Industrial
Episode 27 of the June Murders
Commander Cooper was disappointed. The forensic team at NCIC was the most highly trained and best resourced in the country, but even they were not able to get anything from Zac Taylor’s smashed computers. They had pieced together a few circuit boards but nothing was retrievable. She would have to relay the bad news. Bale had also been in touch about a Russian, Stephan Likhodeyev. She might have better news on that score. He was known to them, one of a number of Russian billionaires who had invested in London property, although border control records showed that Likhodeyev himself seemed to be visiting the UK less frequently. Nonetheless, his name, alongside his father, Grigor’s, was among those listed as of interest in an ongoing investigation into concealed foreign assets. It was a considerable list that included not just Russians, but oligarchs from other former Soviet states, as well as China, and the Middle East. The impetus behind the investigation was not just money laundering but a concern that strategic industrial sectors — especially in advanced technology — might be infiltrated by potentially hostile powers.
Likhodeyev’s known portfolio of assets was fairly conservative: he owned indirectly a number of luxury properties in the south-east of England. But his family was close to the Russian government and since the Winchester poisonings…
