Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

‘Nice place, innit?’ he said, following my eyes. ‘Shame it’s not mine.’

‘Oh, you mean the building society own it?’

‘Worse. Dekker. If I can’t meet next month’s mortgage payment, which I can’t, they’ll repossess. I’m desperate to sell it before then.’

‘Don’t you have any savings?’

‘All tied up in the employee trusts, aren’t they? I can’t get hold of them if I’m dismissed for bad faith. So, you could say I’m up shit creek.’

‘Have you tried to get another job?’

‘Yeah. I tried. No chance. I don’t know how Ricardo did it, but you’d think I was Nick Leeson, the way they treat me.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

Teresa came in with two mugs of tea. ‘Thanks, love,’ said Dave, taking his. He sipped it and then answered my question. ‘Sell this place. I’ve got some old mates from my forex days who’ll back me to buy a pub. Then Teresa and I’ll run it. Quite honestly, I’m looking forward to it. I’ve had enough of the City.’

‘So have I,’ said Teresa.

‘I know what you mean,’ I said.

‘So you got the boot too?’ Dave asked.

‘Not quite. I jumped.’

‘Why?’

I told him about my reservations about Dekker, and about Isabel’s kidnapping. He was shocked.

‘She’s a nice chick. Bright, too. So, they don’t know whether she’s still alive?’

‘No.’

‘Nor who the kidnappers are?’

‘No, again. Kidnapping is an industry in Brazil. This kind of thing happens all the time.’

‘Like bankers getting topped for their wallets?’

I looked at him sharply. ‘You told IFR you were suspicious about that. Why?’

‘It was no more than that, a suspicion. But a strong one. There are all those numbered accounts at Dekker Trust, supposedly overseen by Eduardo. Ricardo says he knows where all that money comes from, but I’m not convinced he does. And you know Eduardo. He’d happily turn a blind eye.’

‘OK, so there might be some dodgy money there. But that’s not proof, really, is it?’

‘No. But there’s talk in the market.’

‘Talk?’

‘Yeah. Everyone knows Chalmet handles dodgy money, and they own twenty-nine per cent of Dekker Ward. Now they’re beginning to talk about us, too. Ricardo doesn’t hear that stuff, of course, no one would dare to say that kind of thing to his face. But I’ve heard stuff down the pub over a few pints.’

‘And you think it’s true?’

‘I wasn’t sure at first. I ignored it. But I thought it was interesting when that bloke Martin Beldecos started rooting around. He was asking difficult questions, and waiting till he got answers that made sense. Then he was conveniently murdered. And when you got yourself stabbed, it was too much of a coincidence.’

‘So you talked to someone at IFR? ’

‘Yeah. Big mistake.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he wrote about “sources inside Dekker Ward”, didn’t he? Then he spoke to me on the phone here. I reckon Eduardo was tapping it somehow. That’s how they caught me.’

‘But why did you talk to him? You knew Ricardo wouldn’t like it if he found out.’

Dave sipped his tea, and glanced at Teresa. ‘I dunno. It just seemed wrong. A bloke murdered, another guy attacked, everyone wringing their hands, no one asking the right questions. I’d been thinking a lot about it, and it didn’t make sense. I’d probably have kept my trap shut but we’d had a few beers, and I thought, What the hell? It just sort of slipped out. I didn’t think it’d blow up in my face like that.’

I nodded. Maybe I should have asked more questions.

‘I went to the police, you know,’ he said.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. After they fired me. I was so pissed off I wanted to get back at them somehow.’

‘And what did the police say?’

‘It was a complete waste of time.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, a murder in Venezuela is hardly their jurisdiction, is it? And Martin Beldecos was an American citizen, technically resident in the Cayman Islands. I mean, it was a total non-starter.’

‘What about the money-laundering? Weren’t they interested in that?’

‘They was. Sort of. But Ricardo’s clever. You see, most of his activities are not really regulated by anyone.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, to start with, Dekker Ward, the stockbroker, is regulated by the Securities and Futures Authority, not the Bank of England. The SFA is less worried about money-laundering. Then Ricardo’s biz is all run from Canary Wharf, and the SFA deals mostly with head office in the City. Most emerging-markets trading is unregulated anyway, it’s not like trading on the London Stock Exchange. They keep a close eye on that. Anyway, many of Ricardo’s trades are booked through Dekker Trust in the Caymans, which is a legally unrelated company, so it’s outside the UK authorities’ control.’

‘I see.’ Ricardo had woven a compliance web that it was nobody’s job to untangle.

‘So, they keep a watching brief. As long as money isn’t being laundered in London, which it isn’t strictly speaking, there’s not much more they’ll do.’

‘And what about the police?’

‘Not much better. If I can come up with a “suspicious transaction”, they’ll bung it on a computer somewhere. Apparently they have banks reporting hundreds of dodgy transactions all the time.’

I thought all this over. ‘Last month I came across a fax for Martin Beldecos from the United Bank of Canada. It said that the US DEA are investigating Francisco Aragão and that they’d traced a payment from him to Dekker Trust. Maybe they’ll tie him in with Dekker. He is Ricardo’s brother-in-law, after all.’

‘Francisco Aragão, eh?’ Dave rubbed his chin. ‘Well, that would make sense. He sounds very dodgy.’ He sighed. ‘You could try telling them, I suppose, but don’t hold your breath.’ Dave saw my frown. ‘The best thing to do is to forget it, Nick. There’s nothing you or I can do to get back at Dekker. Look, when I get my pub, will you come in for a drink?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘If you let me know where it is.’

‘I’ll do that.’

I stood up to leave. Dave gave me a lift to the station. As I was getting out of the car, he called to me. ‘Nick?’

‘Yes.’

‘Be careful. When Dekker Ward have it in for you, they can get nasty.’

‘I will.’ I smiled grimly, shut the door, and turned into the station.

Despite Dave’s scepticism about the DEA, I thought it worth trying them. Now I had left Dekker there was nothing to lose. So, doing my best to ignore the damage it would do to my phone bill, I asked International Directory Enquiries for the number of United Bank of Canada in the Bahamas, and dialled it. I soon got through to Donald Winters.

‘Good morning. It’s Nick Elliot here, from Dekker Ward in London. I’m a colleague of Martin Beldecos’s.’

‘Oh, yes. What can I do to help you, Mr Elliot?’

Luckily, it seemed that Winters hadn’t heard about Martin’s death.

‘You sent a fax to Martin last month mentioning that you had linked a payment to our Caymans affiliate with Francisco Aragão.’

‘That’s right. That was something to do with a lawyer called Tony Hempel, wasn’t it?’

‘I think so. You said something about Francisco Aragão being under investigation by the US Drugs Enforcement Agency?’

‘Yeah. I’m not sure what became of that. We haven’t heard anything more from them. But I can give you the number of my contact there if you’re interested.’

I wrote down the name and number, thanked Winters, and hung up.

I dialled the new number. It was somewhere in the United States, but I wasn’t familiar with the city code so I didn’t know exactly where.