Читать книгу The Account - Roderick Mann - Страница 14

Hunched over a cup of coffee, Albert-Jean Cristiani sat by the window of a small bar in the rue du Rhône watching passers-by as they walked along the fashionable Geneva shopping street. He was feeling despondent. It had been a difficult week so far. He had a deep-seated suspicion it was not going to get any better.

He sighed and raised his hand to order another cup. It was after 11 a.m. but he saw no point in hurrying. The investigation on which he was engaged was going nowhere. He might as well enjoy a few more minutes of people-watching. And contemplate his forthcoming retirement at the age of fifty-five. Just that week he had picked out a small office for himself on the corner of the Quai Wilson where he planned to set up as a private investigator.

For twenty years Cristiani, a short, stocky man with thinning hair, had been one of four special investigators for the Swiss Federal Banking Commission. When he had first joined the Commission it had been a puny thing with a staff of five. Now it was fully staffed with bright young lawyers and accountants eager to gain a few years’ Government experience before branching out on their own. And it had clout. It was now a criminal offence to mislead or lie to the Commission. At the slightest hint of impropriety it invoked the clause in the 1971 Banking Law, which stated that the director of a bank must behave ‘irreproachably’. Failure to do so could result in the Commission withdrawing a bank’s licence.

Cristiani’s main function was to monitor ‘irregularities’ in the bank system and report them back to his head office in Bern. Since he joined the Commission, there had been plenty of ‘irregularities’. So many, in fact, that Cristiani had not been surprised when his irate boss finally called him in for a meeting.

‘I’ve just had a call from the Director,’ Commissioner Pierre Bonnet said grimly. ‘He is incensed. The world now sees us as a place where any Mafia boss or drug dealer can hide his money. We’ve got to put a stop to it. We must restore Switzerland’s reputation as a law-abiding country.’

Sitting opposite his portly boss, Cristiani had nodded dutifully. Was the Commissioner kidding himself? A law-abiding country? Bonnet knew as well as he did that for years the Bern Government had engaged in secret surveillance and eavesdropping on its own citizens. And that somewhere in the capital there were almost 600,000 dossiers on Swiss citizens tucked away.

But this was serious. This was about banks. The life-blood of Switzerland. He had not been surprised when, next day, Bonnet issued a strongly worded statement to every bank in Switzerland. It said, in effect: No more scandals.

He knew the edict would be ignored. It would have no more effect than the booklet the Big Three banks had issued some years before. In The Truth About Swiss Banking, they stated: ‘The purpose of Swiss banking secrecy is to protect the innocent, not shield the guilty.’ He was told the booklet produced guffaws of laughter in Washington where officials knew there wasn’t a bank in Switzerland that would turn away a man with a suitcase stuffed with $100 bills.

Sometimes Cristiani wondered where all the cash came from. Drug money, of course, made up much of it. That, and money skimmed from the casino tables of Las Vegas and Atlantic City. But it was surprising to him just how many ordinary people now passed through Geneva’s Cointrin Airport with tote bags stuffed with notes.

But it was not another money scandal that occupied Cristiani’s thoughts as he sipped his second cup of coffee. It was the death of Georges di Marco. There was something suspicious about it.

Despite his age, the man had been in apparent good health. He held an important position in one of Geneva’s most respected banks. He was popular with his peers and friends. He had a pleasant apartment off the rue des Granges. He seemed financially well off. Why, then, would he have decided to end his life? It made no sense.

The question of the coat bothered Cristiani. When found, di Marco had been wearing only a suit. Cristiani could not imagine the elderly banker walking a mile to the lakeside on a freezing winter’s night without an overcoat.

There was something else. He had no key in his pocket. Had he just walked out without locking the door? That, too, seemed unlikely.

Inspector Thibault, the police officer investigating the banker’s death, had dismissed any suggestion of foul play by pointing out that there were no signs of a struggle. Cristiani had been astonished at such naivety. Only two years before there had been a report of a drowning in Lake Garda, ostensibly due to suicide. Later a man had confessed to the murder. The victim’s hands and legs had been bound with tape, he explained, before being lowered over the side of a boat with a rope around his waist. When he was dead the man’s body had been pulled back to the surface and the tapes and rope removed. No signs of struggle. An apparent suicide.

Cristiani had met di Marco several times, most recently when they had dined at the same restaurant. They had talked briefly and di Marco had asked to see him again. He had seemed agitated. Cristiani told him to call. A few days later, sounding nervous, di Marco had telephoned to set up a dinner appointment. Before they could meet again he was found dead.

When Cristiani telephoned Paul Eberhardt to discuss di Marco’s death and voice his concern about the coat and the key, the banker had seemed equally baffled.

‘I’ve thought about that myself,’ Eberhardt said. ‘I simply don’t understand it. It’s a complete mystery. Why did he do this terrible thing?’

Cristiani listened politely. Although he knew Eberhardt only slightly, the elderly banker had intrigued him ever since a rumour had surfaced a few years earlier that he was being blackmailed. The rumour stemmed from the fact that he had continued paying a former officer of his bank, a man named André Leber, 10,000 francs a month even though he had left the bank several years earlier. Cristiani’s enquiries had come to nothing and in the end he had concluded that if the banker wanted to support a former colleague that was his affair. Leber had later died in a car accident.

Frustrated, Cristiani made his way homeward, holding his umbrella with both hands against the gusting rain. Perhaps the death of di Marco had been a genuine suicide, he decided. That was what the police and the coroner had determined. But if it wasn’t, was it something to do with Paul Eberhardt?

Paul Eberhardt had spent an anxious morning. The phone call from Cristiani had worried him. Inspector Thibault was the man handling the di Marco investigation – yet it was Cristiani who was asking all these questions: What had di Marco’s mood been when he left the bank that night? Was he depressed? How long was it before he was due to retire? Had anything happened at the bank to upset him?

Eberhardt felt he had answered the questions well, but he could tell Cristiani was not satisfied. He had brought up the question of di Marco’s overcoat and the fact that he had left his apartment unlocked.

Eberhardt had confessed himself baffled.

What had surprised him was to learn that di Marco had invited Cristiani to dinner in Lausanne – far enough away to ensure privacy. So di Marco was going to tell his story just as he had threatened. And to an investigator of the Federal Banking Commission. Thank God he had acted in time to stop that.

He reached for his coffee. It had grown cold. He rang for Marte to bring him a fresh cup. He was safe. He was convinced of that. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.