MURDER IS SKIN DEEP by M.G. Cole (read dune .txt) 📕

Derek Fraser a visit just to see the look on his face when he revealed Hoy’s identity. But, other than personal gratification, there was nothing to be gained from that, and if he knew that Rebecca and Terri had struck up some sort of friendship, he would have revealed it earlier.

Try as he might, Garrick still struggled to find what bound the women together, other than loathing the same man. If Fraser was doing well selling the art, then it made little sense for Terri to ditch him as an agent. It was Fraser’s own fame that was helping drive up the price. Instinct told him they were looking at the evidence the wrong way. Maybe he was being unduly influenced by Fanta’s whimsical take on viewing artwork, but it was sticking with him. Then something else she had said… her date with Sean. The magician. Sean’s smoke and mirrors comment.

“We’re looking at the wrong hand,” he said suddenly.

“Sir, you have well and truly lost me.”

Garrick now wanted to get to the incident room to access the case files. It was just as well because Chib told him she’d have to charge up again soon. Inside, he took care to avoid Drury’s office, and stood in front of the evidence wall, soaking it all in.

The second gunman at the security van incident had to be the same man Garrick chased in the hotel. The gun, and now the Mark Kline-Watson connection, put him by Oscar Benjamin’s side. He knew he should tell the team investigating the robbery, but until he had something other than speculation, it was probably best to keep quiet.

It was likely that Oscar Benjamin had fled the country, leaving his partner in crime behind. Why? Had Benjamin stolen all the money from his partner? Left him high and dry? Had he done it to escape from Rebecca to start a new life? It was possible.

“Do you have a moment, sir?” It was Fanta, who was leaning back in her seat, dark circles under her eyes betraying her fatigue.

Garrick crossed over. “When did you last go home?”

“What year is it?” she quipped, then pointed to her screen. “What do you make of this?”

She scrolled down a series of bank statements showing thousands of pounds regularly coming in and out.

“My dad was an accountant in Shanghai before he came over,” she said.

“Ah, the man who named you after a fizzy drink.”

“I used to tell people it was short for Fantasia.” The truth was that Fanta had been one of the few English words he’d remembered at short notice. “He used to teach me and my brother bookkeeping when we were kids.”

“Wow. Your family nights in must have been wild.”

Ignoring him, she circled the mouse cursor over the figures. “So even I can tell this look dodgy. They’re K-W’s business accounts prior to his business collapsing.”

“He was making some quite substantial sales.”

“Yeah. All very regular for somebody who, by all accounts, wasn’t shifting much out of the store.” She switched to a browser and called up the shop’s old website on the Wayback Machine. “I trawled through this. For a year he had pretty much the same items on there. He’d tweak the prices to get rid of them, but look, month after month, it’s mostly the same stuff. He might not have put everything on there, but this is the world’s shop window. Surely he’d put up the big-ticket items. Look at this. A pink elephant!”

She was indignant at a ceramic pink elephant, standing three feet high, with its truck reared back.

“He was charging seven grand for that! Who would want it?”

“Isn’t that what you consider art?”

“No. That’s kitsch. And according to the website, nobody wanted it as it was still there until he closed. So where was he making the money?”

Garrick had seen similar set-ups before. “Money laundering.”

Fanta leaned back in her chair and put her arms behind her head. “That’s what I was thinking.”

Garrick used the mouse to flick back to the bank statements. “He wasn’t making a profit unless he was keeping it in cash as a backhander. The business was unsustainable, even as a front.” He scrolled through the records. “These early figures seem normal. So maybe he was really trying to make an honest go of things, then found the path for easy money.”

“Then he had to close.”

“But couldn’t risk applying for bankruptcy. That would affect what type of bank account he could have. It would be too risky to have any bank closely monitor his activities. It would be better for him to be in debt rather than write it off.”

“The financials for the Cinq Arts Gallery follow a similar pattern, except this time with some profits sunk back into the business.” Fanta’s nose wrinkled as she thought. “It was that another money laundering front.”

“It certainly smells like it, doesn’t it?”

“And it feels right that he’d try to squeeze more money from our man Fraser. If he could pay off his debts quick, it would open the doors for his business to legitimately shift larger amounts of money.”

“The only problem is, we’re now building a case against a dead man. How does Rebecca Ellis tie into this?”

He outlined his thoughts on Oscar Benjamin’s accomplice. Harry Lord had been listening from his own desk. He rolled his chair over to join them.

“When me and Sean were asking about Benjamin, remember they said he was recruiting for a job? If this was the heist, then would he really use strangers? People he didn’t trust?”

Garrick shook his head but remained silent as he walked back to the evidence wall and took in each face in turn. He peered at the CCTV picture of Rebecca Ellis and her phantom friend loading her car up. He tapped the figure in black.

“This is Terri Cordy,” he declared with confidence. “Rebecca spun a cock-and-bull story about some friend because she didn’t want us to make any connection between them. Sean backtracked her movements to the station.” He looked around. “Where