Silver City Scandal

by Gerald Hammond

He finished, turned off the tape-recorder and switched to a less formal manner. ‘This is the pistol,’ he said, laying the weapon on the desk. ‘I’ve unloaded it. There may still be some of his prints to be found. And here,’ he produced three of his polythene bags, ‘I have the odds and ends from Galway’s pockets, the same from McHenge’s, and what I could find in McHenge’s car.’

  ‘You realise,’ Tooker said severely, ‘that by sending yon lad out to the rig you’ve kept yourself from prosecuting him for the attack on yourself, or even using it in evidence in the other matter.’

  ‘We knew that,’ Jeremy said. ‘But there was only Keith’s word for it. And at least we’ve prevented him from walking out on bail like his friend and lousing up our attempts to find the man behind him.’

  ‘There is that,’ Tooker admitted. ‘But these bits and pieces have lost value as evidence, being gathered up in this way. For a’ that, we’ll just get a wee bit of expert help. Most of our forensic work’s done from Glasgow, but there’s a lad I ken fine in the university, lectures in forensic science. We can see what he makes o’ it a’. First, though, we’ll just take a wee keek ourselves.’

  He came and stooped over the desk. His fingers were surprisingly deft in manipulating the two ballpoint pens with which he sorted through the miscellaneous junk. The cigarettes and matches from McHenge’s pockets seemed to interest him. He poked out the tray of matches, tilted the outer box to look inside and grunted sadly.

  ‘To go by the notebooks of the officers who searched the place,’ he said, ‘there was an empty box of Bluebell matches found near the bottom of yon gulley. The inside was scorched, as if the mannie had the habit of sheltering his match from the wind by striking it and then holding it in the hollow end of the box. But no such luck!’

  They were interrupted by the arrival of Sheila, accompanied by a youth to carry the boxes of computer hardware and followed by the boffin from Shennilco. The last arrival delighted Keith by being exactly what a boffin should be – bald and serious with thick spectacles. He answered to the name of Grenville. Hugh said later that not even the Shennilco Personnel Department had ever learned his first name if, indeed, he had one.

  The others retired into the inner room while Mr Grenville set up the computer. Sergeant Tooker sat at the desk and resumed his search. Sheila produced a pair of tweezers which helped him greatly, but for the most part the search only revealed the sort of trivia which any man might collect. Galway’s pocket diary contained a list of expenditures which were presumably listed for reimbursement, but there was no significance to be found in them.

  McHenge’s wallet, however, made the sergeant’s eyebrows climb slowly up his forehead. It held rather more cash than an honest man needs to carry, together with credit cards and driving licences in several different names.

  ‘Galway’s was the same,’ Keith said. ‘But I had to hand it over with him.’

  ‘They could have held him on that alone if they’d wanted,’ Tooker said. ‘But your name’s a dirty word just now – nae bogger likes being wrong – so they didn’t oppose bail.’ He used the tweezers to extract a folded slip of paper from the wallet and opened it with one of the pens. His eyebrows rose even higher and he whistled. ‘Dinna’ touch,’ he said, ‘but take a wee look at this.’

  The commonplace, unlined paper carried a message printed neatly in block capitals with a black ballpoint pen: WATCH K.C. IF HE GETS WARM, COOL HIM. BURN THIS.

  ‘He’s a daft gyte to have kept it,’ Tooker said. ‘But if they was a’ wise, we’d not catch any of them.’ He looked at Keith. ‘K.C. would be yourself?’

  ‘Who else?’ Keith said.

  ‘Fairly that. M’hm. There’s a faint imprint from the page above,’ Tooker said, ‘but damned if I can make anything o’t. I’ll get this to the forensic lad right away.’ He got to his feet and stood silent for a moment, swaying from foot to foot. ‘I’ll awa’ then.’ But his eyes were on the boots behind the door. ‘Damn it, that reminds me. Did those belong to McHenge? There was something about boots . . .’

  ‘If there was,’ Keith said, ‘it didn’t come out at the trial.’

  ‘It’d not have seemed revelant. In a murder inquiry, ilka wee bit paper gets lifted, and there’s aye plenty o’t, folk being the heedless buggers that they are. And there’s that much paper these days a man only has to pull out his snotterclout and he drops a piece. Well now, among all the scraps lifted from the farm where they found the body, there was a receipt from yin o’ they grand stores around George Street. It was for a pair of black calfskin boots like these, and dated just twa days afore the murder. The lassie in the shop minded the sale fine and said she’d know the mannie again. A wee man, she said, wi’ a thin face and a head so narrow you could slip it under a door.’

  Chapter Nine

  Mr Grenville, crossing with Sergeant Tooker in the inner doorway, announced that the computer was now in commission. But Keith paused before moving. ‘We have a chance of proving that McHenge did the murder,’ he said.

  ‘Not good enough,’ said Jeremy Prather. ‘Convict a hired gun of the killing without implicating his employer and it may still be generally believed that he was hired by Hugh. And if we send him up the river alone, you can bet McHenge will implicate Hugh out of spite. We need the client.’

  Keith shrugged. ‘We still need luck,’ he said. ‘He’s covered his tracks almost all the way, using a closemouthed, hired killer who’s never even seen his face. And we can’t even make the most of what evidence we find. The police would have a team in sterile clothing picking it up into sealed bags and registering them from hand to hand into the laboratory and back. The way we’re working, half our evidence may be inadmissable.’

  ‘It’s not forensic evidence that’ll sink the client,’ Jeremy said. ‘What’s more, Sergeant Tooker said something to the point. “Dod McHenge is a pro”, he said. “He’ll gie little away. Find me the client and a wee bittie of evidence, and in time he’ll shop the both of them.”’

  ‘He could be right,’ Keith said doubtfully. ‘Let’s see what else we can get.’

  They gathered around the computer. Keith had brought the disc, still embedded in the novel for safety. He slipped it out and handed it to Mr Grenville.

  ‘As I understand it,’ Grenville said, ‘you want me to get some highly confidential and possibly protected information off this disc. You’re sure that this is the same hardware throughout?’

  ‘As sure as I can be,’ Keith said. Grenville’s voice was pedantic and southern English, but Keith did not hold that against him. Some of his best friends were Englishmen.

  ‘And I gather that the lady was a skilled programmer,’ Grenville said thoughtfully. ‘With this system it would be almost impossible to inbuild a protection against printing out but rather easier to embed a secret command to erase if given the wrong instruction. So first of all we’ll use the printer to print out everything on the disc in its fundamental hexadecimal notation. What we call a hex dump. You follow me?’

  Without waiting for the affirmative reply which he would not have received, he put the disc into the disc-drive, threaded the end of the computer paper into the printer and began keying in. The printer made zipping noises and the computer paper unfolded itself in a long chain which Sheila refolded neatly onto the wire rack. The video screen registered an incomprehensible jumble of letters and numerals.

  After some minutes, when there was a stack of closely printed paper an inch thick on the rack, the printer stopped suddenly.

  ‘Now,’ Grenville said. ‘At least if we lose it we have a hard copy and we can put it all back – at the expense of many hours of the most tedious work imaginable. Let’s see what we’ve got.’

  He keyed again. The video screen showed a menu and then a short index of six file references. More keying and a summary of the accounts of one of Miss Spalding’s clients appeared on the screen. ‘I take it that this isn’t what you’re looking for?’

  Jeremy Prather studied the figures, l
eaning forward and breathing heavily. ‘The tax inspector might be more than just interested,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think that we are.’

  ‘Probably just a bland front,’ said Hugh, ‘to make Nosey Parkers like us think we’ve seen it all. Print it out anyway.’

  In a few more minutes they had a print-out of the six sets of accounts. ‘If there’s anything for us here,’ Jeremy said, ‘I can’t see it.’

  ‘Those are the unprotected files,’ said Grenville. ‘From here on, it gets more difficult. The file names aren’t on the catalog and she may have used an embedded command to erase if the wrong code is used. I suppose you’ve no clues as to what names she might have carried in her head?’

  ‘Not the least idea,’ Keith said. ‘Presumably there’s more to come. She wouldn’t have hidden the disc so carefully just for a few mildly questionable accounts.’

  ‘Of course there’s more to come,’ Grenville said impatiently.

  ‘How could you possibly tell?’

  ‘Because the hex dump was much too long for the little we’ve got out so far.’ Grenville’s voice held all the contempt of the expert for the tyro. ‘Now, do we start trying the lady’s initials or her birthday or what? Forwards or backwards? It’s up to you.’

  ‘Go back to the catalog,’ Keith said.

  Grenville touched the keys. The video screen flicked. It showed the bottom of the menu followed by a small panel of disc information, all negative. Below were the reference letters of the six files which they had already seen, arranged in two short columns of three.

  ‘Let me try to understand,’ Keith said. ‘It’s possible to file information without the file names appearing here?’

  ‘Perfectly possible,’ said Grenville. ‘In fact, you can see that it’s been done. The two columns aren’t level. So there’s a blank at the top of one column. That could happen in either of two ways. One would be if she keyed the first command on the menu – Save Entire Text – without giving any file name at all. I don’t think she’d do that, because a careless user could get access by mistake. So what I’d do if I were trying the same thing would be to turn that into a command to erase the sensitive files. The other way would be to give it a file name using only the red function keys.’

  ‘For which we’d need a code?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Keith looked helplessly at the ten red function keys. They were numbered from f0 to f9. ‘It could be something like her phone number?’

  ‘Easily. But it could just as easily be a word. After all, it’s only a mnemonic. You’d call f0 A, f1 B and so on. After f9 you’d start again at the beginning.’

  ‘And if we guessed wrong we could wipe off exactly what we want to know?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  Keith glared at the screen, willing it to give up its secret. He was barely aware of an interruption but glanced up to see Hugh Donald accepting a package from a messenger at the door. As he looked back to the screen his eye passed over the novel in which the disc had been hidden. Poor Jenny said the dust jacket. And suddenly he knew.

  ‘Got it!’ Keith said, so loudly that the others jumped. ‘Miss Spalding told her friend that her name was on it. At the time, Jenny only thought that it was an oblique way of saying that she was mentioned in Miss Spalding’s will; but in the end that was what made me look harder at this particular book. I think that she used the name Jenny.’

  Grenville made a chart on a scrap of paper. ‘That would probably mean nine-four-three-three-four,’ he said. ‘That’s if she didn’t put any more twists into it. Shall I try it? Forward or backward? Remember, if we get it wrong we may be in for a long delay while the computer gets fed again manually.’

  In her photographs, the brilliant Miss Spalding’s mouth had shown a sardonic twist. She would undoubtedly have thought of her friend as backward and somehow Keith was sure that such an oblique but caustic comment was in keeping with her character as he was beginning to see it. ‘Backward,’ he said.

  ‘Try it,’ said Hugh Donald. ‘It’s as good a guess as any other.’

  Grenville keyed. There was a flicker and the screen was filled with neat tabulations. ‘Eureka!’ he cried with unusual joviality.

  Hugh Donald leaned forward and switched off the video screen. ‘This is for my eyes only in the first instance,’ he said. ‘Print it, don’t even look at the print, just give it to me with the disc and then switch off. What’s on here is probably an explosion looking for somewhere to happen.’

  *

  While Sheila and Mr Grenville were sent out to take an early lunch, Hugh Donald took the print-out into the inner room, and when at last he invited them to join him he kept it out of view from Keith and Jeremy. It was clear that Hugh had abandoned his passive role and for the moment had taken over, along with the chair behind the desk, quiet command of the proceedings.

  ‘First off,’ Hugh said, ‘I may as well tell you something which isn’t on the tapes and which I’d been hoping not to have to say aloud. My depute was on the fiddle while I was out of the way. The signs are unmistakable. Large orders going to firms on my personal black-list – firms which may not be dearer but which certainly don’t give the same value for money as our usual suppliers.’

  ‘What happens to him now?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Fired,’ Hugh said. ‘There’s never any point prosecuting. You can’t prove that a back-hander passed, although I’m damned sure that he’s salted away a fortune more than big enough to make up for losing a job. Unfortunately, he’s also refusing to say a word, not even “Good morning”, and we can’t put any pressure on him because he knows that we can’t prosecute.

  ‘Secondly, the messenger brought me three lists – on disc, as you suggested, Keith. One list of the people who might have been glad to see me out of the way. Another of men who bought Armas Alicante sidelocks. And a third list of men who had guns of that make altered.’

  ‘With details of the alterations?’

  ‘As far as we could get them, yes. Not all shops are as meticulous as yours. And I’m afraid that some shops weren’t as helpful as they might have been. But it may give us something interesting to compare with what we can get from this print-out. A quick scan suggests that this is far from being a laundry list.’

  Hugh took another plunge into the print-out. After a few seconds he whistled.

  ‘The lady had interesting laundry?’ Jeremy asked.

  ‘Very. The first part deals with payments into bank accounts. Switzerland, Monaco, Andorra, you name it.’ He studied in silence for another minute. ‘The deposits seem to correspond roughly with what follows on. They start small, several years ago, and escalate in size and number. No withdrawals. They must total . . . nearly a quarter of a million.’

  ‘She was planning to retire with her girlfriend soon,’ Keith said. ‘Somewhere warm, where people wouldn’t bother them.’

  ‘That figures. The rest seems to be a record of transactions. I suppose she’d need a reminder of what information she’d sold to whom for how much, and this is it. She’s used a sort of shorthand for names which isn’t always very intelligible. I can read some of them because I knew of the contracts. For instance, CNBR has to be Cuthbertson and Bauer. Others will take some figuring out. But the nature of the deals is clear enough, and, let me tell you, there’ll be some red faces if this has to come out.’

  ‘We’ll need it as evidence,’ Jeremy said.

  ‘Over the dead bodies of twenty or thirty of Aberdeen’s most respected citizens,’ Hugh said. ‘Although, if it’s a choice between my good name and theirs, guess who wins. She seems to have started small, passing bribes and taking a cut. Sometimes the bribes went to a firm’s buyer, sometimes to an estimator, for information on the bids of rivals. There are some payments here which don’t seem to be linked with anything else, so I don’t think she was above a little blackmail.’ His voice was becoming slower and more absent as his eye raced ahead through the welter of corruption. ‘There are one or two deals here
which I wondered about at the time. Now I see why one of our contracts for rig maintenance was won by the wrong firm and by a tiny margin.’

  Hugh fell silent and scanned on, turning over the folds in the long print-out. Suddenly he looked up. ‘Either she was planning to skip out by October at the latest or else she’d gone clean off her rocker. Possibly both. And if she was getting above herself and planning to vanish with her friend to some small Adriatic island, she could have been putting the bite on almost anybody on this list.

  ‘Since about last June, she’d been selling figures to more than one tenderer. As far as I can see, some of the figures were her own guesses, which means that she could pocket the whole of the slush money. It would have blown up in her face as soon as the first tenders were opened and somebody found that he’d got a contract when he thought he’d bought his rivals’ bids. Or sooner, if the wrong two men happened to meet and swap a little oil industry scuttlebutt.’

  ‘I suppose that’s a motive for murder,’ Jeremy said doubtfully.

  ‘Suppose?’ Hugh almost shouted. ‘No suppose about it. Look at it this way. Some executive pays out ten or twenty K for information which should get his firm a big contract. But he’s sold a pup. First, his head’s on the block. Second, the story mustn’t get out or he’s unemployable in the oil industry from then on as anything loftier than tea boy. And, third, he’s therefore wide open to blackmail. Oh yes, there’s motive for a dozen murders here.’

  ‘It won’t be much help if you don’t let us see it,’ Keith pointed out.

  ‘You go to lunch,’ Hugh said. ‘Take your time. I’ve got to do some telephoning. There are a few names I can’t guess, and sometimes there’s only what seems to be the name of a firm and I don’t know who the individuals would be. But give me an hour or so and I’ll bloody well find out.’

  ‘You phone from in here,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll sit in the outer office with this.’ He took down the Armas Alicante sidelock from the top of a cupboard. ‘Our quarry will probably know by now that McHenge has vanished, in which case he may guess that we’ve got the goods. Jeremy can fetch us a carry-out apiece.’