Page 39 of The Dead Come to Stay

The fourth floor of the Burnhope residence turned out to be a massive solarium with a ceiling of glass. MacAdams really should

have predicted as much. The space, almost entirely open-plan, boasted an enormous meeting room, a casing with books and almost

as many business trophies as the main office, as well as an extended conference room table. The rest of the house had preserved

a kind of warmth, made possible by plants and music stands and the accoutrements of living. The fourth floor had none of this;

sleek, modern, it might as well have been a suite of Hammersmith and Company. Burnhope sat at his desk, back to the door.

“Finished with your meeting, I take it,” MacAdams said.

Burnhope turned around in a hurry. It was the first time MacAdams had seen surprise there; it gave him a curious open-eyed

look.

“I wasn’t aware you were here,” he said.

“Oh, I think you were,” MacAdams replied. He had to walk a line here; they had nothing—yet—to bring him in over. But for once he had an advantage, and he was going to make the most of it. “You surely know we would be coming to ask about York.”

“Yes. I already spoke to the Newcastle police about this, and I’ve made a statement for York Central, too,” Burnhope replied

easily. “I told them, and I’m happy to tell you: I knew nothing about this.”

“One of your close colleagues imported millions in stolen goods under your nose, and you... just had no idea at all?” MacAdams

asked. “You seem too smart for that kind of con.”

“There would be records of deliveries, shipments, documents to sign, distribution...” Green ticked them off on her long

fingers. “Here you are, the boss of it all.”

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 did not kill 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. A Fresh 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, this is 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 had been married, 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 publicly available, 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 calling you ,” 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.”

“We are not making accusations,” Green said, throwing MacAdams a rather pointed glance. “We’re just trying to understand why

he phoned you eight times when you claim you weren’t on personal terms.”

“I’ve had just about enough of this,” Stanley said. “What is it that you have against me? I run a successful business, I help

organize a charity, Ava and I were both at a charity event when all this happened.”

“By all this you mean Ronan Foley’s murder,” MacAdams clarified.

Burnhope nodded grudgingly. “Yes. Look, the man worked for me for years. Over a decade, you understand. I investigated his references, and they checked out. I didn’t know he’d been lying about himself then—and I didn’t know he was lying to me now .

I don’t even know when it all started.” He drew himself up a little, a man getting his composure back. “Did he call the

house? Maybe. People do. Should I have been suspicious? Maybe. But unlike some people, I trust my wife. ”

“You don’t believe she was having an affair with Foley,” MacAdams asked, delivering a poke he hoped might reignite his passions.

It didn’t work.

“I do not. The two of them wouldn’t even have anything to talk about.”

Green had never bought MacAdams’s theory about Ava. Which was why her next comment surprised MacAdams.

“Actually, they might have plenty to talk about,” she said. “Like two million or more in black market antiquities stolen from

Syria and on their way to collectors. Rich men, like yourself.”

Burnhope got out of his chair so fast that it nearly triggered MacAdams’s reflexes. But he was laughing .

“Please do look around yourself,” he said. “I collect art, yes—modern art. I have no interest in antiquities. And have a look

at Ava’s music room, if you like. Modern. Regional and local. Now you are grasping at straws.”

“Maybe you don’t collect,” MacAdams said, not willing to let the line of inquiry die out. “But someone does. Someone with

ties to you, to the charity, to Abington. Come on, Burnhope. You play golf with these people, you go to balls with them. Black-tie

people.”

“People like Gerald Standish,” Green added.

An indistinguishable sound escaped him Burnhope and he scrubbed fingers through his hair.

“ Dr. Standish has sponsored more refugees than anyone—hundreds of thousands of pounds spent, lives made better, people changed.

He’s opened his own home as a halfway station. He serves on two committees for the refugee council. Why are you targeting the very people trying to make a difference in the world? Foley was the bad apple. Can’t you see that? Let the blame fall on him.”

“The consequences certainly did,” Green said.

Burnhope’s hands had found pockets, probably to keep them still, but his anger was growing palpable.

“Sit down, Mr. Burnhope,” MacAdams said. “You told it from your perspective; now I’ll give you mine. This isn’t some one-off

operation. Foley couldn’t get the pieces here on his own; he must have connections—a network—in Syria. You have connections to Syria. Your charity does, too. And Hammersmith is an international company with its own network, buying

power and access to tax havens. At the same time, both you and your wife collect art and know the art world. And then you

have friends like Standish, who collect art and antiquities—from Syria. I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s expecting a lot from

coincidence.”

“Syria is not a coincidence,” Burnhope said. He’d resumed his seat, and simultaneously seemed to deflate. He reached for a

framed photo near his laptop.

“Do you want to know why I care about Syria? Why Ava does? Why we both work so damn hard?” he asked. “My children, our children, are from Syria. We adopted them five years ago. Look at them.”

They stared up at MacAdams with laughing expressions. Dark hair, olive skin. One of them had pale blue eyes. He guessed one

to be eight, the other six.

Burnhope was still speaking. “Their village was destroyed. Their families were probably murdered.”

“I didn’t know that,” MacAdams admitted, though it explained Ava’s earlier emotional response. It was also chewing a few holes

in a few theories.