Trail of Greed: Fighting Fraud and Corruption... A Dangerous Game (11 page)

“That’s his wife,” said Mike, pointing to her. “That’s great. Purdy has a mistress. That could be useful. Do you know who she is or where she lives?”

“Yes. We have a name and an address. She is a divorcee and runs a hairdressing salon in the High Street. We’ve quite a few photographs of her.”

“Fine. Keep away from her now. We don’t want to run any risk of her finding out she’s being watched. As long as we know how to get to her if we need to.”

“Anything else?” asked Pierre. “We’ve only managed to come across two blokes who he seems to frequent. He goes to a squash club down in Leith twice a week. He always plays with the same guy. We followed him there on Tuesday and after he’d gone I had a look at the board of court reservation and his name was up every Tuesday and Thursday with the same guy and at the same time. It’s obviously regular.”

“Who’s the guy?” “Don’t know yet,” he replied. “We only have a name, Bill Dewar. But I’ve asked Doug to find out more . . . just in case.”

“And the second person?”

Mike pushed a photo over to me. “He’s lunched twice this week with this man.” I picked it up and looked at it. It was only a three-quarter view and taken through a window but the man looked distinctly familiar.

Then I thought I had it. I pushed the picture across to Pierre.

“Mean anything to you, Pierre?”

He stared at it for while.

“This man was at the conference.” “Correct. I think that’s a man called Gavin Reid who could well be AIM’s lawyer. Personally I don’t much like the look of him. Could you check him out as well, Mike?”

We broke up around three. We agreed that Pierre would bring Sophie round the next morning and, as he hadn’t much else to do, he’d go down and play Lundin Links, which I told him was another of Dad’s favourite courses.

Mike would be going back to Edinburgh to check up on Gavin Reid and Purdy’s squash playing friend, Bill Dewar.

The next morning I got up early. There hadn’t been a woman in the house since Liz died, apart from my cleaning lady and Mrs Clark. There was a distinct male atmosphere to the place. There wasn’t much I could do about that but at least I could tidy up a bit.

I opened all the windows to let the air in. Books were tidied away and the place was given a good vacuuming. Checked out the bathroom. Made sure it was presentable and clean. I definitely needed to clean the kitchen. Last night’s frying pan lying in the sink was not a good idea.

By the time I’d done all that I was exhausted and my back was aching.

I sat down for a minute and looked at Dad’s picture on the opposite wall. I told him a bit more about Pierre, about Mike and Heather’s reaction to him and the news that their Dad had a secret past. I told him that we didn’t mind in the least. After all, he didn’t know anything about Pierre but, “I’m sure that you’d approve of him if you’d met him”, I told him.

I cleared the desk where my PC sits to give Sophie some working space.

I realised that I was thinking thoughts about Sophie that I really shouldn’t be. Forget it, I told myself. I’m past all that, and she wouldn’t be interested. I’m far too old. Sad, but there it is. Liz’s picture in the corner seemed to nod approval.

Pierre and Sophie arrived at around ten thirty. Pierre didn’t stay as he had organised an eleven thirty tee-off time.

I showed Sophie around, offered her a cup of coffee and helped her to connect up her laptop.

“I’ll leave you to it,” I said. “I’ve got some gardening to do. Make yourself at home and if you need anything just call.”

She settled down to do battle with the world wide web and I went out to get on with some pruning and weeding.

I popped in occasionally to check that all was well. Sophie was totally concentrated. She’d pulled her hair back and fixed it with a rubber band behind her head and she had a neat pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose.

The screen of her laptop was showing screeds of numbers, letters or formulae cascading down at a tremendous pace. There were half a dozen discs lying on the table beside her and a pad and a pencil with notes. Whatever she was doing was completely beyond me.

She turned and smiled when she heard me. “Everything ok?” I asked. “Sure. But this could take some time.” There was the day (about forty years ago) when I would have said “Take all night if you want”, but instead I replied that there was no particular hurry.

I pottered around in the garden for another half hour then went in to suggest to Sophie that she stop for a while and we’d have a bite of lunch. The computer was still crunching numbers at a vast rate.

I proposed some fish pâté and Chablis which I had in the fridge. This was met with approval. We sat outside in the sun, but sheltered from the wind.

Over lunch I learned how she and Pierre had worked closely together for years. How it was Pierre that had given her her chance to develop. The company had paid for her to have extra training and it had been a great place to work. She had been very sad when Pierre had sold out but she had understood. She obviously had a great affection and respect for my elder brother and they had clearly been good friends as well as colleagues. She knew all about his history and his desire to find out more about his father.

I got up and brought out Dad’s picture and showed it to her. She had seen the tiny copy that Pierre had but she was fascinated by the larger framed version.

“Wow,” she said. “There’s really quite a family resemblance isn’t there? You all seem to have something of him in you. With Pierre it’s the shape of the head. I can see his mouth and chin in you and that’s definitely Mike’s eyes.”

I told her a bit about myself, my career, Liz’s early death and Callum out in Australia. I told her about Heather and something about Mike. Our upbringing and education, which had been so different from France.

She told me how delighted Pierre was at having discovered an unknown family.

“He seems to have been rejuvenated by about ten years. It’s great for him.”

“And how about you? Where’s home? No husband or kids?”

She smiled. “No. Unfortunately – or fortunately, I’m not sure – I found out in my early twenties that I couldn’t have children. Most guys want them and I never found anyone that I wanted to see over the breakfast table every morning for the rest of my life. It’s no big deal. I can have a bit of fun when I want to and move on when I feel smothered. I’ve been very successful in my career and have the money to enjoy complete freedom.”

Half of me could understand that but the other half, far larger, thought back with affection to the wonderful years I had had with Liz.

I asked her how she was getting on with the task in hand. “Slowly,” was the reply. She then proceeded to give me an idiot’s course in hacking, explaining about IP addresses, ultra high speed scanning programmes and a whole lot of other technical jargon which was way above my head.

“And they won’t know you’ve been in there?” “Not if I leave no trace behind.”

“And if you do?” “Well, first of all, they’d have to be pretty good. Most companies use external IT people and they don’t give the same service as your own internal people. But if they do find out it’ll because I left a trace. Normally you clean out all traces before you leave. But it’s not fool proof.”

“And could they get back to you?”

“What do you mean?” “Could they identify where the hacking came from?” “If I left a trace and they had the software, yes.” Sophie went back to work. I went back to pottering and the afternoon wore on slowly.

About four o’clock I heard Sophie call me. I went in to find her with a very pleased expression on her face.

“I’ve done it,” she said with glee. She waved a CD at me. I walked over and congratulated her. I took the disc from her hand. It looked pretty innocuous – like any other disc.

“On there is a list of all the investors in the three funds run by AIM and all the information about the funds’ investments over the last five years. I haven’t looked at the detail yet but it’s all there.”

“Great,” I said and asked her if she’d made another copy.

“Not yet,” she said, “But I’ll do it right now.” She stuck a new disc in the slot on the side of her machine, punched a few buttons. It whirred away for a minute or two and then ejected.

“We’ve now got two copies on disc and one on the machine. Now give me some quiet while I get rid of all the traces of my visit. It’ll take me a good half hour.”

I left her to her labours and went to tidy away the tools I had been using outside. Tomorrow we’d be able to have a good look at the inside workings of AIM and get to grips with Mr Purdy’s machinations.

Pierre arrived about ten minutes later, full of the joys of his golfing experience. He’d met a couple of members who had invited him to play with them and he had thoroughly enjoyed himself.

We interrupted Sophie to share the news of her success and opened a bottle of wine. We decided to meet the next day and take our time to analyse what we had found.

“Leave one copy here for safety,” I said to Sophie, and she put one on the shelf above my computer.

Pierre then got up to leave. “Come on Sophie, hurry up. Don’t forget I promised you a good dinner tonight. Do you want to come along, Bob?”

I declined. “No thanks. I’m going to have a good bath and an early night after all the work I’ve done outside.”

“Sophie, are you not finished yet?” “Nearly,” she said. “Stop hustling me.” Her finger tapping speeded up and a few minutes later she closed the lid of her machine and got up to go.

We decided to leave it with me until tomorrow. I wasn’t going to try to read the disc until Sophie came back the next day to show us how. I was scared I might wipe something out.

Hot bath. Meal in front of the TV, watching some European Tour event and then off to bed with a book – a reasonable evening programme for an oldie like me.

We started the next morning just after ten. I had nipped in to Cupar and stocked up with printer ink and paper. I guessed we were going to need it.

Sophie powered up my PC which was linked to the printer and slipped in the disc. The screen was suddenly filled with stacks of file references. Each had names and codes which meant nothing to any of us yet.

We opened up the first one which turned out to be a file of data concerning a certain Michael Baxter. It listed all his personal details – name, birth date, marital status, children, occupation or previous occupation. It turned out he was widowed, seventy-eight years old and lived in Inverness. He had been a veterinary surgeon and had one daughter (details given), who had presented him with two grandchildren. He had invested three years ago and had still two years to run. He had invested a hundred and thirty thousand pounds and had earned a return of three point two per cent which had been paid out to him in the middle of January each year - just over four thousand pounds to add to his pension.

We tried a few other ones. Each file had the same kind of information. There were between two hundred and fifty and three hundred of these files for each of the three funds, which meant an average investment of about a hundred and eighty thousand pounds.

Suddenly Pierre told Sophie to stop for a minute. “What’s that box over there on the left?” On the left-hand side of the screen there was a framed box with nothing in it. Sophie moved her mouse over it and up flashed a label with the words ‘Password Protected’.

We all looked at each other.

“Can you bust the password, Sophie?” I asked. “Should be able to,” she replied. “But it’ll take a bit of time.”

She pulled a set of discs from her briefcase and stacked them up beside her then proceeded to feed the top one into the slot.

“This could take an hour or two,” she told us. “So you two can go and have a walk or something while I work.”

Pierre and I took her at her word and went off for an hour up through the village to the hills behind. We walked gently, admiring the view and enjoying the fresh air. As we walked I pointed out some of the landmarks and gave him a brief history lesson about the area.

We returned after an hour and a half and I made us all a cup of coffee. I was in the middle of explaining to Pierre the history of Falkland and its palace when Sophie called through to us. She had found the password and could now show us what was written in the box.

For the particular file we had on the screen it said ‘Admitted retirement home March 2011. Trustee solicitors MacLean and Padgett, Stonehaven’.

We went back over some more files looking for other comments. There was one where the comment was ‘Careful, ex-accountant’ and another with ‘diagnosed dementia’.

Pierre then spotted something else – not everyone in the same fund was receiving the same rate of return. There seemed to be a correlation between the rates and the comments. Where ‘careful’ was noted, the return was higher than the poor guy who had dementia. Those in the hands of trustees seemed to be somewhere in the middle.

We sat back and looked at each other, horrified. They were systematically adjusting the rates according to his perceived danger of someone kicking up a fuss.

“Can you guys pull all this information out on to a spreadsheet so that we can really see the overall picture?”

“Sure. No problem.” “Let’s do it then. I’ll leave you to it. I’m going outside to think about this.”

I poured myself a stiff whisky, even if it was before noon, and went out into the garden. I was shocked to the core. I couldn’t believe that anyone could mount a scheme so brutally fraudulent and think he could get away with it. But the evidence was there. He must be creaming off millions.

How did he get it past the authorities? The answer must be that he had crooked accountants and lawyers that he paid to turn a blind eye. The authorities would accept what was lodged with them and as long as nobody blew the whistle he was printing money. He had carefully selected his target group so that it was unlikely that anybody would challenge him.

Inside the company I suppose a few people must be in on it but he would probably have sectioned off the work amongst different departments so that no one saw the whole picture.