Ears of The Wolf

Chapter 1-1

Ch. 1The throaty roar of a high-performance car engine and screech of skidding tyres resounded through the underground car park. The attendant jumped to his feet. He rushed out of his snug little cubicle, cursing at being startled while downing his breakfast mug of tea. Instantly he realised, as on so many previous occasions, the identity of the speed freak. He shouted in the direction of the dispersing cloud of acrid smelling burnt rubber, ‘Rebel, that sign out there says Leman Street, not bloody Le Mans!’ He playfully shook his fist, feigning anger at the driver of the sporty coupe who was unfurling himself from the meagre confines of the hard-top. As always, he could not resist returning the young man’s smile, waving cheerfully to him as he disappeared through the entrance to the main building.

Marty Rebel was a young man in a hurry. Not the rubber burning type of hurry, such as when at the wheel of his treasured Lotus. His hurry was to turn his finger hold on the route to the high peaks of the world of finance into a firm foothold. He was a litigation investigator with sudden visions of an executive desk.

His long stride carried him in a purposeful glide across the marbled terrazzo floor of the reception foyer of Lion Investment Holdings plc, a company of excellent standing, an accredited major player in international finance and insurance.

Without fail, the same old Monday morning scene met his eyes as he observed his colleagues shuffling between floors and offices. It was so remarkably reminiscent of a modern masterpiece he’d seen during his teens on one of his mandatory cultural safaris in London. It was so like a thing called The Pond by the artist L.S. Lowry.

‘Mr Rebel.’ The call came from the receptionist.

Marty stopped, his daydream broken. He turned towards the source of the call. ‘Yes? Sorry, Helen, I mean good morning. Quick, I hope it’s important. I’m late and right up to my neck in it. That’s before I start.’ He approached the girl.

‘You’re to report to Mr Harbin’s office on arrival. That’s the message I have. It sounded quite urgent, Mr Rebel.’ She looked concerned for him.

Marty checked his watched, smiled at her and nodded his thanks.

The girl lowered her head again in pretence of arranging something on the desk. It was a futile and conspicuous attempt to disguise the embarrassed fluster she always got herself in when dealing with Marty.

‘I’m on my way. Thanks again.’ He turned, now moving slower, busily constructing a base from which to develop his argument. He ought to have known that the meeting was an inevitability. Bosses, damn Harbin, I could’ve done with another day, he thought.

Meeting Harbin, nicknamed with disaffection Harbinger by most who had been summoned to plead their corner with the man, was not a pleasant experience.

Marty had been to Highgate earlier. He was puzzled at the peculiar accounts regarding the awful demise of Sir Rupert Scott. The incident was inconsistent with the deceased’s lifestyle. Marty knew him from fairly recent meetings with the man by way of company business. Something didn’t ring true. Every one of his visceral instincts screamed foul play.

‘Are you getting in, then?’ The question broke into Marty’s thoughts. The lift was there, doors wide open. An anxious passenger, a threatening finger poised on the button panel, waited impatiently for Marty to come back to reality.

‘Oh yeah, thanks.’ Stepping in, with further apologies, he selected his stop. Thankfully there would be some small respite while dropping the other passengers at their various floors on the way up. But irrevocably, he was on his way. By the time the lift reached the thirtieth floor he must be prepared for a full-blooded session in Harbinger’s hot seat.

Marty carefully weighed the pros against the cons. It was Monday. All things at Lion Holdings were reborn on Monday mornings. That meant being at your desk for the great unfurling of the new week. He was indisputably late, due to the detour that he had made. But he was certain that the gravity of the conclusions he’d reached as a result of that detour would validate it. More importantly, they should provide him with opportunity for immediate career advancement. If he was right, he would be in line for such options as could only be described as “the stuff of dreams”. All that he needed in order to realise that mouth-watering outcome was the support of the man on the top floor. That man was in the resplendent office at the pinnacle of Lion Towers, there because he had climbed to the top of the UK headquarters’ executive ladder. That man was Ralph Harbin.

Well here goes nothing, thought Marty, stepping out of the lift.

He stopped at the door to Harbin’s office suite. It was a magnificent mahogany masterpiece of a door, designed to defeat fire, sound, and quite probably, battering-rams. He took a deep breath and rapped hard. Marty counted the ceremonial ten-second wait, Harbin’s command “Come” was spot on cue.

‘Sit yourself down, then, Martin. We must have a sort out, what?’

Marty nodded, sat himself in the renowned “hot seat”.

‘You have been turning in such excellent results recently, Martin, and now, as you seem so prone to do, you have fallen off the jolly old horse again-hmmm. What have you got to say for yourself, young man?’ Marty cringed at Harbin’s ostentatious whine. It almost made him puke, nevermore so than when Harbin refused to use the name given at his christening. Instead of which, he protracted the word “M-a-a-rtin” in a patronising manner. It rankled, got up Marty’s nose, just as if the bore had rammed the toecap of one of his dandified patent leather winkle-picker shoes up a nostril.

Marty pushed his chair away from the mahogany desk. Its expansive surface gleamed conspicuously empty of business paraphernalia, with the exception of the latest in video-phones. Marty thought, pompous, idle bastard - why don’t you fall off your own high-horse and break your scrawny neck? He stretched out his legs in a gesture of defiance.

‘You can get yourself back over here, I’ve got questions.’ He was using all of the “harbinging” tone to the full. ‘We have a situation now, the net result of your activities this morning. You had best furnish me with some credible answers.’

Harbin postured true to form. His image was outlined by the early spring sun filtering through louvred blinds on the window behind him. Below the window, the sprawl of the City of London, with its hosts of money-changers’ houses, swarmed to the banks of the Thames river.

Harbin had paused. He exaggerated the attitude of searching for damning evidence to support his statement, fumbling in a desk drawer. ‘I have been taken to task by no less a person than the Police Commissioner, who, I assure you, does not take kindly to having his men hampered, vis a vis your intrusion this morning. What on earth were you doing, pestering that grief-stricken household without authority?’ He slammed the drawer back, more in a display of frustration than anger. ‘Come on, young man, let’s hear what you think you have achieved other than blemishing the prestigious integrity and reputation of this company.’

Marty had played this game before. He made no attempt to answer, nor any to even look at his inquisitor. He ground his foot into the lush pile of carpet that added to the odour of power and advantage that saturated the atmosphere. Stark memories of his Dublin childhood flooded his mind. Stinking pomp and obscene bloody circumstance, he thought, Jeez, this arrogant fool will piss-off a body one fine day sufficient enough to make them throw him out that damn window.

Harbin said, ‘I am still waiting for your answer.’ He looked on the verge of a seizure of some sort. ‘I don’t like waiting, Mr Rebel. I say “Mr” quite advisedly, for I believe I must be, apparently missing something here and you are now of such station as to be needless of my authority. That being the case, perhaps you would be so kind as to enlighten me what it was that warranted your most valuable, personal attention?’

Marty recognised the sarcastic vein for what it was worth, the man’s sad attempt at directing a straight question to a subordinate. It was the signal to play his hand. There was no point in further delay. He took a deep breath, crossed his fingers and toes, called upon all his friendly gods for luck and plunged in. ‘I am convinced that Rupert Scott was murdered at his home last night.’

The statement had its desired effect; it was a bombshell. That effect hung on the air for longer than Marty would have predicted. He waited for Harbin’s reaction. It seemed an interminable wait, but when it did come, the response was exactly what Marty had anticipated.

‘Absurd! Don’t be so damned absurd.’ Harbin made a supreme effort to regain his practiced mantle of sublimity. ‘And permit me to remind you, it’s Sir Rupert to the like of you, Rebel,’ he spluttered. His struggle for control was in vain, his face had turned to a purplish red hue.

The fact that Harbin was using surnames was clear indication to Marty that his boss was perplexed. His lack of composure left him oblivious to the absurdity of his demand for protocol. It did not, as it never did, occur to him that his posturing might be conceived as comical.

‘Surely you mean “was” Sir Rupert, don’t you, Mr Harbin?’ Rebel by name and by nature, the Irish mischief in Marty would not allow him to miss out on the opportunity for a bit of his own nit-picking.

Harbin ignored the remark. ‘The local constabulary were satisfied with their examination at the scene of the incident, Rebel.’ He dabbed self-consciously at the beads of sweat leaking from his scalp. The absence of hair emphasised his shiny pate. ‘The doctor seems definite as to his conclusions. Sir Rupert collapsed on the bottles. He virtually brained himself, as well as lacerating his throat, causing a massive stroke or coronary. So what is all this murder nonsense?’

Marty knew the window of opportunity was wide open. Being familiar with Harbin and his moods, he saw that it was time to extrapolate. ‘What they all think they saw this morning was the body of a man, lying amidst a mess of broken glass; a man said to have had a heart attack on the doorstep. I don’t know why, but I reckon the police grabbed at the doctor’s opinion that it was triggered when the old boy slipped, putting out a bottle. He’s also supposed to have taken a helluva bang to his head from the fall.’

‘Yes. But I still can’t see.’ Harbin floundered for words.

Marty looked intently at his boss, who had suddenly become withdrawn, filled with a disquieting sense of déjà vu. He took a magazine from his briefcase and slid it across the barren, polished surface of the desk.

Harbin looked down at it, then back to Marty, puzzled. ‘What on earth has “Jane’s Guns Recognition Guide” got to do with last night?’

He threw the magazine back across the desk.

Marty cussed his eagerness as he put his coffee break reading away. He replaced it with the intended one, taking care to open it at the relevant page first.

Harbin glanced at the year-old copy of “Savant “ magazine.

‘It was little more than twelve months ago,’ Marty started. He brimmed with confidence again, he felt in control. ‘My brief at the time was to compose a profile of “Sir” Rupert. It’s our procedure, as you are aware.’ The emphasis on Scott’s title was deliberate. The young Dubliner knew he would gain more support from his boss if he acceded to his dictates. ‘We were in process of underwriting enormous liabilities on the man for the newly formed aerospace outfit, Global Avionics Technologies. Sir Rupert was a prime target for head-hunters the world over in the field of military radar.’ Marty stopped, leaned over the desk to outline various points in an in-depth feature article about the dead engineer, at work and play. In it were intimate details of Scott’s rigid lifestyle, routine and habits. It did suggest grounds for investigating why he was out of his bed after midnight, putting out his own milk bottles.

*

Marty hardly noticed the high-pitched hum of the lift. He was far too excited and absorbed in formulating his strategy. His boss’s reaction to the magazine article had been more favourable than expected. It had swayed the balance of his argument; coupled with the mention of City rumour that the Serious Fraud Squad were looking in the direction of David Lang-Mainwaring, the aerospace company’s entrepreneur founder. Marty had much to do if he was to stand the slightest chance of constructing a case. Conspiracy to defraud was a field in which he was skilled, but to try proving murder was a different challenge.