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78
At 6.30 p.m. the fourth briefing meeting of Operation Dingo commenced. But as Roy Grace began reading his summary to his assembled team, he hesitated, noticing that Gle
‘Is there a problem?’ Grace asked him.
Then he noticed several of the others gathered around the work station seemed to be looking at him strangely too.
‘You smell a bit fruity, boss,’ Gle
Grace realized to his horror what the DS was driving at. ‘Oh, right, I apologize. I – just got back from a dog-training class. The little bugger threw up all over me in the car. I thought I’d managed to wash it off.’
Bella Moy delved into her handbag and handed Grace a perfume spray. ‘This’ll drown it,’ she said.
Grace hesitantly sprayed his trousers, shirt and jacket.
‘Now you smell like a bordello,’ Norman Potting commented.
‘Well, thank you very much,’ Bella said, glaring at him indignantly.
‘Not that I would know, of course,’ Potting mumbled, in a feeble attempt at retrieving the situation. Then he added, ‘I read recently that Koreans eat dogs.’
‘That’s quite enough, Norman,’ Roy Grace said sternly, returning to his typed agenda. ‘OK, Bella, first can you report on your findings so far about Joa
‘I contacted the officer in the New York District Attorney’s
Office you suggested, Roy. He sent me an email an hour ago, saying that prior to 9/11 all immigration was handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Agency. It’s different since. They’re merged with US Customs and are now called Immigration Customs Enforcement. He says that unless she had gone in on a visa for an extended stay, there would be no records. He’s checked back through those for the 1990s and she doesn’t show up as having gone in on a visa, but he says there’s no way of finding out whether she ever went there or not.’
‘OK, thanks. E-J, how are you progressing with the family tree. Did you track down any of Joa
‘Well, she doesn’t seem to have had many. I’ve found a gay stepbrother – who’s a piece of work. He goes under the name of Mitzi Dufors, is nudging sixty, wears studded leather hot-pants and is covered in piercings. He does some kind of a drag act in a Brighton gay club. Didn’t have many flattering words to say about his late stepsister.’
‘You can’t trust middle-aged men in leather hot-pants,’ Norman Potting interjected.
‘Norman!’ Grace said, firing a warning shot across his bows.
‘You’re not exactly a fashion guru yourself, Norman,’ Bella retorted.
‘OK, both of you, enough!’ Grace said.
Potting shrugged like a petulant child.
‘Anything else from her stepbrother.’
‘He said Joa
‘We should try to find how much money was involved and what happened to it. Good work, E-J.’
Grace made some notes, then moved on to Branson. ‘Gle
Branson gri
Grace made a note.
‘Her car got repossessed, then her house. Sounds like Wilson was a man of straw. Had nothing, no assets at all. His widow ended up getting evicted from her posh house in Hove and moved into a rented flat. Just over a year later, in November 2002, she left a suicide note and jumped off the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry.’ He paused. ‘We went and saw Mrs Klinger as well, but she more or less confirmed what her husband told us.’
‘Any of her relatives able to verify her state of mind?’ Grace asked.
‘Yeah, she’s got a sister who works as a hostess for British Airways. I just spoke to her. She was at work and couldn’t really speak. I’ve got an appointment to see her tomorrow. But she also pretty well confirmed what Klinger said. Oh, yeah, and she said she took Lorraine to New York as soon as flights were ru
‘So she’s convinced Ro
‘No question,’ Gle
‘Yes, what did you find out?’
‘He’s wanted for questioning by Brighton CID regarding an allegation of indecent assault on a young woman back in 1990. The girl’s story is that they left the club and went back together, and then she was badly beaten up by him. It could be linked to an S &M scenario. Possible that she initially went along with it and then he wouldn’t stop. It was a very nasty assault, together with an allegation of rape. But it was decided at the time that it wasn’t in the public interest to go to Australia and bring him back. I don’t think we’ll be seeing him in England again, not unless he’s very stupid.’
Grace turned to DC Nicholl. ‘Nick, what do you have to report?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s actually quite interesting. After I did a nationwide search on Wilson, which didn’t come up with anything we didn’t already know, I decided that a businessman like him, with his smart house in Hove 4, was likely to have some life insurance. I did some digging and discovered Ro
‘Presumably his widow didn’t know this?’ Grace said.
‘I think she did,’ Nick Nicholl said. ‘They paid out to her in full in March 2002.’
‘When she was in a rented flat, in distress?’ Grace asked.
‘There’s more,’ the DC said. ‘In July 2002, ten months after her husband died, Lorraine Wilson received a payment of two and a half million dollars from the 9/11 compensation fund.’
‘Three months before she jumped off the ferry,’ Lizzie Mantle said.
‘Allegedly jumped off the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry,’ Nick Nicholl said. ‘She is still officially recorded as a Sussex Police missing person. I’ve checked the file and the investigators at that time were not entirely convinced that she had killed herself. But the trail went cold.’ Then he added, ‘The insurance investigator assigned to the claim on Ro
‘Two million five hundred thousand dollars – with the exchange rate back in those days, that would have been worth close to one and three-quarter million quid,’ Norman Potting said.
‘So she died in abject poverty, with over three million in the bank?’ Bella said.
‘That amount of moolah would buy you a lot of Maltesers,’ Norman Potting said to her.
‘Except the money wasn’t in the bank,’ Nick Nicholl said. He held up two folders. ‘Managed to get these a bit quicker than we should have done, thanks to Steve.’