I spent the next two days on the company. Marsh-Laine Capital: mid-size investment advisory firm, twelve years in operation, clean regulatory record on the surface, the kind of firm that existed in the middle distance of the financial landscape without drawing attention. I pulled every public filing I could access. I called two sources who tracked money in the sector. I read six months of Companies House records.
On the second afternoon I found it. Not hidden — available, if you knew where to look. A series of transfers over fourteen months, flowing through a subsidiary structure that Marsh-Laine had established eighteen months ago and that listed a single director.
Eleanor Marsh.
The transfers were structured carefully — individually below the threshold that would trigger automatic reporting, collectively amounting to something significant. It was exactly the kind of pattern Victor Laine had described to Eleanor before his death. The kind of movement that would only make sense if someone was planning to walk away.
I sat with that for a long time.
Eleanor Marsh had hired me to find the person moving money inside their company. The person moving money inside their company was Eleanor Marsh. And Victor Laine, who had discovered it, was dead.
She had not hired me to find the killer. She had hired me to find what Victor had found — to understand how much he had documented, how close the evidence was to the surface, how much of a problem she still had. She had placed me in the position of investigator, pointed me at the company, and waited to see what I turned over. Whatever I brought back would tell her exactly what she needed to know about her own exposure.
I was not her investigator. I was her audit.
I reviewed what I had done over the past two days. I had accessed public records, Companies House filings, and sources who operated openly in the sector. I had not yet put anything in writing or sent anything to anyone. What I knew was in my head and on my laptop, neither of which Eleanor had access to.
I needed to make a decision before I made a phone call.
I called Eleanor Marsh and told her I had completed my preliminary review and had findings I needed to discuss in person. I asked her to come to my office the following morning. She agreed without hesitation, which told me she was confident. Confident people made mistakes.
Then I called my contact in financial crimes directly — not through the department, through a personal number I had held for six years and used sparingly. I told him I had information relevant to the internal flag on Victor Laine. I told him it included documentation of a structured transfer pattern and a director-level connection to the subsidiary account. I told him I needed a formal meeting before ten the following morning.
He called back in forty minutes. The meeting was arranged.
I want to be precise about what I knew and what I was inferring, because the line between those things matters. I knew about the transfers. I knew Eleanor had details no public record contained. I knew she had hired me in a way that positioned me as an information source rather than an investigator. What I was inferring was motive, means, and sequence — and inference was not evidence.
What the financial crimes unit would find, or not find, in Victor Laine’s toxicology review was not mine to predict. What the transfers would amount to, legally, was not mine to determine. I had given them the thread. Whether they could follow it to an end was their work, not mine.
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