Out of control (19 page)

“That was when Ana told us about the iPhone. It was her idea. She noticed it lying on a table in Macek’s office as she passed by on her way out. He wasn’t around and she just had an instant brainwave. So she grabbed it and left, cool as you like.

“Anyway, after that there was absolutely no trouble. I followed them all the way, keeping about a hundred yards behind them. There is no way that anyone could possibly know where she is. So here we are. Cheers!”

*

Breakfast the next morning was just Maggie, Mike and I. Although quite late, neither Sophie nor Ana had appeared. I was quite happy with the morning papers and Maggie was her usual bright self. Mike was grumpy. Apparently Sophie hadn’t come to bed until four o’clock in the morning. She’d dug him in the ribs with a “We did it!” and then promptly fallen asleep. That hadn’t gone down too well so after a large cup of coffee he disappeared with Oscar for a long hike muttering “Bloody women.”

Maggie had things to do so I relaxed until Sophie appeared around eleven, looking as fresh as a daisy and clearly pleased with herself.

“Morning, Bob. Guess what.”

“You managed to get into Macek’s iPhone.”

“How did you know?”

“Mike told us you woke him up at four in the morning to tell him. I don’t think he was too pleased and he’s gone off with Oscar. I doubt if we’ll see him before lunchtime.”

“And I thought he would be pleased.”

I didn’t comment while she hungrily attacked her late breakfast.

Ana appeared a quarter of an hour later, a different creature from the one I had met the night before. She’d just showered and her hair was still wet. The same jeans and trainers but no more anorak. Above her tee-shirt was a bright smile. She seemed a lot more confident in our company - another example of the capacities of the young to recover from adversity. She embraced Sophie warmly, wished me ‘Good morning’ and dived into the toast and marmalade.

“Did you find anything interesting?” I asked Sophie.

“I’m not sure. I hope so. We’ve listed everything we think could be useful and it’s on my computer. I thought we might go through it this afternoon.”

“That’s great news. Let’s hope there’s something useful there.”

I left them to their eating and decided to go out for a short walk.

I followed the track over towards the loch, enjoying the feeling of the soft grass under my feet and tried to go over the things I still had to do.

Sophie’s work might throw up other possibilities of action, but, for the moment I only had to wait. I needed feedback from Bucharest from Pierre. I was waiting to hear from Antoine to find out if he had discovered anything else about Dugain. There was also Helen. Now that Dugain had got his agreement for buying the shares he had, as expected, proposed to buy Antoine’s. Would he now approach Helen? After lunch we settled down in the lounge with Sophie’s laptop propped up on a pile of books in front of us so that we could all see. Mike had obviously got over his grumpiness and the atmosphere was one of eager anticipation.

Sophie gave the explanations.

The first file she showed us was a copy of his contacts. She had split them into two lists – one of UK phone numbers and one of foreign ones I wasn’t too interested in the UK contacts so I looked down the list of the foreign ones. Sophie had sorted them by country code and put the name of the country alongside the number. None of them had names; simply letters with or without numbers after them. Presumably this was his coding system.

There were a dozen or so for Romania. Two were labeled B1 and B2. I looked at the French ones, pulling out my phone to check something. I was relieved to see that Antoine’s number wasn’t listed. There were also a few numbers in Germany and in Holland and one in Belgium.

“Hold on a minute Sophie. Do you think you could call these numbers in France and try to find out who they belong to before we go on to anything else? And could Ana do the same for the Romanian ones?” She looked at Ana, shrugged her shoulder and said “Sure. Why not?”

“Well, let’s do it now. Here, use my phone.”

“I’ll use mine. It has a French number so it will seem less suspicious.” Ana pointed to the second number. ”You don’t need to call this one. It’s the LyonPharma office number and this one is mine,” pointing to the fifth.

Sophie leant forward and typed in the identifications in the column next to the numbers.

That left three others. The first one was Dugain’s. He didn’t answer and Sophie was invited to leave a message. She promptly hung up. We had all expected his number would be one of them and Ana entered up the information.

The other two were answered by female voices. Sophie promptly excused herself for having dialled a wrong number and hung up. Ana just typed in ‘girl’ against each one.

Then It was Ana’s turn. She was a little nervous but I reassured her.

“Just ring the number. Don’t say anything. If someone answers and you get a name just hang up. OK?”

She nodded and took my phone.

The first number she tried answered. We could hear a voice at the other end. Ana said a few words in Romanian and rang off.

“A restaurant,” she said and typed it in on the laptop.

With more confidence now she tried another three and identified an insurance company, another restaurant and a ‘no reply’. They were all duly noted. She had left B1 and B2 to the last.

As I suspected they were both answered by male voices. In each case, as soon as they announced a name she simply pressed the button and shivered.

“These were the two men that run the company that sent me to France,” she said, still clearly disturbed.

Sophie put her arm round her.

“Don’t worry. They won’t have a clue who called. You’re quite safe.” and she herself entered in the names which Ana spelled out for her. Nobody spoke Dutch or German so we left these ones.

“Great work, ladies. We’ve now got proof of Macek’s link with the guys in Bucharest. We knew but didn’t have any proof before. We can now give this to the police.”

“Won’t I be in trouble for stealing his phone?” asked Ana.

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll invent some story. Inspector Ross won’t ask too many questions. Now, what’s next?”

Sophie clicked a couple of buttons and another file opened with more information listed.

But, just as she was about to start her explanation she was interrupted. Macek’s phone, which was lying on the table beside her computer, suddenly started to ring.

We all looked at it, wondering what to do. I grabbed it and looked at the incoming number. I signalled furiously to Sophie to go back to the list again. It was back in a second and I saw immediately that it was Dugain.

I chucked the phone to Sophie. “Answer, put it on the loudspeaker and no one says anything – not a word.”

The voice at the other end spoke a few phrases and then rang off. Sophie looked puzzled. I looked at her curiously, not having understood a word. Ana paled, the colour draining from her face.

“He was speaking in Romanian,” she whispered.

Mike and Sophie looked at each other in astonishment. I absorbed the news with satisfaction.

“What did he say?” asked Sophie gently.

Ana gulped and announced in a slightly shaky voice, “He said he was coming over to Edinburgh on Monday morning. He wants him to meet him at the airport.”

“Is that all he said?” I asked.

“He said ‘I’ve got another bloody woman to worry about’. Do you think he means me?” still clearly very worried.

I tried to reassure her. ”No, I don’t think so. He’s trying to take control of a company that’s run by a woman. I think that’s who he means.”

She seemed relieved.

But I didn’t. He probably did mean Helen because he couldn’t know yet that Ana had skipped out of Edinburgh. But his use of the word ‘other’ meant that he had been worried by at least one woman before. Could he have been referring to Irina?

Mike got up with a grin.

“Well he‘s not going to be too happy when he doesn’t get picked up at the airport. Macek hasn’t got the message, has he? Because we’ve got his phone. Anyone want coffee?” and disappeared through to the kitchen.

In fact I felt pretty sure that he was referring to Helen and noted that I must call her as soon as I could on Monday. He probably had to come over to sign off with Albion Venture Capital and perhaps thought he’d visit Bioscope at the same time. I wondered if he had announced a visit to Helen or was he just going to turn up? In either case I had to tell Helen how to react.

“We won’t worry about that,” I announced. “Let’s get on with the rest of what you’ve found.”

“Well, not very much I’m afraid. He seems to be one of those people who wipe out their messages every day. There are only two from Friday. And all his call records have been cleaned out as well.”

She called up the file that had been on the screen earlier.

“This is all we could find. It’s from his ‘Reminders’.”

There was a list of dates and against each one there were two or three letters. At first sight they meant nothing.

Sophie then clicked to a calendar for the year where she had entered the letters against the relevant dates. It still wasn’t much clearer.

“Anyone any ideas?” I asked.

There was a RH, a ZZ, a BD and a few others.

Obviously he knew what they meant but how were we going to work them out? I doubted that it was a code. It was probably simply the initials of two or three words which were sufficient to remind him of something he had to do.

“There’s an IV which could mean Irina Vasilescu,” volunteered Mike.

“Good thinking. Maybe. Any other suggestions?”

I was met by puzzled looks.

“Right , here’s what we’ll do.”

I went out to the reception and found four pieces of paper and four pencils. I came back in and handed one each to the other three and kept one for myself.

“We list all the initials and we note down all the possibilities we can think of. Let’s make it a game and see if it gets us anywhere. For the moment we’ll just look at the last three months and the next two.”

There were eight entries. We all sat back and scratched our brains for about ten minutes.

EA – Edinburgh Airport? IV – Irina Vasilescu? BD - Brian Dawson or Bernard Dugain ? SM – sales meeting? My answers were all related to what I knew about the man. Maybe the others would come up with something different. I knew it was wild guessing and what in the hell was I going to put for ZM?

Eventually I called a halt, collected the pieces of paper and asked Sophie to type them on a spread sheet. Some of the guesses didn’t seem to have any relevance whatsoever.

I did, however, discover what ZM could be. Ana had written ‘Mother’s birthday’.

“How do you work that one out?” I asked her.

“It’s Romanian - ‘ziua mamei’ means ‘mother’s birthday.”

“Right. We can forget that one.”

I then asked Sophie to go back to the calendar and enter them in against the dates.

I looked at the results and tried to do some remembering. I checked back in my mind. That was it.

“That BB could be Bob Bruce - that’s the day I had the car incident.”

I had another thought and immediately took my phone and called Brian Dawson. He confirmed the day of the sales meeting when Dugain had blown his stack. Against that date there was an MD and an SM. What’s more, the following day was where the BD appeared – the day Brian was fired.

The final confirmation that we were unravelling part of the data was when I checked the date against the IV. Sure enough it was the day before Irina was fished out of the river.

But we had no idea about the others which could be important – especially the ones in the near future. For the following week there was an RD and the week after a YY. If we could work out what they meant we might be a little further on.

It seemed like a good place to take a break.

Sophie got up. “Come on, Mike. Let’s take Ana and Oscar and go for a walk. I need some fresh air after last night. So does Ana.” And I was left to my own devices.

*

While they were gone I decided to see if I could get a hold of Helen even if it was a Saturday. I was in luck. I told her that we had discovered that Dugain was coming over to Scotland on Monday – presumably to see the people at Albion.

I told her that I was just calling her to put her on her guard. It was very likely that he would get in touch with her by phone or even visit her unexpectedly.

“There are people that just turn up presuming that you will be available for them and it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s like that.”

“What will I say if he does make an offer for our shares?”

“Just be nice and stall. You’ll think about it. I’ll be down in Stirling in the middle of the week because I’ve learned a little more and I’d like to discuss something with you. Don’t worry, just stall. You’re not going to sell but I want him to think that there is a chance that you might. That’s all. OK?”

And then, as an afterthought, “…and whatever you do don’t say anything about your suspicions on the patent. Don’t even get into a discussion about it.”

Before the others came back I received two other phone calls.

“Bob, this is Antoine. How are you? I’ve some news for you.”

“I’m fine, thanks. Good to hear from you. What’s your news?”

“I phoned my policeman friend and he has agreed that he can do what we ask provided that he gets enough information from your man in Scotland to justify it.”

“Does he speak English and will he understand a Scottish accent?”

“That’ll be no problem.”

“Fine. I’ll speak to Inspector Ross nearer the time and ask him to phone him and explain the situation. Can you send me his details?”

“Certainly. No problem. I can also confirm that Bernard Dugain …….”

“…..is Romanian.” I said.

“How do you know that?”

I told him about the iPhone and the information we had gleaned from it.

“Well my friendly policeman can confirm it….. and there’s more.”

“Go on.”

I listened to what Antoine had to tell me.

“Now that is interesting,” and I told him why, thanked him heartily and we hung up.