Quintin Jardine - Pray for the Dying

A flicker of a smile suggested she took that as a compliment.

‘Provan discovered that your father was listed as Hillary Shelby,’ he continued, taking a document from the Zero Halliburton and handing it to her. ‘See? Hillary not Harry, and there’s an Australian passport number. However, that surname niggled him, and the itch wouldn’t go away. And that’s where his special skills came into play. “Shelby,” he told himself. “I know that name from somewhere.” Dan isn’t of the IT generation,’ Skinner said, ‘but he went to the computer and ran a Google search.’ He grinned. ‘He called it “that Bugle thing” when he told me about it. He did try the full name first off, but got zilch, so then he entered simply Shelby, on its own. He came up with a car designer, an actor, and three different towns in America, then at the foot of the page, he got Harry Shelby, and it all came back to him, and that pub quiz mind of his.

‘Harry Shelby was an Australian financier, a real tycoon. . or typhoon, as Dan called him. He built a business empire of considerable size in Australia, South Africa and in Hong Kong from the early seventies on. He started in minerals, then moved into currency trading, and pretty soon he had become a national business icon, stand-out even in an era in Australian history when there were quite a few of those around.

‘In nineteen ninety-six, he was awarded a knighthood, in the Birthday Honours list. He was scheduled to be invested in Canberra, by the High Commissioner. Everything was set up, but the day before, Harry Shelby vanished, off the face of the earth. He was never seen again, and he never left a penny behind him, or rather a cent.’

‘I remember that,’ Payne exclaimed. ‘It was big news for a week or so, internationally.’

‘I confess that it passed me by,’ the chief said. ‘But nineteen ninety-six was a busy year for me; my mind was full of other stuff, on my own doorstep. Anyway,’ he carried on, ‘you can imagine that after Shelby disappeared, his whole life was dug up. It didn’t take the investigators long to find out that in fact he ran out of business steam in the mid-eighties, after a series of bad currency deals that he managed to cover up. Everything he’d done after that had been a huge Ponzi scheme, paying investors with their own money, as he drew more and more in with the promise of attractive profits that were evidently being delivered. If Harry Shelby hadn’t had such a big reputation, chances are he’d have been caught, but because he was such a hero he got away with it.’

He stopped to sip his tea, only to find that it had gone cold.

‘Why did he run?’ he asked, then answered. ‘It may have been because he knew that all Ponzi fraudsters are caught eventually, unless they shut up shop before it’s too late.’ He paused. ‘However, Provan happened upon another theory, one that the Australian authorities. . Dan checked this with the Australian Embassy. . believe to this day, possibly because it suits them so to do. They think, indeed they’re pretty well sure, that a couple of his biggest investors were Americans, Mafia figures, using his investment scheme to launder money. The scenario is, they caught on to the swindle, so they dealt with it the old-fashioned way. They made Shelby and his money disappear at the same time. On the day that he did, Australian air traffic control traced an unregistered flight out of Canberra heading for Tasmania. The investigators had a tip that Shelby was on it, until they dropped him out halfway there over the ocean.’ He gazed at Marina. ‘But we know that’s not true, don’t we?’

She stared back at him, silent. He took a photograph from the case, held it up for Payne to see, then passed it to her.

‘That’s Harry Shelby, aged about forty.’

He produced a second. ‘That’s Peter Friedman, photographed, to his annoyance, at a charity dinner last winter. He’s over thirty years older, but I’ve had the images run through a recognition program, and it confirms they’re one and the same man.’

He went back into the attaché and took out a third image. ‘And that’s you,’ he said, ‘from your HR file in Pitt Street. You can’t hide from it, Marina. You are your father’s double.’

She picked up his mug, and drank his cold tea in a single gulp. ‘And proud of it,’ she whispered.

‘It was the newspaper photograph that did it, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Antonia was in her first month in Glasgow when it appeared. She read every newspaper, every day, to familiarise herself with the place, and she saw that. She used CTIS to trace him, then one day, just as you have, she turned up here, alone. When he got over the shock, he assumed that she had come to arrest him, but no. I mean, why would she have done that? There would have been nothing in it for her.

‘Your assumption was correct; she did to him what she had done to Lawton and his wife. She showed him the brochure for the house and told him that she wanted it. She told him to forget about trying to vanish again, as she would know about it the moment his helicopter took off, or he boarded the ferry. But in truth she knew that there was no point in him running. He was dying, and even then the house was being turned into a hospice, a place for him to be as peaceful as he could be in his last days. So he bought the Bothwell place for her.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘He told me she should have chosen a bigger one.’

‘Why did he go to the damn dinner? That doesn’t sound like typical behaviour.’

‘He was in Edinburgh, seeing an oncologist for tests,’ she explained. ‘It was that day, and he had a feeling the news wasn’t going to be the best, so he went, in the hope it might cheer him up. As it turned out it did the opposite.’

‘Does your mother know any of this?’ Skinner asked.

‘None,’ Marina insisted. ‘Maman is not a stupid woman. She had a good job in the civil service, but she was looked after by men for much of her life, first Anil, and then Papa. She’s naive in some ways, so when Antonia told her that she had done well in property in Britain, she believed her.’

‘How did Sofia meet your father?’

‘He was part of an Australian business delegation to the island, in nineteen eighty, after her thing with Anil was over. Maman was in charge of official government hospitality. That’s when it began.

‘I was born two years later, and for all my childhood he spent as much time as he could with us. He was as good to Antonia as he was to me. That’s what made her behaviour all the more despicable. You were right. She was just a nasty little blackmailer.’

‘When did you get back in touch with him?’

‘I was never out of touch. Gifts would arrive, and letters, never traceable, only ever signed “Papa”. The theory is wrong, incidentally, about the Mafia. They were his partners in the Ponzi business, not his victims. They all made lots of money and when the time came to close it down, they helped him get away, and they planted the idea that they had killed him. In fact he lived in the West Indies for six years, as Peter Friedman. He moved to Mull ten years ago, around the same time as I came to Britain. It was then he told me his new name.’

‘Whose idea was it for you to join MI5?’ Skinner asked.

‘A shrewd question, because I think you know the answer. Papa suggested it. The idea was that if the Australians started looking for him again, in Millbank I would be well placed to hear about it. By that time I was in a security department within the Met, so when I applied, it seemed a natural step, and I was accepted. Brian Storey was my boss then, and he endorsed me. Antonia never knew, though, not ever. The service, as it does, gave me a front as an importer for a chain of florists.’