Before the Board Convenes
The forty-third floor smelled of carpet cleaner and recycled air. Priya arrived early, as she always did, and set her coffee on the desk before it had finished brewing properly. The cup left a pale ring on a document she had already read three times. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the City of London was still assembling itself: cranes turning, a pigeon settling on a window ledge opposite, the distant amber pulse of a traffic light on Threadneedle Street.
She opened the spreadsheet again.
The supplier was called Halcyon Process Solutions. Registered in Edinburgh, active account, invoices going back eleven months. Priya had tried twice to find a website. There was nothing. Companies House showed a registered address, a single director, and no filed accounts. The invoices to Cordell Capital were quarterly. Forty-eight thousand pounds each time.
She typed the director’s name into the search bar: D. Fenwick. Nothing useful came back. She wrote the name on the inside cover of her notebook and pressed her thumbnail into the paper until the letters were embossed on the reverse.
At half nine, Marcus Hearne dropped his bag on the desk beside her. He was a senior compliance officer, tweed jacket despite the warmth, glasses on a cord. He smelled faintly of toast.
“You’ve got that look,” he said, without sitting down.
“There’s a supplier I can’t verify.” She turned the laptop to face him. “Eleven months, four invoices. No web presence, no traceable output, no internal record of what they actually delivered.”
Marcus put his glasses on and leaned forward. He read for a long time. His jaw shifted once, very slightly, as though he had bitten into something unexpected.
“Who authorised payments?”
Priya had been waiting for this. She clicked to the next tab. The authorising signature on each invoice was the same: G. Calloway. Geoffrey Calloway, head of operational procurement. Who was, she did not need to add, on the board subcommittee reviewing this quarter’s supplier contracts. Who was, in three hours, walking into that review.
“Right,” said Marcus.
He did not move for a moment. Then he straightened up, pulled off his glasses, and cleaned them on his shirt hem with slow, deliberate strokes.
“Have you copied this to anyone?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t. Not until I’ve spoken to Ingrid.”
Ingrid Solberg ran internal investigations. Priya had met her once, at a leaving party for someone she barely knew. Ingrid had eaten a sausage roll and explained money laundering typologies to a junior paralegal who had not asked. Priya had found this quietly reassuring.
Marcus was on the phone before he reached the glass partition of his office. Priya turned back to her screen. She tidied the columns of figures, adding a filter so the Halcyon entries sorted cleanly to the top. One hundred and ninety-two thousand pounds in eleven months, paid promptly, never queried.
At eleven, Ingrid came through the main door in a grey coat that was still buttoned. She nodded at Priya and went directly into Marcus’s office. Through the glass, Priya watched them talk. Ingrid did not sit. She stood with her arms folded and read the screen, then asked a question. Marcus answered. She asked another.
At eleven-twenty, Ingrid came out alone and stopped at Priya’s desk.
“The Edinburgh address,” she said, keeping her voice flat and even. “Did you look at it on the map?”
Priya had. “It’s a postal forwarding service. A shop on Leith Walk. You can rent a registered address for forty pounds a month.”
Ingrid looked at her with an expression that was not quite approval but contained its outline. “I’ll need everything you have. Not printed. On the system, timestamped, with your log-in.” She paused. “The board review is being postponed. A scheduling matter. Mr. Calloway will not be informed of the reason.”
Priya saved the file. She double-checked the timestamp. She did everything twice.
Geoffrey Calloway arrived at twelve-fifteen carrying a leather folio and a paper bag from the sandwich place on the ground floor. He stopped at the lift lobby when two members of the legal team intercepted him. From where Priya sat, she could see his expression change as one of them spoke. The sandwich bag crinkled. He pressed it between both palms without seeming to notice.
They walked him towards the meeting rooms at the back of the floor.
Marcus came and stood beside her desk. He set a fresh cup of coffee down next to hers.
“How long had you been sitting on it?” he asked.
“Three days.” She wrapped both hands around the cup. The ceramic was almost too hot to hold. “I wanted to be sure I hadn’t made a mistake.”
“You hadn’t.”
Outside, the pigeon was still on the ledge opposite. The cranes were turning. The light on Threadneedle Street had cycled through its colours so many times since she had arrived that she had lost count.
“Ingrid will want a full statement,” Marcus said. “Take your time with it. Get it right.”
Priya pulled her notebook towards her and opened it to the inside cover, where D. Fenwick sat in embossed letters below the surface of the page. She turned to a clean sheet and began.
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