No mother, of course. In fact, no picture of her anywhere, as if he had airbrushed her out of their lives. I guess it hurt too much. Something hurt inside me, too, as I gazed at the picture of the happy little group and thought of an appointment I had to keep the next day, a journey I had been blocking out. I had intended to go alone, but Marsha insisted on keeping me company. I didn’t want to think about tomorrow right now. Not yet.
So instead, I did what I had promised myself I would not. I put a hand on one of the buff files on the desk, the first to catch my eye. I stroked its smooth cover. It had a label. Kelly’s Brewery. I opened it. The first few pages were formal letters of appointment. Then, I came to some handwritten notes. The writing was difficult to decipher. I concentrated harder, but it meant nothing, just columns of crazy figures and equations. I had seen that writing before. Could it be, I wondered, as the door opened and Ross walked in.
“Those are private documents,” he said. I blushed scarlet.
“I..I... was just pouring the coffee.” It was a pathetic excuse.
“I think you’ll find the coffee pot is that thing with the handle,” he pointed to the tray. Moving to the desk, he picked up the pot and poured two cups, while closing the file with his free hand.
I took my place in the chair opposite him.
“You’re taller than I remembered,” I attempted to break the ice.
“Well, you’ve not grown-up any,” he screwed his eyes up and stared at me. I flinched. “Shall we get down to business...” he continued. “My time is…”
“I know… precious.”
I chose my words carefully. I wanted him to respect me, like me even. I thought of Ken Strachan and the interview that day in my office. Now the boot was on the other foot. I needed help.
“I’m investigating the missing pension money.”
“On what authority?”
“Authority?”
“Are you with the police, has a court appointed you? Is an interested party paying you?”
“I’m a journalist. The public has a right to the truth. The victims have a right to the truth.”
“Ah, the truth. We all know how truth is your industry’s particular stock in trade.”
It was a cheap jibe, so I ignored it.
“Ken Strachan asked me to investigate. He was an old...” somehow the word friend wouldn’t come out.
Ross cut me short. “I’m not interested in your scandal. All I want is to sort out this mess and get as much money for the members as I can. That’s my only concern.”
“The murders…”
“In the past year, I have had the misfortune of watching seventeen people die without any compensation for the loss of their life’s work and savings. I saw an old woman drop dead yesterday.”
“It was tragic.”
“And that’s what you’re after, isn’t it, Ms Lighthorn? Fodder for your newspaper? Scandals that sell copies.”
“No,” I protested, knowing there was at least a grain of truth somewhere in those words.
“I have a difficult job, which needs sensitive handling. I have a legal duty to do the best I can for those who’ve lost out, but I mustn’t raise expectations unrealistically.”
His face darkened.
“I don’t want any more dead bodies on my hands.”
“Of course, I understand.” I spoke softly. This was going as badly as it could, and I didn’t know how to turn it around.
So I softened my voice, and tried a different tack. “Did you hear they pulled a body out of the Clyde last night?”
“No…yes. Of course, I’ve heard. I’ve been with the police since dawn.”
Well that might explain a lot.
“Could it be the missing actuary who worked for Sherlock?”
“Maybe it is,” he threw at me. “Maybe this guy stole all the money for Kelly, so had to be silenced. What a story that would make for your readers!”
“It’s the truth my readers want.”
“Well, if it’s truth you’re after, it probably has nothing to do with anything. Some drunk lost his footing.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Actually, I don’t care. It doesn’t help me recover the cash.”
“Will you get it back?”
His voice softened and he loosened his tie as if relaxing.
“Not all of it, no.”
“How much is missing?”
“Even that’s not clear yet. We’re gathering the data. It depends on how much the Government will pick up, it has some liabilities, the records are a mess...” He touched the buff files in front of him irritably. “The cost of annuities are rising all the time.”
“Then there are your fees, of course. They’ll have to come out before anyone else gets a penny.”
He didn’t move a muscle. I thought of Sister Robert, and quickly apologised, before he threw me out.
“I’m sorry, that was unfair.”
He let it go.
“Mr Ross, the only valuation I’ve seen was done about six years ago. The fund was in surplus then. I’ve not seen the one Sherlock did three years later.”
“No, they don’t broadcast the numbers. According to Sherlock it was still roughly breaking even…assets and liabilities roughly matching at around £3 billion.”
“Can you trust these numbers?”
“Sherlock’s, what do you think?” he shook his head. “My first priority was to carry out a valuation. I haven’t filed the formal report yet. But I can only find £1 billion in the kitty.”
I sucked in a breath sharply. “More than £2 billion short.”
“Off the record, but probably half of that is markets.”
“But the other half...d’you know what happened to that, where it went?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“But you’re on the trail?”
“Investigating a number of avenues, yes.”
He opened a file on his desk, as if about to share something with me, then thought better of it and closed it again.
“What do you know about the Kellys?” he said.
“Not a huge amount...old family firm...got left behind in the brave new world of the 21st century. Not the first, won’t be the last.”
“That’s about it,” he said. “In their heyday, they were one of the most powerful families in Scotland. The brewery dates back to the late 1700s. It was Jack Kelly’s great, great, great, great grandfather who first began brewing the stuff. The conditions of working class life gave them a terrible thirst.”
“An escape.”
“The Kelly’s have always been teetotallers, did you know that? So many of the drinks’ families were. High church, too. Beer and whisky made their fortunes, but they had the sense never to touch a drop.”
“Kind of endearing, huh?”
“They got a good living out of it for a couple of generations, bought a nice house in town, an estate on the West coast, property on the islands and a place in society. But it was Mary Kelly’s husband, Robert….”
“Jack’s father?”
“Uh..uh. He was the one with the big plans. Took the business global.”
“Global?”
“Prohibition was his fortune. Supposed to have supplied half of Boston with booze at one stage. Made some very important political contacts.”
“Bootlegging, I see. And when prohibition ended?”
“Kelly was well-placed to put his business on a legitimate footing. He expanded into whisky, soft drinks, you name it. He even had a share in a small oil rig at one point.”
“That’s why the scheme was so big?”
“The American’s love all things Scottish, particularly Scots whisky,” he nodded. “Then, there was the Japanese market.”
“And the depression and the war.”
“Exactly. Our fellow man was never without a reason to want a drink.”
“So what went wrong?”
“Look round you any night you go out. What are we drinking the
se days? White wine, and the odd bottle of red. By the ocean. You can’t grow grapes in Scotland.”
“But the rest of the group?”
“Long gone. They sold it off bit by bit, to keep the brewery going. But they always hung on to the pension funds.”
“Ready for raiding?”
He opened the file in front of him, again.
“Here’s a story. Ask the Pensions Regulator about the monthly transfers of £15 million out of the fund, which started five years ago.”
This was jaw-dropping stuff, but I kept a stiff lower lip.
“Five years ago, Cameron’s was acting. What do they say?”
“Not much.”
“Was it legal?”
“That depends where the money went?”
“If the company pocketed it you mean?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that. Employers could help themselves to surpluses, if the funds had more money than they needed.”
“Which it was at the time of the Cameron valuation.”
“Exactly. But valuations are an art not a science.”
“They can be manipulated.”
“To an extent.”
“But Cameron is a very respectable firm, famous for being conservative.”
“They stopped acting pretty quickly afterwards.”
“By actuarial standards,” I couldn’t resist. He smiled.
“Indeed. And the guy in charge of the account retired suddenly. Lives in Hampshire now. I’m going down to see him next week. He must know something.”
“You’ll be wasting your time, I’m afraid. I’ve already done that one.” I gave him quick rundown of our visit.
“Oh no...” he looked downcast.
“So the valuations are key?” I continued.
“Key to keeping the directors, trustees and their advisers out of jail, yes.”
“If the valuations were misleading, either Cameron’s or Sherlock’s, then we could prove fraud.”
“We’d be in with a chance…”
“And you could sue their insurers?”
“And everyone else in sight, in theory. But proving wilful fraud is nigh on impossible. Very few claims have been successful.”
“The trustees...it’s their job to make sure this sort of thing can’t happen.”
“A toothless bunch, but anyway, if the advisers say it’s OK, there’s nothing they can do.” He was right, of course.
“Back to these transfers. You know, as well as I do, that the regulator won’t say a word.”
“Find a way to get the story out. But leave me out of it.” I nodded, wondering how on earth I could pull that one off. Hell, I could trust this man. If it came to it, I would take one God-almighty-seat-of-the-pants flyer.
He looked at his watch. My eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. It was 11.04am. I had overstayed my welcome. It was time to go. I needed to get moving myself, if I was to make my flight home.
“Thanks, for everything,” I stood, gingerly holding out my hand to say goodbye. He took it, and was still holding it, when I ran one more line by him.
“Have you heard anything about a missing child? Someone Strachan had befriended?”
He stared hard into my face, then dropped both my hand and his gaze.
“My job is to find the money,” he said.
How had I known this would not be news to him?
Chapter 20
12.45 Thursday, October 25,
Edinburgh Airport.
I made the flight by the skin of my teeth and had roughed out a story by the time it landed. Determined to get it away in the next morning’s edition, I took a cab direct from City Airport to the office. My first call was the pension police, or chief regulator. My regular contact Toby Cartwright picked up the phone.
“Julia,” he said. “To what do we owe this honour. Clean out of whipping dogs are we?”
Watchdogs liked to bar their teeth to ward off trouble.
“Toby, what can you tell me about a series of £15 million monthly withdrawals from the Kelly pension fund going back five years?”
“There is an investigation taking place into the whole Kelly affair, as you know perfectly well. We will have nothing to say until it’s completed.”
“So you’re denying you’re investigating these transactions?” I was determined to trap him
“I’m doing no such thing. I’m neither denying nor confirming.”
“So you’re not denying you’re looking into the Kelly collapse?”
“Heavens help me. The fund has imploded and people have lost their pensions. You know there’s an investigation under way.”
“But these transfers?”
“I’m saying nothing.” He paused. I waited…and waited…and waited. Sometimes, saying nothing could be the most productive modus operandi.
The strategy worked.
“The missing money went somewhere didn’t it, pet?” he said, if only to get me off the phone.
I put the phone down. I had all I needed. He had given me a green light to proceed, an off-the-record nod confirming I was working along the right lines.
I called Ludgate directly.
“Bloody hell, good work” he said. Then he began pushing me. “Where did the money go?”
“We don’t know.”
“Get back to your source.”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Who ordered the transfer?”
“We don’t know”
“Are we sure about this?”
“My source is impeccable.”
“What does the regulator say?”
“No comment.”
“Jesus,” his patience was running thin.
“Look let me write it. Then, see what you think. See if it’s strong enough to run.”
“OK.”
I put down the phone and began to type:
‘Watchdogs have launched an urgent investigation into £15 million monthly withdrawals from the disgraced brewery pension fund, which began five years ago.
The suspicious withdrawals came to light as part of an investigation into the collapse of what was once one of Britain’s greatest drinks giants.’
I included all the caveats such as the pension’s regulator refusing to comment, and a similar one from the independent trustee. Before filing, I put in a call to the liquidator and to the new company of Kelly’s Brewery. Both refused to take my call, simply saying ‘no comment’.
Andrew called a few moments after I had filed. My heart sank at his words.
“It’s a bit thin, now I look at it. I’ll see what the lawyers say.”
Within an hour Matthew Sharp was on the phone, firing questions, putting me through the wringer. I thanked God, though, he was on duty. Matthew was crushingly tough, but unlike many lawyers, he seemed to understand his job was to help us get stories into the newspaper, not spike them.
“We are just bandying around unfounded allegations,” he stated the obvious.
“No, we’re not. This has come from a senior source.”
“Name it.”
“I can’t.”
“We have to get someone to confirm something.”
“No one will.”
“Then we can’t run, it without being sued.”
“Truth is a defence.”
“Only if it is true.”
“It is.”
“That money was transferred or that it was suspicious?”
“I don’t know, both I guess.”
“You need another source.”
He put the phone down. I looked at my watch. Time was running out. It was 8pm. Where would I find another source at this time of night? I reached across my desk, and as I did, I sent a mug of coffee flying. I tried to catch it mid air, but made it worse, knocking it sideways. It came crashing down on the desk, where the mug neatly cracked in three. A sticky brown liquid spilled everywhere.
“Damn,” I felt something trickling down my inside leg, seeping right through my underwear. I st
ood up, shaking my skirt with one hand, stretching to grab the fragments of the wretched mug, to throw in the bin, with the other. As I stretched, I had a flashback of Jamie’s Aunt Sally bending to save the tea pot and cups, when helicopters turned her village into ‘Nam.
“Guess she gets more practice,” I thought, as I shook coffee grains off some soaked papers. As I stood there shaking, a light switched on in my brain.
“That’s it.”
I dialled Jamie’s number.
“Jamie.”
“Julia. Hear you had a great time with the old folks? Did you get what you wanted?”
“Yes, no, not exactly. Look, I’m desperate. I wouldn’t ask you.”
“Go on,” his tone was dry.
“When you were at Cameron’s, when you were working for Maurice Patterson...”
“Yeeees.”
“Look. It’s to do with the Kelly Brewery pension fund.”
“Obviously.”
“I’ve discovered that big monthly withdrawals were made, that may partly account for the missing money, going back to Cameron’s time.”
“Impossible,” he answered sharply “They’re too straight.”
“I’m not saying they did anything wrong. Not exactly.”
“Which means, not yet you aren’t. Where do I come in?”
“Did you ever see anything, or hear anything…”
Jamie was as honest as the day was long. If money had been misappropriated, he would not hesitate to shop the culprits.
“How much time do you have?”
I laughed down the line, indicating none.
“I have some old files. Never looked at most of it. Give me half an hour?” Sensible operators took discreet copies of everything they came across. It paid to be cautious.
He put the phone down. Precisely 30 minutes later he rang again. The friendliness in his voice had gone, replaced by a new grimness.
“There’s a letter here to Kelly’s bankers authorising monthly transactions to an account number. The sum specified is £15 million. Is that enough?”
“Will you fax it to me, I have to see it.”
“You keep me out of it?”
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