Trail of Greed: Fighting Fraud and Corruption... A Dangerous Game (2 page)

“Go on,” I said. “Well, to cut a long story short, I am sixty-nine years old. I was born in 1944. I wasn’t the only boy in the village not to have a father. Some had been killed, some had gone home. When I was old enough to ask, my mother explained to me that my father had ‘gone away’. It was only later, when I was about ten, that I wanted to know more. She then told me that my father had been a young Scottish officer. He had been dropped into occupied France to liaise with the Resistance in preparation for the Normandy Landings. My mother was also in the Resistance and they had become firm friends. I suppose it is practically impossible for us to imagine the stress that these young men and women were under. It was only after he left that my mother discovered that she was pregnant. I was born and she raised me on her own. She never married and she kept a photograph of him beside her bed until she died about fifteen years ago.”

Pierre finished off his fish and sat back with a satisfied look on his face – a handsome firm-featured face, slightly tanned. His brown eyes turned on me as if hoping that I was interested.

I was. “So you’ve decided to trace back your roots?” “That’s about it,” he replied. “How far have you got? Is there any way I can help?” He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. He carefully extracted two photographs, lent forward and placed them on the table in front of me.

I set down my wine glass and picked them up. They were slightly faded and crinkled at the edges and he had clearly kept them in his wallet for years.

One was a formal studio photograph of a young soldier in officer’s uniform; the other had been taken outside and was of the same man, not in uniform this time, standing beside an attractive brunette, his arm around her shoulders. They were both smiling at the camera.

“This is your father and that’s your mother?” He nodded. “And you said that you’ve come over here to find out what happened to him?”

He nodded again. “But, in fact, you do know what became of him,” I said. “I know now – but I only discovered about a year ago. I had obviously wondered all my life and when I retired I decided to try to track him down.”

I sat back in my chair and looked at him closely. He said nothing but was watching me attentively.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” I shot at him. “Absolutely not. These two photographs sat on my mother’s bedside table for about forty years. As I said, she only discovered she was pregnant after he had had to leave to go back to Britain. She hadn’t expected to hear from him again because she knew he had a fiancée back in Scotland. They had both known that their relationship would be temporary. There was a war on and at that time nobody knew how it was going to turn out. Bearing in mind that they lived constantly under the threat of arrest, or worse, they lived out their romance knowing that it would be short lived. He never knew of my existence.”

I managed to register most of what he was saying whilst my mind was racing in all sorts of directions.

“My mother absolutely forbade me to attempt to find out what had happened to him. As she said, he might well have been killed. Better to remember what we had, she used to say. However, after she died and I retired, curiosity got the better of me and brought me over here.”

My consternation was slowly subsiding. I picked up my glass and took a large mouthful of that delicious wine and let it roll around in my mouth before swallowing it gently. I put the glass back down and looked at him again. Still that same half-nervous, half-questioning expression on his face.

I held up the photograph of the smiling couple. “I’ve never seen this photo in my life, but this one,” holding up the studio portrait, “has hung on the wall of my mother’s bedroom all my life.”

“And . . .?” Although I had had a shock I somehow adjusted to it rather quickly. I suppose it was because I rather liked this guy.

I looked across at him. He was clearly nervous about my reaction. I shook my head slowly from side to side and allowed my mouth to form a half-smile.

“The randy old bugger!” I said, slowly, pausing gently on each word.

This man’s father was the same man that I knew as my father. It sounded incredible but there was the evidence in front of me. There was no way he could otherwise have had a copy of the photo I knew so well. My sister and brother also had copies.

I had to believe Pierre’s story. It rang true. And, as Pierre had said, I’ll bet Dad wasn’t the only one.

It was perfectly understandable that such circumstances could have happened. I knew Dad had spent a year in France but knew no details. We kids had assumed that it must have been very dangerous. Whether his relationship with Pierre’s mother had been love or simply an intense friendship between two people living on the edge I would never know but, knowing Dad, I figured that I understood how it could have happened. He had come back to my mother and they had had a very happy marriage so I felt no need to criticise him. He had never known about the pregnancy, how could he?

I noticed that the wine bottle was almost empty. “So, as it seems that I’ve just discovered I’ve got an older half-brother – and he’s paying for the dinner – I reckon you’d better order another bottle.”

Pierre’s face relaxed into a contented smile. He clearly had hoped that I would not be too shocked by the news and he made appropriate signs to the waiter who appeared shortly with another of the same.

Conversation after that was naturally a little slow as we both adjusted to the fact that the news was out. I would occasionally stop in mid-sentence and shake my head in surprise.

We both were intensely curious to explore each other’s experiences of the last sixty-odd years. He was clearly desperate to know about his father but didn’t push too hard while I took my time to get used to the idea. I was fascinated to learn about his upbringing in Normandy and what he had done with his life and conversation started to flow more and more smoothly in direct correlation to the diminishing level of the wine in the bottle.

The manager eventually threw us out – or politely asked us to vacate the restaurant – at about half-past eleven. By then I was in no fit state to drive so he kindly offered to drive me home. Pierre and I parted at the door, agreeing that we should give ourselves a day to get used to our new relationship.

Just before parting company one of my habitual off-piste thoughts came into my mind.

“Pierre, you don’t by any chance play golf, do you?” “Where did that question come from? Yes, actually, I do.”

“Good or average?” “I used to play to eleven or twelve, but that was a good few years ago.”

I smiled. “Right. It must be Dad’s genes. Day after tomorrow I’ll take you to my club. It’s very near here and he was a member there for as long as I can remember.”

Pierre said he’d be more than happy and I was levered into the car to be escorted home.

Next morning I awoke rather late. Although it was May, the night had been very cold and there was still rime on the grass at ten o’clock. But the sky was clear and the air was fresh, which was more than could be said for my head. I was getting past it, I said to myself. A whisky before dinner, a full bottle of Bordeaux and a couple of brandies after. There was a day when I would have taken that in my stride. Not now.

The state of my head reminded me of the discoveries of the previous evening. I decided to go for a brisk walk up to the post office to get some milk, in the hope that the exercise would bring me more or less back to normal. Why did Mrs McLachlan‘s voice sound twice as loud as usual? I made it back home and headed off into the kitchen to make myself a cup of strong coffee.

I walked past Dad’s photograph on the wall. It was a larger, framed version of the one that Pierre carried around in his wallet. I stopped and looked at it with an affectionate smile. I’d walked past that photograph hundreds of times but from now on it was going to be with an added piece of knowledge.

“Well, Dad, how are you this morning?” I asked him. “I’ve just found out something about you!”

The expression on his face didn’t change – if it had I would have thought I was in Harry Potter country – but the eyes looked out at me, smiling. His silence about that year in France now took on another meaning. We had assumed that his reticence had to do with the horrors he’d seen or the friends he’d lost. I knew now that there had been another reason. What a pity we had not been able to talk about it. Perhaps if Mum had gone before him he might have let it out but that hadn’t been the case. She had survived him by four years and he would never have talked about something like that while she was still alive.

Next problem. How do I tell Mike and Heather? I had asked Pierre if he was aware that he had acquired, apart from me, another younger brother and a sister. He had known, he had told me, and I suggested he leave it to me and I would organise the breaking of the news to them. The question was “What was the best way to do that?”

Heather was eighteen months younger than me and we had been close playmates as children. We had, however, gone to different schools and different universities so our paths had separated. We remained good long-distance friends, seeing each other two or three times a year. Her world was very different from mine but we kept in touch. She had married a farmer and lived in the centre of the country outside Doune, where she had dedicated her life to her two kids and a never-ending collection of horses. She had always been keen on horses and had studied veterinary science at Edinburgh. It was through her work that she had met Oliver and that had settled her life for her. I wasn’t sure what her reaction would be.

Mike was a very different kettle of fish. Mike had come along six years after Heather, so he was my junior by seven and a half years, a difference which had meant that we had shared very little when we were young. When I was discovering the fair sex he was still playing with his Lego.

But we had both inherited the combativity and competitiveness of our father, expressed through different outlets. I confess to have done reasonably well at my rugby and cricket and had found that I could turn my hand to most sports. Mike also had that gift but took up pursuits that I had not – squash, hockey, biking and the like. The only area where we had a real common interest – and that developed later – was on the golf course.

Mike had gone into the army. He had discovered that if he joined up as a student he could earn a salary whilst studying. The only commitment he had had to make was to stay in the service for seven years after graduating. This didn’t bother him at all and he had stayed on after his seven years and carved out a satisfactory career for himself. He had been able to retire in his fifties with a perfectly adequate pension.

He had seen the world, with service in the various trouble spots across the disappearing British Empire, until he was, much to his regret, superseded by a younger generation. During the last fifteen years of his service he developed his administrative talents in a series of logistics postings. He had never married and now lived in Forfar, in striking distance of the Cairngorms, with Oscar, his black Labrador, where they could both continue to keep fit by wandering off into the mountains for a few days whenever he felt like it.

He was inordinately proud of his dog, claiming to have trained him to sniff out drugs at twenty metres, and he maintained that he could find his way home on his own from anywhere within fifty miles away. I hadn’t believed this piece of boasting and, a couple of years ago, Mike had proposed a bet (a green fee at Gleneagles) that he would prove it. We had driven forty miles up into the mountains and he had simply stopped out in the wilds, let Oscar out of the car and we had driven off back home. He had turned up two days later for breakfast. And on top of that Mike had beaten me three and two over the King’s course the next Tuesday.

I decided I would tell Mike first about his new brother and then we would both discuss breaking the news to Heather and Oliver.

I phoned Forfar and got him at home. “Hi, Mike, how’s life?” I asked. His cool, laid-back voice came back down the wire. “Fine, but unfortunately a bit quiet. I’ve been planning a hike but I’m going to have to delay it because the forecast is looking a bit dodgy.”

“Good,” I replied. “Fancy a bite to eat this evening? We haven’t seen each other in a while and I have to be over in Dundee this afternoon. Why don’t you drive down and I’ll buy you supper?”

We arranged a time and place to meet and I spent the rest of the afternoon going over all that Pierre had told me – trying to adjust to the concept of the newly-enlarged family.

Everything he had said had rung true and I found I liked him. I had absolutely no reason to doubt his story but, on the other hand, I had no way of checking any of it. Dad was dead and he had kept nothing from his time in France. Also, if it was all made up, what possible reason could Pierre have of inventing such a tale? It’s not as if there was an estate to claim or any potential material advantage that could come his way. Could there be some other motive? Then I remembered that he had said that there were two reasons for the dinner invitation. What could the second one be?

Mike arrived at the small Italian restaurant just five minutes after me. I was already seated at the table which I had reserved in advance. He breezed in, causing a few female heads to turn as he made his way over to me.

Although still a bachelor, and liking it that way, he had never had any trouble in attracting the opposite sex. He was not a big man but he had presence. His graying hair was kept short, military fashion, his features were clean cut, his skin tanned from his outdoor life and he projected an aura of total self-confidence, without any hint of egoism. I’m here, I enjoy life, take me as I am or leave it, it doesn’t bother me.

Not long after he had bought his current house and decided to settle down I had paid him a visit. I had been amused to discover that, in his living room, he had a collection of fifteen or twenty framed pictures on the walls and on the bookcases of attractive women of various ages and seemingly different nationalities.