The Impossible Fortune

68

DCI Varma is eating a sandwich at her desk, and failing to solve a murder.

There are no forensics of any use. They haven’t found Holly’s phone, and her personal emails are so heavily encrypted as to be unusable. She thought there had been a breakthrough when a partial fingerprint had been found on a fragment of the bomb, and it had been fast-tracked through the lab. To everyone’s great disappointment it had turned out to be Holly’s own fingerprint. She must have touched the bomb before she died. Perhaps that was even what set the thing off?

Records from Companies House show that Holly Lewis runs some form of storage facility, but, despite a week of investigations, this facility has yet to be located. Her partner in this endeavour is a man named Nicholas James Silver, but he seems not to be at home. An obvious suspect but currently proving impossible to track down. Varma should probably be doing more about this, but, well, you know?

Then there was the lead from what’s her name, De Freitas, about the Bitcoin. Three hundred and fifty million. Actually proved useful in the end.

The Financial Intelligence Unit had got in touch after she’d emailed them about the Bitcoin lead. A man called Lord Townes had been talking to everyone in town about a huge Bitcoin deal he was involved in. It raised a few flags, not known to be his style. She’d looked into it, and, well, what do you know, he was local, so that was a possible connection.

A couple of uniforms had popped round, but he wasn’t in, so they’ll go again tomorrow. Again, maybe she could be doing more.

They say you always want to solve your final case, but Varma doesn’t see it happening.

She scrolls her way down her computer screen. If she’s going to do her pottery full time, she’s going to need a pretty good kiln. You can rent them or you can share them, but Varma wants to buy one, really. To really commit.

Varma has a photo of Lord Townes, so maybe she’ll go round to Coopers Chase again to see if anyone noticed him around on the night of the murder. You never know. While she’s still a detective, perhaps she should do some actual detecting.

She won’t miss the job, and she knows the job won’t miss her. It’d be nice to solve it though, of course it would. Nice to tie up all the loose ends. Maybe Lord Townes is –

Ooh, someone in Horsham has got a second-hand kiln for sale!

69

‘Mr Noakes,’ says Ibrahim, ‘what aren’t we going to like?’

‘Again,’ says Davey Noakes, ‘I don’t come out of this wonderfully, but there we are. It was my idea to pay Holly and Nick in Bitcoin. I’d been paid some for some amphetamine in Amsterdam and accepted it as a novelty. I’d just started reading about it and thought, “Why not?” Holly and Nick agreed to the deal, for much the same reason as I did. Why not chance your arm? It was only twenty grand, and everyone could afford to lose it, if it came to that.’

‘But now it’s worth three hundred and fifty million,’ says Joanna. ‘And very few people could afford to lose that?’

Davey nods. ‘You’re quite right. It has become a bigger and bigger deal as the years have gone by.’

‘Enough to kill for, in fact,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Which is where we came in.’

‘Three hundred and fifty million is more than enough to kill for,’ agrees Davey. ‘But I’m afraid that Holly and Nick’s Bitcoin is not worth quite as much as that.’

‘How do you mean?’ asks Paul.

Davey gives a big sigh. ‘The Bitcoin I got paid in, all those years ago –’

‘The amphetamine Bitcoin?’ prompts Joyce.

‘The amphetamine Bitcoin,’ confirms Davey. ‘After I agreed the deal with Holly and Nick, and I realized that all I actually had in my possession was a piece of paper with a string of numbers and letters on it –’

‘And so?’ says Ibrahim.

‘So I got to thinking that Holly and Nick wouldn’t really know any different,’ says Davey. ‘And so I took another piece of paper. And I just wrote some numbers and letters on that instead.’

Elizabeth is shaking her head. ‘And that’s what was in Holly and Nick’s safe? Not Bitcoin at all?’

‘Afraid so,’ says Davey. ‘Just an old piece of paper with random letters and numbers on it. It looked the real deal, I made sure of that, but if they’d ever tried to cash it out, it’d be worth the square root of bugger all.’

‘Oh, Davey,’ says Joyce.

‘I know,’ says Davey. ‘I know. I thought there was no risk. Thought the whole thing would be a fad. I cashed out the real Bitcoin over the years, at various price peaks, and did very nicely thank you out of it, but I was aware that my little twenty-grand con was growing and growing into a bigger and bigger con as the years went by.

‘When it reached two hundred grand, I thought perhaps I should come clean, you know? Tell Holly and Nick there had been a mistake, slip them the two hundred grand? But I like a gamble, I can’t deny it.’

‘I like a gamble too,’ says Ibrahim.

‘I kept thinking it’ll go down again, it’ll go down again, but it didn’t, and by the time the value had passed into the millions, I thought, all right, it’s not a fad, but I’m damned if I’m going to fork out millions to compensate Holly and Nick for a perfectly innocent scam.’

‘So what was the plan?’ Joanna asks.

‘No plan,’ says Davey. ‘None of it mattered, as long as Holly and Nick decided not to cash out. I’d done sterling work over the years persuading one or other of them that the time wasn’t right. They trusted me, you see?’

‘And then two weeks ago,’ says Elizabeth, ‘in walk Holly and Nick, finally agreeing that the time was right.’

Davey nods. ‘The money was too much to ignore, I suppose. It was always going to happen. My only hope of getting out of trouble had been to die before it did. After the two of them had left, I called my accountant in for a stocktake. My money’s scattered here, there and everywhere, and I just wanted to check what it amounted to.’

‘I did that with my pension,’ says Joyce. ‘There was an advert and you can put it all in one place. It does add up.’

Davey nods. ‘My money amounted to around thirty-one million pounds.’

‘Okay,’ says Joyce. ‘That’s … okay.’

‘Nothing like enough to compensate Holly and Nick. Holly rang me, told me she wanted to meet, and I thought, here we go.’

‘You were going to tell her?’ asks Paul.

Davey nods. ‘I was all ready to come clean, and then she tells me about the car bomb –’

‘And events overtook you,’ says Ibrahim.

‘That’s a nice way of putting it,’ agrees Davey.

‘So the piece of paper we took from the safe this afternoon?’ says Elizabeth.

‘Completely worthless,’ says Davey. ‘I’m ever so sorry.’