Page 17 of Soul of Discretion

“Jack was a good friend of mine, and I appointed him to this position four years ago. I was over here for a meeting with him but regrettably he was nowhere to be found. Now I know why.”

Nick’s ear pricked up. “You were here for a meeting with him? When did you arrive in the country?”

While Nick knew the answer was Thursday, the first night of their booty call, he was a little surprised it was now Saturday, and no one had reported Jack Teeman missing. Surely, someone must have been worried about him.

Simon flashed white teeth. “I arrived on Thursday.” The unspoken, “but you know that,” echoed silently in Nick’s ears. “His secretary told me he hadn’t been seen for a couple of days.” He shared a glance with Decker, and something unspoken but secret sparked between them. “Given what I came over to do, I wasn’t particularly surprised Jack wasn’t here.”

Inspector McKenzie leaned forward in interest. “Tell me more. Nick has a point that no one reported the man missing.”

Simon sighed. “While back in the UK, I discovered someone had been siphoning money from the company. All the evidence pointed at Jack having something to do with it, so I flew out to confront him. Regrettably, now we’ll never know what the hell he would have said.” His tone was tinged with grief and something else. Regret. “Please could you tell me what happened to him? He has a wife over here who will need to be informed, and I’d like to be with you when you do that.”

Nick’s estimate of the man went even higher at that. It wasn’t every day the owner of a nearly billion-dollar company would take it upon himself to break bad news to the family of one his employees. Even if the man had been a friend.

McKenzie motioned in Nick’s direction. “Sergeant? Tell the man what he needs to know.”

Nick took a deep breath and met Simon’s eyes with as much composure as he could muster.

“Mr Teeman was found in a ditch close by the warehouse district of the airport.”

Simon winced and his face paled.

“We don’t know yet how long he’s been deceased. We’ll need to await a coroner’s report. He’d been badly beaten, and there was what appeared to be a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. It bears all the hallmarks of a mob execution. We think he may have been mixed up with them.”

Nick wasn’t going to tell Simon that Jack’s fingers had been missing, as well as his tongue. There was only so much news the man could process given the blanching of his skin at the news of Jack’s injuries.

Simon stood up and paced around the room. “Jesus Christ, what a horrible way to die.” He swung around, his face fierce. “Do you have any idea then who might have done this?”

Before Nick could reply, McKenzie interjected smoothly, “We have some ideas but at this point, it would be pure conjecture and we wouldn’t want to prejudice the investigation releasing anything that isn’t yet proven. I’m sure you understand. I’d be interested in talking to you about the missing money, and what you think Mr Teeman’s part may have been in it.” He motioned to Nick. “Sergeant Cooper is doing the family visit to break the news, so perhaps you can go with him when he does?”

Simon passed a hand over his eyes and Nick thought it might only be him who saw the slight tremble. The man was more affected by the news of Jack’s passing than he made out.

“Of course. Decker, can you fill the inspector in on what we’ve found so far? I’d like to draft a statement to the staff that we can send out on Monday letting them know about Jack. I’ll go now and see Margaret with the sergeant. News like this should be broken with someone she knows present. It’s going to be tough on her.”

Nick cleared his throat, his heart beating fiercely.

Christ, now we get to be the bearer of bad news together. This is surreal.

However, as fate seemed to have thrown them together, now he might get to find out a bit more about the enigmatic owner of the company.

Whatever he could find out might well see its way to helping him in his murder investigation.