘Okay. Get stuck into the paperwork with Mcllhenney when you’re finished with that. And keep a lookout for references to a joint project with Rachel, and a cash fee.’
‘Will do, sir.’
Back in his office just before midday, Skinner called Kenny Duff. ‘I need some financial info on our friends, Kenny. Did either one have a private source of income? Gambling, for example.’
There was a pause at the Charlotte Square end of the line. ‘I guess you’ve come across the joint account, and the nature of the payments. That came as a surprise to me too, when I found the account book. You understand that as executor I couldn’t volunteer that information to you?’
‘Sure, that’s all right. You’ve no clue as to the source of the money?’
‘None at all. It’s a problem for me, I don’t mind telling you. I’ve no way of telling whether it’s earned income, a gift or, as you suggest, a win on the pools. I just don’t know what to tell the Revenue, or even whether to tell them. As far as their general finances were concerned, both Mike and Rachel had good practices, and were comfortably off. Had they chosen a specialist area of civil law, rather than criminal, they’d have done even better, but neither one was short of a few bob. They were planning to sell Mike’s flat to help pay for the new house, and they’d have done well out of that deal too. All that makes twenty thousand in grubby fivers even more difficult to understand.’
Skinner grunted. ‘Thanks Kenny. You’ve been no bloody help at all but thanks anyway.’
56
‘Wait till you hear this!’ Quickly Skinner told Martin of the building society account, and the cash deposits which had followed the London visits.
Martin’s breath hissed between his teeth. ‘Let’s see if we can tie it into this.’ He waved an A4 document. ‘It’s just this minute arrived from Telecom. I haven’t looked through it yet.’
He laid the sheets on Skinner’s desk and walked round to look over his shoulder. The document was in two sections, one listing Mortimer’s calls, the other, those made by Rachel. Skinner handed one back to Martin.
‘You check that one. Look for London numbers, private listings and ex-directories. Let’s concentrate on the four weeks before Mortimer’s first trip to London. See if we get the same name on each list.’
They studied the columns of numbers in silence for some minutes. When Martin spoke there was an edge of controlled excitement in his voice.
‘Try this, boss. On June the fourteenth, six days before Mortimer’s solo trip to London, Rachel made a twenty-three-minute call to an ex-directory number in London. The subscriber is named here as Fazal Mahmoud, address, Forty-nine, St David’s Avenue, Pimlico.’
‘Okay!’ Skinner’s tone echoed that of the younger man. ‘On June the seventeenth, Mortimer made a seventeen-minute call to the same man. Let’s take it forward.’
Each searched his list in silence for several minutes more. When Skinner was finished he looked across at Martin, a question in his eyes.
‘Nothing else sir. No more calls to that number. How about you?’
‘Consistently. One a month, each lasting no more than five minutes. Then in October, three days before the second trip, a call lasting nineteen minutes and thirty-five seconds.’