by Rob Wyllie
He nodded. 'Yeah, money and power. Once they have it, it's so easily abused.'
'So what's this all about?' Jimmy said. 'This injunction thing.'
'Same old story,' McGinley said. 'Trying to shut up the press.'
Maggie smiled to herself. They liked to have it both ways, these journalists. All high and mighty when they printed the latest dubiously-obtained gossip about celebrities and royalty, banging on about the public having the right to know, but they weren't so happy when the establishment fought back.
They found a table in the corner where they could just about make themselves heard above the babble of the lunchtime customers.
'So what is that they - and I guess you mean Hugo Morgan - are trying to shut up?' Maggie asked.
'Dirty tricks,' McGinley replied, taking a sip from his latte. 'We were all ready to expose how Morgan goes about his work when we had this slapped on us. But our legal guys are fighting it, and it's all going to come out sooner or later, mark my words.'
Maggie smiled inwardly. The only people to benefit from these kind of cases were the lawyers, scampering back and forth to the court at seven hundred pounds an hour plus expenses. She almost wished that she hadn't given up the profession. Not that she had had any choice. After the Alzahrani case, it had given up on her.
'So can you tell us? How does he go about his work?'
McGinley gave her a dismissive look. 'What, so you can go scuttling back to him with all my secrets? You must think I was born yesterday.'
'But he must already know what you were going to print,' Jimmy said, smiling, 'otherwise he wouldn't have been able to get this injunction thing, would he? So they can hardly be secrets.'
'That's where you're wrong mate,' McGinley said. 'He thinks he knows, but he doesn't.'
Maggie was already beginning to tire of this guy's air of smug superiority.
'Well, actually Gary, you must think I was born yesterday too, because I'm a lawyer, and there's no way a judge will grant an injunction without good reason.'
McGinley leaned back in his chair, the smugness outwardly undiminished. But Maggie caught Jimmy's eye and saw that he was thinking the same thing as her. If he's so sure of himself, what's he doing here? He must want something.
'Anyway, I assume you two are here to offer some sort of a deal. Come on, let's hear it. I'm a busy man.'
Maggie gave an inward grimace. So this was why he had turned up. Maybe this was going to prove more difficult than she expected.
'Believe me Gary, what we wanted to talk to you about has got nothing to do with this injunction. I told you, we didn't know anything about it until you called us back.'
'So what do you want then?' he said, drumming his fingers impatiently on the table.
'Have you heard of Justice for Greenway?' Maggie said.
'No, what's that?' The surly expression melted, to be replaced by a mixture of surprise and interest.
'We don't really know,' Maggie said, 'but Morgan's been the target of some fairly serious vandalism and harassment carried out in their name. First someone sprayed graffiti all over the wall of his house and then they trashed his Bentley the other day. Oh, and there's these.'
She took a couple of the poison pen letters from her handbag and placed them on the table side by side.
'As you can see, these are some pretty nasty threats. That's why he's asked us to find out who's behind it. We wondered if you might have any ideas?'
He gave her a sarcastic look. 'Are you joking? He screwed nearly two thousand people when he pulled that Phoenix from the ashes stunt up in Cumbria. And then there's Belinda Milner's family. So, yeah, I've got plenty of ideas.'
'What do you mean, Belinda Milner's family?' Jimmy said.
'I thought you were supposed to be investigators. Milner, the boss lady. You know she drowned herself in the lake, just fifty yards from her back door. But what you might not know is that just before then, Morgan had sacked her and screwed her out of her three million bonus.'
'So you think her husband or someone might be involved in this?' Jimmy said. 'That's what we really could do with knowing. Or is there someone else?'
'You really don't get the newspaper business, do you mate?' McGinley said. 'This looks like a story. So if I did have any ideas, why would I tell you?'
Maggie could feel her hackles rising.
'Well I assume you do get the newspaper business, Gary, because you've been in it long enough. So you'll get it that if Hugo takes this Justice for Greenway thing to the Telegraph or another paper, then your little story's going to be just white noise in the background. After your publisher's spent all that money on these fancy lawyers. And they don't come cheap, you know that. I wonder what they would think about that. I don't think they would be too happy.'
That idea had just come to her out of the blue, but now that she thought about it, she rather liked it. So too, it seemed, did Jimmy.
'Aye, the Times, they'd love this too. That's a brilliant idea. In fact, I don't know why we're wasting our time with this guy. Come on Maggie, we can get a coffee back at the office.' He stood up as if to leave. 'It was nice to meet you Gary.'
McGinley's face melted into a grim expression. Maggie guessed his mind was racing through the implications of his rival getting their hands on this juicy story, and not liking the outcome one little bit.
' Well, look... maybe we can work something out here.'
Maggie smiled sweetly. 'I'm sure we can Gary.'
'Aye, no bother,' Jimmy said, 'and maybe you can start with the whole Greenway thing. What did you mean when you said it was a Phoenix from the ashes stunt?'
McGinley was silent for a moment, evidently weighing up whether he should reveal what he knew. Then finally he said,
'Morgan knew only too well that if the problems with the mine went public, the company was as good as bust and he could then pick it up for a song. The company knew that too, which is why only three insiders got to know the shit they were in.'
Maggie gave him a puzzled look. 'What shit was this?'
'You mean you don't know? That they'd spent five years and four hundred million quid digging this bloody great hole on the edge of the Lake District and then, two years behind schedule, when they finally start bringing the ore to the surface, they find that instead of naught point five percent cobalt, it's just a tenth of that?'
'Whoa, now that is serious shit,' Jimmy said.
'Exactly,' McGinley replied. 'That's why they tried so badly to hush it up. Piet Stellenburg's the Chief Geological Officer and it was him that did the original surveys. So at first, he's the only guy that knows naught point naught five is a disaster.'
'So he's in deep trouble then,' Maggie said, 'not to put too fine a point on it.'
'Yeah, too right,' McGinley said. 'So for a week or so he decides to sit on it. Tells nobody. Meanwhile Belinda Milner is all over the business media telling anyone who'll listen what a fabulous success the project has become. She was a good-looking woman, and everywhere you looked there's a picture of her with the hard hat and the hi-viz jacket holding a great lump of rock over her head. She used to run a bloody high street retail chain before she got the Greenway gig so of course she's no idea what she's got in her hand. But the City buys into the hype, the shares shoot up eighty percent, and now the local paper is running stories of ordinary miners who're now sitting on a hundred grand's worth of the B shares.'
'B shares? What are they?' Maggie said.
McGinley smiled. 'I'll come back to them later if you don't mind. Anyway, Stellenburg's getting more and more spooked and eventually decides to come clean. So he tells Belinda.'
'Who decides to continue the cover up?' Jimmy asked.
'Exactly. Slightly influenced by the mega-bonus she's looking at based on the rise of the share price. A three million quid bonanza is in touching distance, and she only has to get through a few months to the end of their financial year for it to pay out.'
'But didn't you say three people knew?' Maggi
e said. 'Who was the other one?'
'A guy called Mark De Bruin. Another South African. He was in charge of operations. A very experienced mining guy. Somehow Milner and Stellenburg managed to keep it to themselves for a month or so more, but eventually he smelt a rat and took a look at the lab results himself.'
'And he said nothing after he found out?' Maggie said.
'Nope. He was on a big bonus too you see.'
She shook her head. 'And nobody else knew? I mean that's impossible surely?'
McGinley shrugged. 'Well I think a few people on the ground might have sussed out that the cobalt yield was lower than expected, but nobody really grasped the significance. I talked to one of the lab technicians for example, and he said anybody who raised concerns was just told by De Bruin or Stellenburg that it was early days and they'd be ramping up the yield soon enough.'
'But then somehow Hugo Morgan found out the truth,' Jimmy said, 'and that's when it all went pear-shaped.'
Maggie gave McGinley a knowing look. 'And you think you knew who told him. Your big story. Until Morgan's lawyers shut you down.'
He shrugged. 'Yeah, for now. But we'll soon get that overturned.'
'Well in that case, you might as well tell us,' Maggie said, smiling. 'If Hugo Morgan already knows, and it's all going to come out anyway.'
But it seemed McGinley wasn't quite ready to play ball. 'You're supposed to be investigators. Figure it out for yourself. A quiz question with just three possible answers so it shouldn't be that hard.'
Maggie saw Jimmy's expression harden. Sometimes that didn't end well, but when he spoke, his voice was calm although the tone was menacing.
'Listen pal, we don't really have time to play your stupid wee games. Either tell us or just bugger off.'
McGinley held up his hands and gave a condescending smile. 'Yeah yeah, it's just us scribblers. The desire to hang on to our secrets. It's engrained in us. So let me just say you need to think about winners and losers.'
'What do you mean by that?' Maggie said, annoyed.
He shrugged. 'Three people knew. Two lost out big-time, leaving just one winner. Figure that out and maybe you'll have your answer.' Draining his cup, he got up to leave, the arrogance reinstated.
'Well, it was nice to meet you both and thanks for the tip-off on the Justice for Greenway story. That'll make a nice sidebar to my Morgan feature. But look, I feel bad about this. So here's a little tip for you. The other suicide, the guy who lost a hundred and fifty grand overnight. Maybe his family's not feeling too happy about things either. So why don't you give a girl called Liz Donahue a call. She's a reporter on some crap little paper up there and she'll know who he is no doubt. Au Revoir.'
◆◆◆
Back in the office, Maggie was able to agree with Jimmy that all things considered, the meeting had been a success. True, Gary McGinley was an arse, but that was probably to be expected given his profession, and he was no worse than a lot of lawyers she knew. The fact was, they'd come away with some solid leads in their quest to find out who was behind Justice for Greenway and that represented progress. Winners and losers, that's what McGinley had said. Belinda Milner, the CEO-for-hire who'd lost her job, her reputation and her three-million-pound bonus. And then had taken her own life. Then there was Stellenburg, the geologist guy who had cocked up the original surveys and had slinked off back to South Africa, his reputation in tatters. As far as losers were concerned, there were none bigger than that pair,
The winner? That had to be operations boss Mark De Bruin, who, it turned out, had now been hired by Morgan to run the reborn company, on a lucrative earnings package that the Financial Times in a highly-critical article described as 'insensitive, given the losses sustained by the original shareholders.' Was he Morgan's mole, spilling the secret that let the financier make his move? It seemed possible, and they'd know soon enough, once McGinley's paper got the injunction overturned. Assuming he was right of course.
But then what of the one hundred and fifty grand guy, who had bet his family's future on the success of the mine only to lose everything as a result of Morgan's financial re-engineering, 'B' shareholders getting nothing once the banks and the revenue had grabbed their share? Miss Liz Donahue of the Westmoreland Gazette would help them with that line of enquiry.
So that was it. Progress, and lots of it, perfectly timed for when she had to report back to their client tomorrow. A couple of leads identified in the Justice matter, and excellent news on the Lotti front. He would surely be very satisfied with all of that, and she very much liked satisfied clients.
With that sorted, she could turn her thoughts to the other matter which had been causing her concern. What to wear for her date tonight with Robert Trelawney.
Chapter 15
It was Jimmy who had been given the job of speaking to Liz Donahue of the Westmoreland Gazette. They could have simply given her a call, but after a brief discussion of the pros and cons, they had decided instead on a face to face meeting. Actually, there wasn't too many cons. The journey from Euston up to Oxenholme took less than three hours, and the three hundred quid that would allow them to travel first-class wouldn't make much of a dent in the generous budget Hugo Morgan had agreed for the investigation. All in all, it would be quite a nice day out.
More contentious however was the debate around which of them should go. He hadn't really reflected before on the fact that whenever there was some sweet-talking of a woman to be done, Maggie automatically assumed that he would achieve a superior result to her. But the more he thought about it, the more uncomfortable it made him feel. Fair enough, he could see it made sense in the Lotti Brückner investigation, where there was an obvious need to test her faithfulness, but here, he was just talking to a bloody local newspaper reporter. It wouldn't matter what he looked like, he could even be an overweight grey-haired forty-something like his brother Frank. That made him chuckle to himself. This time, after some half-hearted resistance he had given in, but next time... the next time his bloody boss wanted him for a spot of honey-trapping, he was going to say something. Well, maybe.
The Westmoreland Times operated behind a dingy shop-front tucked away down a back street in the pretty market town of Kendal. The windows looked as if they hadn't been cleaned in decades, making it hard to tell if the photographs of Old Kendal in the window were genuine sepia or just looked that way through the layers of grime.
Pushing open the door caused a bell to sound a discrete heralding of his presence. In the tiny office, a woman sat behind an ancient desk hammering away on her computer keyboard.
'Just a mo,' she said without looking up, 'don't want to lose my train of thought. I've been buggering about with this piece all morning. It's an absolute bitch.'
A few moments later, she gave an audible sigh of relief. 'Thank God that's done.' She peered at him good-naturedly over rimless spectacles. 'You're Jimmy Stewart I'm guessing?'
She looked about forty, short and slightly rotund but pretty, with bright intelligent eyes and a pleasant ruddy complexion. Her hair, dyed a vibrant purple, was cropped short and she wore a shapeless cable-knit cardigan over a pair of denim dungarees. And a pair of men's brogues. It was important not to judge by appearances, he knew that, but there was every indication that Maggie Bainbridge's little scheme had already gone rather pear-shaped. That was all to the good as far as he was concerned.
He shot her a smile. 'Hello, that's right and you must be Liz. As I explained on the phone, we got your name from Gary McGinley of the Chronicle. I was hoping you might be able to answer some questions about Greenway Mining and a few related things.'
'And you're definitely not with the Chronicle?' Right away, he detected the suspicion in her voice. 'Because if you are, you can sod off back to London on the next train. Particularly if you're a friend of that arse McGinley.'
Jimmy laughed. 'So you think that too? Aye, I've only met him once but he's an arse right enough. So what did he do to upset you?'
'I sent him a lead for a stor
y. A Greenway Mining story as it happens, and a bloody big one too. But he just blanked me. He got some spotty kid from his office to call me to say that what I had wasn't relevant to his line of enquiry. Not so much as a thank you either. Arse.'
'Aye, well as I told you I'm a private investigator, not a reporter. With Bainbridge Associates. You won't have heard of us, we're pretty small. But we're acting for Hugo Morgan.' He gave her an ironic look. 'Who I guess you will have heard of.'
She nodded. 'Oh yeah Hugo Morgan, I know all about him. He's pretty famous around these parts. Not that he would dare show his face within a hundred miles of the Lakes.' She scuttled off in the direction of the small kitchen that was tucked away in the corner of the office, still talking. 'Of course, it's not really him they should be blaming but we like things nice and simple up here. Coffee or tea?'
'Coffee please. White no sugar.'
She stood hands on hips waiting for the kettle to boil. 'Yeah, in some ways Morgan is a saviour, but don't try telling that to the locals.'
'They blame him for losing their investments I suppose. I can understand that.'
She pointed to a rackety plastic chair opposite her desk. 'Take a seat Jimmy. I'll bring the drinks over.' She tip-toed across the office with the over-filled mugs, placing them down on a pair of stained beer-mats. 'Watch, it's bloody hot. Yeah, see the reality is that Morgan actually saved the mine and about eighty percent of the jobs but it was the way he went about it that pissed everybody off.'
'By somehow managing to expose the cover up, I suppose that's what you mean? By the way, did you know McGinley thinks he knows how Morgan found out about the fact the geology had all gone tits-up? The Chronicle was going to run the story a couple of days ago until Morgan took out an injunction.'
She laughed. 'You mean the De Bruin story? You know, McGinley really is an idiot if he thinks that's what happened.'
He gave her a puzzled look. 'I'm not sure I understand.'
'Mark De Bruin was one of just three people who knew the truth about that cobalt seam, and now he's sitting pretty as CEO of Morgan's new operation. So in McGinley's simple world, it must have been him who spilled the beans.'