Michael McGarrity - Nothing But Trouble

From the original account the money had then flowed into various investment portfolios managed by a wholly owned subsidiary of the bank. At that point the audit trail became murky until well after nightfall, when the revenue officers linked a hedge-fund account to the new accounts Spalding had opened under his Bruneau and McGuire aliases.

During a short break for a meal of fast food takeaway one of the revenue officers had fetched, Fitzmaurice leaned back in his chair and flipped through a stack of hard-copy investment records.

“He’s been electronically siphoning off profits from his investments for years,” he said, “and sending the funds out of the country. It all looks on the up and up. The paperwork is in order, taxes on the earnings have been paid, and the money deposited into a numbered Swiss account.”

“Can we identify the owner of that account?” Sara asked.

“Yes,” Fitzmaurice replied, “but not until tomorrow morning when the Swiss bank opens. Do you have a particular person in mind?”

Although Fitzmaurice’s tone was mild, his eyes were watchful as he sat slightly forward in his chair, poised and waiting for her reply. Over the past three days he’d been more than patient with her, never once asserting the authority he could rightly have claimed over the investigation. Instead, he had done all in his power to help her and for that he deserved an honest answer. She wrote down a name on a slip of paper and handed it to Fitzmaurice.

Fitzmaurice’s eyes lit up. “Thomas Loring Carrier. I take it that this is the gentleman who is beyond my reach.”

Sara nodded.

Smiling broadly, he slipped the paper into his shirt pocket and turned to the revenue officers. “Let’s gather and compile the evidence we need.”

“What will you do with it?” Sara asked.

“Present it to a judge and ask for Spalding’s assets to be frozen and the villa and the motor yacht to be seized. That should put a damper on his plans to start a new life here.”

For the next hour the revenue officers printed hard-copy information from the bank’s mainframe files, while Sara and Fitzmaurice entered it into evidence. After the material was boxed and carried away by the revenue officers for further inspection, Fitzmaurice presented a list of the seized records to the bank’s solicitor on their way out the door. The man looked none too happy to receive it.

Outside, they hurried across the dark street through a light rain to a waiting Garda vehicle that would take them to the airport for the return flight to Dublin.

“Were I to do a computer search on Thomas Loring Carrier, what might I learn?” Fitzmaurice asked as he slid into the backseat next to Sara.

“Enough to confirm your suspicions about my assignment,” Sara answered.

“Why did you tell me about Carrier now?”

“Because I may need you to cover my back,” Sara said.

“Exactly who might I be protecting you from?”

Sara carefully considered her response before she answered. “They think of themselves as patriots,” she said.

“Ah,” Fitzmaurice said with a knowing nod. “We had our fair share of those during the Troubles.”

Each day that passed with no word from Sara made Kerney more anxious and worried about her. Patrick, who missed his mother badly, intensified Kerney’s unspoken concerns by constantly asking where she was and when she would return. Sara’s absence had shaken Patrick and made Kerney realize that up until now he’d been a sorry excuse for a parent.

Clearly, Sara was the linchpin in Patrick’s world and Kerney the absent father seen only occasionally. That point had been driven home to him midmorning when he’d been called to Patrick’s preschool. A mean, bossy kid had pushed Patrick down and kicked him during playtime. Patrick had thrown a tantrum and tried to run away. When Kerney got there, he found his son teary eyed, sullen, and miserable, demanding his mother, wanting to go back to his real home, his real school, his real friends.

Kerney took Patrick home immediately and tried to soothe him, but it wasn’t until after lunch, when he suggested an afternoon ride, that Patrick broke into a smile. After Kerney saddled up Hondo, a gray gelding, and put Patrick on the saddle in front of him, his son’s spirits lifted enough for him to start in again about wanting his very own pony. By the time they reached the pond, fed by a natural spring, surrounded by marsh grass and cattails, Patrick seemed to be over his preschool ordeal. In the coolness of the cloudy afternoon, with a slight breeze tinged with enough humidity to promise rain by evening, Kerney dismounted and led Hondo up a hillock, with Patrick still in the saddle clutching the pommel. At stone ruins that looked out at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, knife-edge sharp in a shaft of sunlight that cut through the cloud bank, he tethered Hondo to the thick branch of a cedar tree.

“Do I have to go back?” Patrick asked as Kerney lifted him out of the saddle.

Kerney studied his worried son’s face before he set him down. “To preschool?”

Patrick nodded somberly.

“Only for a few more days.”

“I don’t want to,” Patrick said stubbornly.

The look on Patrick’s face almost broke Kerney’s heart, and he made a snap decision. “Okay, you don’t have to go back there.”

“Ever?” Patrick asked, his eyes brightening.

“Ever,” Kerney replied as he ruffled his son’s hair and unclipped his cell phone from his belt. Patrick smiled and scrambled gleefully to the top of the low stone ruins. With one eye on his son Kerney called Deputy Chief Larry Otero and told him that he was starting his vacation effective immediately and wouldn’t be back until after he returned from the Bootheel.

“You deserve it, Chief,” Otero said.

“It’s more that my son deserves a father,” Kerney replied.

After a short but fruitless search for arrowheads and potsherds at the ruins, which were purported to be the site of a Native American sweat lodge, Kerney rode, with Patrick in front of him, to the barn, where he unsaddled Hondo, put him in the paddock, rubbed him down, and fed him some oats. Then, as a treat, Kerney fixed strawberries and ice cream for Patrick and spent an hour reading to him until it was well past his nap time. When Patrick’s head drooped and his eyelids fluttered and closed, Kerney carried him to his bed.

In the study Kerney checked his e-mail. There were still no messages from Sara, which, since he still didn’t know where she was or what she was doing, left him with a growing sense of alarm. He fired off a note to her, saying all was well at home but that he really needed to hear from her, and went to check on Patrick. The events of the morning had worn him out and he was fast asleep, but his face was clear of worry. Kerney closed the door quietly and went to the kitchen to clean up the lunch dishes, marveling at the resilience of the young, wishing some of it would rub off on him so he could rebound from his present funk.

Upon their late-night arrival in Dublin, Fitzmaurice received a message informing him that the calls Spalding had made to London were to a very expensive, independent personal escort named Victoria Hopkins, who operated out of a flat in St. John’s Wood and advertised herself on the World Wide Web as a “courtesan of distinction.” Inquires made of her neighbors by the police revealed that Hopkins was traveling in Wales and due to return home tomorrow.

“Apparently,” Fitzmaurice said after he filled Sara in, “yachting isn’t Spalding’s only preferred leisure-time activity. I would imagine he’s anchored in a lovely cove somewhere near Holyhead, rocking the boat-so to speak-with his for-hire courtesan right now.”

“Can you arrange for overnight surveillance on the villa in case Spalding arrives early?” Sara asked.