‘Maybe,’ she said, clearly not believing anything I was saying.
I spread the papers across her desk and began breaking them apart and analysing them as quickly as I could, finally digesting all the information I’d not had a chance to look at before I’d been yanked off the case. There was something I was missing, something I had overlooked about O’Neill from the very beginning. Why did we all assume that his charity had been altruistic?
‘You’re looking at it wrong,’ I grumbled, before quickly adding, ‘sorry,’ knowing that Cis would be slightly offended by my harsh but honest critique. I extended out a few more sheets across her desk. ‘I was looking at it wrong, too,’ I said, more reassuringly. ‘You have his personal accounts, right?’
‘In one of the folders, yeah?’ Cis said, pointing at one of the boxes. I lunged for it, sending the various papers into the air like confetti.
‘We gave O’Neill too much credit, thinking he was this golden boy Robin Hood. He wasn’t, not at all. How best to get a tax-free return on a profit as a kind of organisational entity?’
‘Set up a non-profit,’ Cis answered in response.
‘Right? So, you close down your business in its best fiscal year yet and then begin to funnel money through that. Because look, that business may have closed, but he set himself up asan independent contractor not three months later; he was still making money on the side. It says so here.’ I pointed to one of the records. ‘Who buys a second home the year after you close down your business?’
‘But the man had a non-profit, Gareth. We have evidence of him investing in the community,’ Cis responded, like she was talking to a mad man, while I held another business file aloft in my hands.
‘No, no, no. We have evidence that hesaidhe would,’ I corrected, jabbing my hand at one of the many photos we had received from archives. ‘What have we been finding? Pictures of him making pledges, announcing funding, launching scholarships, but all these initiatives ended before they were off the ground. Look at these Heart of Hope Foundation projects here,’ I said as I began to slap the pictures on the table like they were tenners at a strip club – not that I had ever gone to one, of course. ‘The community centre that never finished construction, the children’s home that had to close down after a fire, the scholarships that no one actually was awarded. I would bet my pension that these schools and town halls only saw fractions of the money they were promised. Imagine it: countless local council grants, government funds, big donations, all becoming one big income stream that can’t be taxed, plus being an independent contractor to keep up appearances.’
I reached across the desk, snatched yet another piece of paper, and smoothed it out under my palm. Lord above, I despised the way Cis organised her work.
‘Just look at this,’ I said, jabbing my finger on the paper. ‘In 1995, £150,000 from a local council grant, and another £50,000 donation from a tech company for corporate social responsibility. All of it earmarked to renovate a sports centre for local communities based in Southampton. And now? Want to guess what that sports centre is today?’ I didn’t wait for ananswer from the slack-jawed Cis, practically hurling my body into the nearest pile of papers to search for the relevant file.
‘Here,’ I exclaimed, holding up one of the files. ‘See this? Six hundred pounds, a measly six hundred pounds! That’s what they claimed they spent on bringing in a surveyor, and that’s it. And the so-called sports centre now?’ I quickly searched for it on my phone before holding it up for her to see. ‘Renovated into luxury apartments.’
Cis took a step back and raised her hands triumphantly above her head.
‘That’s it. That has to be it,’ she said, as I could see the spark of excitement behind her eyes.
‘He was a common fraudster, of course he made enemies,’ I explained, as the fog of the case seemed to dissipate ever so slightly. ‘I mean, he didn’t deserve to die, don’t get me wrong. But the man leeched money off the state, had some friends in high places, probably split it a few ways and got rich doing it. Maybe he conned the wrong person on a really bad day, and it finally caught up with him after all these years. The axe forgets, the tree remembers.’
‘Oh my, Vivian is going to be so happy,’ Cis exclaimed, the glee visibly beaming from her face.
A folder caught my eye with a name I recognised: Francesca Donoghue.
‘Is Fran’s file here? Have you got her history?’
‘Yeah. You know she was involved in an investigation before?’
‘She was?’
‘You didn’t know?’ Cis said. I thought I saw her face twist and break into concern, perhaps the first time I had seen her exhibit a genuine emotion today.
‘Well, shit,’ I remarked. I had never even thought to search Fran up in the database in the years I’d had access as a policeofficer. It had crossed my mind a few times, sure, but part of me felt like doing that would not only be using my police privileges unethically, but also admitting to myself that I didn’t trust Fran to tell me everything. At what point do you stop taking people at their word? Fran was a social worker who had never been in trouble with the police, a law-abiding citizen as long as I had known her. But then again, weren’t you supposed to tell your partner everything? Why hadn’t she told me was involved with a police investigation before?
‘You read it, right? Her file,’ I asked Cis.
‘Well, of course I did.’
‘Anything in there that directly implicates her in this?’
‘No,’ Cis said, somewhat gently. ‘If there was, she’d be in a cell already.’ She realised the bluntness of her words. ‘Sorry.’
Now I knew she didn’t mean that apology, but I decided that I could call her out on being a bad friend when I’d finally found the sick murderer that had killed old man O’Neill.
‘I didn’t know that she grew up in a children’s home, though, St Nicholas’s?’
‘Fran doesn’t like to talk about it much, I don’t think it was easy for her,’ I replied with the same brusqueness that Fran would speak with when talking about her childhood.
There was a short, uneasy silence between us.
