Chapter 4

Life around my - our - house was a little strange for the next few weeks. Bridget seemed to take the weird situation in her stride. And Emily? Well, Emily took every opportunity she could to rub my nose in it. She was polite and even pleasant some of the time. She - once having replenished her wardrobe at my expense - dressed to kill most of the time. There wasn't a day that, when I came home from work, I didn't have to take a deep breath when I saw her.

I brought her a car as quickly as I could and organised credit cards and things for her. We even went out to dinner together a couple of times in the first week. Afterwards I realised that that could have been a mistake. It could be that I was trying too hard. So when we went out after that I made sure that we were always in company or had Bridget with us.

It was those little digs that got to me more than anything else did. "Have you put a limit on this card? Are you sure you can trust me not to spend too much?" Emily asked when I gave her credit cards to her.

The coldest reaction I got was when her BMW was delivered. The damned delivery guy, whilst familiarising Emily with the car, explained about the tracker anti-theft system. These systems had only just come onto the market and very few people had even heard of them at the time. Emily completely misinterpreted what the system was all about and thought that it was a way of me keeping track of her movements.

Luckily I was away at a business meeting that evening. Bridget, Stella and her husband explained that the system was all about the police recovering the car quickly if it was stolen.

Emily apologised for the cryptic and somewhat interesting phone call I'd received from her at the office that day. I knew Emily was no stranger to strong language, but I don't think I've ever heard that many blasphemies strung together in one sentence before. Actually she kissed me - on the cheek - when I got home the following morning and told me how much she loved the car.

"Well, I think we've found our mole, or at least the man who sent that second video tape to you," Inspector Morris said as I entered his office.

"The only problem is he isn't going to be much assistance to us; he's left the country again."

From elation at the inspector's first greeting, I felt suddenly deflated. Inspector Morris went on to explain that they'd managed to track down the taxi driver who had delivered the tape. He'd been on the rank near the railway station waiting for the late night train bringing revellers back from the city centre when the man had approached him and paid him to deliver the package to my office building. He went on to explain.

"With the taxi driver's description, it didn't take us long to find out what hotel the guy had been staying in. He was calling himself John Carter - by the way, that's an alias. His real name is Peter Garfield."

I gave a start.

"I thought that would pique your interest. He's the nephew of Phillip Garfield who was one of the five men that Emily had identified as being in that office that day. It appears that Phillip Garfield is in hospital and from what I've been able to ascertain is shortly about to be meeting his maker. Peter Garfield flew in from Ireland a couple of days before that tape was sent to you. We've managed to find out that he went to visit his uncle in the hospital and then the same evening he sent that tape to you. The following day he flew back to Ireland."

"Are you going to question Phillip Garfield?"

"We can't. I'm afraid he's in a comma following a heart attack and the doctors don't hold out much hope for his recovery. Look, we are keeping a low profile. We don't really want the others to know that we are back on their case."

"What about this Peter Garfield? Are you going to question him?"

"Eventually I think, but not for the time being. In the mean time we've been looking very closely at the other four men. They're a strange bunch, all of them so called entrepreneurs and very rich. These guys seem to play at being businessmen more than anything else. I doubt that you will know that they had all sold their holdings in the company Emily worked for within a year of that first tape showing up."

"No. Why do you think they did that?"

"I should imagine that the debacle with Emily put the fear of God in them, so they distanced themselves as much as they could. Anyway less than two years later, the company went into receivership; I've gotten in touch with the fraud boys over that and a couple of my friends over there are nosing around. We can't do anything too high profile at the moment. Slowly, slowly catchy monkey with those sorts."

"I can't understand why you aren't going to question this Peter Garfield about the tape. Surely he must know something?" I asked.

"Because the other four spend most of their time out of the country nowadays. They meet up every couple of months or so at a hotel that Peter Garfield owns in Ireland. If we speak to him, then it might tip-off the others that the fraud squad and I are looking into their affairs. Look, apparently my colleagues in the fraud squad have been interested in these guys for some time now and I'm afraid the fraud squad take priority in this. As far as they are concerned Emily is just a side show."

"Well, she's not a side show to me!"

"I realise that and so do my colleagues. Don't get me wrong. They are just as interested in what happened to Emily and you. If she wouldn't mind, they would like to speak to Emily as well. It's one thing that ties all the five of them together. I believe the fraud boys will want to arrest all five — well, four - conspirators at the same time. So they are looking harder at things than I can. If they can, they will build a case that involves all of them. The fraud boys are playing their cards quite close to their chest so I don't know how big this really is."

The inspector went on to tell me that his enquiries Stateside had not exactly turned up trumps, but a couple of his FBI contacts had shown a lot of interest in the yacht the five had been on or rather the yacht's owner at the time. As far as he could make out the guy who owned it wasn't a known criminal, but he wasn't exactly kosher either. He was one of those guys that the FBI were sure was up to something. They just couldn't figure out what. Apparently the IRS, the American income tax people, were also interested in him.

A couple of days later, some officers from the fraud squad were leaving the house when I arrived home with Bridget. Emily told me they had just run over the whole thing again with her and asked her what she remembered about the goings on in the company when she had worked there. But as it was many years ago Emily couldn't remember much that she thought they would be interested in. They showed her lots of pictures of people but she only found a couple who were vaguely familiar.

Another month or so passed and to me it appeared that nothing was happening where the police were concerned. So I decided to take things into my own hands, as far as I could.

I'd made a good few friends in the city and I started asking questions, as subtly as I could. I was to learn that the five men were a strange bunch. They were known to have control of vast sums of money, which they invested all over the place, sometimes taking over companies whose stock had the unenviable habit of rising once they bought in and falling rapidly once they had sold out again. But whether that was by luck or for some other reason, no one would speculate.