Free Stealing People by Robert Wilson Page A

out of them?’
    ‘There wasn’t anything from the US Department of Defense if that’s what you’re asking.’
    ‘Just answer the question, Siobhan.’
    ‘Of the offshore companies whose accounts I’ve seen, there were three: Xiphos Technologies Inc., Hoplon International Ltd and Kaluptein Trading Inc.’
    ‘And where were these companies based?’
    ‘Christ,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘Xiphos was in Belize, Hoplon in Bermuda and Kaluptein in the British Virgin Islands.’
    ‘And these companies paid into which of your father’s accounts?’
    ‘He didn’t receive anything. My father paid into these companies from accounts he had in the same territories. So his Belize company, called Interceptor Trading Ltd, paid Xiphos; the Bermudan company, called Ferguson Consulting Ltd, paid Hoplon; and the BVI company, called Sunbeam International Ltd, paid Kaluptein.’
    ‘Why did your father name his companies after Jensen cars.’
    ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    ‘The Jensen brothers made sports cars after the war until the seventies.’
    ‘My father doesn’t give a shit about cars,’ said Siobhan. ‘I would say he’s only interested in people. Yeah, money and people and how they work together … and how the one fucks up the other. And power, too, or is that the same thing?’
    ‘So you told these two guys that your father had walked off into the night three days ago and you hadn’t seen him since,’ said Boxer, ‘and they didn’t believe you?’
    ‘I didn’t end up like this because they were happy,’ said Siobhan. ‘They wanted to make sure I didn’t go to the police. They showed me what to expect if I did and threatened me with worse.’
    ‘Any indication what they wanted from your father? Money … expertise? Had your father stolen something?’
    ‘They just wanted to know where he was.’
    ‘It could, of course, have nothing to do with his business and be something … personal.’
    ‘It felt like it.’
    ‘I mean you don’t beat and rape a man’s child unless you want to make a very personal point.’
     

 
     
     
     
     
    7
     
     
     
    20.15, 15 January 2014
    DI Mercy Danquah’s house, Streatham, London
     
     
    T he call came through at 20.16. Mercy remembered the time, a professional tic, as she clicked the receive button to what she thought was going to be a call from Marcus Alleyne.
    Until that moment she’d been sitting at the kitchen table in her dark blue jeans, a black roll-neck cashmere sweater (a present from Amy), navy blue high heels and full make-up, waiting for him to show. Normally this would not have been an unusual situation. Alleyne, the laid back Trinidadian, felt that punctuality was uncool, while it was Mercy’s duty, as the cop, to always be on time. But given the circumstances of the phone call earlier today, and the fact that they hadn’t seen each other for four days, she thought he might, for once, have been on time.
    Mercy decided not to let it bother her. It was his nature. She slipped back into a reflective mood. January did this to her. The cold and wet, which she loathed, and the possibility of losing her job made her retreat into a dazed state of comfort rumination. She’d been seeing Marcus for nearly two years now. The only man she’d seen for longer was Charles Boxer, and it had just started occurring to her, with some surprise, that she was now over Boxer. She didn’t think about him any more. He naturally cropped up in her mind because he was Amy’s father, but she no longer thought about him in the addictive way of the unrequited lover of the last twenty-odd years.
    Her mind was full of Marcus. He occupied her, but not in the all-encompassing, oppressive way that Boxer had. With Marcus, she was so confident of his love, there was no room for anything else. They talked every day about everything. Well, almost. He loosened her up, made her laugh and they still had great sex.
    So what was the problem?
    That word: