Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(60)

“What?”

She sighed. “Never mind. Look, I’m not allowed to know what you’ve got, all right? Because if I know that and the Directorate arrest me and torture me and I tell them everything – because I will, I’m no hero – they’ll say, ‘Well, there’s only one chap who could have told her that, it’s our old mate Hal,’ and then you’ll be in a lot of trouble, won’t you.”

He stared at her. “It’s not possible,” he said.

Gwen thought about it. “Okay,” she said finally. “Just give me the bullet points.” Hal looked lost again. “The gist. As vague as possible. Yes?”

Hal, it occurred to her, had never been spoken to like this by a woman before, bless him. He needed a few moments to gather his thoughts. “There were two of them,” he said. “In the 1980s, in the place he told me to look for. They lived here for a while, but we sent them back.” He paused. “Is that vague enough?”

She shrugged. “Works for me.” She took a bite of scone, washed it down with a sip of tea, dabbed her lips with her napkin. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to visit the ladies’, and while I’m gone I want you to leave. Go home, go back to work, I don’t care. Try not to attract attention. We’ll be in touch.”

He blinked at her. “What about my...”

“What? Oh. Sorry. Almost forgot.” She opened her handbag and took out a small brown envelope. She had no idea what it contained. She slid it across the table, slipped it under his plate. “There you go. Enjoy.” She got up and left the table without looking back.

One of the reasons she liked this restaurant was the corridor at the back which led to the lavatories. At the end of the corridor, past the doors to the toilets, was another door, which opened directly into an alleyway at the rear of the building. She opened the door, poked her head out, glanced quickly left and right, then stepped into the alley and walked confidently away from the restaurant.

The alley opened onto a busy shopping street off the Market Square. She crossed the street, walked a hundred metres or so, and entered a shop which seemed to sell nothing but ladies’ gloves. Through the shop to the back, where another door gave access to another alley. This one led to a maze of little alleyways, some of them cobbled, some of them not. She muttered the memorised route under her breath, “Left and right and right and left and forward and left,” and after fifteen minutes or so she stepped out onto a street full of motor cars and shops with Czech signs.

“Right on time,” Seth said, stepping up beside her and slipping his arm through hers. They started to walk. “How did it go?”

“Tell you later,” she said. “I’ve got to change these f*cking clothes. I look like an extra from Brief Encounter.”





4.





“WE NEVER THOUGHT we would actually be visited by one of the trustees,” said Mr Coltrane. “For years the trust has taken care of itself, with occasional minor adjustments.”

“Is it a problem?” asked his visitor. “My being here?”

“No, not at all,” Mr Coltrane reassured him. He looked at the sheaf of documents on his desk. “Everything’s in order. We were notified of the death of the previous signatory, of course.”

“May I ask by whom?”

Mr Coltrane consulted his pad. “A Mr Salum?e.”

“Ah.” The visitor nodded. “Of course.” The visitor was well-dressed but indefinably tired and careworn. He walked with a cane and he had a very faint accent. Mr Coltrane fancied himself a student of accents, but he couldn’t place this one.

“The gentleman’s authentications were correct,” said Mr Coltrane, suddenly concerned that something was amiss.

“I’m sure they were,” said the visitor. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a plastic card. “As, I hope, these will be.”

They spent five minutes matching random groups of letters and numbers from the visitor’s card with another which Mr Coltrane had taken from the office safe. There were signatures and countersignatures to be taken, terms to be read out loud, more signatures, then an exchange of encryption keys.

When everything seemed to have been completed to the solicitor’s satisfaction, the visitor said, “You’ll appreciate that I’m new to this matter; perhaps it would help if you could provide me with an overview of the trust and its disbursements, so I can get up to speed.”

“Certainly.” Mr Coltrane went back to the safe, returned with a red cardboard folder, which he laid on the desk in front of the visitor. “I have some business I need to take care of,” he said. “Perhaps you’d like to stay here and read in private...?”

“That would be very kind,” said the visitor. “Thank you.”

Rudi waited until the solicitor had left the office, then he got up and went to the window. The firm of Leonidas & Parr, Solicitors And Commissioners for Oaths (est. 1893) occupied the top three floors above a laundrette in Tilbury in Essex, the final and rather humble stop on a month-long odyssey of safety deposit firms, lawyers and banks which had taken him halfway across Europe and back. At each stop there had been instructions for how to find the next, and keys or authentication codes to release the information held there. And at each stop there had been details of some kind of financial instrument or account involving a very large sum of money. Rudi, who had been keeping a running count in his head as he travelled, believed the sums amounted to a little less than a billion dollars. The money was in continuous motion across Europe and several offshore accounts in the Caribbean, sloshing back and forth like water in the bottom of a rowing boat as if afraid it would be found if it stayed still for too long. Every month, a tiny fraction of it was transferred into a bank in Southend, and from there it was paid out again by Leonidas & Parr, who believed they were acting on behalf of a trust fund amounting to no more than a few hundreds of thousands of pounds.