Aftershock

Thirty-six

‘Thanks, boss. Sorry, thanks, Bob,’ said Maggie Steele. ‘That contact may well come in useful. I have a feeling that I’m about to run into a brick wall. I’ve been digging into Dražen’s company. He’s no longer part of it: his shares have been sold to a Bermuda trust.’

‘What about his co-directors and senior colleagues?’

‘I’ve spent most of the day digging into their backgrounds. Leaving aside his mum, who’s taken over as chair of the company, there are only two of any consequence. Fishheads is a very tight operation: there’s no excess baggage at the top level. The CEO is an accountant named Godric Hawker. He was originally recruited as finance director, from one of the major accountancy firms, to impress the City, it’s said.’

‘Any connection with your man before that?’

‘None that I can see. I did find out something interesting about him, though, from a friend of a friend who did some asking around for me. Hawker jumped at the chance to join Fishheads because its headquarters are in London. He has a severe flying phobia; that meant that his promotion prospects with an international accountancy practice were a bit limited. It also means that if Dražen were to contact his old associates, Hawker would hardly jump on a plane to go and meet him.’

’That’s assuming Dražen’s not hiding somewhere in Britain.’

‘He isn’t,’ Maggie replied. ‘On the day the Met raided his apartment his father’s company jet logged a flight plan for Iceland. There’s no record of it ever landing there. Three days later it flew into our air space from the US and landed back at its home airfield. It was flown by Davor Boras’s driver, David Barnes. The day before that, Barnes was a passenger on the morning flight from Heathrow to Dulles International, in Washington.’

Skinner laughed. ‘Maggie, my girl, you really are good. Dražen flew the plane across the Atlantic, his friends in the intelligence community helped him disappear, and his dad sent his minder and pilot to fly the thing back.’

‘Why would anybody help him?’

‘For services rendered, and maybe still to come. What about the other business associate?’

‘He’s very interesting. His name’s Ifan Richards; he’s the public face of the company in the City. Age twenty-nine, a year older than Dražen, son of a Welsh printing millionaire. They were at Charterhouse, and they both attended Harvard Business School. Ifan majored in management sciences, and Dražen did international business. They were both on the students’ council board in their final year. Dražen was a vice-president and Richards was the communications director. Both graduated summa cum laude on the same day. Ifan was recruited by IBM in London, and was there until he joined Dražen in the start-up of Fishheads dot com.’

’Dražen’s best mate, from the sound of it,’ said Skinner. ‘What’s his personal background? Gay? Mind you, Dražen’s hetero: we found that out from Amy Noone.’

‘He’s still single, but he has a girlfriend called Chandler Lockett, who was a member of a girlie band when they were fashionable. Nowadays she’s mostly seen with him on the pages of Hello! magazine and the like.’

‘Legends in the surgery waiting room?’

‘And the hairdresser’s.’

‘So? What’s your thinking?’

’If anyone’s going to lead us to Dražen, it’ll be Ifan.’

‘Not his mother?’

‘I’m going to assume she wouldn’t put him at risk. We know for sure his father won’t. Anyway, Sanda’s a figurehead in the business. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was replaced as chair pretty soon by the non-exec that the LTN Trust put on the board.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Nobody I’ve ever heard of. His name’s Ignacio Riesgo.’

‘What? Spell the surname.’

‘R-I-E-S-G-O.’

Skinner’s laugh took her by surprise. ‘He wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Yes, he bloody would!’

‘What are you on about?’ asked Maggie, puzzled by his reaction.

‘His name. Riesgo, translated, means “risk” in English. You’re telling me that Dražen’s replacement on the board of the company he founded is called “I. Risk”. He’s pulled another one, the cheeky bastard. You find Ignacio, and you’ve found Dražen.’

‘But his shares have been sold. I checked with the company registrar: his signature is on the transfer document.’

‘Transfer being the key word. They’ve been moved into a trust, not sold to an individual. Mags, I don’t know anything about this LTN operation, but if the L doesn’t stand for “Langley” I’ll bet you it should. This will be a CIA front. I wanted to tell you this face to face, but Davor Boras has been enabling operations in the Balkans for years, and latterly his son’s been involved too. These guys have a stack of Brownie points with the Americans; now some of them have been cashed in.’

‘Maybe, but if I can find him. .’

‘There will be one significant problem with that.’

‘What?’

’Three of our people have met Dražen. Mario, and the two DCs down in Leith, Tarvil Singh and Griff Montell. But that was weeks, months ago. I’m pretty sure that by now they could all sit in the same room as the guy and not know him, at least until he spoke. He’ll have had cosmetic surgery, his hair colour and style will be different, he’ll be bearded and he’ll probably have been to fucking Specsavers. We’re going to need his DNA to identify him for sure.’

‘If that’s what it takes,’ said Maggie, grimly, ‘I’ll take a blood sample myself.’

‘You’ve got to find him first. That may be impossible. Right now, I agree, it looks as if your best route is through Richards, but that won’t be easy. He’s part of an international trading company, and if the CEO won’t fly, he must be all over the place on business. He’ll have dozens of opportunities to make contact with Dražen in the course of a year. Best thing to do is have a talk with our friend Adrian; see if he can help.’

‘First thing tomorrow. Thanks again, Bob, for all this. You’re only indulging me, I know, but I appreciate it. You’ve no idea how much it helps.’

‘Indulging you? I’m bloody well not. You’ve only been on this for a couple of days, and look at the results you’ve got already.’

‘The next part’s going to be the hardest, though,’ she said. ‘But I promise not to disturb your holiday again. Say sorry to Aileen for me, please.’

‘I will. She’s upstairs just now, refreshed after a siesta and getting ready to hit the town.’

‘Sounds good. How’s it going anyway? Are you having a quiet time, apart from me, that is?’

She heard him chuckle. ‘Quiet time? You ask your ex and his mate how quiet it’s been.’