Майкл Ридпат: The Partnership Track

‘Which was absurd,’ said Charlie. ‘He never understood the real world, that was Harald’s problem.’

‘So Tomskoil never knew you screwed up?’ I asked Charlie.

‘You gotta keep the client happy,’ said Charlie.

I knew I would never get Charlie to admit to what errors had actually been made now they had been covered up, and probably not Cynthia either. But the details didn’t matter. I was beginning to get an idea of what had happened in Mauritania.

‘We screwed up,’ I said. ‘We covered it up. Tomskoil never found out. And Harald was unhappy about it.’

‘That’s about it,’ said Cynthia.

I remembered what Manuela had told me, but she wasn’t saying anything now. ‘And nobody told Bill?’

‘No.’

‘Steve said we shouldn’t,’ said Charlie. ‘It was Steve’s call. We were just doing what we were told.’

Cynthia nodded.

I glanced at Manuela. Nothing. So I asked a question to which I knew the answer. ‘Did Steve think Harald would tell Bill anyway?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cynthia.

‘Charlie?’

Charlie nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted. ‘Steve got me to talk to Harald, find out what he was thinking. Harald was adamant that Bill should know.’

‘Was what you did illegal?’

Tomskoil was quoted on the London Stock Exchange. Which meant knowingly furnishing false numbers could be a criminal act in the UK. And nobody would want to piss off the Russians.

‘That’s a question of interpretation,’ said Charlie.

‘Probably,’ said Cynthia.

‘Hey! You’re not suggesting I killed Harald, are you?’ said Charlie.

‘It’s a motive,’ I said. ‘Put it on the chart.’

Cynthia hesitated.

‘We’re talking about a murder here,’ I said. ‘Maybe two, if you count the geologist in Africa. Write it down.’

Cynthia flipped back to the motive heading, and wrote down Charlie next to Project Assegai .

‘That’s dumb,’ said Charlie. ‘Anyway, Steve Rosenheit would have a much bigger motive than me to kill Harald. I’m just the grunt who made the error. He’s the guy who authorized the cover-up. And he’s not here.’

That reminded me of the Porsche Cayenne I had spotted as I had arrived late the night before. Steve’s Porsche Cayenne.

‘Yes, he is,’ I said. ‘Or at least his car is. I saw it outside one of the cabins last night.’

‘In that case, where is he?’ Charlie said. ‘I haven’t seen him. Has anyone else seen him?’

Blank faces around the table.

‘Are you sure it’s his?’

‘Yes. He has that stupid licence plate: “OIL 66”. He must have driven up here from New York.’

‘He lives in Connecticut,’ said Cynthia. ‘It would be doable. You drove up here, didn’t you, Trent?’

‘Yeah, I did,’ said Trent. ‘So where is he? Is he hiding?’

‘Or is Bill hiding him?’ I asked.

‘Doesn’t make sense,’ said Charlie.

‘None of this makes sense, Charlie,’ I said. ‘Put his name up, Cynthia.’

‘All right.’ Cynthia scrawled up Steve Rosenheit’s name on her list. I was making some progress.

She checked her watch. ‘OK. Only five minutes left. What are we going to say?’

‘That we have no idea who killed Harald,’ I said. ‘It could have been me, it could have been Trent, it could have been Charlie, it could have been Steve Rosenheit. Hell, it could even have been Bill himself. And somebody shot him. Where would I get a gun? I’ve never fired a gun in my life!’

‘It’s easy to get an illegal firearm in this country if you really want to,’ said Charlie. ‘Even for a dumb Brit.’

‘Or a dumb Canadian. Or Trent, or Cynthia, or Bill or Steve. That’s my point. It could have been anyone.’

‘We’ve got to come up with something,’ Cynthia said.

‘No we don’t!’ I protested, banging my palm on the table. ‘This isn’t an exercise. This is a murder investigation! It’s the cops’ job to gather the evidence and analyse it. We really have no idea who murdered poor Harald, and we shouldn’t pretend we do.’

Cynthia was silent. I was pleased. It looked like I had finally got them to admit the futility of what they were doing. With no help from Manuela. She was still sitting there, arms folded, motionless, her eyes staring somewhere behind Trent’s head. But something seemed to have changed about her. Her folded arms, which previously had acted as a barrier to the rest of us, now seemed to be hugging her small body, hugging it tightly. Her impassivity had become something else. I wasn’t sure what it was.

But it bothered me. It scared me.

‘We do know who killed Harald,’ Trent said.

‘Who?’ said Cynthia, turning to him in something close to relief.

‘Peter. Project Assegai is a distraction. The physical evidence shows it can either have been me or him, or maybe that hotel guy who didn’t know any of us from Adam. I have no motive. I know I didn’t kill Harald. And that means it must have been Peter, who wanted to be partner and who saw Harald was in his way. It’s the simplest solution and it’s the one we should go with.’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ I said.

‘I think you did,’ said Trent coolly. A smile slipped across his lips and was gone. ‘That’s what the facts show and that’s what we’ll tell Bill. Hey, we might be wrong, but that’s OK. If you are innocent and you can prove it, the cops will go along with that. But Bill asked us to determine who most likely murdered Harald given what we know, and we’ve done that. It’s you, Peter.’

Trent looked around the table. ‘Are we agreed? We say Peter is the most likely suspect?’

‘Peter,’ Charlie repeated.

‘Cynthia?’

Cynthia hesitated.

‘Cynthia? We need to come up with a name.’

She looked at the thick blue ink on her flip chart. Then nodded. ‘Peter.’

‘Manuela?’ Trent asked.

All eyes were on Manuela, who didn’t respond. But she blinked. Once.

‘Manuela?’ said Cynthia. ‘You haven’t said anything yet.’

Nothing. But Manuela’s small body seemed to be tightening.

‘Manuela? Are you OK?’

‘I know who killed Harald,’ Manuela said in a whisper so low I wasn’t sure I had heard it. The rest of us watched as she began to rock backwards and forwards in her chair, slowly at first and then faster. Her face reddened, and her expression was tight as a drum, as if she were struggling to hold in a mighty force.

‘Harald and I had a relationship. We were engaged, actually.’ She held up her left hand, revealing a cluster of diamonds around her finger. ‘Of course we had to keep it secret. I put his ring on when I heard this morning.’ I hadn’t noticed it when we went for our walk, because of her gloves.

‘I didn’t know,’ said Charlie. He and Cynthia looked completely surprised. Trent slouched back in his chair. His lips weren’t actually smiling, but he seemed, well, satisfied.

She took a deep breath. ‘They say it’s stupid to enter into a relationship with someone at work. In the case of Harald I don’t regret it for a moment, he was a wonderful man, but sometimes they are right.’ She sniffed. ‘What was stupid was the night I spent with Trent. It was eighteen months ago, before Harald. We were in Williston, North Dakota, and we’d had a few too many drinks in the hotel bar. It was an awful mistake, as I told Trent right afterwards. But he wouldn’t accept it.’

‘Are you saying I killed Harald?’ Trent said with scorn.

‘You were jealous. You were insanely, stupidly jealous, especially when you realized that Harald and I were having a relationship and that that relationship was serious.’