Gallowglass (16 page)

THIRTY-THREE

A
s we slunk down the levels on the great spiralling staircase, I kept stopping and listening. There’d been no sign of nightwatchmen yesterday but maybe they didn’t come in at weekends. Or worse, I’d roused them when they found the ladder missing, and they were lying in wait. With a pair of shotguns.

As we descended, I also grew convinced that this was going to be our one and only chance. I couldn’t get Airchie back up on the roof. He was still shaking. I wasn’t sure I had the strength for it either. I shoved from my mind the horrors of the return trip. It simply didn’t bear thinking about. One step at a time.

We got to the final landing and Airchie gazed down across the rows of desks and the walls of filing.

‘Christ, Brodie. It’s big.’

‘I thought you were at the Royal. They’re bigger, are they not?’

‘Aye, but I only saw one part of it. This is the lot! All the branches, the head office branch and the bank-wide books.’

‘Well, you’re just going to have to narrow it down, aren’t you?’

We stepped into the hall and I found a switch that illuminated the lamps above the cabinets. The soft glow and the serried ranks of desks turned the accounts hall into a ghostly reading room. Airchie began to pace his way round the floor,
stopping at each section, reading the spines of the books sideways. He did one full circuit, often stepping back and checking a section he’d just passed. I waited at the front of the class in the big desk that faced the lines of smaller ones. The invigilator’s desk. I expected to find a tawse and mortarboard tucked under the lid. I sat and smoked and watched the hands of the big clock saunter round. Half an hour went by and Airchie had just completed his second circuit. He stepped towards me brow creased and rubbing his nose where his specs made a dent.

‘Well, Airchie? Can you do it?’

‘Oh, aye. If I hud a month.’

I glanced at my watch. It read one o’clock. I reckoned they’d be in at six next morning, the start of the week. We’d work till five.

‘You’ve got four hours.’

‘It’s no’ possible.’

‘OK, we’ll come back tomorrow night, and every night for a month.’

I saw him consider making the climb again. His face fell. Medal or no.

‘Airchie, you’ll have to do what you can in four hours. Let’s look for the big things. Start at the top. Are the client ledgers alphabetical for the head office branch?’

He nodded.

‘Find Gibson. Find his personal accounts. Then we’ll take it from there. Oh, and keep an eye out for the account belonging to a certain Douglas Brodie. I’d like to know where my life’s savings went.’

‘Ony o’ that booze left?’

‘Empty. Besides, you need all your wits about you. Tell me how I can help.’

He thought for a moment. ‘There’s a set of the overall head office books ower there. They show transfers between branches and between other banks. Mair important is that
there should be a record of the receipt of funds from the Bank of England. The Bank has been spraying cash around to keep up the capital levels of the retail banks. The ledgers might show they came as straight loans or from the sale of gilts.’

‘A gilt is a loan issued by the Bank of England?’

‘Aye. One of the ways we’re keeping the wolf from the door. Borrowing in the international markets, but borrowing backed by the Anglo-American Agreement. See what you can find.’

‘Airchie, I’m impressed. You sound like a professor.’

His mouth twisted. ‘Aye, well. Ah used to be good at ma job. An’ Ah keep an eye on the papers.’

‘Good for you. OK, I’ll dive in over here. And, Airchie, remember where you got the ledgers. We have to leave this place as we found it. No signs.’

We moved to the shelves. I set myself up on a desk near the back. There were small electric lamps above each desk. I switched mine on and began to bring over the huge books and examine them one by one. Airchie followed suit. For a while, he seemed to be in his element, humming to himself as he thumbed through ledger after ledger. He’d got hold of some scraps of foolscap and a couple of pencils and was making notes. I looked up after an hour or so and saw his head on the desk. Gentle snores seeped from his mouth. I marched over and shook him.

‘Airchie! Airchie!’

‘Whit? Whit is it? Where am Ah?’

‘Airchie, get up. Have a walk round the desks. You need to stay awake.’

We walked together until I was sure he was revived enough to carry on.

‘Any progress? Have you found Gibson’s statements?’

‘Ah huv that. There’s some interesting stuff going on. Big sums going out, big sums coming in.’

‘Unusually big?’

‘For a personal account, aye. A thoosand here, a thoosand there. The odd five thoosand.’

‘More than I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s doing well for himself.’

‘He is that.’

‘Where’s it coming from and where’s it going to?’

‘That’s what Ah’m following. That’s why Ah’m ower there and there.’ He pointed to two other desks, where he’d piled some ledgers from different sections.

‘Good work, Airchie.’

‘What about you, Brodie?’

‘I’m in the big league. I’ve found entries for transfers of millions of pounds from the Bank of England. Some show them as loans from the sale of gilts. Others as straight loans with a reference to AAA, which I assume is the Anglo-American loan. Others mention Lend-Lease. They’re showed as credits.’

‘We’ll make a bookkeeper out of you yet, Brodie. They’re still tying up a’ the loose ends o’ Lend-Lease. A’ they tanks and planes that we got on the never-never from the Yanks we ended up having to pay for.’

‘But we got them cheap, I recall.’

‘Ten per cent in the pound. Paid off over fifty years at two per cent interest. A bargain, I’d say.’

I had to shake him awake twice more throughout the long hours till dawn. I had him explain some of my own findings and he guided me to further exploration. I’d had some basic training in the army in keeping accounts for soldiers’ pay and rations. Between us we were beginning to see a picture emerging. I struggled with my own eyes at times and did a brief jig and short series of exercises to set my blood coursing again.

At four in the morning, Airchie called me over.

‘I’ve found your accounts, Brodie. I thocht you might have been worth mair. No’ much to show for a’ the years defending the country.’

‘You don’t say. But I did have a few bob to my name. At least I thought I did.’

‘You did.’ He pointed to lines in a ledger with my name at the top of the page. ‘You had five pounds and ten shillings in your current account, and forty-four pounds, three shillings and sixpence in your savings. Until the ninth of June.’

‘That was the Monday
after
Gibson was murdered! Someone in the bank sent forged statements to the court stating I was broke three weeks before!’

‘A statement’s just a bit o’ paper, Brodie. Ye can say anything on it. And put what dates you like on it.’

‘It’s solid proof I was set up though! Who took it?’

‘It shows all your money being withdrawn on the same day plus a five-pound overdraft. There’re three chits here, one for the savings account, one for the current, and one an agreed overdraft. All paid out in cash on the ninth.’

‘Not to me!’

He waved another bit of paper. ‘This is a letter purporting to be signed by you permitting the bearer to access your accounts.’

‘Who was the bearer?’

He peered at the heading. ‘Miss Pamela McKenzie. A friend of yours?’

‘The wee bitch!’

I stood in shock, trying to make sense of it.

‘Was it that easy? Anyone could have walked in and slapped a letter on the counter saying they had the right to take someone’s money?’

‘No’ really. It needed bank approval.’

‘Did she have it?’

‘It was initialled CC – presumably Colin Clarkson, the Finance Director.’

‘Bastard,’ I said softly.

‘It might no’ mean anything, Brodie. Heid bummers sign or initial anything put in front o’ them.’

‘Well, somebody’s a bastard.’

I went back to my own analysis with renewed fervour. There were scribbles and boxes with lines drawn between them. I knew what they said – more or less – and Airchie could help me draw the right conclusions. It was a good start. I had traced some of the sources of a sizeable income stream feeding Gibson’s account. Airchie seemed to have got some interesting information about his spending habits. Money going to personal accounts and to companies. All we had to do was get out of here and compose the overall picture. In a hurry.

When I next looked at my watch it was five thirty. Some light was filtering through from the high-up windows down into the banking hall. We were cutting it fine. Too fine. I reckoned there would be porters opening up the doors in half an hour. It was time we were on the move. I looked over. Airchie was barely awake, his face white and strained. He looked nearer ninety than fifty. I was never going to get him to make the climb again. He’d get up the ladder, take one look from the skylight at the huge drop and freeze. That was before we’d even tackled the high jump over the ridge wall.

‘Airchie, get packed up. All ledgers away. Lights off. It’s time to go.’ I pointed up to our escape route.

He looked across at me. ‘Brodie, Ah’ve been thinking aboot that. Ah cannae dae it.’ His face said it all. ‘Even if you had a crate o’ whisky, Ah couldnae dae it.’

THIRTY-FOUR

I
stared at him. I knew when men were trying it on. This was no bluff.

‘Leave it to me,’ I said with more hope than knowledge. I jogged up the stairs, level by level, until I was breathing heavily on the top landing. I looked up at the open skylight. The rectangle was now grey and would be lightening fast. I could slip out and leave Airchie to face the music. What would another stretch of five years matter to him? Then I thought of his medal hopes and what this work meant to him. A last chance.

I jumped on the ladder and stepped smartly up to the open skylight. I reached out – sorely tempted to climb out and away – and hauled the heavy glass box closed. I all but slid down the ladder and back on to the landing. With my foot on its bottom rung I had to pull it back and unhook it. It was a two-man job. Slowly it came up, but in the process it caught on the long steel arm of the catch that held down the skylight. It clunked, clattered and dangled. Bugger! I stared at the swinging arm. To hell with it. I wasn’t going back up there. I hauled the ladder down and on to the landing. I manoeuvred it over to the wall and flung it up in its proper place. I looked up at the errant catch. Who would notice? And when? There was no time to worry about it. If anyone saw it they’d think it had just come loose.

I cast about. There were cupboards and doors running off the landing. I started to go through them. Surely if there was a ladder, there would be other equipment. I found mops and brooms, buckets and a sink. But hanging behind one door was what I was looking for. I grabbed them and a box of tools and headed down the stairs. Airchie was just sliding the last ledger in place.

‘Here. Put these on.’

I held out a pair of dungarees, blue cotton and well worn. They came with a matching cap. For the first time in hours, Airchie smiled. I slipped my own pair on and did up the bib and braces. I jammed the flat blue cap on and picked up my gas-mask case. We stowed our notes in it and inspected ourselves. Airchie’s dungarees fell over his shoes. We rolled up the cuffs. Mine were halfway up my ankles. I undid the braces as far as possible and pushed them down. We wouldn’t pass inspection by a real maintenance crew, especially wearing their gear. But it was the best we could do. The rest was going to be down to brass neck and timing. We sat clutching our bag and toolbox, waiting for the first noises of the day. We had five minutes.

At six o’clock on the dot I heard bolts and chains being unlocked out in the banking hall. Then voices. We stared at the double door that led from the back office along a short corridor to the cash desks. The doors themselves were locked. On the outside. All we could do was wait our turn. At last we heard footsteps. They stopped outside the door. A key fumbled in the lock, and the door started to swing open. I nodded at Airchie and stepped forward into the pool of light.

‘Morning!’ I called and strode forward. ‘All done here.’

The man – in winged collar and tie and tails, presumably a junior manager – stepped back, startled.

‘Oh, good morning. I – what? – have you been…?’

‘Weekend maintenance. Night shift. Had to check all the radiators. Everything fine now.’

Airchie walked behind me, head down, silent behind his glasses. I started whistling and tried to keep my pace normal as we emerged into the grand banking hall and headed for the door. Another man stood nearby screwing in his tie studs. A doorman getting ready for the day. He turned as we walked towards him. I called out gaily:

‘Good morning. Looks a fine day.’ I nodded to the light-filled windows.

‘Aye, it is.’ Then his brain said,
Wait a minute
. ‘Where did you come frae?’

‘Maintenance. Radiators. All OK. Nice bit o’ double time.’

‘Ah wisnae telt. Wait the noo. Ah need to check ma list.’

‘Sorry, pal. We’re starving. We’re away for a sausage roll and a cup o’ tea. Sort it oot wi’ yer boss. He kens a’ aboot it.’

I walked up to the great front doors and pulled open the small side panel embedded in it. I held it as Airchie stepped out, then followed him. The doorman was transfixed, watching us depart, his head trying to make sense of it, but too slowly. We stepped down into the fresh morning air of St Vincent Street and sucked it in.

‘Just keep walking, Airchie. Don’t look back. Don’t run. We’re walking round the corner and down the hill. Keep going.’

We walked steadily down Blythswood Street until I steered us into the cobbles and narrows of Wellington Lane. Behind the Alhambra we stripped off our dungarees and caps and stuffed them in the big bins. We left the toolbox outside the stage door – someone would find a use for it – and emerged on Wellington Street. We walked on and turned into Central Station. A café was just opening for early workers. I filled Airchie with tea and toast until some colour came back. I lifted my mug.

‘Archibald Higgins, you’re a wee hero. Two medals is what you deserve.’

‘Ah don’t mind telling you, Brodie, Ah’m fair puggled.’

‘Me too. Are you able to brief me on what you’ve found? I need to pull all this together.’

Airchie straightened up, rubbed his bloodshot eyes and with the aid of his notes and mine, we built up a picture of a managing director robbing his own bank. Gibson had been milking hundreds of thousands of pounds over the last two or three years, especially the last twelve months. He’d been dipping into the golden streams flowing from the Anglo-American Agreement. Loans to help the war effort and its aftermath. Too good an opportunity to miss.

Where required, the various transfers had been authorised by senior officials including Gibson himself and the then Finance Director and now Managing Director, Colin Clarkson. Were Clarkson and the others just doing their boss’s bidding? Or were they active accomplices?

There were also records of note-issuing. The Scottish Linen Bank was allowed to produce its own banknotes. Print money. A handy facility if you needed a few bob to make up a shortfall. There were some sizeable issues over the past year or two: hundreds of thousands of pounds in various denominations. I didn’t know what checks and balances stopped Scottish Linen from simply running the printing presses when they felt like it. Did it all have to be backed by gold?

Our research covered only the last three years of records, but showed Gibson stealing and disbursing over a million pounds. An amount I struggled to comprehend.

‘A million quid, Airchie! What could you do with a million quid?’

He sucked his pencil. ‘What do you earn a week, Brodie? About eight pounds?’

‘If I get a Sunday shift.’

He did a couple of bits of long division. ‘By my calculations you’d have to work for 2,427 years to earn that.’

‘So I’ll never be a millionaire. It doesn’t bother me. How could you spend a million?’

‘Ah’d like the chance. See Bearsden?’ He scribbled some more.

‘You want to live in Bearsden?’

‘Why no’? You think it’s too posh for the likes of me?’

‘For the likes of either of us. But never mind. Everybody needs to aim high. What could you buy for a million?’

He leaned across the greasy Formica. ‘Ye could buy a hale street, Brodie. Several
hale
streets. Ah hear the price for wan o’ they big detached hooses is getting near two thoosand quid.’

‘What would you want with five hundred houses, Airchie? That’s not a street. That’s
Higginston
.’

‘That would be rare.’ He beamed. ‘Well, maybe Ah’d just buy a couple. One for me, one for ma mither. She’d love that, so she would. And Ah’d just fritter the rest away on women and Rolls-Royces and fine wines.’ His eyes went dreamy.

‘In the meantime, Airchie, let’s figure out what Fraser actually spent a million on, eh?’

Airchie’s research showed Gibson steadily syphoning off chunks of cash every month over the past year into a suspense account called ‘AAA interest’. Anglo-American Agreement? But it wasn’t accruing. Comparing notes with Airchie, we found that each month this account was emptied into one of several personal accounts under the direct control of Sir Fraser Gibson himself.

There were one-off payments from Gibson’s accounts as well as regular monthly sums to a small number of named accounts. Among them was a private account in the name of Mungo Gibson at the Maybole branch of the bank. Lady Gibson also received some large dollops of pin money. Just how many furs did one woman need, even in Scotland? The other recipients were companies: ‘Silver Dollar’ and ‘High Times’ received irregular but sizeable lump sums.

But over the past year a regular monthly amount of £20,000 had been transferred into the pockets of a company called ‘Gulf Stream’. An outfit operating on the Ayrshire coast? Doing what? Some legitimate business at the many
ports? Fishing? Or good old-fashioned smuggling with the Irish Republic? Booze and drugs?

It could have been worse, I suppose. We could have found Gibson had been defrauding the bank for
tens
of millions. The amounts pilfered wouldn’t break the bank and didn’t breach its capital requirements. But it spoke of a stunning lack of controls and corruption and collusion at the highest levels of Scotland’s largest financial institution.

I could see the headlines on every newspaper in the country and imagine a bout of handwringing and apoplectic fits at the Treasury. And big question marks in Washington.