“Perfect… and afterwards I’m going to make you love me even more.” She leaned over and kissed his neck.
In the end, they didn’t make love as Linda had suggested. It had been a long and tiring day so they ordered Chinese food and shared a bottle of wine as they ate. Then afterwards, like an old married couple, they slouched together on the couch and watched television until they fell asleep.
In the morning, they took the same route to Megan’s place as they had the day before. Again, Linda accelerated hard as they joined the four lane freeway, before slowing unexpectedly to see if they could spot a tail.
“Anything?” she asked as Stone swiveled his head from side to side.
“I’m not sure. There’s a blue Ford back there that looks familiar.”
“Yeah, I saw it as well, although it’s hard to tell if he’s following us.”
“Hang on… its passing us now.”
He watched closely as the car overtook them and accelerated into the distance.
“I think its ok. The driver took no notice of us at all. It was probably just someone late for an appointment.”
Although they saw no other sign of a potential tail, before parking at Megan’s, they drove around the block twice, just to make sure.
Megan greeted Linda like a long lost sister, dragged her along the corridor, leaving Stone behind to negotiate his way past the cats unaided. Today Megan’s hair was coloured in a bright shocking pink and styled into what Stone suspected was something called a ‘beehive’. She was wearing black high-heeled shoes, silk stockings, and a suit that closely resembled a US Army uniform of the 1950’s. Stone wondered how she found the time to create a new look each day. Even without the demands of being an employee, there were days when he barely had enough time to shave. As he watched the two girls chatting excitedly about ‘girly things’, Eric faked mild annoyance at being ousted from the center of attention, but secretly he was delighted to see that Linda had made a new friend. Nevertheless, he consoled himself by playing with the kitten that he had rescued. Megan had christened it ‘Widget’.
Eventually Megan’s attention came around to the business in hand, and she began talking about the latest developments.
“I’ve had a good look at Second Chances, but sadly there’s very little more to tell. At face value, they’re a small, but outwardly respectable charity. They receive support and donations from several celebrities and businesses, and they have a reputable board of Trustees. Their accounts are up to date and they seem believable.”
She threw her pen onto the desk.
“If Second Chances is just a front for the Wrecking Crew, then there should be something in the figures to back that up — but I can’t find it.”
“So we’re wrong?” Stone asked.
“No… I think we’re right. They’re just very, very good at hiding their nefarious activities.”
She waved a pudgy hand at her desk.
“What I’m saying is that there’s absolutely nothing here. If we’re going to track them down to their ‘evil lair’, then it won’t be through forensic accounting.”
Linda leaned forward.
“Who are the Trustees, anything suspicious there?”
Megan gave a grim smile.
“Sorry — quite the opposite, for a start there is Sir Harold Heathfield—”
“What… The MP?” Stone asked incredulously.
“None other!”
Linda frowned and shrugged, so Megan filled the gaps in her political knowledge.
“He was the former Defense Minister, and before that he was Home Secretary. Currently he’s the longest serving MP in the House of Commons. I think they call it ‘Father of the House’. There aren’t many people in Britain with a more respectable persona.”
Stone rubbed the back of his neck in frustration.
“Bloody hell! Who are the other Trustees?”
“There’s one other Trustee, it’s a man called Simon Cartwright. Hanna, his wife, was the third Trustee… ” Megan looked down respectfully, “but obviously not anymore.”
“Oh!” Stone said quietly.
Linda looked back and forth in confusion.
“Am I missing something?”
“You don’t know?” Megan asked in surprise.
Linda looked at Stone pleadingly.
“What don’t I know?”
Megan jumped in first.
“Hanna Cartwright, her maiden name was Silk. She was better known as ‘Silky’.”
“What, the model? The one that died of breast cancer?”
“None other!”
Megan spun her office chair in a tight circle.
“Hanna ‘Silky’ silk — the supermodel and international celebrity. She was the darling of the catwalk. Then she was the woman who publicly shared her illness, and death, to raise money for cancer charities. She was also the perfect wife of one Simon Cartwright.”
“Could she and her husband really have been the people behind the Wrecking Crew?” Linda asked. “It seems a little unlikely.”
“Well, let’s review. To prove this we need to identify four things: who, how, why, and where. Agreed?”
Megan looked at them both with a bright toothy smile. She received two silent nods in reply.
“Excellent! So let’s look at Simon and Hanna Cartwright. We have at least two strong leads that point directly to ‘Second Chances’, and by association, to the Trustees. I think that puts them firmly in the frame as the ‘Who’.”
“Go on.”
“They certainly would’ve had access to the right kind of criminal contacts through the charity. The other Trustee, Sir Harold Heathfield, could have provided plenty of clients for their unique services. So that’s the ‘How’ part solved. Is that agreed?”
“It seems to fit so far,” Stone conceded. Linda nodded silently.
“Good. Now, the ‘Why’ is a bit of a mystery. All three Trustees seem to have plenty of money, at least by normal standards. Cartwright and Heathfield both came from wealthy backgrounds, and Hanna made bucket loads of cash through her modeling. So I can only conclude that they were either hungry for even more money, or just on some kind of power trip.”
Linda held up a finger to make a point.
“Well, rich people always seem to be obsessed with increasing their wealth. On the other hand, if you look at what happened to Charles Rathbone, it seems to me that he was destroyed for his political ideals. So I would say that the ‘Why’ that you are looking for, is more about the pursuit of power, than the pursuit of money.”
“I agree,” Stone said.
“Me too,” Megan added.
“Ok… So they’re guilty as charged on three counts, all that remains is the ‘Where’ — and that’s where we come unstuck. Unless they’re operating this multi-million pound conspiracy factory from a poky little office in the back end of Aylesbury, we have nothing.”
“Nothing?” Linda asked.
Megan shook her head.
“Sorry, not a sausage. There’s absolutely nothing in the finances that leads anywhere. There are no payments that I can find that have a matching — or even similar — deposit in another account. No phone bill, tax bill, building insurance or car rental that shows any link to indicate where the Wrecking Crew operates from.”
She tapped her copy of Rathbone’s file with her finger.
“An operation of that size needs careful management, a lot of administration, access to confidential data, plenty of money and a load of computing power. There should be cars, equipment, offices, somewhere secluded to train, and a computer center with very good internet access — probably through a satellite dish. All I can tell you is that somebody is doing an excellent job of covering their tracks. And incidentally, I’ve had no success in finding who that ‘someone’ is either.”
Megan banged her fist on the desk to illustrate her irritation, startling two of her cats in the process.