‘After this, they traced Beck to a scientific research facility in north London. At the time he’d been employed there for several years. The investigation identifies him as a manager of some kind. From this point on, the agency put an operative into that research facility to watch him. This operative is referred to by a number only. This is where Elena Calvo turns up, boss. You said she was a player. She was the CEO there, and while she was there, she had an encounter with Beck. That brings us to this series of photographs. The time and date stamp says 22:38 one night in June four-and-a-half years ago. They must have both been working late.’
Up on the screen, there flashed in succession pictures of Elena Calvo standing beside her car in an underground car park, talking to Jerome Beck. The body language made it clear there was a fierce argument going on. Towards the end he was pushing his wallet at her. She refused to look at it. The last photographs in the series showed her slamming her car door and driving away.
‘That argument went on for eighteen minutes,’ Ralph continued. ‘Pity we can’t know what was being said. Or shouted.’
‘That’s where Beck kept his photograph,’ Jacquie said. ‘It was in his wallet like that. At the front, behind a window.’
‘Did he have it with him then?’ Ralph asked.
‘If he got it from his dying mother, why not?’ Harrigan said. ‘What do we know about this research institute?’
‘So far we’ve only checked its website. There’s nothing to indicate it’s anything but legitimate. There is one significant fact. Although this is hidden behind various companies, it’s owned by Jean Calvo. The dossier traces that ownership in detail.’
‘Did Senator Edwards see those photographs of Beck arguing with Calvo? Did he know they had this previous connection?’ Harrigan asked.
‘He must have done,’ Ralph said. ‘I spoke with his adviser any number of times this last week. He told me they’d both been through the dossier in detail. Now the poor bastards are dead.’
‘Did the minister mention this to her?’ Parkin asked. ‘Did she know this dossier existed?’
‘She’s the only one who can answer those questions now,’ Trevor said. ‘Edwards told us no one besides his staff knew about it and he could trust his staff. We’ve also kept its existence confidential. Maybe the boss can add something to this. He’s spoken to Calvo.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Her connections to the minister make her significant in this. She told me about this same incident while I was there,’ Harrigan said. ‘She was explaining it away. Beck was a drunken bum who harassed her. She hired him over here because she needed someone, then fired him almost immediately because he was a drunk. He started making abusive phone calls and she got one of her security people to watch him for her. I don’t think she would have told me any of that unless she expected me to know it from another source.’
‘Why couldn’t she be being truthful?’ Parkin asked.
‘She’s not someone who tells you things unless it’s in her interests. In my opinion, the connections here are too close to ignore. Also, Marvin had his own copy of this dossier. Which means he would have told du Plessis about its existence. Did Calvo know about it because du Plessis was working for her and he told her this information was out there? Maybe she even got her own copy that way. That’s another line of possible communication we can’t ignore.’
‘Something else for you to prove, Commander,’ Parkin replied.
‘I think it’s something anyone involved in this job has to consider,’ Harrigan said.
There was a brief silence.
‘Why would you waste eighteen minutes talking to a drunken bum late one night in a car park?’ Frankie asked, spiking the tension. ‘If he harassed you, why would you go ahead and hire him again? Only if you had to.’
‘What happened after those pictures were taken?’ Harrigan asked.
‘They kept a watching operation on Beck,’ Ralph said. ‘We get a series of weekly reports from their operative. Whoever this person was, they weren’t able to gain access to the research projects Beck was involved in. Access to the laboratories was tightly controlled and there was no public information available concerning the projects themselves. Instead the operative formed a personal connection to Beck, close enough to get a good view of his lifestyle. Whatever Beck was doing, it paid well. He liked to gamble; not always successfully, but he never seemed to have any trouble paying his debts.’
‘Just Beck?’ Harrigan asked. ‘There’s no indication this operative’s assignment extended to Elena Calvo?’
‘If they did, boss, it was extracurricular. There’s no information about it here.’
‘What happens then?’ he asked.
‘There’s a note on file that says the operative’s last report was removed because it had been requested by the under-secretary to the Ministry of Defence for use at a briefing. That report never made it back to the file. After that, there’s no more information from the operative. The reports stop.’
‘Is that the end of the information?’
‘No. As well the operative’s reports, the surveillance team’s reports are also in the dossier. Now according to them, Beck was still meeting du Plessis regularly. Their reports record that their operative was at the last two meetings these men had. Usually there are photographs of the meetings, but on this occasion those photographs have been removed.’
‘By who?’ Harrigan asked sharply.
‘By the agency. There’s a note to say they can be found on another file. After the final meeting, du Plessis left the country, flying to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That’s the last piece of information on file. The last page is stamped: Operation terminated: Archive. After that, there’s no indication it did anything but go back into the filing cabinet.’
‘What was the date of du Plessis’s departure?’
‘November four years ago,’ Ralph said.
‘Do we know what Beck was doing between then and now?’ Harrigan asked. ‘Do we know if he joined his mate over there?’
‘We do, and we can thank Edwards for that,’ Trevor said. ‘He fast-tracked the information out of the Department of Immigration. It hit our desks by courier yesterday morning. Otherwise, we’d still be scratching our bums for it six months from now. Beck left for Africa two weeks after du Plessis. He said he didn’t go to Kinshasa, he went to Nairobi.’
‘Do we know what either of them was doing over there?’ Harrigan asked.
‘We’ve got no information on du Plessis. But according to the information immigration had from Beck himself, he went to Africa as part of a religious educational aid project.’
Even the federal police contingent laughed.
‘Would I lie to people?’ Trevor said. ‘The project was based in Nairobi. It was called Christian Educational Initiatives, providing education at village level. Supposedly, Beck was their financial manager. Probably he spent most of his time sitting around playing pocket billiards.’
‘Does this charity really exist?’ Harrigan asked.
‘Apparently. There was correspondence between its head office in the UK and the Department of Immigration. The High Commission sent people out to have a look at its Nairobi office. Obviously, anyone can hang out a shingle and ask a few mates to hang around some rented rooms for a day or two. But you can see the department being able to justify what it did. Beck spends a number of years supposedly as an administrator in a respectable scientific research facility, then goes back to a country he’s had a long association with to work in an aid program. If that’s all the information you’ve got, on paper it doesn’t look so implausible. He came here from Nairobi via Johannesburg a year ago. His visa was handled through the Australian High Commission in Kenya.’