No Kiss For The Devil

15

By nine the following morning, refreshed by a few hours sleep, Riley had completed researching what she could find of Helen Bellamy’s life. There was almost nothing of a personal nature.

A schools reunion site yielded some names from a meeting a year ago, but nothing recent. Helen’s professional record, which was spread across a wide range of business topics, showed a varied and regular pattern of work, although strangely, nothing for the last six weeks. But that, she decided, could be because Helen may have been working for publications without a web presence, and therefore with no electronic link to the Internet. She had worked for a number of small but solid magazines and newspapers, and was clearly building up to a more prestigious future when she had met her untimely death.

She had belonged to one or two journalism or writing-related support groups, but they were also woefully thin on detail. Riley’s conclusion was that Helen Bellamy had been a very private person, and had left almost nothing of a footprint, unless it was with people who had known her well. People like Frank Palmer, who appeared to have known precious little.

For a change of pace and atmosphere, she turned her focus on the background, work and minutiae of ‘Kim’ Al-Bashir, retailer, multi-millionaire, investor and speculator.

Originally named Muammar, after his grandfather, Al-Bashir had decided shortly after arriving in England to call himself Kim — a fact which had earned him the early, taunting tag of ‘Johnny English’ both from the press and his enemies. Al-Bashir seemed to have developed the knack of courting the former when it suited him, and evidently had no shortage of the latter. Rumour suggested that these enemies stretched from his birthplace in Egypt to the corridors of Whitehall in London, many of them the trampled human casualties from numerous business dealings and his ruthless desire to rise to the top.

Al-Bashir’s biggest problem seemed to be his belief that, having bought a large amount of London property during the ‘eighties, including a chain of household department stores with a flagship address and branches all over the country, he should have been riding high in the nation’s consciousness and hearts, loved and respected by all.

Sadly for him, this had not happened. As if in compensation, he had surrounded himself with a small army of security men, and the stories of how he dealt with perceived enemies were numerous. He had been investigated many times, some of his men had been charged with assault or intimidation, but nothing had stuck, confirming the belief among many in the press that, in spite of his claims to the contrary, he had friends in high places.

Yet when it came down to basics, all Riley managed to find was that Al-Bashir — rich, powerful and seemingly paranoid — was no worse than many other rich, powerful businessmen. He had more money than most and, if rumour in the city was true, backers with unlimited resources to help fund his various business ventures. But in that he was hardly unique.

One of those ventures, verified in the on-line city pages of the nationals, concerned Al-Bashir’s desire to become a leading player in the telecoms market. He had bid for a share of an imminent release of licences across Central and Eastern Europe, effectively seeking to supply, equip and run the entire cellular network across a vast land base. According to the Financial Times, Al-Bashir already had a share in the huge new Batnev satellite system which, once hooked up, would control a substantial amount of mobile phone and wireless connections. It was rumoured that the low cost of the new system would allow him to mop up subscribers across an even wider area, including parts of the Middle East and even sections of the hugely profitable European subscriber base, where subscribers were no longer troubled by brand loyalty.

Riley turned to the folder Varley had given her. She had deliberately left this to one side until she had formed opinions based on her own research. Much of it merely confirmed what she had already discovered, probably culled from the same public domain sources. Al-Bashir, it said, was after some very big fish indeed, and could, if successful, change the face of a large part of the communications world across Eastern Europe.

A note on a single sheet of paper in the file caught Riley’s eye. Folded in on itself, it was snagged between two other documents. There was no indication where the information had come from or where it was supposed to fit. Although typed, it read almost like an afterthought.

Apart from the established providers (already bidding), there could be other obstacles in Al-Bashir’s way. These amount to a number of previously unidentified wealthy individuals or equal-interest groups with a strong desire to keep control of the market in local hands while taking advantage of the enormous potential offered. Although largely resident abroad, these emigres (oligarchs?) still command substantial resources and considerable influence in the region from local (state) up to national level, in some cases capable of outstripping bids from the more impoverished national treasuries. Singly or as a group, they should not be discounted.

Oligarchs. Riley sat back. That word again. Coincidence? It must be. She forged on, her thoughts drifting to whether Al-Bashir had considered how unpopular his bid was going to make him if he succeeded. Commercial enemies were one thing and to be expected. But consumer resentment of one man’s grandiose schemes was something else entirely, and very unpredictable. If he had thought it through, he was evidently unconcerned by it.

Reading further, she found other disturbing questions coming to the surface. They concerned Asiyah, Al-Bashir’s young and beautiful — but rarely seen — wife. A gifted musician and artist from a traditional Alexandrian family, she had walked into his store one day, and by the time she was ready to leave, Al-Bashir had proposed.

Some of the press speculation and reports included mention of Asiyah’s alleged taste for the high life, free of the restrictions of her family and homeland. But why not? She was the wife of a wealthy man who clearly liked to indulge her. There were reports that he was protective of her, some suggesting to a degree beyond the merely reasonable. One of Al-Bashir’s security men had been dismissed for allegedly looking at Asiyah too openly, while another had been sacked, subsequently accusing Al-Bashir of having him beaten up for disagreeing with Asiyah over a question of her personal safety.

Yet again, nothing startling, given the kind of life these people led. Mildly eccentric behaviour came with the territory. But press reports fed eagerly on the mundane, turning it as if by magic into something else, coloured and re-packaged for public consumption.

It was only when Riley was well over halfway through Varley’s notes that she found the personal detail began to outstrip the commercial. Wading through documents similar to the ones she had discovered, she found additional allegations which, if true, meant Asiyah Al-Bashir wasn’t just merely extravagant, but unfaithful, too. If the allegations were false, they were opening up the publishers of the magazine — and by implication, anyone putting their name to them — to legal action. And funded by Al-Bashir’s vengeful millions, that would mean personal and professional ruin. But what if they were true?

She read through an impressive looking report prepared by a high-level security company, looking for weaknesses in the detail. Asiyah, it was stated, had formed a secret liaison with a non-Egyptian national. She had been followed to several meetings in London, Paris and Athens, where compromising photographs had been taken. From the angle of some of the photos, Riley could only surmise that the photographer had been standing on a balcony right outside the woman’s hotel room, and that Asiyah was criminally careless when it came to drawing the curtains.

It was bad enough that Asiyah’s lover was allegedly Israeli — heinous indeed for the wife of a staunchly proud Egyptian. But there was worse to come — at least, from Al-Bashir’s point of view.

His wife’s alleged lover was another woman.