James Craig - Never Apologise, Never Explain

After paying for his lunch, he decided to go back into Winter Garden House. Alice would be home from school soon. It would be nice to be there to meet her and find out how her day had been. Carlyle’s own day was pretty much a write-off. A lot had happened but he’d achieved nothing. Sometimes you just had to quit while you were behind. Better now just to let things lie, then wait and see how they looked in the morning.

Stepping out of the cafe, Carlyle almost walked straight into a couple strolling arm-in-arm along Macklin Street. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, keeping his eyes on the pavement.

‘Inspector!’

Carlyle looked up to see Harry Ripley — Heart Attack Harry — with a homely looking woman who appeared to be in her early sixties. ‘Harry,’ he said, ‘how are you?’ He nodded at the woman.

‘This is Esther,’ the old soldier beamed, ‘Esther McGee. We met at a Residents’ Association coffee morning not long after… er, you and I last met.’

Carlyle stuck out a hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Esther,’ he said. ‘I’m John Carlyle, one of Harry’s neighbours.’

‘Oh, yes, Inspector,’ the woman smiled. ‘Harry has told me all about you.’

‘I hope he’s looking after you well,’ Carlyle grinned, some of the couple’s obvious good spirits now rubbing off on him.

‘Oh, yes, he’s a right gentleman.’ A naughty twinkle appeared in Esther’s eye, as she pulled Harry close. ‘And still in such good shape,’ she winked, ‘if you know what I mean. There’s still plenty of lead in his pencil.’

‘Well, yes,’ Carlyle coughed, feeling himself blush. But that was nothing compared to Harry, who had gone a bright beetroot red. The old dog, Carlyle thought. But at least we don’t have to worry any more about him trying to top himself. Hoorah for the power of love, or whatever this is. ‘Nice to run into you both,’ he stammered. ‘I’m glad things are going so well, Harry.’

It took the old man a few extra seconds to regain the power of speech. ‘Nice to see you, too, Inspector,’ he said finally. ‘And give my best to Helen and Alice.’

‘I will,’ Carlyle replied. ‘The pair of you must come round for tea some time soon.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Esther agreed, ‘that would be lovely.’

‘There you are, Harry,’ Carlyle smiled. ‘Speak to Helen and she can let you know when would be a good time.’ With that, he scuttled across the road and quickly retreated inside Winter Garden House.

Carole Simpson sat morosely at her kitchen table in Highgate, holding a very large glass of Langoa Barton 2001, while waiting for her?800-an-hour lawyer to call. When the call finally came, she pounced on the handset lying in front of her.

‘Hello?’

‘Carole, it’s John Lucas. I’ve just come out of Kentish Town police station.’

‘Yes.’ She could hear traffic noise in the background. Presumably the lawyer was walking along the road looking for a cab. Good luck to him, Simpson thought. Kentish Town was one of the neighbourhoods affected by the recent burst of rioting that had spread across the city before the Met had been able to react. Even at the best of times, it wasn’t the kind of place a man in a suit should be wandering around alone at night. She hoped that Lucas would find a taxi before he got mugged.

As if to allay her fears, she heard Lucas suddenly bellow, ‘TAXI!’

She waited as he clambered inside and told the driver to head for a restaurant in the West End, before restarting their conversation. ‘You were in the station a long time,’ she said, knowing what that must mean, waiting for the final confirmation of how completely her life had been demolished.

‘Yes,’ the lawyer said, sounding more chipper now that he was safely ensconced in the back of a black cab. ‘More than eight hours, in fact.’

Simpson did the calculation in her head. Good God, she thought morosely, that’s more than six grand. She wondered how much money she had in her purse.?50? All of their bank accounts had been frozen. Would they find the money to pay the legal bills?

‘He’s confessed, Carole. He’s admitted to defrauding his investors.’

‘You told him to do that?’ she asked incredulously.

‘No, no,’ the lawyer said, shocked. ‘Of course not. I’m not even completely sure what exactly he’s confessing to, at this point. He was looking to wind the fund up, which isn’t really what you would expect of someone in these circumstances.’

‘What do you mean “ in these circumstances ”?’ she asked sharply.

‘Well…’ Lucas chose his words carefully, ‘in a so-called pyramid or ponzi scheme, things usually get to the point where the whole thing collapses as a result of too many people trying to take their money out at the same time. Here, it seems, Joshua was trying to give their money back to them — or at least part of it.’

‘Doesn’t that make him innocent?’ She used the word in the narrowest, legal sense.

‘By crystallising the losses,’ Lucas continued, not caring to answer the question, ‘he could have been hoping to share out the losses among everyone, rather than leaving the last ones left in holding the baby, and facing total financial ruin. If that was the thinking behind it, he would have known that there would still have been a big row about it, but the whole thing could have been represented as bad luck rather than actual fraud.’

That made his damn letter even more stupid, Simpson decided.

‘At the moment,’ Lucan continued, ‘all this has to be argued over. We certainly don’t know what the authorities have as yet, in terms of developing a case. Given where we are at this stage, I told him to say nothing. He chose to ignore me.’

‘Not much use then, were you?’ Simpson said bitterly.

The lawyer chose to ignore the barb. He’d been here many times before. One of his great strengths, so he liked to think, was an ability not to get wound up by clients who were, inevitably, having to operate under a great deal of pressure. ‘That is always the client’s prerogative,’ he said gently. ‘It may even be for the best, in the long run.’

‘How so?’ she asked, not prepared to believe it.

‘Well,’ the lawyer said, ‘this way we can avoid a trial and can negotiate a lesser sentence.’

‘So that’s it?’ she said, trying not to wail.

‘Goodness, no,’ said Lucas, trying to sound fatherly, even though he was at least five or six years younger than the woman struggling to hold it together on the other end of the line. ‘Not at all. Whatever Joshua has said, it is still very early days here.’

‘So what happens next?’

‘He’s going to be handed over to the City of London Police’s Economic Crime Directorate. In due course, they will probably look to charge him under the Fraud Act of 2006. I expect that they will claim he is guilty of either false representation, failing to disclose information and or abuse of position. However, there’s a long way to go yet. There are still various different possible outcomes, and we want to optimise the result for Joshua — and for you.’

‘Should I go and see him?’

‘Not yet,’ the lawyer said firmly. ‘Apart from anything else, they’ll probably move him about a bit, depending on cell availability. You know what it’s like.’

‘Yes,’ she said icily, ‘I do.’

‘You don’t want to be rushing off on a wild-goose chase across London, especially if the media are on your tail.’

‘No, you’re right.’ Simpson thought about taking a slug of wine, and decided against it. Putting the glass on the table, she cut to the chase. ‘Will he go to jail?’

Definitely, thought Lucas. And for quite some time. There had never been a worse time to be caught out as a financial crook. All it needed now was for the American authorities to get involved and the silly sod would have hit the jackpot. Those buggers would quite happily lock you up forever, with an extra hundred years on top, just to make them feel better. ‘That is a possibility,’ he replied cautiously, ‘maybe even a probability. But that is not what you should be worrying about now.’