Deception (16 page)

‘
You’re a doctor . . . but also some sort of policeman?’ said Mrs Logan.

‘
Couldn’t have put it better myself,’ agreed Steven pleasantly.

‘
Just a minute.’

In all it took Steven some seven minutes more to clear the hurdles of the outer office and be shown into the inner sanctum of Hector McGraw, senior partner in the firm.

‘
You have me at a disadvantage, Doctor, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from the Sci-Med Inspectorate before’ said McGraw, standing up to greet Steven. ‘What exactly do you do?’

Steven explained briefly the function of the SMI and its powers.

‘
Sounds like a very good idea,’ said McGraw. ‘Where do we come in?’

‘
You’re handling the action against the GM crop trial at Peat Ridge Farm in Blackbridge,’ said Steven. ‘You obtained a lab report on the crop from a ministry lab over in Ayrshire. I’d like to know who commissioned the report.’

‘
But it was a ministry report,’ said McGraw.

‘
But commissioned privately.’

‘
I didn’t know that,’ said McGraw.’

‘
How did you come by it?’ asked Steven.

‘
It simply arrived on my desk.’

‘
Then what did you do?’

‘
The report clearly stated that the crop contained three foreign elements instead of the two stated in the license so we brought this to the attention of the relevant authorities.’

Despite the fact that McGraw had professed surprise at his visit, Steven had the distinct impression that the man’s responses to his questions had been prepared in advance, as if he had been expecting someone to ask them. ‘Did you check the report’s authenticity?’ he asked.

‘
Well, no,’ replied McGraw, putting on a defensive grin. ‘The report was on official paper. There didn’t seem any need to . . . ’

‘
So an official looking piece of paper is sent to you anonymously and you do nothing to check whether it’s genuine or not. Is that what you’re saying?’

McGraw appeared flustered for the first time. ‘As I say, the ministry letterhead seemed to suggest that it was kosher.’

‘
How difficult do you think it would be to forge the letterhead?’ asked Steven.

‘
But why would anyone want to . . . ’

‘
Because many thousands of pounds are tied up in this crop trial,’ interrupted Steven, making it sound like that was obvious.

‘
Are you saying that the report was forged?’ asked McGraw.

‘
No, it wasn’t,’ conceded Steven, but he suspected that McGraw already knew that. There was something about the man’s smugness that suggested to him that McGraw hadn’t bothered to check the report’s authenticity because he had been expecting it to.

‘
Thank goodness for that,’ said McGraw with a smirk.

‘
Who is paying Mr Rafferty’s legal bills?’

‘
I think that’s an improper question.’

‘
But one I think you should answer.’

‘
And if I refuse on the grounds that it would be a breach of client confidentiality?’

‘
I’ll ask Inland Revenue to go through all the documents on the firm’s premises with a fine tooth comb,’ replied Steven.

‘
But they’d find nothing wrong with anything!’ protested McGraw.

‘
I know,’ replied Steven. ‘But it wouldn’t look very nice.’

‘
That is outrageous.’

Steven remained silent.

McGraw drew in breath angrily and gave him the information he already knew. ‘Mr Rafferty has the backing of a venture capital company named Pentangle. They have asked for our note of fee to be submitted to them.’

‘
May I see the correspondence?’

McGraw got up from his desk and opened a filing cabinet. He took out a dossier and handed it to Steven without comment. Steven flicked through it and found the official letter from Pentangle giving invoice instructions. There was nothing of interest in it save for the Pentangle reference to be, ‘quoted in all correspondence’. It was SigV. Steven read this as, Sigma 5. He felt glad he’d come.

NINE

As he drove across town to his hotel, Steven kept thinking about the designation, Sigma 5. Although Pentangle’s front men, Childs and Leadbetter, had denied having anything to do with sending samples of Agrigene’s crop at Peat Ridge for independent analysis, finding the code, SigV on their invoice instructions to McGraw’s firm in his office was, he thought, just too much of a coincidence. Sigma 5 might not be a company name in its own right but it might well be the code name given to some project they were funding. In fact, that would probably make more sense, he thought.

But why concoct the story about the lab report being sent anonymously to Rafferty’s lawyers? He supposed that it could be that they did want to associate themselves overtly with something that wasn’t entirely above board - bribing a government scientist to produce a misleading report would certainly come into that category. But whatever the reason, if Rafferty and co had seen fit to lie about it, that fact alone suggested that they were working to a different agenda.

As he drove along Melville Drive, the stretch of road running between the green park areas of The Meadows and Bruntsfield Links, Steven’s phone rang and he pulled in to the side to answer it.

‘
Jamie Brown here,’ said the voice.

‘
Who?’

‘
Jamie Brown of The Scotsman, we met in the pub at Blackbridge last Sunday. Remember?’

‘
Of course. I’m sorry.’

‘
I said I’d get back to you when I’d looked into whether or not Crawhill Farm was on the market.'

‘
Oh yes, I remember,’ said Steven, feeling embarrassed that he’d gone ahead and asked for himself.

‘
Apparently it’s not, and hasn’t been in the past thirty years. Mind you, I suppose that doesn’t rule out some kind of private deal going on between Rafferty and another party but as far as the normal agencies are concerned, it’s no go.’

‘
Pity,’ said Steven, ‘another beautiful theory spoiled by an ugly little fact, as someone once put it.’

‘
It’s not entirely bad news though,’ said Brown. ‘I did manage to establish that Rafferty does have a strong business association with an outside commercial interest.’

‘
You have been busy.’

‘
It’s a venture capital outfit called, Pentangle.’

‘
Sounds like a folk group,’ said Steven.

Brown was unabashed. ‘But here’s the really strange thing,’ he continued. ‘It doesn’t exist. ‘It doesn’t seem to be registered anywhere and none of our finance people on the paper have ever heard of it.’

‘
I don’t think you can read too much into that,’ said Steven, keen to discourage Brown from digging too deeply in his patch. ‘Venture capitalists are often shy retiring creatures. They seldom like the glare of publicity so they may not exist as a corporate entity. They’re probably just a group of very wealthy men calling themselves, Pentangle for the sake of convenience.’

‘
Maybe,’ agreed Brown. ‘But here’s another strange thing. Steven Dunbar isn’t on the staff of any environmental department or agency in the UK. He doesn’t exist either . . .’

Steven closed his eyes and cursed silently. Brown had turned out to be a better investigator than he’d thought. ‘I didn’t actually say that I worked for them, just that I had an interest in the environment,’ he pointed out.

‘
So who do you “actually” work for?’

‘
The Sci-Med Inspectorate,’ Steven admitted. ‘When we last spoke we weren’t officially involved. I was just having a nose around.’

‘
But you are now?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
That’s interesting. Could we meet?’

‘
If you mean for interview, no.’

‘
Off the record?’

‘
Purely on that understanding.’

‘
Just tell me where.’

‘
My hotel, The Grange in Whitehouse Terrace. 8 o’clock in the bar.’

Steven pressed the ‘end’ button and let out his breath in a long sigh. He tried looking on the bright side. At least it was Brown and not McColl, the other scribbler he’d met in the Castle Tavern but this was a complication he hadn’t bargained for. He would have to be careful but, trying to look on the bright side, he reckoned that Brown, with his connections, could actually be a help.

When he got back to his room he contacted Sci-Med and asked if they had anything for him. They, like Brown, had drawn a blank on Pentangle and also on Sigma 5 but thanks to the co-operation of Inland Revenue, they had obtained details of Gerald Millar’s bank account and retirement package. Steven asked that they E-mail the figures to him so he could go through them at leisure. They said they would do this in the next half-hour. Steven stripped, had a shower and changed into casual clothes while he was waiting. The file was there when he switched his computer back on.

He found the financial details interesting. Gerald Millar had been given, ‘full enhancement’ on his pension rights in contradiction of what he understood should happen and from what Roberta at the Ayrshire lab had told him. This simply did not fit with a member of staff having requested his own early retirement. It was the deal given to staff being retired compulsorily at the ministry’s request when years of service were enhanced artificially to increase the size of their pension. Steven noted that they had also increased the associated lump sum payment. ‘Nice one Gerald,’ he murmured.

In addition to the retirement package, there was another recorded payment of thirty thousand pounds, paid into Millar’s bank account and marked down as the proceeds from the sale of shares in two named companies. Nothing odd in that, thought Steven but then his suspicious nature gave him second thoughts. The money might well have come from the sale of shares but had Millar actually owned these shares in the first place? The payment could conceivably have originated from a third party who had just laundered it through an apparent share deal. He replied to the E-mail with this self same question for Sci-Med

It was just after seven and Steven thought he’d use up the time before his meeting with Brown looking into the niggling little problem of executive responsibility out at Blackbridge. He’d been under the impression that the Scottish Executive had clear and exclusive rights to decide on matters agricultural in Scotland but from what he’d overheard at lunchtime at the hotel there seemed to be some confusion about this. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food still seemed to be playing a leading role. He connected his laptop to the Internet and sought out the web pages in succession of both the Scottish Executive and MAFF.

It was hard going, navigating his way through a sea of irrelevance but in the end he came up with something called, ‘The Main Concordat between the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food and the Scottish Executive’. This long document outlined an agreement between the two bodies to respect each other’s territory and keep each other informed, co-operate wherever possible and generally be good pals. It struck him that the words in it had been very carefully chosen by someone doing a fair impression of tiptoeing through a minefield and reminded him of a prayer. ‘Lord, help me not to stand on people’s toes, particularly those that are attached to the arses I may have to kiss tomorrow.’ He finally came across one telling statement that said, ‘This Concordat is not intended to constitute a legally enforceable contract or to create any rights or obligations, which are legally enforceable. It is intended to be binding in honour only.’

‘
In other words, not worth the paper it’s written on,’ murmured Steven, closing down the connection. Now he understood the problem.

‘
I thought you’d be staying at the Blackbridge Arms,’ said Jamie Brown when he arrived promptly in the bar at eight.

‘
I never like sleeping over the shop,’ replied Steven.

Brown took off his Berghaus jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. ‘What are you having?’

‘
I’m fine just now,’ replied Steven who was already nursing a gin and tonic.

Brown asked for whisky. ‘So you’re one of Sci-Med’s people,’ he said. ‘A brave one too by all accounts.’

Steven raised his eyebrows.

‘
You were the one who exposed the transplant scam at the Medic Ecosse Hospital in Glasgow a few years back, weren’t you?’

Steven agreed that he had been involved, remembering now that there had been a bit of press coverage at the time and, despite his best efforts, he had featured in some of it. Brown must have looked him up in the paper’s archives. ‘This is all off the record, isn’t it?’

‘
You have my word,’ replied Brown. ‘I can’t however speak for any of my colleagues over at Blackbridge should they make the connection. I should think,
Glasgow Hospital Hero called in to solve GM Riddle
, might well prove irresistible to a certain little red-haired man with a Rottweiler personality. Come to think of it, you went on to marry one of the nurses caught up in that business, didn’t you?’