Michael Ridpath - Final Venture

I thought about the gun. It must have been planted. But how? I had checked the apartment for signs of a break-in. I wasn't an expert, but there was nothing I could see. The chipped paintwork round the living-room window seemed to my eye to have natural causes. And no one had been in the apartment since the police had searched it apart from Lisa and me.

In theory the police could have planted it. But would the American police really plant evidence on a suspect? Why? I didn't think Mahoney much liked me, but that wasn't much of a reason. Perhaps he wanted to improve his clear-up record? Perhaps a foreign national was an easy target? Anyway, if he had planted the gun, wouldn't he have 'discovered' it in his search of the apartment?

I now realized the Boots bag didn't mean anything. It was undoubtedly mine, in fact I thought it might have held some old school and university photographs, but whoever had been in the closet could have spotted the bag and taken the opportunity to stuff the gun inside it.

Ann and Eddie were on their way to San Francisco when the police had searched the apartment and found nothing. Not that I thought Ann could have killed her ex-husband. She seemed to me to have recovered from their separation quite successfully, and was now happily remarried. At the funeral, she spoke of Frank with a certain fondness rather than with passion.

But Eddie. Eddie was much more likely. He had never forgiven his father for leaving the rest of the family, and had barely spoken to him for years. Despite his professed indifference to money, the prospect of Frank's legacy seemed very important to him, as he had shown so clearly that morning at the lawyer's offices. And he was very eager to blame me for the crime. Eddie was definitely worth considering.

The other two 'family suspects' were Lisa and me. Lisa I just couldn't believe. Which left me.

There were rivalries at Revere. Frank and Art didn't much like each other, vying for position as Gil's right-hand man. The only other conflict that I was aware of at work was once again with me. But Revere was generally a civilized, pleasant place to work. It wasn't the kind of place where people stabbed each other in the back. Or shot each other for that matter.

With a sigh, I drew the same conclusion as Mahoney. I was the most obvious suspect.

I needed to find out more.

The first place to look was Frank's office. I walked down the corridor towards it. The door was locked. Hm.

I sauntered further along the corridor.

'Connie, I'd like to get into Frank's office. I need to see if he has some papers on Net Cop. Do you know who has the key?'

Connie occupied a large desk just outside Gil's office. She was a well-groomed woman in her forties who had been Gil's assistant since before he had set up Revere. She seemed to like me, which was at times very useful.

'I think Gil has it, Simon. Go right in, there's no one with him at the moment.'

I went in. Gil was on the phone. I sat and waited. After five minutes or so he finished.

'What can I do for you, Simon?' Gil smiled at me, his thoughts obviously still on the telephone call.

'I need the key for Frank's office. There are some files on Net Cop in there I need.'

For a moment, Gil looked at me half-suspiciously. Then, as if remembering his decision to trust me, he reached into his desk for a key.

'Here you are. Please return it as soon as you're done with it.'

I took it and unlocked Frank's office. It looked much the same as it had the last time I was there. My eyes were immediately drawn to a photograph of a seventeen-year-old Lisa, looking slightly gawky, but already with the smile that I loved so much. There was a smaller photo of Eddie graduating. Nothing of Lisa's mother. The office was reasonably tidy, but there were papers in his in-box, and on top of the wooden filing cabinets. Yellow Post-Its reminded him of things he would never now do. The office looked as if it were expecting him back at any minute.

I had worked with him closely enough to know my way round his filing system. The first thing I did was to look for his Net Cop file and pull it out. The only papers in it were ones prepared by me. I ignored the bulging files on his other deals and concentrated on his more personal stuff.

He didn't have any secrets. No locked drawers. No coded files. A very full diary, but none of the appointments seemed out of the ordinary. There was an interesting file labelled 'Recruitment'. In it was a sheaf of resumes, mine included. Curious though I was, I just skimmed it. And then there was a file labelled 'Fund IV.

I flipped through analyses of Revere's existing funds' performance, completely dominated by BioOne of course. This was no doubt supposed to impress investors into taking part in the new fund. Then I came across a single sheet of paper.

It was a letter from Gil to Lynette Mauer, dated September 9. The second paragraph grabbed my attention:

As you know, I am planning to reduce my involvement with the day-to-day management of Revere Partners and its investments. While I will continue to provide advice related to investments made by our first three funds, I will take no role in the new fund which Revere intends to raise next year. You know the strong team of partners that I have been fortunate enough to assemble over the last few years, and I am confident that the performance of our fourth fund will be as strong or stronger as those preceding it.

I look forward to seeing you at our Monday morning meeting on October 19, when we can perhaps discuss this further.

The letter was signed Gilbert S. Appleby III.

So Gil was going to retire! With the twenty or thirty million that was his share of the BioOne loot, no doubt. Very interesting. And now that Frank was out of the way, his successor was obvious. Art Altschule.

No wonder Lynette Mauer was worried. She didn't trust Art. She saw BioOne for what it was, a fluke.

Art Altschule running Revere! I shuddered.

I stuffed the letter back in the file and continued my search. I had just turned on Frank's computer and was beginning to figure out how I might be able to get into his files when his office door opened. I looked up guiltily, half-expecting it to be Frank himself. It wasn't. It was Gil.

'What are you doing, Simon?' he asked, his forehead wrinkled. 'You've been in here a long time.'

'I'm looking for a memo Frank wrote when we originally invested in Net Cop,' I said, guiltily. 'I was just checking to see if I could get it off his computer.'

The small brown eyes bored into me through those thick lenses. He said nothing. I sat still, trying to keep a keen-associate look on my face. Inside I squirmed. I'm sure he saw the inside.

'I don't think you should be rooting around in Frank's computer. You've been in here long enough. If you haven't found it yet, you're not going to find it.' He nodded at the Net Cop file lying on Frank's desk. 'Why don't you take what you've got and go?'

I switched off Frank's machine, grabbed the file, and left, feeling very small. I should be much more careful in future. Gil had promised me his trust. It might be very useful in the coming weeks. I would be foolish to throw it away.

I made my way slowly home that evening, delaying my return to the empty apartment. On an impulse I stopped at the absurdly up-market 7-Eleven on Charles Street with its cream-coloured porticos, and bought bacon, sausage, eggs, the works. Within minutes, the sounds and smells of a gigantic fry-up filled the apartment.

The bell rang. I swore and answered the door. It was Sergeant Mahoney, accompanied by his trooper/detective sidekick. I let them in.

Mahoney sniffed the air. 'Smells good.'

He waited as if he expected me to offer him some. No way. That bacon was all mine.