The thing about being a journalist is it can be hard to let things go. It turns out that’s the case even if you’re no longer employed as a journalist. I was curled up on my childhood bed, heritage-listed laptop on my knees, searching for information about ZephEnergies Limited and Prometheus Power. There was plenty of publicly available information about ZephEnergies, but I thought it was still worth a bit of a dig around. Their interests were certainly well beyond wind energy. They were on the shareholder registers of a couple of other nuclear power facilities. Prometheus Power was more of a mystery. I’d called Stav, who’d used his lawyerly dark arts to help me dive a few levels deeper than simple Companies House searches. He was a divorce lawyer, so he was used to digging around to find where the money was hidden. Although he specialised in gay divorces, so his expertise was mostly in mediating joint custody arrangements for pugs.
“It’s a shell company,” Stav said. “It’s a UK company with fifty-one per cent UK ownership, but the remaining investors are based in the Channel Islands. That’s not uncommon.”
“Because it’s a tax haven?”
“Correct.”
“Can we find out who owns those offshore shares?”
There were some keyboard taps at the other end. “Major shareholding is a company called Highveld Industries. Also based in the Channel Islands.”
“And who owns that?”
“My friend, you are now in the realm of layering. You could be at this for days and never find the name of an actual traceable human.”
“I have time,” I said. “That’s the one thing I do have.”
“Well, I’ll leave you with it, then,” Stav said. “I’m meant to bill by the quarter hour, you know.”
As we hung up, my phone pinged. It was Ludo, again. Seeing his name twisted a knife in my heart. He had cost me everything, and hestillwouldn’t leave me alone. I couldn’t deal with it. I had to maintain focus. I threw my phone on the bed and kept digging through the layers of Prometheus Power’s investment structure.
Chapter64
Ludo
Afew days later, I sidled up to my father in the kitchen while he was doing the dishes. Always best to approach him with something like this while his hands were busy.
“Daddy, can I have a word?”
He gave a world-weary sigh.
“You’re about to say something unspeakably daft. I urge you to stop, rethink, and say nothing.”
“What makes you say that?”
Water sloshed around in the sink.
“Because last time you called me Daddy, you asked for a horse, and we all remember how that ended.”
I certainly did. I think we still had the plaster cast up in the attic, somewhere. It had been signed by Vanessa Redgrave at the stage door of Wyndham’s Theatre. A treasure not to be thrown away. I swallowed, not to be deterred.
“I’ve been talking to Wilhelmina Post. About my career. And I’ve come to a decision. I don’t want to be a political reporter anymore. I want to be a theatre critic.”
I heard the distinct sound of a plate snapping in two.
Chapter65
Sunny
Ihad to get out of the house. Mum was driving me nuts. She’d also found the stash of manky socks under the bed that I’d definitely meant to launder and given me a lecture about personal hygiene and respecting people’s property. She seemed less keen on me lecturing her on respecting people’s privacy.
“It’s my house, Sunshine.”
“I think you’ll find the council owns it.”
The fact she lived in a council flat was one of her triggers. It was a low blow, and it didn’t go down well. Which was how I found myself twenty miles up the M1, lying in my pants in a crystal pyramid with a tiny white towel over my arse while Summer realigned my chakras or something. It might have been reiki. There was acupuncture involved at one point, hence the state of undress. I didn’t really care for some of this stuff, if I was honest, but Karma had refused to teach me how to surf the dark web until I’d been suitably cleansed.
“You’re holding on to alotof anger,” Summer said now. I was also holding on to a fart, but I didn’t tell her that. If this went on much longer, she’d soon find out. “You need to practice forgiveness. It will free you of a lot of this negativity that’s weighing you down. Do you anger quickly? Do you tend to find you’re quite hot-headed,in the moment?”
