Текст книги "Trail of Greed"

Автор книги: John Dysart

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At that point I didn’t either but he was going to turn out to be exceedingly useful.

I reflected for a minute or two. I relayed the information to Mike about the conference next week.

“Does this Purdy character know you’re going to the conference?” I asked Pierre.

“Yes. I replied to the invitation I received. I suppose they need to know for numbers who is going to attend. I’ll probably get a badge at the entrance. That’s the way these things usually work.”

“Here’s what I suggest. You haven’t made any waves with these people yet?”

“No. I’m just one of their investors and I get their regular bulletins. I haven’t asked any questions about returns or anything like that.”

“OK . I’ll see if I can get an invitation for myself. We’ll go along independently. You stay perfectly friendly with your Mr Purdy and I’ll go along as if I was representing potential investors and see if I can stir things up a bit.”

“You mean bushwhack him?” asked Mike. “Something like that. I’ll ask a few questions and see if I can destabilise the guy. Pierre stays friendly, on the inside. Afterwards we compare notes. If things look suspicious we’ll plan what to do next. I’ll tap a few contacts and see if I can get an invitation. How about that?”

“And if we conclude that everything is above board, I’ll just decide whether to leave my money there or move it,” Pierre concluded.

That decided, I asked Pierre what he was planning to do over the next few days.

“A bit of touring,” he replied. “Maybe I’ll take my new clubs with me and get in a bit of practice so that next time we play I can give a better account of myself.”

Mike suggested that perhaps we should introduce Pierre to his younger sister. I had forgotten about that but obviously it had to be done.

I dropped Pierre off back at his hotel and Mike and me went back to Letham, having promised to join Pierre for dinner.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at home doing a bit of gardening. Mike is still fit enough to help me with some of the heavy stuff and I have to admit that I appreciated his help. Bad backs are not ideal for shifting heavy sacks of compost or for clambering around in trees to prune them.

Dinner was an opportunity for us to fill in lots of stories about Dad which Pierre really appreciated. It must be strange to discover who your father is at seventy years old. I couldn’t help thinking about all these years that we had had when we had taken him for granted and to realise that here was someone who would only learn secondhand. We did our best to regale him with anecdotes which we hoped would give him a picture of the man we had both loved and who had been an integral part of the forming of our personalities. He had been an example to us in so many ways that were incalculable.

The great thing about him had been the example he gave us and also the fact that he had let us get on with our lives – make our own mistakes – but was always there if we wanted an opinion or advice – and most of it was delivered with sound common sense.

Pierre let us ramble on. It was also an opportunity for Mike and me to reminisce. I discovered things about Dad through Mike that I hadn’t known about. We each had our own personal experiences that we hadn’t always had the occasion to share. So Mike and I benefitted from the memories as well as Pierre. It was a very satisfying evening, and, as usual, the food and wine were excellent.

We parted company rather late and I risked the fact that there would be no police on the two-mile journey home. If there had been I would probably have been in line for a few points on my licence, but the alternative of being driven home by Mike was not an option. He would have turned the balloon into all the colours of the rainbow. I was going to have to put him up for the night and let him go off home the next day. And on top of that he insisted on a night cap before crashing out at around two in the morning.

On Monday I was going to have to see about getting an invitation for the conference and phoning my wee sister to tell her that we had somebody we wanted her to meet. I had no idea what her reaction was going to be but I thought it best to keep it as a surprise rather than announcing the news over the phone. We had decided that we would organise a visit to Doune after Pierre got back.

Chapter 5

Sundays are not very different from any other day of the week when you’re retired. Mike woke late and set off for Forfar early in the afternoon.

I did the little housekeeping that I was now used to. A quick vacuum, change the bed sheets, stick on a wash. I have a cleaning lady once a week who does the rest and always leaves the pictures hanging not quite straight. I think she knocks them all slightly off the horizontal just before she leaves to give the impression that she has dusted them. I manage to keep the place in a reasonable state of cleanliness although Liz would probably be horrified.

The last few days had certainly been a change in routine for me and had set me thinking a lot about Dad. I looked differently at the various mementoes of him that were scattered around the house. His portrait on the wall. Other photos and keepsakes that I had inherited. I pulled out the drawer in the old desk and rifled through piles of old black and white photos which represented a pictorial essay of my childhood. Definitely a day of memories – almost all good ones.

I drifted through the afternoon and went to bed early after watching my DVD of The Man who Shot LibertyValance for the umpteenth time.

Fresh on Monday morning I turned my mind to Pierre’s suspicions of AIM and Mr Alan Purdy. I still had contacts in the financial world of Edinburgh so, after breakfast, I got on the phone. I had no trouble in fixing up an invitation to the conference on “Investing For You” which was to be held in a Conference Centre on Wednesday.

I was rather looking forward to my outing. The idea of asking a few questions designed to disturb appealed to me. Perhaps shaking the tree a bit might reveal something about the company and its boss.

I don’t exactly know why I had suggested that Pierre and I go separately. As I was planning to play the role of the awkward one I just figured that it might be better to have someone more or less on the inside. That way, between us, we might learn more. It seemed to make sense at the time.

Once that was fixed and I had planned when I would have to leave on Wednesday I had the rest of the day to myself.

As we had agreed, I phoned Heather to invite ourselves round at the weekend.

“Hi, Heather, how’s things?” She recognized my voice immediately. “Bloody awful if you really want to know. One of the horses has gone lame and I’m looking after Rory and Paddy for a few days as their parents have decided to clear off for a holiday in Spain. I’m seriously thinking of charging them for childminding services.”

I knew this was rubbish because she adored her two grandchildren but I let her get her frustration off her chest.

“How about you? It’s ages since we’ve seen you. What have you been up to?”

“Not much. The gee-gees.” “You’re not in to horses are you?” “No, my gee-gees are golf and gardening. Listen, I had supper last night with Mike and we thought we might invite ourselves over to see you at the weekend if you’re up to it.”

“Hold on a minute and I’ll check.” Heather’s calendar was usually pretty full but she came back to the phone with the news that Saturday was free if we wanted to come over for lunch. I confirmed and we then nattered for five minutes about the usual things – the weather, the horses, Oliver’s new car and the bloody government.

“By the way, there will be three of us, if that’s ok.” “Who’s the third?” she asked promptly. “Secret. Wait and see.”

“Mmmm – male or female?” She was continually hoping that Mike would settle down with someone but I figured that was a forlorn hope.

“No comment.” We left it at that and I hung up, agreeing that we would be there around noon on Saturday.

Having sorted that one out I thought I would take advantage of the clement weather and go over to Ladybank for a bit of practice. After all, Pierre was away trying out his new clubs and I was damned if I was going to let him beat me when he came back. I also needed to do some thinking about how I would approach question time at the conference.

Thoughts were careering around in my head in random order and I needed to get them straightened out. I’ve found that there are two ways to resolve this kind of a problem, both based on the principle of externalisation – either talk to someone or write them down. Automatically this process forces you to arrange them in some kind of logical order. Having nobody around to talk to and being too lazy to start writing there was only one other alternative – go off and do something completely different and come back to them later.

I decided to go over to the golf course and hit a few buckets of balls. I had recently bought a new driver and it needed getting used to.

Twenty minutes later I was standing on the practice ground with two buckets of balls at my feet and a seven iron in my hands.

A couple of loose swings to warm up the old muscles. Thwack! Reasonably straight, reasonably long, no pulled muscles. I then settled down to my habitual practice procedure. I took all the clubs out of the bag and lent them against the bench behind me and proceeded to warm up for ten minutes or so with a couple of shots with two or three of the short irons, taking plenty of time between each shot. There’s not a lot of point in hurrying. After all out on the course you only hit the ball on average once every two or three minutes. Banging off ten eight irons in less than a minute seems to me to be overdoing it. And who hits two shots, one after the other, with the same club (apart from the putter) – or perhaps the driver if you’ve put the first one out of bounds?

My theory is that you should allow yourself no more than five or six shots with one club, then move on to the next one. I then finish up with the last twenty balls or so as I would probably play a round – perhaps one shot with a four iron, then a seven, followed by a half shot with a wedge.

Thwack! About a hundred and forty yards straight down the middle. That’ll do. Take a different club. Close the face a bit and punch it and watch it keep nice and low, below the wind.

All thoughts of asset management have now evaporated completely. All I see is my little white friend sitting there waiting to be hit, or soaring up into the air designing a perfect curve to fall and bounce on as close as possible to where I intended.

I stop for a few minutes while my imaginary partner is searching in the rough for his wayward drive.

Our green keeper had set up a couple of old rugby poles at a distance of about a hundred and fifty yards and twenty yards apart – that being a reasonable average for the width of a green. At my level of golf nowadays I always aim for the centre of the green. If the hole is near the middle so much the better. If it’s towards one side – too bad. It just means I have a longer putt.

So I line up for the middle of the two poles. That allows me a deviation of ten yards either way to still hit the green. I once calculated that this gives me a margin of error of about plus or minus four degrees off centre if I want to land on the green at that distance. I wish I hadn’t done the calculation because it scares the hell out of me now whenever I line up my shot!

I finish up by going through the bag until I’ve hit three in a row with each club within the bounds of the two poles. Total concentration. Grip, feet, alignment – then empty the brain up in my head of all thoughts that might pollute the other brain – the one down in the gut that knows exactly what to do because he’s done it thousands of times before. I stubbornly try to hit the ball the way I used to thirty years ago. The technique is still there but the body is a lot less flexible and I have to adjust to that. It’s still a great game!

I wearily stack all my clubs back in the bag, lug it over to the car and wander in to the club house for a well-earned beer. Sitting in the bay window overlooking the eighteenth green, watching a ladies foursome earnestly putting out as if the British Open was at stake, I rerun the video of the questions I might ask at the conference and the possible responses. My video could not have imagined the events that were to follow.

I did however have one idea which might be useful. I had a fairly good friend from the past who might be able to help me. We had been regular visitors to each other’s houses when Liz had been alive but when one of the couple is gone there is a tendency to lose touch. George and Helen had, if my memory was correct, a son, Steven, whom we had watched grow up and who had, after university, gone into financial journalism. He was a few years younger than Callum and the last I had heard was that he was working in Edinburgh. It would be interesting to know if he knew anything about AIM.

I got up to leave just as a slightly boisterous foursome came in for their nineteenth hole. I knew two of them quite well, especially the shorter dark-haired, pugnacious looking individual in the plus-fours.

“Morning Keith,” I said in passing. “Morning John. Had a good game?”

“Hallo, Bob. Not leaving are you? Stop a minute and have a drink.”

Keith and John were fellow members of the club with whom I had occasionally played in competitions. They were good enough characters. Keith, or as I should properly refer to as Sir Keith McDowell, was an extremely successful businessman who had taken over his father’s wholesale grocery business and built it up to become the largest chain of supermarkets in Scotland. He had recently been knighted for his success. Short and sturdy, with close cropped dark hair, going grey, he was a vigorous bundle of energy – the kind of man who never walked quietly into a room but bustled in, automatically turning heads. I didn’t know him that well but quite enjoyed his company. He played punchy golf, not much style but extremely competitive, and had a fund of rather dodgy jokes.

John Harris was a good friend who ran a veterinary clinic in the nearby town. Being in the heart of farming country and there being little competition, he had also been very successful in his career. Liz and I had got to know him years ago when we had had a dog and the friendship had developed from there.

The other two were unknown to me but were introduced by Keith as Gavin Reid, his lawyer from Edinburgh, and Peter Gibson. No further identification was volunteered for him.

I agreed to a very quick beer, not wanting to be unsociable. We chatted for a few minutes about our chances in the upcoming Ryder Cup. Peter seemed a harmless enough chap, a bit nondescript. He didn’t have much to say because, as usual, Keith monopolised most of the conversation. The lawyer from Edinburgh didn’t volunteer much. He kept himself rather reserved, in a lawyer’s observation mode. He was a bit overweight and balding. A rather supercilious air about him. His weak chin and round, slightly bloodshot eyes said to me that he probably drank a bit too much. My guess seemed to be confirmed when he ordered a refill – large gin and tonic – before I had even drunk half of my beer.

When I had finished my drink I left them to it, promising to give Keith a call soon to fix up eighteen holes.

“This time I’ll beat you,” he said with his usual competitiveness – half smile, half deadly serious.

“We’ll see”, I replied and bade them all goodbye. After a simple late lunch I got on the phone to George who sounded glad to hear from me and asked all the right questions about how I was surviving on my own. He confirmed that Steven was still in Edinburgh and seemed to be doing rather well. There was talk of a permanent girlfriend and Helen was starting to think about grandchildren. He gave me Steven’s office number and his home number and said he was sure he would be happy to hear from me.

I tried the office number but he was unfortunately unavailable so I thought I’d leave it until the evening.

I got through to him just after seven and he sounded both pleased and surprised. I gave him an update on Callum whom he asked after.

I then explained, in very vague terms, the reason for my call.

“Steven, you’re now working as a financial journalist if I understand correctly from your father?”

“Yep. And I’m quite enjoying it, although a lot of it is much less glamorous than it sounds. Ploughing through Annual Reports, interviewing boring old farts who are only interested in making money – but it pays the rent.”

“Can you help me on something? Do you know anything about Ailsa Investment Management?

“Do you mean AIM, the outfit run by a guy called Alan Purdy?”

“Yes.” “Why do you want to know? Thinking of investing?” “Oh, no. It’s for a friend of mine who asked me about them. I had never heard of them but I told him I would try to find out.”

“I don’t know much but I’ll ask around for you. Is it urgent? I do know they are giving a conference the day after tomorrow at the Caledonia Conference Centre. I’m going along.”

“Good, so am I. It’s at eleven isn’t it? Why don’t I meet you beforehand and we’ll have a coffee. It would be good to catch up.”

He was up for that so we fixed a time and a place and I hung up.

Chapter 6

I set off early on Wednesday morning to drive through to Edinburgh for my coffee date with Steven. I had decided that he could be a useful ally if it turned out that there was anything fishy about AIM and I was going to get him onside.

The drive down through Fife was, as always, nice and easy – easy from a traffic point of view and easy on the eye. Skirting round the east side of the Lomond Hills I drove down on the new fast road towards the Forth Road Bridge.

I have always loved the approach to North Queensferry. As a boy there had been no road bridge and we had had to make the crossing by ferry – a great adventure for a young boy.

But the old railway bridge had always been there – a magnificent monument to Victorian engineering skills. It is as much a symbol of Scotland as the Eiffel Tower is of Paris.

What makes it stand out so dramatically is the fact that it’s not spoilt by a town or city at either end. It spans the Forth about ten miles east of Edinburgh and stands in superb isolation above the grey waters of the Firth of Forth.

It was the first steel structure in Britain and was opened in 1890. It required sixty-five thousand tons of steel and God knows how many rivets.

Long may it stand. Steven was waiting for me at the agreed rendezvous. After exchanging welcomes and catching up on his career progress, I told him about my “friend” who had invested some money and wasn’t too happy about the performance and wondered if there was anything dodgy going on. I explained how I had agreed to go along and be a bit provocative and see what the reaction was.

“Listen, I’m going to try to upset him. We think there’s something behind the non-performance. When we go along you don’t know me. We’ll go in separately, but we can meet up afterwards during the farewell coffee or whatever. If there is anything fishy going on and Purdy gets uptight by my questions, and then sees me talking to a financial journalist, then he’s not going to be a very happy man. If you want to write an article on what you’ve seen or heard that’s ok with me but we do it as if you and I have no prior connection. Keep my name out of it. Tomorrow we can speak by phone and compare impressions. Then we can decide on next steps. OK ?”

Steven listened attentively. I stressed that I didn’t want him writing about our suspicions yet. If he reported the meeting straightforwardly, that was fine, but he wasn’t to start publically surmising yet. If we thought things were not right and we started digging he would be kept informed and we could decide together whether to go public or not, and when.

“Fine by me. Maybe I’ll get a good story out of it.” Little did he know that he was going to get several stories out of it.

As I entered the foyer of the vast glass building, a monument to modern architecture, having laboriously ascended the twenty-five granite steps leading up to the enormous revolving doors, I was asked two or three times if I needed any help. Was I perhaps lost? Was I sure I was in the right building?

I guess that jeans and brown leather loafers, topped off with a bright canary yellow, open-necked shirt, and covered with a light brown canvas jacket were not customary in this environment but I didn’t give a damn. I wanted the attention. I was past the age of needing to conform and I was determined to enjoy myself.

I walked up to the reception desk manned (or womanned?) by three bright young things, all smiles and lipstick, short skirts and plunging necklines, who dutifully gave me my badge and my welcome pack – a neat little canvas bag with logos plastered all over it containing the programme and a few advertising leaflets – and I was permitted to pass through into the auditorium.

I had procured an invitation through one of the few remaining contacts that I had in the Edinburgh financial world, so my badge carried my name but no company identification.

The auditorium was about a quarter full which gave me plenty of scope to choose a seat in a suitably strategic position. I chose one toward the middle, about five rows back from the front, right in front of the table behind which the various presenters would be sitting. I was pretty sure I would be noticed.

The auditorium gradually started to fill up as people straggled in, mainly in groups of two or three but with the occasional person on their own. It was a typical cross section of an audience for such an event – a couple of dozen elderly grey – or white-haired gentlemen in suits, shirts and ties – the old school, all around my age – a few little old ladies clearly there to keep an eye on what was happening to their savings, then the next generation: mostly male, most in their twenties, all texting furiously on their iPhones or consulting their iPads and ignoring everyone around them. I think if you asked them afterwards what the colour of the seats was or roughly how many people were there, they wouldn’t have a clue.

Perhaps thirty per cent of the younger generation was female – power-dressed in black or grey business trouser suits, sporting large “designer” handbags, (what is a “designer” handbag? I would have thought that every single handbag in existence had been “designed” by someone!), tossing their hair to the side to be able to slide the mobile phone against their ear. Heads tilted, earnest conversations taking place. The occasional wave to someone who passed. It gave the definite impression that it was all for show. Why not go out into the corridor to phone?

Two of the younger males sat down next to me – not so much as a “good morning” – and I received a full whiff of scented gel, mixed with the strong musky perfume of the girl in front. Fortunately on my other side I had a couple of guys of my generation who voiced the standard greetings and we exchanged a few normal comments about the weather, the traffic and last week’s rugby match. At least it was human contact.

At the appointed hour the three conference presenters mounted the four short steps at the side of the stage and took their places behind the table, each behind their own name plate. If they had got it right Mr Alan Purdy was sitting in the middle. I looked at him with interest. This was the man I had come to see. This was the guy that Pierre suspected was ripping him off.

He was about six feet tall and I guessed his age at around fifty-two or fifty-three. His face was starting to round out, the cheek bones no longer prominent and the beginnings of a jowl around his chin. The eyes under the slightly bushy eyebrows were blue and gave off the impression of a certain degree of intelligence. This impression was strengthened by a large forehead. He was smartly dressed in a three-piece suit, a blue and white striped shirt and a bright emerald green tie. A matching handkerchief had been thrust casually into his top pocket.

He was overweight – not yet dramatically, but on the way. But it was the mouth that bothered me. Set above a weak, slightly receding chin, his mouth was narrow, held in place by soft thickish lips. The overall first impression was of physical strength and relative good looks – a combination that, if not imbued by humility, tends to develop a liking for power. But that was only a first impression. I hoped that during the conference he would show more of the kind of man he was.

The master of ceremonies walked on to the stage, microphone in hand, beaming at everyone and proceeded to announce the beginning of the conference. Everyone quietened down. The younger crowd dutifully switched off their telephones; the older contingent folded away their newspapers.

This was probably the culmination of a couple of months of earnest work by the man with the microphone and he was basking in the attention. I won’t describe him because he didn’t really have very much to him that made him stand out. He was just one of these guys that do this sort of thing and as far as I was concerned he could have his moment of glory.

He told us how delighted he was with such a large attendance for the fourth annual conference on “Investing for You” (with a nice commission for him, I thought to myself), and proceeded to introduce the speakers. Each name was greeted with polite applause, a little bit more for Mr Alan Purdy, Chairman and Managing Director of Ailsa Investment Management, but not from me. I’m sparing with my applause – certainly when no one has done or said anything yet. Why should you applaud someone just for turning up? If what the speaker has to say is worth it, I’ll willingly applaud – at the end.

There were to be three presenters who would each speak for about half an hour and there would be twenty minutes of question time after each presentation, announced the MC. Mr Purdy, who was clearly the star of the show, would be speaking last – after a coffee break.

I was not in the least bit interested in the presentations on “Succession Planning” or “Tax-effective Investing”. I would let them drift by. Mr Purdy’s presentation was entitled “Winning with the Big Boys”, sub-titled “How the man in the street can gain as much as the large corporate investors”. Why he couldn’t have thought up a title which was self-explanatory and didn’t need a sub-title to explain what it meant I don’t know. Probably there was some deep marketing philosophy behind the idea.

The elder contingent listened with attention to the discussion on Succession Planning, which was not surprising. The question session lasted about fifteen minutes and various people could be seen taking notes. After all, if they could pass on as much of their wealth to their children and grandchildren without the taxman grabbing half of it, why not?

Needless to say, each discourse had been accompanied by a bloody Power Point presentation. The “Succession” man treated us to a plethora of family trees with arrows flying all over the place. There was even one which simulated a situation of two men who had formed a civil partnership and adopted two kids, one of which had produced two grandchildren!

The taxman’s contribution was a series of slides containing reams of words and numbers and percentages. He proceeded to read them to us, presumably on the basis that he thought we couldn’t read them ourselves.

In spite of the fact that he had announced that we would all receive a hard copy afterwards, the younger generation earnestly scribbled away on notepads. He overran his time by about ten minutes, but that didn’t really matter because there were only two questions at the end – both of which were unnecessary because the answers had already been given in the presentation.

We had a short break for coffee in the lobby. I knew nobody, apart from Pierre and Steven, so I stayed off on the side, observing the sheep networking. After a couple of minutes a lady nervously approached me and held out her hand.

“Good morning,” she said somewhat nervously. “Are you enjoying the conference?”

I smiled down at her. She looked about ten years older than me, in her mid-seventies perhaps and was wearing a powder blue suit, the jacket over a white blouse adorned with a pearl necklace. Nothing to indicate poverty or wealth. Just a nice person. Her hair was white and neatly kept. She was sporting a black patent leather handbag, clutching a brown foolscap envelope under her hand bag arm and trying not to spill the coffee in her other hand.

“Here, let me help you.” I took the cup from her, placed it on the table beside us and turned back to answer her question.

“To be honest, the first two presentations bored me rigid. I really just came to hear what Mr Purdy has to say.”

“Me too. I’m Alice Hetherington, by the way. I don’t know anybody else here so I hope you don’t mind me importuning you.”

“Not at all. My name is Bob Bruce.” “Originally Robert, I suppose,” she said with a smile. “How did you guess? What brings you here?” “Well . . .” she said hesitatingly, and looked intently at me. “I’m also very interested in what Mr Purdy has to say. You see, I’m a client of his and I’ve given over most of the money my late husband left me to AIM for them to manage. I’m not very good at financial things but I’m a bit concerned about what they are doing with it.”

My antennae moved into gear. “Go on,” I said. “Well I don’t know if I should. You look like a nice, trustworthy person – certainly different from all the others here – but I don’t know you.”

“Mrs Hetherington – may I call you Alice? I’m basically here for the same reason as you. Not for myself, but for a friend who expressed exactly the same concerns to me. I promised him I’d come along here and listen to what they have to say and see if I could help him.”

“Are you, or were you, a financial person?” “To a degree. Let’s say I know more than my friend.” “And certainly more than me,” she went on. “The trouble is that I live up in Perthshire and I’m not exactly surrounded by smart financial management people. Our family lawyer knows a fair bit about conveyancing but that’s about it.”