Alex Warren Murder Mysteries Collection

Chapter 10

Alex had only just turned the key in the ignition when his phone rang. From the "Parrot" screen he could see it was Sandra calling. He switched off the car"s engine so as to deactivate the hands free and instead lifted the phone"s handset to answer. He turned on the radio for the boys to listen to. It was set to Radio Clyde and he noted it was part way through a play of one of his favourite songs, Hotel California by the Eagles, accompanied by the lyrics,

Hotel California"You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave." He slid out of the door to stand in the car park so he was better able to converse privately.

“What"s been happening?”

“A fair bit of progress. First, Connor"s team got into the safe. There was about five grand there in cash, all used notes. No meaningful prints. The money didn"t tie into shop receipts, so it may have been ill-gotten gains from blackmail or just a cash float for making purchases, there"s no telling. There was also a notebook, the sort used for keeping accounts. You know the sort, with cash columns? The only things written were symbols and letters, a code of some sort. There were also numbers. I suspect it"s how Stevenson kept tabs on his victims and what and when they paid him. They"re arranging to have it looked at to see if anyone can break the code. But most interestingly there was a gun, a Smith & Wesson revolver, and it had Stevenson"s prints on it. It wasn"t loaded but there was a box of cartridges and it wasn"t full. They"ve run tests and it doesn"t seem to have any history. It"s not a common gun for this part of the world and it"s a mystery where the cartridges were used. It could just be target practice, of course.

“Next, the door to door has been continued but hasn"t yielded anything worthwhile. We"ve a list as long as your arm with people who"ve moaned or complained about Stevenson but no one who"s seen or heard anything meaningful.

“Fitzpatrick"s been brilliant on the CCTV. He"s still working through it but he"s already given us a list of twelve vehicles that have been spotted near both locations. The man"s amazing. I don"t know how he does it.

“We managed to borrow one of the brains from forensic accounting. Connor set it up for us, and he"s been working through Stevenson"s financial records. He"s part of some new department and I"ve arranged to go to his office at four o"clock to go through anything he"s come up with. When I spoke with him, he said he"d organised the research on other business interests and property. So I"m looking forward to seeing what he has.

“Now the bad news, we"ve been trying to find the working girls and boys from the photos. We"ve taken them round all the usual contacts but nobody"s recognised any of them. They"re not known on the normal circuits. We"ve checked the streets and the escort agencies too, but no leads on any of them. They could be new to the game or else they"re from out of town. They"re mostly young, but don"t look underage. The folk we"ve spoken to said most of the new girls they come across are Asian or East European but from the photos that doesn"t tie in with our lot.”

“Mmm, I"d have thought at least one of them would have been recognised.”

“Not so far. Anyway, a bit more luck with the punters. We"ve been able to pinpoint some of them already. It"s nearly all top-level stuff. We"ve got a couple of bank managers, some senior business executives and, wait for it, a Sheriff.”

“What?”

“You heard right, I said a Sheriff. McSweeney, he serves regularly as a magistrate at Paisley court. You"ll remember, he"s the one the press went mad about a few months ago, not without good reason. It was because of his soft touch, accepting very iffy defence pleas. I"m planning to set up interviews but I"ve not arranged to see any of them yet. I thought you"d want in on that one.”

“You"re right there. You"ve done well, very well. Is there anything else?”

“You bet and it"s another strange one. One of the photos we"d been trying to trace thinking she was a w**********l turns out to be one of the punters and not just any punter either, she"s a local councillor. We should really have recognised her earlier but it was just so unexpected. It"s Shirley McCann. She"s married with two kids and she"s only in her late twenties, but looks even younger. She"s been recognised as one of the high flyers in the opposition, tipped for a Holyrood or a Westminster seat. I"ve been trying to pin down where she is so I can fix up an interview. I was planning to try and see her with Sanjay as I don"t trust Donny not to put his foot in it, unless you want me to wait for you?”

Alex let out a low whistle. “You"ve certainly been busy. No, go ahead and fix it up at the first opportunity, and I think you"re right to keep Donny clear of her. Donny and influential women are not a good mix”

“Just one more thing, remember the inconsistency in Findlay"s story? We checked it out. He did make the emergency call from the shop phone but we checked he also made a call from his own mobile about a minute later, before anyone arrived. It was to a mobile number. We checked his records and he"d not called that number before, not within the last three months at least. But it had been called from the shop number quite a few times and it had also been called from Stevenson"s home phone. Very curious. I"ve tried ringing the number but it"s only ever rung out. I"m having it traced and I"m arranging to see Findlay again tomorrow. I"ll put him under some pressure and see what I get.

“Oh, one last thing. When we checked the shop phone, there"d been a couple of calls to a different mobile on the morning of the murder. The last one was just after ten past one so, based on when Findlay said he left, it could be our murderer. I"ve tried to check it out. The phone number corresponds to a cheap pay as you go bought from Tesco. The purchaser details were bogus so it looks like a dead end, unless we find it on someone or the owner switches it on.”

“You"ve done amazingly well, keep up the good work and keep me informed.”

Alex climbed back in the car and noticed the music had finished and the radio broadcaster was speculating about the afternoon"s football program. He drove back to his flat and they all changed and picked up the match tickets. They then continued across to Ibrox where, knowing many of the support staff, Alex was able to find a parking spot close to the stadium. They showed their tickets at the turnstile, picked up a programme and found their seats. Then while waiting for the game to start, they enthusiastically discussed Rangers" prospect of retaining the premiership title after their successful start to the season. A win today would add to their lead at the top of the table. They were already nine points clear of Motherwell and twelve clear of Celtic with these two playing each other the following day.

Within minutes of the game starting, Alex became first irritated and then increasingly infuriated by the behaviour of a middle-aged spectator sitting three rows in front of them. The man was clearly intoxicated, jumping up from his seat and shouting and swearing at the players and the referee in the crudest possible way. Nothing seemed to please him and he made sure everyone knew about it.

Although he wasn"t in favour of the boys being too insulated from the real world, Alex was unhappy with them being exposed to this sort of obscenity. Eventually Alex had had enough,

“We all came to watch a game of football, not to listen to your ranting. So just keep it to yourself!”

“Oh yeah! And who"s gonna make me?” came the reply from the thug who spun round showing clenched fists.

“Well, I"m ready,” Alex replied holding up his warrant card while standing up to his full height which, from the lout"s viewpoint, was further exaggerated by the tiered seating in the stadium.

The thug turned back and sat down, doing no more than mumble to himself for the rest of the afternoon. A spontaneous round of applause burst out from around them and, witnessing the pats on the back and the voicing of thanks from fellow spectators, the boys looked approvingly at their father.

Their enjoyment of the game was increased further when Nikica Jelavik headed the home side into the lead in what was Rangers first real attacking movement of the match. Although being far from their most impressive performance, the game ended with Rangers victorious, winning 3 – 1 and establishing a twelve point lead at the top of the Scottish Premier League. Their fans left the ground happy with the result.

Sandra had not been to this office before. She hadn"t even known it existed. She arrived at the modern tower block building on Waterloo Street slightly ahead of her four o"clock appointment. She entered through the revolving door and, after showing her ID at the security desk, was told to take the elevator to the third floor and go to the fourth door along the corridor, labelled suite fifteen.

Approaching the entrance, she saw the office wall was constructed out of opaque glass bricks and the door itself was heavy figured glass with three separate steel plate reinforced Mortise locks. Her rap on the glass was quickly answered as the door was opened into a very large, bright and airy office. All the furniture was modern and fronted in aluminium or beech. There was a scattering of desks, a couple of large tables, a profusion of computer monitors and a bank of filing cabinets. Only two other people were there. Sandra wondered if she had come to the wrong office. The girl who had opened the door looked to be aged in her early twenties. She had very white skin, long jet-black hair and was dressed as a Goth.

She introduced herself, “Hi, I"m Celia, you must be Sandra. You"ve an appointment to see Geoff. He"s just finishing a call, but go across to his desk and take a seat. He"ll be with you in a sec.”

Celia sat back down at her desk by the door. It struck Sandra as odd the way the room was laid out. It was such a large office and the two people in it were sitting at opposite ends. Didn"t they like each other or were they just trying to make use of the space?

Just as she approached the desk, Geoff turned to face her. He looked to be about her age and was of medium height. He had the broad shoulders and muscular arms normally associated with a swimmer or a rugby player and neatly cropped, sandy-coloured hair. He was clean-shaven with hazel eyes and smooth, even features other than a kink in his nose, which looked like it had been broken at some time in the past, perhaps confirming the rugby playing. His tight jeans were straining to contain his muscular thighs and he was wearing a Rolling Stones" "forty licks" tee-shirt.

Sandra blinked a couple of times. This was not what she had been expecting. Having been introduced by Connor over the phone, she"d made an appointment to see someone she"d thought was from the force"s financial investigations section. Although she truly hadn"t known what to expect, this certainly wasn"t it. She"d probably have felt more at ease in a dark dingy office, piled high with paper and old, brown wood furniture and staffed by someone bald, bespectacled, podgy and middle-aged wearing a pin striped suit. She couldn"t help herself from staring.

To add to her discomfort, she was dazzled by his wide even-toothed grin, his eyes dancing with mirth. “Have I disappointed you? You must have been expecting a suit, collar and tie?”

“No, no,” she stammered showing her embarrassment. “I"ve just never been to this section before.”

“You wouldn"t have. It"s new. Let me explain.” While talking, Geoff was reciprocating by casting an appreciative scan over Sandra"s lithe form. “We"re trying out an experiment with collaboration from the police, the accountancy bodies and the law society. This office was only set up last month on a trial basis. It"s being staffed by some of your people together with secondments from some of the accountancy firms and the legal practices. I"m Geoff Thomson and I"m an Accountant. Christ that sounded like an introduction at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Have a seat and I"ll tell you more about it.

“As I said, I"m a qualified accountant and I work for Ross Marwick"s, one of the big four accountancy firms. After I qualified, I worked in insolvency for a while and I really liked it. It gave me a taste for being at the sharp end, running a business, but what I really loved was getting involved in investigations and tracing where the money had gone. I"ve spent some time with the forensic accounting department too. When this secondment opportunity came up, I leapt at it. You met Celia when you came in. She"s a law graduate. We"re planning to staff this unit with three accountants, two lawyers and a few of your people, but that will take a bit more time to pull together. For the time being, there"s just us and Tony and he"s on holiday this weekend. Most of the work will be done in association with the Serious Fraud Office, but where there"s time, we want to have greater interaction with CID. Inspector Connor told me about this case on Thursday evening and I said I"d be happy for us to have a look into it and maybe give you some pointers. I picked up the files yesterday. We don"t have a lot of time because from Tuesday our time"s committed as we"re starting on a major investigation working with the Liverpool SFO looking at the Scottish end of one of their cases. That"s why I"ve been working the weekend.”

“That was good of you,” she replied smiling.

“Well, what else would I be doing on a wet and windy Saturday? Now I"ve retired from rugby, at least on a regular basis, I"ve got so much more free time.”

Sandra inwardly congratulated her own detective skills.

“I miss the after match socialising though. Maybe, after we"ve finished this briefing, you"d like to come out for a drink.”

Sandra was taken aback. “What? You"re asking me out?” She"d only met this guy two minutes ago and thought he was coming on to her. Had she been sending out the wrong signals? No doubt he was good looking and he must be intelligent to have this job, but she didn"t feel ready to accept an invitation without knowing him better.

Seeing her concerned expression, Geoff continued, “Whoa. Wait a minute. There"s nothing heavy here. We"ve had a hectic week and I"m calling it a day after our meeting. Celia and I had already agreed we were going for a beer when we finished and I thought you might like to join us.”

Now Sandra felt even more embarrassed. Had she misread and jumped in too quickly? Or was it really a try on? Sandra had never been short of admirers but she hadn"t had too many real boyfriends. When she"d broken up with one a few years back, he"d accused her of being scary and frightening other people away. Maybe he"d been right and she was too guarded, not prepared to give anyone a chance.

“No it"s okay. I was only joking. Anyway, I"m afraid I"ve still a number of things to do before I finish up. Maybe another time,” she recovered.

“Fine, we"ll take a rain check,” Geoff replied. “Another time it is. I"ll not be staying out long myself. I need to get back to relieve my partner. Liz has been home watching the twins all day and she"ll be looking for reinforcements.”

So he"s got a partner, Sandra thought, and children. Either he"s a genuine guy who"s just been looking to unwind a bit before going home, or my instincts were right and he"s a bit of a cad. Either way, I"m here on business so let"s get on with it. “Well, what have you been able to find out?”

Geoff pulled a spare chair over to his side of the desk, patted it inviting her to move seats so she"d be better able to see the papers and the screen.

“As I said before, we haven"t had a lot of time but we"ve been through Stevenson"s bank statements and his business records. At first, it looked as if all the records were immaculate. There were invoices and receipts to support nearly every transaction. But when we looked deeper, it wasn"t so clear. It wasn"t clean at all. It was quite strange too because we looked at the last three years and there seemed to be a major change just over a year ago.

“In the earlier period, there was an inconsistency where there were a lot of transactions which made large profits, but that was offset by several other transactions which made losses. Sometimes it was when purchases had been made from the same person. With the profitable sales, the associated purchases were quite often made by cheque but most often with the loss making ones, the purchases were by cash or mainly cash and part cheque.”

“I don"t understand. Why would that be?”

“We had our suspicions but we had to do some research to really find out. We"ve made a number of sample calls. All the purchases we checked where a big profit was made were confirmed by the seller. A few complained that they"d been robbed on the deal. It was a different story for the ones where a loss was made. We weren"t able to confirm the price with any of the sellers. Some knew nothing about the transaction and others agreed the sale but claimed they were paid much less. We looked in detail at the purchase documents and found quite a few had been doctored. Look at this one: it"s for a ring that was purchased for fifty quid and it"s been changed to two hundred and fifty. Look closely, you can see the pen strokes are different on the "two." Then when it was sold it only fetched one twenty. He really made a profit of seventy but the books showed a loss of one hundred and thirty.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Two reasons; one, to reduce his profits so he wouldn"t have to pay corporation tax, or less tax, and two, so he could take cash out the business without it showing and again so he didn"t pay tax to take it out. It was a limited company. If he was taking money out, he should have been paying income tax and national insurance.”

“It was pretty well thought out then?”

“Yeah, I suppose so, but not very sophisticated. It was a pretty amateurish fraud to cheat the taxman and not too difficult to detect if you know what to look for.

“Most of the sales look kosher. A lot of them are through the shop and he mostly received the money by cheque or credit card, and that didn"t give him room for manoeuvre. He sold a bit through the trade too which could stand some closer examination. He sold many items through the auction houses and did some buying there too. He mostly used Great Western Auctions, the place out at Scotstoun, you know, Anita Manning"s place, the one that"s used on Bargain Hunt?”

“Oh yes, I like her.”

“So did he, apparently. He did a lot of business there, and from what I see, that"s all completely legit.”

“You said that was the earlier period and then it all changed, so what happened then?”

“It didn"t all change. Everything that had been happening before continued to happen but all of a sudden a new type of transaction began to occur and quite often.

“A number of transactions went through that didn"t seem to make either a profit or a loss. That in itself wasn"t very strange. You don"t always know how the market"s going to react and you might just want your money back, the way the economy"s been, things like antiques can be very volatile. The strange thing here was that they were bought and sold within days of each other and the items were more like commodities, mainly gold and some diamonds. The gold was mostly coins, sovereigns and the like, and the diamonds were all over one carat, so they were investment diamonds and not costume jewellery.”

“Why was that odd?”

“To a dealer, items like that have a known price. You wouldn"t expect Stevenson to buy them unless he was getting a very good deal, or unless he already had a buyer and would be making a decent margin. But in most cases, the price he paid was on the money. There wasn"t any scope for him to make a profit and true enough he would sell them on almost immediately, but at a price that was more or less what he had paid.”

Sandra"s face had a quizzical expression.

“Maybe it"ll make more sense when I tell you that he invariably paid for his purchase by cheque and then sold the items for cash. The receipts all went through the bank even though it was paid for in readies.”

“So was this some sort of money laundering scam?”

“Exactly; Stevenson had cash he couldn"t account for. From what I"ve heard, it"ll be from his blackmailing scams, and he"s converted it into gold and diamonds. Things that can be fairly easily converted back to cash, that are easy to store and that can"t be traced, not without a gemmologist"s report at least.”

“Phew, he seems to have had it pretty well tied up?”

“Yep, it will have worked like a dream, just so long as no one looked too closely at the records. And that"s where I came in.”

“Well, what does that tell us about the murderer?”

“Nothing really. We have evidence suggesting fraud, tax evasion and money laundering but how to link that to the murder is your department, not mine.”

“Is there any action we should be taking about the crimes that we"ve discovered?”

“That"s a difficult problem. You can"t prosecute someone who"s dead. But then the assets he"s accumulated have been derived from illegal activities so we don"t want them passing onto his family with his estate. The Procurator Fiscal will need to have a look and HMRC might want to start its own investigation.”

“What about the coins and diamonds, where do you think he"s stored the loot?”

“Ah! That one"s your job too. Having said that, I was also asked to look and see if I could trace what other business interests or properties Stevenson had, so that might give you some leads.

“I"ve searched Companies House records and Stevenson"s listed as director and owning nearly all the shares of Odds and Ends Limited. He"s also listed on three other companies: SS Sales Limited, Steve Scott Antiques Limited and Meg Assets Limited. There was a fourth but that went bankrupt and was liquidated about ten years ago. SS and Steve Scott are dormant companies and Meg is non-trading. It"s an investment company and owns some property, stocks and shares. At one time, the shares in Meg were owned jointly by Stevenson and his mother but a few years ago she transferred them, most of them to him with a couple to his sister. She probably didn"t want to own them, or more to the point, he didn"t want her to own them so it wouldn"t affect her entitlement to benefits.”

“I"m sorry I don"t really understand that?”

“It"s all to do with the benefit rules. Stevenson"s mother is living in a care home and the charge for that is hundreds of pounds a week, probably about seven or eight hundred pounds. If she has her own money then she has to pay for it but if she doesn"t have any money then the Council pays. It"s not quite as simple as that. She"s allowed to have some money or assets but if it"s worth more than about fourteen thousand pounds then she has to pay.”

“Really, I thought the Scottish Government had a policy about not having to pay for care for the elderly.”

“There is a policy but it doesn"t cover care home costs.”

“But if she had assets and gave them away, surely that could be traced and challenged.”

“That"s true, but first the authorities would need to suspect they had a claim and whether the gift was okay would depend on how long ago it was made and if it could be explained as being for another reason.”

“God, I hadn"t realised these things were so complicated.”

“Count yourself lucky. With an ageing population and limited resources, it"s affecting more and more people. In past generations, it was a lot more common for elderly relatives to be taken care of by their family, but that"s now become very much the exception rather than the rule. Now most folks" lives are so busy and complicated they struggle to look after themselves, never mind having to nurse or care for their parents. With the added problems of greater longevity and near epidemic levels of dementia, the system is straining at the seams and costs are passed on to the families who can afford it whenever possible. Those who have never worked or who"ve spent or given away their assets get it for free, but any poor bugger who"s been cautious and saved to create an inheritance gets it taken away from them.”

“That doesn"t sound very fair.”

“It"s not, but who said life had to be fair. A lot of those smart enough or aware enough do what Mrs Stevenson"s done and give away their money or put it in trust.”

“You sound as if you have some experience.”

“I do, my grandfather has Alzheimer"s and had to give up his house to go into a nursing home a couple of years ago. My parents and uncles had no alternative, the house had to be sold to pay the fees and so far they"ve amounted to over sixty grand.”

“Ouch!”

“Anyhow, none of this is going to help you solve your case. I was telling you about Meg Limited. It owns a portfolio of shares, nothing suspicious, all blue chip investments. But the properties are more interesting. The accounts only show it as property investments but I"ve checked it out with the Land Registry and the company owns three flats, two are in Newton Mearns and the third is in the Glasgow Harbour development at Partick. He also owns the freehold on two shops in the West End. I don"t see any immediate links to him; one"s a fast food carryout and the other"s a newsagent. They may just be leased out to get the income but you"ll probably want to check them out. I"ve written down the addresses.”

“Thanks for all your help,” Sandra smiled gratefully.

“Any time,” Geoff replied and patted her three times on the leg in a friendly gesture, just above her knee, but with the third one his fingertips gently grazed her inner thigh and he gazed into her eyes longingly.

To Sandra the effect was like an electric shock and she sprang to her feet. She felt very uncomfortable in his company. She was now more certain that she hadn"t misinterpreted his earlier intentions. She was glad Celia had been in the room, albeit at the other side, as she wouldn"t ever want to be left alone with him. She fought back the urge to utilise her martial arts training. Just one straight arm punch to the centre of his face would be so pleasing. It would break his nose in an instant. Maybe that"s what had happened to it before. It might not have been rugby after all. She decided against making an issue of his behaviour or making any formal complaint, as she had more than enough to cope with at the moment. However, she"d maybe pass on a comment to her union rep so that Geoff could be monitored more closely. Sandra rushed away and as she approached the door, Celia ran to open it for her, not saying a word, but her eyes were downcast staring at the floor.

Sandra was desperate to tell Alex about the new information but waited until she was back in her office to call him.