Free Make Them Pay by Graham Ison

lucky enough to spot it ask them to let us know, but to take no other action. If they do manage to locate him, we’ll take a trip down there and have a word. It could be that he really has gone on holiday.’
    ‘Yeah, maybe, guv, but it seems all too convenient to me that he vamooses straight after Eberhardt and Schmidt were murdered. There we have an ex-SAS geezer who suddenly takes it on the toes just after Charlie Flynn called in to see him.’ Dave regarded everyone involved in an investigation as a suspect until proved to be innocent. ‘Guilty knowledge, no doubt about it,’ he added, just to make his point.
    ‘You might be right, Dave. It seems odd that he took off straight after he’d had a visit from the police. However, there are some loose ends to be tied up.’ Although I knew damned well that the address on the letters sent to the ‘investors’ was false, I had to show in the final report that this had been checked. And that meant a trip into the foreign territory cared for by the City of London Police.
    The address on the letter received by Lady Fairfax turned out to be premises occupied by a firm of solicitors. In my view, not the smartest move on the part of the share-pushers. But as it happened, the lawyers hadn’t even opened the letters that had arrived at their address.
    ‘Yes, we had quite a few letters addressed to this fellow Anthony Cook,’ said the senior partner, after he’d consulted his office manager, ‘but we sent them back to the post office marked “Not known at this address”.’
    ‘You weren’t interested in why letters for this man kept arriving here?’ I asked, just for the hell of it. ‘Didn’t you open them to find out?’
    ‘They were not opened because so to do might have constituted an offence under Section 84 of the Postal Services Act 2000,’ said the solicitor. He was a smug sort of character, mid-forties and expensively suited. ‘And lawyers are not in the habit of breaching the law, Chief Inspector, as I’m sure you appreciate.’
    Really? I’ve certainly known a few who’d bent it, to say the least.
    ‘If any such letters arrive in the future, perhaps you’d let me know.’ I handed the lawyer one of my cards. ‘I’ll arrange for an officer to seize them as evidence in a case of double murder I’m dealing with. I’m sure you’ll agree that such action will exonerate you from any allegation of interfering with Her Majesty’s mails.’
    ‘Quite so,’ said the solicitor acidly.
    So much for that. Now we had to look into the matter of the discontinued 0845 telephone number that Lady Fairfax, and doubtless the others, had tried calling. But I knew what the outcome would be.
    Back at the office, I set Colin Wilberforce the task of discovering details of the subscriber from British Telecom. Or BT as it now styles itself in the prevailing fashion of using abbreviations for everything. It took him about ten minutes.
    ‘According to the director of security at BT the number has never been issued, sir,’ said Wilberforce.
    ‘But Lady Fairfax said that it came up as disconnected,’ I said.
    ‘It would’ve done, sir. I was told that it’s the standard recorded response to numbers that have been disconnected or never issued.’
    ‘But how was our mysterious share-pusher lucky enough to come up with a number that had never been issued?’
    ‘He probably kept dialling 0845 numbers until he hit on one that had been disconnected and then put that on his bogus letterhead,’ suggested Dave.
    ‘Sounds right, sir,’ said Wilberforce. ‘It was a bonus that it hadn’t been issued, but in the event it didn’t matter.’
    ‘It wouldn’t’ve really have made a difference if he’d picked any number,’ said Dave, as usual getting to the nub of the matter. ‘After all, he picked a solicitor’s address for his letterhead.’
    ‘One other thing, Colin,’ I said. ‘Get on to the delivery office that serves the solicitor’s address and find out what they