Meyer-Hofmann AG

10

Captain Myles Blackburn looked up from the reports on his desk as Joe Wilson entered. It was unusual for Wilson to visit his office, unless he wanted something. Blackburn’s hackles were already rising as the detective sergeant took a seat opposite him and handed him the letter.

Probably another plea for an overdue promotion, Blackburn thought.

Wilson was without doubt one of his best detectives, but he rubbed people up the wrong way. Male people that was, it seemed females were unable to see any of his many flaws.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a letter.” Wilson smiled.

“Great, wise guy. Why are you giving it to me?”

“Captain, you remember what I told you about the Singh case, that it wasn’t so cut and dried as everyone thought?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Read.”

The captain scanned the letter before rubbing his forehead and slowly shaking his head.

“Who is this woman? Can she be trusted?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been in touch with her yet. But I need you to stop them releasing the bodies until we have had a chance to examine them again.”

“The governor won’t like it. They were going to ship them back to India this week. The guy was some Indian politician’s son. Probably how he ended up running a company like HLH Partners.”

HLH Partners had started as a branch of Lehman brothers in 1995, before becoming autonomous three years later. It was a hedge fund, but diversified into managed funds and equities. After moving its headquarters from London to New York in 2000, the company had never looked back. It managed assets in excess of twenty-six billion dollars for investors, and it had become one of the big players on Wall Street. According to the letter, Rahul Singh had become the CEO of HLH at the end of 2010, after a rapid rise through the company’s ranks. He had created two of the most profitable funds on the company’s books and was well-known in the City. HLH had itself been acquired in 2001 by a large German corporation, a holding company called Meyer-Hofmann AG. Keeping the same board and management since the takeover, there had been no noticeable change in the company’s running. Apparently, that had changed recently, when Meyer-Hofmann took a closer interest in the company and its employees. The letter said that Meyer-Hofmann had been in no way pleased to see a man of Indian origins running one of their companies. According to the letter, Meyer-Hofmann had actively tried to move Singh on, but had been blocked by the board, who had backed Singh to a man. The letter went on to talk about written evidence, which implied that Singh should be replaced by other means. Mrs Petersen had been worried that could have meant murder. She had asked to be kept out of the investigation, but by putting her name and address on the letter, she must have known that would not happen. Still, it all seemed rather insubstantial to Blackburn, who put the letter down on the table before looking up at Wilson.

“I’ll talk to the governor, but you better get me something better than this. I need hard evidence.”