Page 81 of The Dead Come to Stay
Burnhope’s expression was cool, though still amiable.
“Have a seat, Detectives,” he said. “First of all, you don’t run a multinational company by being the one who checks every invoice and shipping receipt. I already told you that I’d given the York property to Foley to run.”
“And he ran it into the ground—and you didn’t check up.”
“I didn’t know I had to. Look at this from my perspective, why don’t you? A company and its employees depend on trust and reputation. I trusted Foley.” Burnhope folded his hands on the desk and sighed. “He betrayed that trust. He might well ruin our reputation, which means he betrayed all of Hammersmith.”
“I entirely agree,” MacAdams said, taking the seat he’d been offered. “A company with all these awards—” he gestured to the wall of glittering teardrops “—depends a lot on its reputation. The market isn’t easy... and everyone knows it’s slowed in the last decade. And now you’ve been betrayed by someone you trusted. One might almost say it was a motive.”
Burnhope placed both hands upon his desk. “I didnotkill Ronan Foley.”
“Good, because he doesn’t exist,” Green said. She opened the file folder she’d been carrying and handed out several photographs.
“What am I looking at?” Burnhope sighed, though MacAdams could see it well enough: a young man and woman on their wedding day.
“Rhyan Flannery,” Green said. “Irish. From Belfast.”
“I don’t know him.”
“Look closer,” MacAdams encouraged. “You told me you were only in Ireland as a child. You must have gone back now and then, surely. Perhaps you met a man looking for a new start. AFresh Start, let’s say.”
Burnhope put the photographs down and attempted to push them away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I take offence that you’d bring my charity work for rehoming refugees into this.”
“Stanley,thisis Ronan Foley,” MacAdams said. And for the second time, he saw the look of shock. It didn’t appear to be faked. Burnhope snatched up of the photographs of Foley and Tula again.
“This? Is Foley? And that’s... his wife?”
“They are still married, in fact,” Green said. “Perhaps you knew that. She lives in Abington.”
“Look, I knew Foley hadbeenmarried, once. He mentioned it in passing. I didn’t know where she lived, and I sure didn’t think they were still together.”
“Was it because he had another woman?” MacAdams asked. He’d been trying to catch Burnhope out, get him to admit to some knowledge previously repressed. But the man merely gave him a smile, salesman like.
“There had been women, off and on, through the years. Christmas party dates and the like, nothing serious.”
“You told me you weren’t friends. That he stayed out of your personal life. But he came to Christmas parties.”
“Company Christmas parties, Detective.”
“Yet he called your house. Your landline,” MacAdams pressed.
The hooded eyes remained slack. “Our landline is publiclyavailable, not that anyone uses a phone book these days. If you say he called, he did. That doesn’t make us close companions.” The slight brogue had resurfaced, but it was proving difficult to get a real reaction out of Burnhope. Emotion, after all, led to more mistakes.
“Maybe he wasn’t callingyou,” MacAdams said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Mr. Burnhope,” Green said, still standing at his elbow with the folder. “I have here a list of times he called your house using a burner phone. Can you verify that this is your home number?”
“It is... but that doesn’t signify—”
“A burner phone, Stanley,” MacAdams repeated. “A person only uses one of those if they don’t want to be traced. A person who has changed their name, who is a devious criminal and who—for instance—doesn’t want his boss to know he’s calling his wife.”
The expression on Burnhope’s face wasn’t one of surprise, not this time. It was stone-cold anger.
“I should kick you out of my house for even suggesting something like that.”
