Chapter 14: Harwick's Position

Harwick's response to the investigation was sophisticated and wrong. Crane had expected sophistication — the man had been managing complex situations for thirty years. What he hadn't accounted for was that Harwick's sophistication would be calibrated for the opponents he usually faced: organizations that could be pressured, investigators who could be discouraged, evidence that could be complicated by teams of lawyers. The Metropolitan Police fraud division was not any of these things. The detective who led the investigation was a woman named Inspector Osei, who had handled three previous cases involving the manipulation of charitable and scientific organization assets and who received Crane's documentation with the specific appreciation of a professional encountering work done to her standard. 'The valuation analysis is the strongest thread,' she said, after reviewing the three envelopes. 'The consortium structure documentation takes it further. The minutes corroborate the timeline of the fraud's development.' 'The medical findings,' Crane said. 'Are being reviewed. I've engaged an independent forensic physician.' She looked at the documents. 'If the review confirms what your contact suspects, we have a murder case with financial motive, means consistent with the medical findings, and a suspect whose connection to the victim is documented in Society records.' 'He'll argue the fraud was a commercial dispute,' Crane said. 'Legitimate disagreement about valuation methodology.' 'He can argue that,' she said. 'He'll be arguing it in front of a court with sixty years of Society records, the testimony of the Society's president and four members, and the documented financial connections between his consortium and the companies that produced the valuation report.' She met Crane's eyes. 'His lawyers are going to have a difficult case.'