‘All right so far.’
‘Andthat companyis the one registered with the authorities, and the company’s ultimate owner now has to go in the Register of Overseas Entities. And you’re saying that’s how we’ll find the ultimate owners, right? Through this register?’
‘It’s not quite that simple, unfortunately.’
‘Thought so. Why?’
‘Because anyone really determined to hide their identity will probably just port over their stooge, their fake “ultimate beneficial owner”, and put them on the register.’
‘Oh. Won’t anyone check?’
Jonny shrugs. ‘Not much. Even worse, if you claim your dodgy overseas company is owned by a trust and nobody owns more than twenty-five per cent of it, you don’t have to declare the identities ofanyof the people with control.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah. It stinks.’
‘OK, Jonny, I’m really genuinely on top of it now. Can you please just tell us what you’ve found?’
He grins. ‘All right. After Elle went off on her trip today to find some of Davy’s sellers rather than his buyers, I just made a list of the companies and went through the register to see the listed beneficial owners. And they’re all the same guy.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The same guy ownsall these properties?’
Em groans. ‘Oh my God, Al. No. The same guy islistedas the owner of all these places. Meaning he’s the stooge Davy relied on and provided to his dodgy clients.’
‘Oh. Yes. Got it.’
‘Exactly,’ says Jonny. ‘He changes the address and the details around so it won’t be too obvious to any software crawling the system to find duplicates, but basically that’s it. We know who Davy’s stooge is.’
‘And who is he?’
He turns his screen around. On it is a picture of a pallid-looking young man sitting in front of a concrete wall. The shot looks like the cover of an album for a genre of music toocool for you to have even heard of. ‘His name is Wolfgang Eisenlohr. German-based.’
‘Nice name. Extremely metal.’
‘You know the even better thing?’
‘What?’
‘I’ve tracked him down.’
‘Shut up. How?’
Jonny gives his standard finger-waggle. ‘Computer stuff.’
Elle pipes up. ‘Don’t be mean, J.’ She leans towards me. ‘He just took a punt and emailed [email protected]. Got a reply in three minutes.’
‘Often it’s hardest to work out the simplest thing,’ Jonny says.
‘Sure. Well done either way, Jonny, that’s amazing. Think he’ll answer any questions from us?’
‘It’s worth a try. He’s said he can Zoom us at seven tomorrow evening.’
‘And, I’m sorry, does all this help us work out who killed Davy?’ I gesture at Jonny’s screen.
