Those Left Behind - 9. May you live in interesting times

“The Andreas Huber bloke has disappeared too. I’ve just had the SFO on the phone.”

“So, it’s up a notch?”

“You’ll have a warrant, first thing”.

“That’s gonna change things, sir. Kid gloves off?”

“I don’t know, you can be nice guy. I’ll be Mr Nasty in the background. Wait for the kid to go to school, one less thing. And make sure Cynthia’s at the Bank as soon as it opens, with some backup. We don’t want anyone doing a runner.”

“She needs to talk to the boyfriend too.”

DI Donaldson grunted, “Bank won’t take all day, she can go later. He’s only corroborating, isn’t he?”

“As far as we know, there’s hardly anything on him either.”

“Look. How the fuck did this lot get involved with serious fraud, they’re hardly the types. And no major debts, no gambling habits or anything.”

“The team are double checking, but the two men seem to be sober, solid citizens.”

“Who just happen to be bonking each other on the sly?”

DS Marcus gave a dry laugh, “It’s called the suburbs, sir.”

“Hmm.”

***

“I’m sorry sir, my boss insisted, there’s been new evidence from Strasbourg.”

“And just what are you looking for?”

“Anything connected to your wife’s work.”

It was a nightmare of a day. As the police combed the house, Ludo sat in the garden and went over and over things with DS Graham Marcus, ‘call me Graham’. They never got anywhere, or at least Ludo never did, maybe the policeman achieved some sort of aim. Ludo had no idea where Jackie might have gone. In the end he produced a list of her friends, and very meagre that looked, and places they’d been. He couldn’t make his mind function, and it was worse that Graham was patient and charming. And made a great cup of coffee.

It all came down to not knowing anything; how do you convince someone of that. All he felt was dread and was pretty sure he must come over as guilty. Guilty of something. The stuff about where she might go was ridiculous. He tried to make DS Marcus understand Jackie’s point of view, that it was image that mattered, but the more he did so the more he thought he dug himself into a hole. Jackie simply came over as a selfish bitch. Had he been wrong all these years? The stuff they’d done, it had been real, hadn’t it?

He tried not to let it overwhelm him, but the whole business made him doubt the whole marriage. But without Jackie there’d be no Damian, and without Damian there’d be no Ludo. Always try to look for the positive, as his grandmother would have said.

When the police had gone, he realised the extent of the devastation. His work laptop had gone, all his work files, innumerable personal files, all neatly docketed by Ludo. The police had left the house neat and tidy, remarkably, but Ludo had watched and knew that they had been there. He was shocked by quite how furious he was, how violated. It was only stuff, it could be replaced, but the idea of the police poking round, trying to find stuff on Jackie. And there was the what if….

What if there really was stuff, that he hadn’t noticed.

What if they decided he was guilty, how did you prove you were innocent if you had nothing to show for it. What if this was deliberate? That’s what scared him. That Jackie had cared so little that she’d drop him, had dropped them in the shit. The sight of Damian’s face, white and drawn, came to him. He wanted to protect Damian, but how? The boy had already been questioned by the police, only briefly when they arrived but it was enough to unsettle the boy.

It went round and round and round. He had to do something, but what?

He phoned work.

Not his boss, but the department head, Alastair. They’d always had a good working relationship and Ludo felt he could say anything to the man.

>Ludovic, good afternoon. What a pleasant surprise.

“Good afternoon, Alastair, I’m afraid it’s not good news though.”

>Ah. Problems with the Timworth account?

“No. Personal. Big problems.”

>Ah.

“Jackie and I had a bust up last week. She left me. Sudden.”

>I’m sorry about that.

“Then the police came looking for her.” Ludo felt the other end of the phone go preternaturally silent. “They think she’s mixed up in some sort of financial scam at her Bank and she’s disappeared.”

>Remind me of the Bank.

“Standard International Bank. Not a client, luckily.”

A snort from Alastair.

“The police were here again today with a warrant. They’ve taken all my stuff too.”

>Ah, I see. Inevitable, I suppose. They think that you are involved?

“I can’t even come up with anything to help them. And now all my work stuff.”

>Don’t worry about that. Take a week’s leave of absence. I’ll talk to Malcolm about your accounts, and we’ll sort you out. It’ll mean taking a back-office role, I’m afraid, till the publicity dies down.

So, he didn’t even have the work to fall back on. The interview with Damian had gone OK on Monday. At least, it gave him something else to worry about. The policeman, Graham Marcus had turned up with a young woman from child services; intense and personable, she seemed barely old enough to have had a child as old as Damian. In the end, she’d not done much, Damian had been focused and clear. The early questions had clearly unnerved the boy, who had constantly looked over at his Dad, checking it was still OK to answer. Ludo could understand why.

The police were not interested Jackie’s good moments as a mother or the terrific episodes of enjoyment that they had that made life as family work. No, they were interested in what she’d been up to and what Damian had noticed. The answer was quite a lot, though admittedly from the point of view of a ten-year-old boy. Damian couldn’t go much beyond saying Jackie was angry or nasty or upset, and he’d shied away from knowing too much, scared what it might mean. The boy’s admission that he was worried about his parents divorcing had wrung Ludo’s heart.

Ultimately, Ludo couldn’t really fault the police. He’d hated putting Damian through that, and goodness knows how long it would take to for the boy to recover. But the problem lay with Jackie, her actions meant that the police had made Damian relate all the nasty things about his Mum, making her seem an uncaring ogre. Not a nice process to put your son through.

Damian was clear and definite with his answers, though having his ten-year-old son affirming the boy’s delight at his Father’s affair with his school-friend’s Dad was truly unnerving. But Damian looked drawn afterwards and Ludo had managed to dismiss the police with stiff politeness, suppressing the fury he felt.

He sent Damian upstairs and worked his fury out by doing some exercise, what he really wanted is something to punch, someone perhaps. Which was laughable, he was the last person to fight anyone.

He had messaged Arthur, presumably the police had been round there too.

>How are you doing?

“Furious. I want to punch someone.”

Arthur laughed.

>Seriously?

“Not really. Just so angry with no-one to take it out on.”

>Police OK with Damian?

“Treated him fairly, but he spent the interview telling them all the things Jackie did, then affirming he knew about us two and was OK with it.”

>Shit. Not nice for a kid. Look, do you want us to come round?

“Would you?”

>No problem. I’ve started dinner, shall I bring it?

“Please. I’d not thought about that!”

Ten minutes later, they appeared, with Arthur carrying a casserole. Adam immediately dashed upstairs with Damian, and the two boys seemed to be exchanging news about their exciting times with the police.

Arthur busied himself with the casserole, head down, “You think the police got anywhere?”

“With us? Search me. Seemed to go round and round. Damian answered everything clearly and directly.”

“He OK?”

Ludo pulled a face, “Not sure. Oh, he was straight with the police, but they weren’t interested in the good bits.”

Arthur gave a bitter, dry laugh, “My Mummy was an axe murderer.”

“Not quite, but nearly. I sat there listening to the kid describing her and the picture was horrible. No kid should have to tell the authorities how shitty his Mum was. And for God’s sake, he had a clear idea she was seeing someone, and he hated it.”

“But he didn’t hate the idea of us two?”

Ludo shrugged, “I can’t get into the boy’s mind, but no.”

“Perhaps because he got to know me first, or because of Adam.”

“Maybe. Leaves another whole can of worms, doesn’t it?”

Arthur gave a bitter smile, “What if Damian had taken agin me?”

“Yeah”, Ludo sighed. “Look, here’s me moaning away, but how about you?”

“Me? Well, a woman came and went over things. I had to admit that we’d had a long and happy relationship, that I knew Jackie but didn’t know her well. That my view of her was coloured by my fondness for you, but that recently she’d seemed even more distant than usual. That no, I had no idea what she worked on and that you hadn’t either. Corroborative detail at best. Probably not what they were looking for.”

On Tuesday Ludo kept Damian off school. The two worked in the garden at first, but then the call came through, DS Marcus and DI Donaldson would be around later to take his statement. Ludo’s first thoughts were that at least he didn’t have to go to the station. Did they even think about childcare when it came to suspects? Was he a suspect, Ludo imagined so. If Damian’s statement yesterday made Jackie seem like a bitch, then Ludo’s would make him seem like an idiot. How could he not know so much, had he been so bound up in Arthur or had Jackie been good at covering her tracks? He was about to go down the rabbit-hole of worrying whether anything in his marriage had meant anything at all, when he noticed Damian standing anxiously at the door.

“It’s OK, there no problem, I just need to make a formal statement to the police.”

“So, you have to go to the police station?”

“No, they are coming here. You be OK on your own for a bit, whilst I talk to them?”

Damian nodded.

“Sure?”

“Yes, Dad. I’ll be fine and I’d rather be here than with Arthur.”

“OK.”

They had a scratch lunch and had just finished tidying up when the doorbell went. Damian immediately disappeared upstairs, and Ludo let in the two policemen. Graham Marcus’ boss was a big bloke, friendly looking at first and it would have been easy for Ludo to let his guard down. They had questions, going over and over everything, and it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so serious, the way the two men acted was almost stereotypical, friendly DS Marcus and more severe DI Donaldson. Except plenty of Donaldson’s questions were pertinent, why didn’t Ludo know that, why hadn’t he noticed?

By the end he felt wrung out, stupid and anxious. How the fuck did they get out of this. Jackie and the Andreas bloke had disappeared off the face of the earth. There was money missing, at least the police were admitting that, but there no knowing where it had got to. How long had it been going on, was it a new thing or had Jackie been on the take for a long time? So many questions, and here was he sitting right in the middle, completely oblivious.

There had been no question, Arthur and Adam simply appeared from school and joined them.

“How did it go?”

Ludo shrugged, “No problems as such, they are going to type up the statement and I can sign it. But…” He gave a big sigh.

“That bad, eh?”

“If I was them, would I believe me?”

“Want to talk about it?”

Ludo pulled a face, “Could we not. All we can do is go over and over things.”

Ludo had an idea and dragged Arthur upstairs. After half an hour they had the spare room shipshape, and they’d found the spare bedding. Ludo couldn’t see himself sleeping with Arthur in his and Jackie’s bed any time soon, but that didn’t mean Arthur couldn’t stay. Adam was delighted.

***

“Well?”

“Bit of a mixed bag, sir. Lots of stuff, but frankly nothing useful.”

“Bugger. What about the husband’s laptop and things.”

“The tech folk are still going over it, but at first sight it seems all kosher, just advertising stuff, clients and the like.”

“Nothing about the Bank.”

“Not a dickie bird, and no mention of the wife.”

“Hmm. So, looks like the two did lead separate lives. You need to do more digging, Graham. There’s something that crossed over. Somewhere. Cynthia get anything?”

Graham Marcus shrugged, “Some gossip. Seems the wife was a bit of an ice-queen. No-one had an idea of a boyfriend, and a few of the women rather felt sorry for the husband, Ludovic. One woman, Molly, met them on holiday last year and she was pretty scathing. But we got nowhere. Just background.”

“And the project?”

“Just her and Andreas. She specialised in doing audits, and that’s what they were doing. Dodgy dealings in Strasbourg under the microscope. And hence the obsessive security.”

“Fucking hell, Graham. A couple of auditors let loose, and they’re off on the fiddle themselves.”

“Looks like it.”

“You’re right about the husband, either he’s a good actor or there’s nothing. But if he’s not involved…”

“What the fuck’s going on. If his statement about her comments is true.”

“Why make something like that up?”

“To muddy the waters, sir?”

“I don’t like it. Not one bit. We’re missing something. I’m going to press the SFO. It’s their baby and they can’t expect us to solve their problems. Leave it with me but keep plugging on. There has to be an answer. Some paper trail that we’ve missed.”

“Sir.”

“Oh, and Graham, any sign of the bird?”

“Well and truly flown sir.”