The Flinck Connection (Book 4) (Genevieve Lenard) (12 page)

“Did they threaten her?” I thought of possible reasons she would do this and not get paid. “Was she blackmailed?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. Whatever they had on her is big enough to keep her quiet as well. She refused to tell me who they were, she wouldn’t even tell me if it was a man, a woman or a group. Whoever ordered the job was not interested in the paintings at all. They told her they would do all the prep work, she just had to go in and steal at a specified time. They were going to cut the power to make it easier for her getting past the security system. After the heist, she could sell the paintings and it would be her payment. She didn’t want anything more to do with this job and handed me the paintings.”

“At least this lays the museum heist to rest,” Phillip said.

“As far as Henri Fabron and those other arseholes are concerned, yes.” Manny scratched the stubble on his chin. “But this is far from finished. There are too many loose ends.”

“Who would order the theft of millions and not want it?” This was only one of the many questions I had. “I would like to know what the ulterior motive was and whether it can be traced back to Gabon and the No Secrets law.”

Everyone turned to me with different expressions of confusion. It annoyed me when I forgot that other people were not part of my thought process. I couldn’t just announce the conclusions I had come to. I was going to have to explain the findings I had made while in that hyper-focussed state.

“Come with me.” I walked to my viewing room without waiting to see if they were following. The minute it took for Phillip, Manny and Colin to stand behind my chair gave me sufficient time to order my thoughts. I pointed to the first monitor with a photo of President Godard and his wife. “They add complications to my theory. I know they are connected to the case, but I’m not sure how. Not yet.”

“Tell us first how all these connect to Gabon.” Colin sat down next to me. “We can get to the president and his wife later.”

“To date we have three direct messages sent to Nikki. The first one places a Vermeer in Motte’s house. The second direct message places a Flinck in Savreux’s house. Both the Vermeer and the Flinck point back to the 1990 heist. Motte and Savreux are connected through their individual work in Gabon—Minister Savreux while in the military, René Motte working for Elf. Then later on they founded the Libreville Dignity Foundation, connecting them to Gabon again. What I’ve also discovered is that even though René Motte was pushed out of Elf in 1989 when the French government became the oil company’s owners, he still had money invested there. It had brought him a significant return.”

“How do you know about his investment in Elf?” Manny asked.

“His riches made him famous enough to have a very public profile. I found numerous articles and interviews with him. There were some conflicting facts, but this I am sure of. During the Elf investigation and trial in the late nineties and early 2000s, his association was scrutinised and his finances made public. Out of his involvement with Elf from 1983 until now, he accrued over ninety million dollars.”

“Bloody hellfire.”

“He’s a smart businessman and used that money to make more money. René Motte is now worth
just under three billion dollars.”

All three men uttered crude expletives.

“If he has so much money, why the hell does he have a stolen Vermeer in his house?” Manny asked.

“The psychology behind owning stolen masterpieces is of special interest to us as insurance companies,” Phillip said.
“There are numerous reasons accomplished, wealthy individuals want to own something they could easily afford.”

“Some artwork is not for sale,” Colin said.

“True. That is another set of reasons for owning something no one else can own. There is something about the excitement of forbidden fruit that applies here.” Phillip pointed at the monitors. “Genevieve, how does the rest of this lead to the No Secrets law?”

I counted off on my fingers. “Savreux is connected to Gabon. René Motte is connected to Gabon and the Boston heist in 1990. If we were to believe the direct message Nikki got about the Flinck, Savreux is also connected to the Boston heist. Both of them are connected to the Libreville Dignity Foundation. This charity, obviously connected to Gabon, was targeted while Sue stole the paintings which are now in the team room.

“The president of Gabon, Mariam Boussombo, is connected to the Foundation and is in Strasbourg. I looked into her visit and noticed that she’s to address the Senate in favour of President Godard’s No Secrets law. She’s been actively campaigning for something similar in Gabon.”

I took a deep breath. “President Godard is set to speak to Parliament next week about this law. It’s speculated that this law has a strong possibility of being passed—politicians are about to lose a lot of privacy rights and some of their immunity. If Minister Savreux had not been killed, he would’ve lost his office. He had publicly vowed to resign if that law got passed. He had a television interview scheduled for Sunday evening to reiterate his reasons for being against this law.”

“This is a nice summary with some extra information, Doc. But it doesn’t really blow my hair back.” Manny winced. “There’s no exciting new discoveries.”

“Of the next part I’m not sure, but I read it on enough independent and trustworthy news websites to warrant
attention. There have been rumours that Minister Savreux was going to give some kind of exposé to prove his stance against the No Secrets law. The rumours went on to say that it was going to be some private information about the president Minister Savreux was going to share. I didn’t find any official confirmation of any of this.”

Manny’s eyebrow rose high on his forehead. “Holy saints, Doc. Do you realise what you are saying?”

“I’m saying it, which in itself should make it clear I know what I’m saying.”

Manny shook his index finger at the first monitor. “You are saying that Savreux was going to hang out the president’s dirty laundry to prove that privacy is needed. That means that the president had motivation for killing Savreux. Bloody hell. Just exactly what was Savreux going to reveal? Does it have something to do with Gabon as well?”

“Firstly, I did not once say or even imply that the president had motivation for killing Minister Savreux. Or that Minister Savreux was going to reveal any of the president’s secrets.” My voice was low and void of emotion. “Secondly, I have President Godard’s photo up because he is involved in this case, but that is the part I have not worked out yet. His wife, on the other hand, has a much clearer connection. We know that Mrs Isabelle Godard is an active patron of Libreville Dignity Foundation. Thus she has a strong connection to Gabon, to Motte and to Savreux.”

“Doc, you need to do your magic Mozarting thing and connect these bleeding dots. We can’t have the president or his wife implicated in a murder case.”

The information on the monitors was drawing me in again. The elusive factor connecting it all was buried in there.

“What’s that, Jenny?” Colin touched my arm and pointed at the far right monitor.

“Oh, that is the Foundation’s financial information.” My subconscious was telling me the key to understanding it all was not in those spreadsheets.

“Jenny?” Colin squeezed my arm. “Why do you have the Foundation’s finances up with everything else?”

“Because I suspect the charity is a front for money laundering.” I frowned.

Manny inhaled so fast, he started coughing. “Doc, you’re killing me. Explain.”

“Colin said that Sue was ordered to steal paintings. Any paintings as long as they were of the highest value possible, right?” I waited until Colin nodded. “I posit that the theft was indeed a distraction. Whoever had hired her, needed her to steal at a specific time, during which the whole block’s electricity was out. They were able to gain access to the charity without drawing attention since the focus was obviously on the stolen paintings worth millions.”

“As opposed to a little burglary in a charity office,” Manny said.

“Exactly. This brings forth three important questions. The first would be, why did they need physical access to the Foundation? The second question is, what didn’t they want investigators to see? And the third, why did they change the financial data on the Foundation’s system?”

“Wait. What are you talking about, Doc?”

Whenever in a hyper-focussed state, hours, even days, melted into one. It wasn’t always easy to remember what discoveries I had made when. Or whether I had shared all these discoveries. I closed my eyes for a second to sift through my thoughts, and looked at Colin. “Before Francine left this morning, she found out that the computer data the Libreville Dignity Foundation had thought was backed up had been compromised. At a first glance, all the financial data appeared intact, but it isn’t. During the heist somebody replaced the financial data on the Foundation’s system.”

“Replaced it with what?” Colin asked.

“Slightly altered data.”

Manny rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Now what?”

“Francine spoke to the accountant at the Foundation. She gave us good news. She’s only been working there for six months and felt out of her depth. In order to familiarise herself with the Foundation’s financial history, she copied everything on an external drive to take home and study.” I pointed at my computer. “She brought it in a few hours ago and I’ve been looking at some of it.”

Manny appeared overwhelmed at my explanation. I thought I had been rather succinct.

“Hellfire, Doc. What did you find in those financials?”

“Two years ago, Libreville Dignity Foundation ran out of funds. It was unable to pay its staff and I found emails between the staff discussing dissolving the charity. A few weeks later, their bank account received an infusion of seven hundred thousand euro. This was from an unnamed donor. I’m not as good as Francine, so I could only trace the bank account number to a bank in Samoa.”

“One of the few go-to tax havens left for the rich and criminal,” Colin said.

“This account and three others from different banks, all located in Samoa, have deposited into the Foundation’s account the combined sum of ten million three hundred thousand euro over the last nine years.” I purposefully called them deposits. That amount of money in this context no longer looked like donations.

“Is all that money accounted for? Spent on charitable work?” Manny leaned forward, squinting at the monitor. He wasn’t going to see the answer on that particular spreadsheet, so I changed it to the appropriate one.

“I still have to work through the expenditures, but at a first glance it looks as if only a small percentage went to charity.” I highlighted a line on the spreadsheet. “Five months ago, there was eight hundred thousand euro in the account. All but thirty thousand euro have been withdrawn since.”

“Who has access to this account?”

“The old and new accountants, the managing director of the charity and the chairman.”

“Bloody René Motte. The bloody chairman.” Manny leaned back. “Gabon, Boston and these idiot politicians are all somehow connected. Where did that ten million come from though? I would really like to know that.”

“My time would be better spent looking through Savreux’s finances,” I said. “Francine would be much faster and more efficient finding the source of that ten million.”

“Could that be the source she was talking about this morning?” Colin asked.

“I doubt it. I only found those anomalies this afternoon, after she had left.”

“Back up for a second.” The look Manny gave me was filled with emotions usually reserved for Colin or Vinnie. “What do you mean looking through Savreux’s finances?”

“Francine emailed the files this afternoon.” I realised I should’ve mentioned it to Manny, but until he had looked at me as if I was a criminal, I had put it out of my mind as non-essential information. I held up both hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. Francine didn’t say anything in her email about where she was or what she was doing. She only sent a hyperbolic victorious email with attachments. They are terribly disorganised and will take me some time to set in order before I analyse it. None of the entries seems to be organised according
to any system. The dates are in completely random order. I can’t yet see which entries are expenses and which are income.”

Whenever Manny’s one eyebrow raised slowly, and his eyes lost their focus, I knew I was sharing too much detail. I bit down on the insides of my lips, immediately releasing them again. I didn’t want to start another nervous habit. “I will analyse Minister Savreux’s finances and Francine can locate the origin of the ten million euro.”

“Not today.” Phillip pushed his shoulders back and stood taller. He did this when, in his own words, he was laying down the law. “It is time for everyone to go home and rest. I’m sure Vinnie and Nikki will appreciate a break from each other by now.”

“Oh, my.” For a while, I’d completely forgotten about them. “Are they okay? Did something happen?”

Phillip shook his head. “I should’ve have chosen different words. I spoke to Nikki this afternoon and they are well. Apparently, Vinnie is grumpy and has been cooking for hours. That means you should go home, have a good home-cooked meal and rest. Minister Savreux’s financial analysis can hold until tomorrow.”

He waited until I nodded. I did so with reluctance. I respected Phillip too much to lie to him and the words rushed out of my mouth before I could stop it. “I’m going to take my computer home and organise the files. I can promise to not analyse the data, but I won’t be able to sleep with the state those attachments are in.”