The Murder Loop, page 12
‘What happens then?’
‘We take the money in, examine it, and if we’re satisfied it is genuine and there is no link to criminality or money laundering, we exchange it, paying new money directly into the person’s nominated bank account. If, on the other hand, we believe there are grounds to refuse the exchange, we retain the damaged notes and alert the relevant authorities.’
‘So you’re telling me that if a person tried to exchange notes, you’d have their name, address, date of birth and bank account details on file – at a minimum?’ Please God let the answer be yes.
‘Depending on the length of time that has passed, yes. Under data privacy requirements, we don’t retain personal information longer than is strictly necessary.’
‘But you surely maintain a list of those who try to exchange suspect notes?’
‘Yes, we do.’
‘Oliver, was Nabila Fathi one of the names on your list?’
‘Can you spell the surname for me?’
She did so, and then spelled out the first name for good measure.
‘Let me check.’
This is it – I can sense it.
He paused for a moment to consult whatever records he had to hand.
Somehow Nabila was roped into – or got in the way of – some money-laundering activity and it got her killed.
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Ashcombe said eventually. ‘There’s no mention of that name on my list.’
Should have known. Why would an investigation be easy when it can be hard instead?
She took a moment to reflect on everything Ashcombe had told her so far, and what it could mean.
Somehow the notes had come into Nabila’s possession – perhaps before she arrived in Ireland seeking asylum, or possibly after. The notes were real tender, not counterfeit – had she known as much? That seemed like a relevant question in trying to determine what her actions may have been. If Nabila had understood the notes to be legitimate, she may have tried to use them locally, only to be rebuffed because of the extent of the damage. That would have left her with little real alternative but to try and exchange the notes via the Currency Comptroller’s office. In which case she would surely have given her real name and address, because she was doing nothing wrong and had nothing to fear.
Then again, it was well documented that asylum-seekers – even when granted refugee status – were, as a general rule, incredibly nervous about interacting with state authorities, often with good reason. So she could have known the notes were legitimate and still felt the need to use a false name. If for any reason she thought they were counterfeit, she would definitely have done so. In a town as small as Glencale, it would have been too great a risk to try and pass off counterfeit large-denomination notes locally, leaving the Currency Comptroller as her only option – and giving her real name and address would have been insane in those circumstances.
All of the above assumed Nabila did actually try to exchange the notes, of course – Cass knew it was possible she had acquired them in the run-up to her death and never had the opportunity to do so, or had had them for some time and was afraid to use them. If that were the case, Cass would have to focus on the source of the notes, and that, she knew, would be a labyrinthine task, a dead-end for sure. They could have come from anywhere.
Who is the patron saint of miracles again? Peter? Jude? Anthony? Whoever it is, I’m praying to you now.
‘Could you check if there is anyone on your list with an address in Glencale, or in County Kerry more widely?’ Cass asked. ‘Woman or man?’
Silence as he consulted the records again. Cass steeled herself for the gates to slam shut on this particular avenue of inquiry.
Good work by me up to a point, she thought, but ultimately a dead-end.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Yes, a woman with an address listed as Glencale tried to exchange some of these notes a little over a year ago.’
Nabila Fathi was killed December before last – a little over a year ago.
‘What month?’
‘December tenth.’
‘What was the woman’s name?’
‘Ezme Khaled. Says here she had about 800 euro to exchange.’
‘And the address?’
Oliver Ashcombe proceeded to list the address.
She gave a false name. But it was Nabila. No question. Ordinary people in very pressurised circumstances make mistakes that, in hindsight, appear incredible.
‘Does the file say what happened?’
‘By that time, we’d had a few cases of people trying to exchange this money. In those cases, we took in the notes on application, retained them, and refused to go through with the exchange until we investigated more fully. We would have followed that approach here except, from what it says on the file, Ms Khaled didn’t hand in the notes. She partially completed the application form – name, address, breakdown of notes, and then stopped at the section where the applicant is required to fill out the source of the funds, i.e. the ownership. According to the file, she asked our clerk if she had to fill out every section, and when the clerk said yes, Ms Khaled informed him that she had changed her mind and decided to hold onto the money. The partially completed form was left on the counter, but she left our premises in possession of the notes.’
Something had spooked Nabila. The extent of questions on the form. Or the realisation that the Currency Comptroller wouldn’t exchange the damaged notes for physical cash on the spot. Nabila fled, worried that she had been dragged into something that would affect her refugee status. Or that she would get into trouble with someone – someone she was afraid of.
‘Oliver, I need one more thing for now, if that’s okay. Would your office retain CCTV that long? Would you have footage of who came into and out of HQ on the day?’
‘We might be able to go one better,’ he said. ‘We have a camera over the public counter, for obvious reasons. I’ll have to check exactly how long we hold onto footage – but if we have it from back then, we’ll have Ezme Khaled on camera.’
‘This could be really vital information in an inquiry. Could I press you to–’
‘I’ll get you an answer today on the length of time we retain CCTV. And if we do have footage, I’ll do everything in my power to get it to you within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.’
‘Much appreciated. And I’d like to see all relevant footage – not just of the public counter, but of Ezme Khaled entering and exiting the building.’
‘You’ll get everything we have.’
She thanked him and ended the call.
Nabila Fathi was considered by all who knew her to be a kind and decent person, intrinsically shy. At the time she paid her visit to the Currency Comptroller office in Dublin, she had only just been granted asylum after waiting and worrying for four long, arduous years.
How on earth was she persuaded to get caught up in something like this? And did it get her killed?
For the first time since starting back to work in Glencale, Cass was thankful to Finnegan. If anybody might know how and why Nabila had become embroiled in something so murky, her best friend might. And thanks to Finnegan, Cass now had Maisah Sahraoui’s mobile number.
Of course, technically speaking, Cass had no confirmation that the woman who had identified herself as Ezme Khaled to the Currency Comptroller was indeed Nabila.
No witnesses. No CCTV footage – not yet, at least. But the address had convinced her.
Nabila Fathi may have given a false name on the day. But she must have realised that if she did hand over the money, the Currency Comptroller would need a verifiable address – somewhere to send the exchanged money to.
And so she’d given her real one…
The flat over Harbour Murphy’s shop.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Maisah Sahraoui’s mobile rang out each of the six times Cass attempted to contact her. Eventually, she sent a lengthy text message:
I’ve been asked to look again at Nabila’s case. I know how much you want to see her killer found. My questions are only about Nabila – not you. Please ring – your help could make a difference.
After hitting send, she wondered briefly whether Maisah had good English, and would be able to read the message. If this didn’t work, she would ask one of her colleagues in Donegal to visit the direct provision centre where Maisah was now based and ask for her in person.
‘Back to school this afternoon for us,’ a voice said suddenly over her shoulder.
‘Could do without it,’ Cass replied.
‘You should wear your old school skirt,’ Liam Devine said. ‘Bet you’d look great in it.’
‘Fuck off, you perv. You’ll have to do better than that to wind me up.’
‘I’ll collect you around two for our date then. We’ll sneak a fag around the back of the school shed after.’
He walked away, chuckling to himself. She’d known Devine was fond of himself – he’d lick himself in the mirror, as her mother used to say of his type – but this was the first time he’d made any sexually laced comments. His lame wisecracks didn’t bother her – what passed for ‘banter’ in some of her previous postings in Dublin had been many times worse. She hadn’t put Devine down as the type, though, and she groaned inwardly at the thought that even in such a small station as Glencale, she’d have to put up with this shit. Even if Devine meant no harm by it.
The rest of the morning she worked through a series of phone calls and social media searches in the hunt for Peter Bannon, but to no avail. She couldn’t help but wonder what Sarah Delahunty’s phone logs over the last few months might show. But Sarah wasn’t a person of interest and, under law, any request to a phone provider could be made only by a chief superintendent or higher rank. Requests couldn’t be made on a whim, and Cass knew she’d need good reason before tabling one – reason she didn’t have right now.
Nothing for it but to keep shooting in the dark, she thought.
Lunch was a sandwich at her desk and, despite the torrential rain outside, a longing to swim in the sea. At close to two, her phone emitted the familiar beep of a text message. Maisah Sahraoui had broken her silence.
Ring again but u understand – am afraid. Will do this 4 Nabila.
Cass dialled the number, and Maisah answered on first ring.
‘Nabila’s murderer you mean,’ a voice said, softly-spoken but firm.
‘Yes, I’m looking to find the person responsible,’ Cass said. ‘As per my messages, my name is Officer Kate Cassidy – everyone calls me Cass and you should too. I’ve been asked to review Nabila’s case. I am hoping you can help me.’
‘You say “killer” in your message to me. Nabila was not killed in some accident. She was murdered. You see?’
That’s told me, Cass thought.
If Maisah was afraid of personal consequences, she wasn’t going to let that fear prevent her from standing up for her late friend.
My kind of person. ‘Yes, Maisah, you are right. May I call you Maisah? Am I pronouncing your name correctly?’ Bring it back to basics, thought Cass, and start over.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and I am sorry for my bluntness. I want everyone to understand she was murdered.’
‘But we’ve always known that, Maisah,’ Cass said gently. ‘It’s why we launched an investigation in the first place.’
‘Yes but your fellow officers do not seem interested. Every week I call to the station for updates – to see Sergeant Finnegan – for that I am punished and sent away.’
‘Maisah, I wasn’t working in Glencale during your time here. I can’t speak to the past. I can only tell you that Sergeant Finnegan personally asked me to review the case as a priority. I’m doing that now and, based on some new information received, I have some questions you might be able to help me with. Will you do that?’
‘Will it hurt my application – to talk to you?’
‘This has nothing to do with your application for asylum, Maisah. For good or for bad, I cannot influence that one way or the other. This is only about Nabila. Nothing else.’
Cass could sense a lifetime of distrusting authority in the pause that followed.
‘Okay. I answer your questions for Nabila.’
In the car on the way to the school, Devine chuntered on about his glory days as a schoolboy footballer. Cass, who had little time for nostalgia, and even less for the self-aggrandising sort, barely registered a word of it.
She was too engrossed in Nabila Fathi’s case, obsessing about the banknotes, wondering how Nabila had come into possession of them. Maisah had answered every question willingly, but in truth had little in the way of valuable information to impart. She painted the same picture of Nabila that Cass already recognised: open-hearted, loyal, reticent. Everything else was mostly a sea of vagueness. One thing about which Maisah had been adamant, however: Nabila had not come to Ireland with any significant sums of money in her possession, damaged or otherwise.
‘She has nothing coming here,’ Maisah said. ‘She gets this money a short time ago. I do not know how.’
Neither did Cass – and that was the problem. If Nabila had come into the money in Ireland, there was no indication in the file of the potential source, and Cass had dug out nothing by way of a lead. The only person who had given her cause for suspicion was Harbour Murphy – but why would an established politician, even a particularly greedy one, risk messing around with dodgy money? It would be an enormous leap to suggest he be questioned over the notes, Cass knew, because there was not one single iota of evidence linking him to them.
The fact that Nabila had given her real address, in the flat over his shop, may have served to increase her suspicions but, in practical terms, signified nothing. Cass’s best hope remained that the Currency Comptroller’s CCTV footage would throw up something, anything, that would give her the slightest of threads to pull.
She made a mental note to double-check the call logs for Nabila’s phone. While the phone itself had never been discovered, the original investigation team had obtained her number from Nabila’s friends and pulled the necessary records from her phone provider, before tracing all the calls she made. None of the calls – or the recipients of them – had given rise to suspicion in the original investigation. But Cass now had something the original team didn’t: a specific day and date on which Nabila was doing something which – potentially at least – could have been a factor in her death. It would be worth double-checking the call log against that period, especially in the immediate window after she had seemingly panicked and fled the Currency Comptroller’s office.
Devine parked and Cass suddenly realised just how long it was since she had been inside the doors of Saint Al’s. The old prefabs provided to cater for extra growth in her day had been replaced by a gleaming modern wing to the main building, mixing old and new. She’d neither loved nor hated school; was just glad to leave and get on with her life.
School reunions and the like had never been her thing, and so her toes curled now at the prospect of returning and meeting some of her former teachers, as well as a couple of old school friends who were now on the staff. Granted, it was an important ambassadorial duty: a chance to stand in front of impressionable teenagers and encourage them to follow her lead and join the force. But Cass was not a sales merchant, and had never been. While the job could be rewarding, it could also be stultifying – and soul-destroying, if you let it get to you. So she would focus not on selling the job, but on speaking to the girls’ self-interest: encouraging them to avoid the kind of stupid mistakes that could derail a life. That was her plan.
Liam Devine, she later realised with horror, had gone in with an entirely different kind of plan.
It was a fluke she caught it. After the teachers had brought them to the student hall and introduced the pair to their awaiting audience, Cass, as the former pupil, had made some opening remarks – receiving a bouquet of flowers in response, much to her embarrassment. She then handed over to Devine to do the rest of the talking, given he was the main act.
He was at ease with the girls, deploying his easy charm to good effect. It wasn’t difficult to see that a few of the girls seemed enticed by him. None of which would have struck her as out of the ordinary – he was precisely the alluring sales merchant that Cass would never be – until the engagement ended and the girls began to file out of the hall. A few lingered to ask individual questions. Cass dealt with a handful and then went to speak with the teachers, leaving Devine to field the last of the queries.
After a couple of minutes, anxious to leave and return to work, she turned back and saw Devine wink and smile at a blonde student as he palmed a piece of paper into her hand.
His cheeks flushed when he realised Cass was looking at him, and then he smiled at her in precisely the same way as with the student.
My charm can overcome, she sensed him thinking.
Cass didn’t particularly relish or hate confrontation, just recognised it as something to get through. But not here. The teachers didn’t see it and I won’t raise it in front of them. In the car.
‘That went well,’ Devine said. ‘You enjoy being back?’
I should exercise caution here, just in case what I saw was something completely innocuous. But I know it wasn’t…
‘Good school,’ she said. ‘Presume your girls will go there.’
‘Expect so.’
‘What ages are they now?’
‘Chloe’s nine and Lily is seven.’
‘You might be presenting to them at some point so.’
‘I hope I’ll have passed the baton on then. Promotion or two, or three – or a lottery win!’
And if somebody else came in and hit on one of your daughters when they were sixteen or seventeen, what would you say? What would you do?
