The Murder Loop, page 11
‘Detection’ figures were, to Cass’s mind, tantamount to a fraud on the public; she firmly believed the Guards should report conviction rates and nothing else. She had been grateful, therefore, when Kearney had placed the emphasis on precisely that: getting a conviction. ‘We achieve it by doing the right things, by sticking to the rules, by respecting suspects’ rights, by ensuring no defence lawyer can pick a single hole in the procedures we’ve followed. No heavy squad and no heroes on this investigation. By the book and nothing else.’ Which was why he had undertaken the two-hour drive to Shannon – to supervise and ensure there was no mishandling of the suspects, no stupid mistakes. And which was why he was able to give a direct account of the interview to the murder conference.
The Americans had been taciturn but not uncooperative. They didn’t request a solicitor, which struck their questioners as odd; and they remained composed throughout the interview. They confirmed they were aware of the murder, having heard about it on the radio, but insisted they had no act, hand or part in it. For a significant chunk, the interview went sequentially, as the Guards sought to piece together the pair’s movements on the day, hour by hour, and, where necessary, minute by minute. They admitted visiting Bridge Bannon’s farm, but insisted he had been alive and well when they left.
Quizzed about the purpose of their visit, they said they were looking to speak with the farmer’s son, who had been an acquaintance of theirs in Long Island. When asked why, they said it was a private matter, and no amount of questioning could prise further detail from them. They had expected to find Peter Bannon at the farmhouse; when they didn’t, they took their leave. As to the reception they had received from Bridge Bannon, the two insisted it was cordial.
The interviewers said the farmer was not noted for his hospitality; the Americans amended ‘cordial’ to ‘curt’. Pushed further, they acknowledged ‘hostile’ might be more accurate. But they insisted they had not returned the hostility. Challenged on their initial lie, they said they were simply observing the Irish tradition of not speaking ill of the dead…
And on it went, piece by piece, none of it amounting to an alibi, the interviewers satisfied enough that things were going in the right direction… until suddenly they veered catastrophically off course. Because when they came to the critical three- to six-hour window which the pathologist believed to be the approximate time of death, things fell apart. The Americans had travelled from Glencale to Cork City shortly after leaving the farm, a distance of about 100 kilometres. They had booked into a city-centre hotel, and had dinner in the restaurant. Time-stamped receipts, credit card payments, and CCTV footage from the hotel would all prove as much, they insisted.
While the interview continued, a call was made to the hotel in question where an obliging assistant manager pulled up the relevant details at speed. The pair had indeed booked in that night – two separate rooms. The bookings had been made upon arrival at the hotel rather than in advance, and each man had used his own credit card for the purpose. The credit card details matched. Furthermore, the assistant manager was able to access CCTV footage from the check-in desk at the time of the bookings. Asked to describe the two men seen in the footage, he gave matching descriptions of the pair sitting in the interview room.
While the Guards would, of course, acquire the hotel CCTV and all other relevant sources of information, on the face of it, the Americans seemed to have their alibis.
Possibly the pathologist was wrong about the time of death, which couldn’t be ruled out. But it seemed a stretch, and nothing further arose in the interview to give any suggestion that the Americans had been the killers. They provided their mobile phone numbers, and suggested phone-mast triangulation would prove they were nowhere near the farm at time of death. They also volunteered DNA buccal swabs, after which they were released without charge. There was simply nothing to charge them with – not even false passports as originally suspected. Their travel documents were legitimate and, misdemeanours aside, the pair had no criminal records.
Not the kind of result any of the team had expected.
A complete bust.
It had been less than thirty-six hours since Cass had spoken with Nicole Wilson, but as soon as the murder conference was over, she rang her old acquaintance again. While Cass doubted the FBI agent had collated much in such a short window, she didn’t want to waste any more of her time.
‘You can call off the hunt,’ she said.
‘Your guys not on the watch list anymore?’
‘They’ve been interviewed and released. Pretty solid alibis, unless we have the time of death wrong.’
‘That’s interesting,’ Wilson said, ‘because those guys have backgrounds you’ll wanna know about.’
‘We checked formally. Misdemeanours only.’
‘Of course, cos Angelo Scalice isn’t going to send two crooks with heavy records to do his business overseas.’
‘Who’s Angelo Scalice?’
‘Mid-level mob boss; runs a bunch of legitimate businesses to launder the proceeds from the illegitimate stuff – drugs, prostitution, trafficking. If he sends someone abroad on a job, it’ll be a couple of guys with clean records as you say – he’s not stupid. But they’ll be professional hoods all the same. And your two, I’m pretty sure, are professional hoods.’
‘Which brings us back to the question they wouldn’t answer in the interview: why were they chasing Peter Bannon across the ocean?’
‘Can’t say for sure, but a colleague in the New York office made a few calls for me. Says there’s a story doing the rounds in Long Island about an Irish guy working on one of Scalice’s construction sites who picked up a bag in an office that didn’t belong to him.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Money. Not a huge amount by their standards – maybe ten, twenty thousand bucks. But not pocket change either.’
‘And not the kind of thing they’re prepared to let go.’
‘Got it in one. I think those two flew to Ireland to tell your boy Bannon that Angelo Scalice wanted his money back.’
‘Makes sense. But we still have nothing to pin them to the murder.’
‘I guess maybe don’t rule them out yet, is what I’m saying. A couple of guys like that, they’d know a few tricks to cover their tracks.’
‘That’s really good to know, Nicole. Thank you for this information. It will definitely help.’
‘Anytime.’
‘Listen, I hesitate to ask when you’ve done so much already but… anything on the other name I gave you?’
‘Mason Brady?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s not accused of any crime, right?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘And not a suspect or a person of interest in any investigation?’
‘Also correct.’
‘Then I’m a bit more reluctant on that one.’
Wilson lapsed into silence, awaiting proper justification. But Cass didn’t have any – not really.
‘It’s just that he helped with the Bannon investigation and I’m not sure exactly why,’ Cass said eventually. ‘It’s always good to know exactly who we’re dealing with in any given case.’
‘Well, you’re dealing with an upstanding US citizen by the looks of it,’ Wilson said. ‘Stellar service record, no blemishes, nothing that would give rise to questions.’
‘Understood. You think you could share that service record?’
‘I’m afraid not, Kate. He hasn’t done anything wrong. I can’t see any basis – even informally – to share that type of information. You’ll have to go through the proper channels for that one.’
‘You’re right – I totally get it.’
‘I’ll say this much though: Brady’s the opposite of the guys you had in the interrogation room.’
‘In what sense?’
‘Let me put it this way: If I wanted the likes of Angelo Scalice and his hoods off the street in a hurry, I’d send a team of Mason Bradys.’
It now seemed premature to have let the Americans off the hook. From what Nicole Wilson had said about their backgrounds, they were unlikely to have travelled to Ireland seeking a friendly reunion with Peter Bannon.
And what of Mason Brady?
He had been in Glencale for a considerable period of time; his arrival had predated those of Peter Bannon and his two pursuers. But was there some connection she had failed to spot? Why exactly had Brady, with his background, come to Glencale? If it was isolation he was after, his home country, with its vast tracts of wilderness and potential to go truly off-grid, would surely have been better. So had he come to Ireland for a separate reason? Or was his presence merely coincidental? And what, if anything, had Nicole Wilson been hinting at when she drew the contrast between Brady and Scalice’s hoods? Was it her way of hinting that there was actually some connection?
Cass couldn’t settle any of those questions.
But she knew there was one way of finding at least some answers.
And that was by tracking down Peter Bannon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When Cass arrived at work the next day, there was a brown envelope on her desk bearing her name. She recognised the handwriting at once, and her stomach lurched.
Disciplinary notice. Well, fuck her if she can’t confront me with it face to face.
Cass was tempted to rip it up, but instead rose from her desk and went to the small kitchenette to make coffee, walking past Finnegan’s office as she did so. Cass wanted Finnegan to see her stroll by, to realise the envelope hadn’t ruffled her in the slightest. But Finnegan’s office was empty, making the gesture of resistance a futile one. Cass continued on nonetheless, and while making her drink, tried to focus on matters at hand.
After first liaising with Kearney to determine the extent to which the team had already dug into Peter Bannon’s background and movements, she’d spent much of the previous afternoon on the phone, trying to add what she could to a pretty empty page.
She’d started by ringing Sarah Delahunty, to see if Bannon had been in fresh contact with her. Delahunty said not. Cass took the last Irish mobile number Delahunty had for her brother, and contacted his service provider, seeking to ping the location of the phone. It yielded no result, and as a result, Cass had made a list overnight of the next steps she would take to try and locate Bannon.
She had arrived early with the intention of methodically working through the list before afternoon babysitting duty – undertaking the scheduled school visit with Devine. But try as she might, she could not push thoughts of Finnegan’s envelope away. Sighing in frustration, she abandoned the coffee, returned to her desk and slit the envelope open, steeling herself for the contents.
Finnegan had written a total of two sentences.
The first asking for Cass to come see her after the school visit.
The second containing a mobile phone number for Maisah Sahraoui.
Was it some kind of peace offering? She and Finnegan had barely spoken since their blow-up, during which Cass had intimated that Maisah was deliberately transferred from Glencale to a direct provision centre hundreds of kilometres away so as to avoid her asking awkward questions about the lack of progress in Nabila’s case. Cass had been unable to reach Maisah at her new location in County Donegal, and the centre manager had been fairly certain she did not own a mobile phone. Now Finnegan had done some of the legwork for her, and procured a mobile number.
Peace offering or managing the process?
Is it possible Finnegan has already spoken to Maisah? Warned her from saying anything to me?
Stop being so paranoid. Take this at face value. It’s Finnegan’s way of acknowledging what happened to Maisah was wrong, and telling me to keep doing what she originally asked me to do – find Nabila Fathi’s killer.
It was a little after 7am – too early to call Maisah, Cass thought. Instead, she switched back to her original plan for the morning – the list of steps to try and find Peter Bannon.
But someone else had started work early that morning and Cass’s landline buzzed shortly after 8am. Oliver Ashcombe of the Currency Comptroller’s office had eventually managed to access the pictures Cass had sent through – and had an update.
‘Your two notes have been on quite the journey. How familiar are you with Benghazi?’
‘Not very. Wasn’t that where a US consulate was attacked?’
‘Well remembered, but the events we’re interested in happened a few years later. Around 2017, to be precise. Libya was in the midst of civil war. But even in civil wars, central banks need to keep running. The Libyan central bank has a branch in Benghazi. And in 2017, that branch held a substantial stockpile of 100- and 200-euro notes.’
‘How substantial?’
‘About 160 million euro, give or take,’ Ashcombe replied. ‘Needless to say, with the country in turmoil and warlords fighting for territory, that kind of money could fund a lot of empire-building. Men, materiel and so on.’
‘Are you telling me some faction robbed some of the money?’
‘Not some of it – all of it. Together with 630 million dinar – worth about 120 million euro – and another two million US dollars. They also lifted close to 6,000 silver coins while they were at it.’
‘How on earth does that happen? How can you lift that volume of money from a protected building?’
‘By taking it over. This wasn’t a one-off raid by a small team. Everything valuable in Libya at that point was up for grabs. Oil was the primary target, cash sources not far behind. Different factions fought to control what they could. Benghazi was a hotspot during the civil war, and the branch was a target throughout that time. Eventually, one of the factions seized it and barrelled the money out the front door.’
As Ashcombe spoke, Cass stared intently at the images on her screen of the notes from Nabila’s rucksack. ‘You’re telling me these two notes can be traced back to that stockpile? Presumably through their serial numbers?’
‘Serial numbers and sewage,’ he stated simply.
‘Sewage?’
‘Serial numbers are obviously what we use to confirm the origin of any note. In this case, the stolen euro notes belonged to select serial number ranges, so we can trace them back. But we didn’t need to see the serial numbers to know these notes were likely to have originated in Benghazi. In addition to the security problems, the branch had an unexplained sewerage problem at some point before the money was taken. The vault was flooded and a significant portion of the money held within it was damaged.’
‘And you knew from looking at the pictures I sent you that they had suffered the same kind of damage?’
‘I guessed, and the serial numbers confirmed it,’ Ashcombe said. ‘You had pictures of two notes which looked identically damaged. That’s because they were. The two notes were from the same batch.’
‘And the cleaning agent?’
‘The seizure of the Benghazi branch is still shrouded in mystery, with a lot of differing accounts and conjecture as to precisely what happened, and how it happened. There’s a UN Security Council Report that will fill in some of the picture for you – I’ll send on a link. But what seems fairly certain is the faction involved distributed the money amongst its top commanders. Two things happened after that. Efforts were made to clean the money, given the sewage damage it had suffered–’
‘Hence the cleaning agent,’ Cass said.
‘Exactly. And secondly, the money – gradually – started showing up around Europe. Individuals walking into central banks across different member states and trying to exchange the damaged notes for new ones. Both in small and large quantities.’
‘And the system noticed?’
‘We always notice. The European Central Bank and its component national members – including us – share information on matters like these. We investigated the patterns, discovered the origins of these notes, and put out an alert.’
‘Which means what exactly?’ Cass asked, curious as to the practical effect of such alerts.
‘We have strict procedures to counteract money laundering. If someone tries to exchange damaged notes for new ones, and we think those damaged notes were obtained through criminal activity, we are required to refuse the exchange and to retain the notes.’
‘How is that legal when you’re only working on suspicions?’
‘We provide a receipt – effectively an IOU – which will be paid if and when our investigation establishes no link to criminality.’
‘Where notes are badly damaged in this way – or any other way – is it only the Currency Comptroller which can exchange them?’
‘Yes. It used to be the case that retail banks would accept the money, but only to serve as a kind of intermediary to facilitate the customer – the money would still be sent to us to effect the actual exchange. Given the rise of digital banking and the retail banks’ pattern of reducing their high-street presence, most of them won’t do that anymore – they’ll simply tell an inquiring customer that he or she has to come to us.’
Could it be? Cass wondered. It sounded like the beginning of a breakthrough, and she was almost afraid to ask the next question in case the growing flame was quenched immediately. ‘Oliver, did anyone come into your HQ and try to exchange these notes?’
‘Yes, several people.’
‘Does a person have to present identification when trying to exchange notes?’ Fingers crossed for the right answer.
‘If you want to exchange damaged notes, you have to fill out a form and hand it in with the notes in question. The form requires name, address, date of birth and so on. It also requests you to explain how the notes came to be damaged. Additionally, if the value of exchange is above 200 euro, we request supporting identification, such as a passport or driver’s licence. If it’s above 1,000 euro, we also request proof that the money is actually yours – supporting documents such as legal papers or bank statements.’
