Free The Hollow Man by Oliver Harris Page A

character, with his finger in too many pies. He wore a Masonic ring and an unhealthy pallor.
    “What do you understand about this situation?” Gaunt asked.
    “This situation?”
    “About why you’re here.”
    “Because I stole and crashed a squad car.”
    “OK,” the counsellor said gently.
    “Chief Superintendent Northwood wants you to explain yourself.”
    “I don’t know if I can explain myself as such. Things happened, and I am ashamed of what happened, and understand that procedures will . . . proceed.”
    “It’s not just this, though, is it?” Gaunt said.
    “You mean with regards to that night?”
    “With regards to everything.”
    “With regards to everything, no. It’s not just this,” Belsey said.
    Gaunt looked half bored, as if he resented being drawn from serious riots to the small and insignificant riot of Belsey’s life.
    “Where were you going?” he asked.
    “I think I was actually trying to get to the Heath. In that sense I succeeded. I woke up the following morning on the Heath. Am I suspended?”
    “Should you be?”
    “Don’t answer,” Sacco said.
    “Would it be a paid suspension?” Belsey said.
    “Are you in financial difficulty?” the counsellor asked.
    “Yes,” Belsey said. He put his hands into Devereux’s jacket. Then he took them out again and checked the time. He thought: Who drops a watch? If you drop a watch, you hear it. You pick it up. And you don’t drop it anyway, because it’s on you.
    “Do you enjoy police work?” the counsellor asked.
    “No more than I’m meant to.”
    “Would you like to talk about what it means to you?”
    “Can I ask you a question about dreams?” Belsey said.
    “Let me ask you a question,” Herring interjected. “Did you enter the borough commander’s home on the night of 11 February?”
    “Yes.”
    “With his wife?” He sounded exasperated.
    “Is that an offence? You’ll have half the Met—”
    “Watch yourself.”
    “Watch yourself,” Sacco said.
    “Is this on the square, Nigel? Know what I mean?”
    “You’re running out of lives, Belsey.”
    “Yes.”
    “Yes what?” Gaunt said.
    “Yes, I entered it.”
    “Why?”
    “I was curious.”
    Herring turned back to the window with his hands in his pockets.
    B elsey thought about money laundering. Even if he could get access to Devereux’s personal stash he wouldn’t be able to transfer it into his current account without setting off alarm bells. Sudden changes in wealth did that. Transfers from dead businessmen to bankrupt detectives did that. And he needed a financial set-up that could travel. He’d spent several months seconded to Anti–Money Laundering and knew the game. There were three stages to each wash: placement, layering and integration. Placing money meant establishing some door through which you could get dirty cash into the world of finance. It meant finding a vein. Layering was the web you weave, the movement around shells, offshores, numbered accounts, making it untraceable before the third stage: integration. Because no one wants a big cheque from the Bank of Downtown La Paz. But get it into the City of London and it’s legitimate. EC1 was every money launderer’s dream. Just half a mile away . . .
    “Northwood says you’ve got previous,” Herring said.
    “Does he?”
    “Trouble at Borough. Question marks.”
    “Chief Superintendent Northwood has some form of his own, doesn’t he?”
    Herring began to speak but the counsellor intervened.
    “Let’s concentrate on the specific incident,” she suggested, with gentle exasperation. “Try to explain what occurred.”
    “Not a great deal occurred. I apologise for taking the car. I’ve been going through a rough time.”
    “Had you been drinking?”
    “Of course I’d been drinking.”
    “Would you say you have a problem with alcohol?”
    “No.”
    “Any other substances?”
    “Ritalin. If I wanted to work here,” Belsey said, “would I have to be close to retirement?