The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths Read Online Free PDF Page A

You’re going to tell me that the whoever-she-is Morgan death needs further investigation.’
    ‘Hayley and yes.’
    ‘You’re going to call my attention to the fact that a crucial letter was forged and that the forgery contributed to Morgan’s death.’
    ‘I am.’
    ‘You’re going to add that the financial transactions we’ve been able to trace so far don’t look like routine payroll fraud.’
    ‘No, they don’t.’
    ‘And you’ll use those things to talk up a case of constructive manslaughter.’
    ‘It is manslaughter. An unlawful act leading to unintended death. That’s manslaughter.’
    ‘OK, then I’ll look down at my list of current tasks and assignments and I’ll find myself agreeing with DI Dunwoody’s assessment that our limited resources could be better deployed elsewhere, particularly as our friends and colleagues in Fraud now have the manpower to take this on. If a manslaughter charge arises from their investigation, we’ll do what’s necessary to assist any prosecution.’
    ‘Except that, as you keep telling me, I’m a cheap resource of doubtful reliability. If I spent more time on the Morgan case, I probably wouldn’t even be missed.’
    Cheap resource: the last time I had a proper telling-off from Jackson was when he discovered that I hadn’t filled out any overtime sheets for five months. These things matter, apparently.
    ‘ Very doubtful,’ mutters Jackson, his attention on his computer. He flicks through what’s been done so far.
    When you get to Jackson’s level of seniority, you’re not a field officer any more. You seldom get to visit crime scenes, interview suspects, force entry. The stink of these things reaches you only at second-hand, from the officers who were there and the reports they compile. But every senior copper was once a plod. They don’t lose their sense of smell, they just get the scent from different sources.
    Jackson reviews the case notes with swift precision. His fingers are heavy on the computer, but also rapid. Deft.
    He lifts his eyes to me again. Dark eyes, shaggily browed.
    ‘Look, you lot have covered most of the basics already. And for all we know there’s a guy called T.M. Baron living on the Costa del Crime, in which case the Fraud boys will just get an EAW and have him picked up.’
    EAW: a European Arrest Warrant. A delightfully simple procedure.
    ‘The money won’t stop in Spain and our perpetrator isn’t called T.M. Baron.’
    I can’t prove that, of course, but most payroll fraud is visibly stupid. Inflated salaries, implausible bonuses, zero deductions, addresses and bank details that track straight through to someone with access to the corporate payroll system. This fraud was clean enough that, for sixteen months, it went untraced. Anyone with the sophistication and patience to set it up wouldn’t be stupid enough to sit in a villa near Torremolinos, waiting to be arrested.
    ‘Probably not.’
    ‘And remember, we don’t know how large this fraud really is.’
    Jackson works his eyebrows at me, so I add, ‘It was a very clean fraud, which implies some professionalism and organization. But organized crime isn’t interested in a couple of thousand pounds a month. They’d need far more than that to make it worth their while. My guess: if we really take a look at this, we’ll find numerous other small frauds built on the same basic model and tracing through to the same ultimate destination.’
    I don’t say, because Jackson is smart enough to see it for himself, that the Morgan–Gibson fraud almost certainly involved a minimum of two people. There’s the T.M. Baron character: whoever it was that collected the first sixteen months’ worth of payments. Then there’s the lower-level idiot who started emptying the Morgan–Gibson accounts. Who blew the whole racket up for a gain of just £5,600.
    An end of summer wasp crawls against Jackson’s office window, butting its head against an obstacle it doesn’t understand and