Her Nightly Embrace Read online

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “There you go. There’s the Ravi I first laid eyes on when Roger first hired you. Admit it, we make a good team. I don’t want to lose that.”

  Damn it. Marcie and I did make a good team. We had an easy rapport and she was happy to show me the ropes, explain how this world worked. Now I realized she was actively grooming me, turning me into a better operative. I was really glad we never slept together.

  “So are we good?” Marcie asked.

  “We’re good,” I lied.

  She looked relieved.

  “Shouldn’t you call Cheryl to tell her this case is closed?” I said.

  “What? Oh, yeah.”

  Marcie got on her phone to the office. A classical piano concerto wafted through the speakers, a melancholy waltz that I knew was going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Cheryl was the only one in the office, holding down the fort. David and Roger were off playing golf with some money people from God knows where.

  “Hey, Cheryl,” Marcie said. “The clown is back in the client’s hands. He’s positively orgasmic. Even authorized a bonus. Said the payment should be in our account within an hour.”

  “Well done, you two,” Cheryl said. “Good result. Ravi, did you actually talk Ken and Clive out of doing damage to Will Mosby? That’s quite impressive.”

  “What was the point putting him in hospital?” I said. “He was already pissing himself.”

  “Well, don’t make a habit of it, love. Ken and Clive are like beasts. Their bloodlust needs to be fed.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind. What’s that playing in the background?”

  “Chopin’s Waltz in A Minor. It’s perfect when you’re feeling wistful or when you have a broken heart.”

  Oh, that tune was definitely going to be stuck in my head all day now.

  “See you shortly,” Cheryl said. “Ta-ra.”

  She hung up. I turned on the car radio and tuned in to Radio 3. Sure enough, Waltz in A Minor came on.

  “That’s pretty,” Marcie said. “Kinda sad, too.”

  “Perfect for wallowing,” I said.

  “Oh, man, we really need to get you laid.”

  “Look, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t need help in that department. If I wanted to pull, I’d—”

  My phone rang. What a relief. We saw it was David on the screen. I left it on the hands-free stand on the dashboard and put it on speaker.

  “You still on the golf course, David?”

  “Thirteenth hole. Boss is laughin’ it up with his new friends.”

  We could hear Roger in the background with the businessmen David had included in this meeting. God knows what kind of venture Roger was getting them into here. No doubt copious martinis and G&Ts were being imbibed.

  “Is everyone cosplaying as Detroit pimps?” asked Marcie.

  “Ha-bloody-ha. Listen, Ravi, bit of an emergency. I have a new client for you. Mark’s still in Mexico, and I can’t leave Roger’s side, so you need to go pick her up. Patching you through now. Go on, Sandra.”

  “Hello, are you there?” Panicked voice.

  “This is Ravi Singh. I have my colleague Marcie Holder with me.”

  “My name is Sandra Rodriguez. I’m an investment banker for Holloway-Browner Banking. My life is in danger. I need you to come get me now!”

  FOUR

  We drove into the City and pulled up outside the Holloway-Browner building. It was one of the newer postmodernist glass monoliths in the City of London, and Holloway-Browner was one of the newer high-flying investment banks on the block, up there with Goldman Sachs and catching up to J.P. Morgan.

  The Chopin was still looping in my head even after Marcie decided it was too sad for her taste and I’d switched the radio off.

  As we waited, I glanced up through the windscreen and saw a ring of vultures circling in the air in front of the Holloway-Browner building. This had to be in my head. We didn’t have vultures in London. What was this about? Some kind of sign or portent?

  Just as I asked myself that question, I saw a man in a suit fall from the sky, through the center of the circle of vultures.

  I thought this was another vision until he landed hard on the parked Volvo that was thirty yards in front of us. The impact blew out its windows, scattering the glass outwards as the roof of the car crumpled under the man’s body.

  “Whoa! Shit!” cried Marcie.

  A woman screamed, and people started to run towards the dead man. A man in a suit got on his phone to dial 999.

  A hand tapped on the window of our BMW. I saw a woman with panic on her face.

  “Open up!”

  I unlocked the back door and she jumped in.

  “Sandra?”

  “Go, go, go! If we don’t get out of here, I’m next!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “That man out there is my coworker Jack Higglesworth! Things have gone to shit! He didn’t jump! He was thrown off the roof! Go! Now!”

  We heard sirens in the distance, police and an ambulance. A crowd was forming around the crushed Volvo. The look on Marcie’s face wasn’t shock or concern, but excitement. She was going to enjoy the shit out of this.

  As we drove away, Waltz in A Minor played out its last phrase in my head. Maybe it wouldn’t be looping in my head for the rest of the day after all.

  FIVE

  Sandra Rodriguez insisted on stopping by her house to pick up some things. Fresh clothes, toiletries, pack a bag. She said she couldn’t stay there as they knew where she lived, whoever “they” were.

  “If this is a murder and your life is in danger,” I said, “we should really go to the police.”

  “No! I can’t have the police involved!” cried Sandra.

  Marcie and I looked at each other. This didn’t bode well. When a client didn’t want the police to come and ensure their safety, it usually meant they were into something dodgy. Now we had to decide if we were going to be part of that, risk becoming criminally liable and getting charged as accessories.

  “The police can’t protect me,” Sandra said. “This goes way above their paygrade. That’s why I need specialists like you. Didn’t David tell you?”

  “How do you know David, again?”

  “He’s a mate. A bunch of us meet him for drinks from time to time. I got the sack from Holloway-Browner, and I was asking him for legal advice when things started getting weird. That’s when I asked to hire your agency.”

  Marcie and I exchanged a look. Something about Sandra’s telling felt off, like she was hiding something, controlling the telling to make herself look the victim to illicit sympathy. She just radiated duplicity. We’d been doing this long enough now to be able to smell it.

  We arrived at Sandra’s terrace house in St. John’s Wood, a fixer-upper that wasn’t cheap that Sandra had clearly bought as a symbol of her having made it in London.

  “Just wait here,” she said. “I won’t be long.”

  Oh, we were her chauffeurs now. Of course.

  As we waited for her, Marcie laughed.

  “Well,” I said. “She’s special.”

  “Oh, she’s a mean girl,” Marcie said. “I like her.”

  Marcie had that same odd look on her face since Jack Higglesworth had splattered on top of that Volvo. She was surprised by that turn of events, but not horrified or shocked, just amused, as if a new vista of entertainment had opened up before her.

  “Her idea of ‘won’t be long’ is kind of different,” I said, glancing at the time.

  “High-maintenance gals need to pack a lot of shit when they’re going away,” Marcie said. “Dresses and clothes for every occasion, the makeup she’s gonna need . . .”

  Just then, a burgundy Tesla Model S electric car drove up and stopped in the middle of the street, not even bothering to find a parking spot because there weren’t any open. An angry bloke in a suit and expensive wide-boy haircut stepped out and stormed over to Sandra’s door.

 
I called Sandra on her mobile phone.

  “There’s an angry banker heading to your door.”

  “Oh, God! It’s my ex! We didn’t end it well!”

  “Sandra! I know you’re here! Let me in!” he screamed.

  On the surface, this looked like a domestic: angry ex pounding on her door and shouting the whole street down. I’d told Sandra to go into the bedroom or bathroom and lock the door. Marcie stayed with her on the phone while I got out of the car.

  “You sure you don’t want to call the police?” I asked.

  “No police, damn it! Get me away from him!”

  I sighed and got out of the car.

  “Open the fucking door!” Darren, his name was. “I’m not leaving till you give it back to me!”

  “Fuck off!” she shouted from behind the door.

  Great. She didn’t lock herself away somewhere safe. This said something about the client’s lack of common sense, but I tried not to judge.

  “Is there a problem?” I said, trying to be as mild as possible.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  He turned, expensive haircut, expensive designer casual clothes for a Sunday, and signs of expensive gak consumption that explained the loud twitchiness. Yeah, definitely a banker. Junior banker.

  “She wants you to leave, or at least calm down.”

  “What? You in on it, as well? Shit, Sandra, what have you gone and done now!”

  “I haven’t done anything!” she shouted from behind the door.

  “It’s none of your fucking business!” he said, turning back to me.

  “She called me and made it my business. What’s it gonna be? This isn’t helping.”

  “I’ll show you what fucking helps!”

  I knew he would swing at me. He had been telegraphing it from the start. I sidestepped the punch and brought my fingers up from under his arm, jabbed the space under his Adam’s apple. He made a choking sound and went down. I took his wrist and pulled his arm back and up, forcing him to his knees.

  “Aaargh!” he choked. “You’re bending it all wrong!”

  “I’m bending it just right. Now settle down.”

  He tried to swing around and punch with his other arm, but that only twisted the arm I held even farther. I put my free hand on the back of his neck and kept him bent over as I marched him away from the door, away from the house.

  “Sandra is under our protection. I’m going to let you go now. Don’t be stupid.”

  As I let him go, he stood up, seemed to calm, then reared up to lunge at me again, only for Marcie to stick a stun gun in his back.

  He twitched and went down like a sack of potatoes.

  “Stay down, dude,” she said.

  I rang the bell and told Sandra it was safe. She opened the door and let me in.

  “I can’t stay here. He’s not the problem. There’s worse that’ll come after me. I’ll explain once you get me out of here.”

  Marcie helped her pack a bag, and she brought her laptop. I watched over Darren, but he was spent after the stun gun.

  As we helped Sandra out to our car, he stumbled to his Tesla.

  “You can have her,” he spat back. “Manic pixie murder bitch.”

  “That’s creative,” Marcie said.

  “It’s his latest nickname for me,” Sandra said. “Bastard. Just get me out of here.”

  SIX

  We took Sandra back to Golden Sentinels to get her story. She said this was about more than violent ex-boyfriends, painted herself as a whistle-blower. We sat her in the conference room and had Benjamin record her on video so that we had a record of her and what she had to say, in case anything bad were to happen.

  “It’s about having as many safeguards as possible,” I told her. “You can never be paranoid enough.”

  That made her even more nervous, so of course I didn’t say “In case you get killed.” She was already highly strung enough.

  “My name is Sandra Rodriguez. I’m an investment banker at Holloway-Browner international. My life is in danger.”

  She paused to let that sink in. Awareness of the dramatic effect her words had.

  “Over the last five years,” she continued. “My colleagues and I were Masters of the Universe. We lied to clients to make them think we charged them the lowest fees, snatched deals from rival banks, set up accounts within accounts, got up to all kinds of borderline and outright illegal shit for the God of Money.”

  Cheryl was taking notes. Marcie was there to provide Sandra with any emotional support, and play Good Cop should we need that. Ken and Clive were kicking back at their desks while Olivia sat at her workstation going through Sandra’s laptop.

  “Live hard, play hard. My lot, we made the biggest deals. We were the cream of the crop. The boss loved us. We were the über deal makers.

  “We were arseholes and proud of it. No one could do what we did. We were moving tens, hundreds of millions every day. Bet big, win big. Lose big, fob it off to the clients.”

  I remembered Olivia telling me stories like this from back when she was in banking.

  “If you failed to make your numbers, you were culled like a sick sheep at the farm. The team could tell who the weak link was, and we would let him know by leaving a black bin bag on his desk when he showed up in the morning. The black bag was meant to be like a body bag, to show him that he was a dead man walking. When our boss called him in for a chat in his office, that was when he was up for the chop.”

  “Sounds like a bit of a cult,” I said.

  “Does, doesn’t it?” laughed Sandra bitterly. “Of course, when it comes to bite you in the arse, it’s not funny anymore. And I certainly wasn’t expecting people to start getting killed for it.”

  “Let’s go back to that,” I prompted.

  “Jack didn’t jump. He was murdered. He was part of the corporate finance team I was in. He was one of the weak links, got a bin bag on his desk two weeks ago. I think he found some anomalies, large sums going in and out of three accounts, all unnamed, just numbered. He was called in to talk to our boss, Stuart Powys. He said he was going to ask him about those accounts even we knew he was going to get the Talk. He never came back to his desk. Next thing we knew, he ‘jumped’ off the roof. That was when I knew I was next.”

  “Does anyone else know about those transactions?” I asked.

  “My boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—Darren Cowley, whom you met earlier. He’s a trader.”

  She stopped and looked at all of us.

  “You don’t believe me, do you? Darren coming after me. That was about this.”

  “I’ve seen enough to know you’re scared,” I said. “That’s enough for me.”

  SEVEN

  We gave Sandra a cup of tea and left her to collect herself in the boardroom.

  “Did you come across this type of case back when you were coppers?” I asked Ken and Clive.

  “All the time, mate,” snorted Ken with contempt at the very thought.

  “Never solved any of ’em,” Clive said. “Witnesses clammed up, evidence got lost, orders from on high, things fizzled out.”

  “Especially when there was a ‘sir’ or ‘lord’ involved,” Ken said.

  “What do you reckon?” I asked. “Bankers set up dodgy accounts, then have to be bumped off so they don’t talk?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Olivia said.

  “It’s my first,” I said. “And my first suspicious death. I just want to know what I’m in for.”

  “Well, her computer’s clean. No viruses, no malware, no physical keylogger,” Benjamin said.

  We had Sandra’s permission to go through her files. She was all ready to let everything hang out.

  “They sacked me two weeks ago for raising a stink about not getting a raise. After all the years I put into that fucking place,” she said, coming out of the boardroom.

  When I told her that nothing would escape Olivia’s forensic financial analysis skills, she looked a bit nervous, but gave permiss
ion anyway.

  “Ms. Rodriguez! Sorry I couldn’t handle your case personally, but as you’ve seen, Ravi is the best man we have!”

  Now Roger made his appearance. He and David had gotten to the eighteenth hole with the new “friends.” They were indeed dressed like pimps from Detroit, those crazy sweaters and baggy trousers. Marcie stifled her urge to giggle.

  He bounded up and shook Sandra’s hand, projecting his full charisma as he reassured her that we would keep her safe and get her what she wanted.

  Why was he sucking up to her, anyway? He usually saved that for sheiks, tycoons, and politicians.

  As he buttered up Sandra with as much of his oily salesman charm as he could muster, I set to work. Phoned Ken and Clive’s contact at the police, promised him a hundred quid for a peek at Jack Higglesworth’s file. I typed up an invoice for the hundred quid as part of the invoice for expenses we were going to rack up on this case. Cheryl had already run Sandra’s credit card. It was one of the gold ones, with no spending limit.

  “Who is she, anyway?” I asked David.

  “Investment banker,” he said. “Friend of some of my friends in the City. I run into her every now and then.”

  “Why’s Roger so interested in her?”

  “I dunno, something she knows or people she knows.” He shrugged. “When she called me for help, Roger said we’d take her on.”

  EIGHT

  Roger offered Sandra the safe house, “at a discount rate.” I didn’t even know there was a “discount rate.”

  The safe house was a bungalow between Victoria and Pimlico that Roger bought as a fixer-upper back in 1989 well below market price, probably knocked off by a favor he did someone. It looked like a pleasant, anodyne corporate residence but for the soundproofed walls, bars on the windows, and reinforced door with a state-of-the-art keycard lock that couldn’t be picked. It was on the end of a quiet street with a view of anyone who could be coming or going. It was used to hide clients from paparazzi or hit men before a court appearance. Roger had the place swept regularly for cameras and listening devices just as he did the office. Marcie told me it had been used at least once a year, but not always for clients. It had also been used by various employees for entertaining. Mark and Benjamin were the prime suspects, but they always cleaned up and covered their tracks.