Alex Gray - The Riverman

Catherine inclined her head. ‘I’m one of the partners,’ she corrected him.

‘Ah,’ he replied and smiled at her. ‘Sorry.’ Then, just as she was beginning to relax, he added, ‘An equity partner, I suppose, not salaried?’

Catherine frowned. ‘Of course!’ she snapped. ‘But what’s that got to do with anything?’

Lorimer inclined his head a little. ‘Maybe nothing, but you would stand to lose a great deal if the firm were to collapse, wouldn’t you?’

Catherine felt as if someone had pulled a plug inside her, draining away all her reserves of energy. She had to keep it together. She had to. Forcing a lightness into her tone, she heard herself reply, ‘Oh I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, Chief Inspector. We’re a well-respected firm, you know, with offices all over the globe.’

‘Really?’ Lorimer asked. ‘Even in places like Australia and Singapore?’

Catherine frowned. What on earth was he getting at? ‘Well yes, since you ask. In fact,’ she lifted her handbag onto the table and opened it, searching for her diary, ‘you can see for yourself,’ and she handed it over to Lorimer who glanced at the Forbes Macgregor logo but did not make a move to take it from her. ‘See,’ she insisted, flicking over the pages till she came to the firm’s international directory, ‘we’ve got offices everywhere.’

Lorimer took the diary, gave it a cursory glance, and handed it back without a word.

‘Do you have any idea where your partner Graham West has gone, Miss Devoy?’

‘None at all, Chief Inspector,’ she answered him, her eyes deliberately meeting his own.

‘So it would surprise you to know that he has left the country?’

‘What?’ Catherine Devoy sat up suddenly.

Either she was genuinely surprised or she was a damn good actress, Lorimer thought, wondering obliquely what Solly was making of this.

‘Yes. We wondered if he had spoken of his intentions to you or to anyone else.’

The woman shook her head slowly and deliberately. ‘No. He did not.’

‘So the first you knew of his disappearance was when he failed to turn up for work this morning?’ Lorimer almost hesitated. This morning seemed like the day before yesterday, so much had happened in the past few hours.

‘That’s correct,’ she replied, her gaze still concentrating on him.

‘Why d’you imagine he’s taken off like that, Miss Devoy?’ Lorimer leaned back and swung gently in his chair, his tone easy and conversational.

‘How should I know?’

‘Well, you’re his partner. Don’t you all have inside knowledge about one another?’

Catherine Devoy shrugged, her eyes sliding away from his at last. ‘Not about personal things, no,’ she said.

‘But you do know about Mr West’s business affairs?’

‘Of course,’ she replied.

‘So you would know that he had been taking out large sums of money from his partnership account?’

The woman’s open-mouthed silence told him all he needed.

Lorimer nodded again. ‘Perhaps you didn’t know everything about Mr West after all?’

Catherine shook her head. ‘Perhaps not,’ she whispered.

Lorimer smacked his hands onto the edge of the desk suddenly, making her jump. ‘Miss Devoy, we have reason to suspect that Graham West is guilty of killing Duncan Forbes and Jennifer Hammond.’

There was silence while they watched the woman’s reaction. For a long moment she did not move or make a sound, her expression frozen. In disbelief? Lorimer wondered.

Then she swallowed hard. ‘Chief Inspector, why on earth would Graham do something as terrible as that?’ Catherine’s voice was low but steady, her gaze once more on the chief inspector’s face.

‘I thought perhaps you might be able to tell me,’ he countered lightly.

‘Well,’ she replied, her eyes suddenly hard, ‘you thought wrong.’

‘You don’t think he was capable of murder, then?’

For a moment she looked away, thoughtful, then she gave a sigh. ‘Who can tell what a person is capable of, Chief Inspector?’

‘Indeed,’ Lorimer replied.

‘I think,’ Catherine Devoy began slowly, ‘that if Graham had been embezzling from the firm we would have known about it before now.’

Lorimer regarded her with interest. There was something about her manner that told him she was thinking on her feet. Had she really been unaware of West’s massive withdrawals?

‘The sums involved were pretty large. We found that he had transferred them to an overseas account,’ he continued, blessing those of his team who had been quick to uncover these financial details. They would know soon enough exactly where it was.

‘May I see these transactions, Chief Inspector?’ Catherine Devoy asked, reaching again for her handbag and drawing out a slim spectacle case as Lorimer opened the file and pushed the relevant papers across the desk.

For a minute there was silence in the small room and Lorimer could hear the sound of traffic outside the building: cars turning from the main road and the rumble of a passing lorry. Then the woman drew off her rimless glasses and laid them on the table between them.

‘This has nothing to do with Forbes Macgregor,’ she began. ‘If Graham was making payments, then it was to a personal account.’

‘Maybe one he’d already set up?’

‘Perhaps,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s not against the law to transfer your own money from one account to another.’

‘How do you know it’s his own? The sums are huge,’ Lorimer protested.

Catherine Devoy smiled sweetly at him. ‘But Graham West is a very wealthy young man, Chief Inspector. What’s wrong with that?’

Lorimer sat back suddenly. He had no answer to that. Maybe she was right. Perhaps West had inherited money, invested it quite legally. After all, he was an accountant. A frown crossed his face as he changed tack.

‘Could you describe his relationship with Duncan Forbes?’

The daylight was fading as Lorimer and Solly stood at the window, gazing down across the city rooftops. Catherine Devoy had left the building an hour before but this was Lorimer’s first chance to speak to the psychologist alone. They’d found out very little from the woman. West seemed to be a charmer, ‘Bit of a playboy’ was how she had put it, and he’d enjoyed good relations with everyone in the firm. No animosity had been shown between the late Duncan Forbes and his younger, high-flying partner. He’d been popular with all the staff, too, and big things had been expected of him in the future. But now? The woman seemed genuinely puzzled as to where he’d gone and why. Part of Lorimer wanted to believe her.

‘What d’you make of her, Solly? Think she’s telling us the truth?’

The psychologist’s eyes twinkled behind his horn-rimmed glasses. ‘Well,’ he began in the non-committal manner that infuriated Lorimer, ‘I think ,’ he stressed the word, ‘that Miss Devoy is hiding something.’ He paused before continuing, ‘I also had the distinct impression that she was ready to say something to you, but that your line of questioning took her by surprise.’

‘How?’

‘It was the way she came into the room, actually. She was ready, prepared. Her manner seemed quite relaxed and she held herself as though she were about to make some sort of pronouncement.’

‘But she didn’t.’

Solly shook his head, ‘No. Pity, really. I’d have been interested to see what fabrications she was going to tell us.’ He raised his eyebrows at Lorimer as if to invite a response.

The chief inspector merely sighed. ‘Well, maybe you’re right, but it hasn’t got us much further, has it?’

‘And Mr Adams hasn’t turned up yet either, has he?’ Solly looked towards the door, as if expecting their next interviewee to walk in at any minute.