by Val McDermid
Graeme Brown – Dec – 125k – Snagglecat 2
Brian McGillivray – Jan – 100k – Meridian Flyer
Wilson Brodie – Feb – 125k – ?Benbecula IV
Andrew Mutch – March – 130k – Lady Lydnia
Danny picked up the paper to photograph its contents with his Kodak Instamatic and noticed there was a scribbled note on the other side.
Maclays So’ton –Jespersen Nassau
He had even less idea what that might mean. But when it came to ferreting out information, he knew where to start looking. He glanced back into the drawer and realised there was a metal box under the sheet of paper. He lifted it out and sat in on the desk. It was secured with a small but serious lock which yielded to the second key on Joseph’s ring.
Danny stared down at the contents, his stomach cramping in shock.
6
Danny had never seen anything like it. A box full of money. Thick bundles of used notes bound with fat rubber bands. Not pound notes, or fivers. That would have been astonishing enough. But most of these bricks of money were £100 notes, with a few £20 wads among them. It was awesome.
It was also terrifying. There was no innocent explanation for this. No interpretation that didn’t involve danger. His mouth dried, his tongue seeming to fill his mouth.
He wanted to slam the box shut and run, to forget what he’d seen and never be troubled again by its implications. And then his ambition kicked in, his reporter’s instinct trumping his misgivings.
The first thing he had to do was figure out how much money was in the box. Gingerly, as if it might disintegrate in his hands, he eased out a bundle of hundreds. He slipped the rubber band off and fanned them out. He’d never seen a £100 note before. If they hadn’t shown signs of wear and tear, he’d have taken them for forgeries.
He picked up a handful and studied them. They were an assortment from the three Scottish banks that had the right to issue notes. The Royal Bank of Scotland, dark red, its watermark panel showing Adam Smith, a detailed line drawing of Balmoral on the back. The Bank of Scotland, red and brown lines that looked like they’d been made by the Spirograph set he’d had as a kid. Sir Walter Scott gazing out at him; the view of the bank’s head office building from the Mound. And the Clydesdale, a scarlet drawing of Lord Kelvin on the front and an imposing university lecture theatre on the back. He held them to his nose and sniffed. They smelled like money, that unmistakable mixture left by hands and wallets, bodies and smoke.
Next he counted the notes. A total of one hundred, making each bundle £10,000. That was more than he’d paid for his flat. More than he’d earn in two years, before tax, including his expenses. There were another eight bundles of hundreds in the box. And five bundles of twenties, some English notes among them, St George slaying the dragon next to the queen’s head. A hundred grand, laid out before him.
As he stared at the cash, his brain started working again. Brian McGillivray – Jan – 100k – Meridian Flyer. Was this McGillivray’s January payment for a racehorse? Or something else? Either way he should take another pic.
There were no more answers in the drawer, nor in the filing cabinets, which contained nothing more exciting than what appeared to Danny to be perfectly normal client files of insurance policies covering property and life assurance. Time to tidy up and get out.
Getting through Christmas Day had been tough. Trying to act casual around Joseph was a struggle for Danny. It was a giant step from never quite trusting his brother to acknowledging he was actively dishonest. And the next step was how he would deal with that. Danny didn’t think he could walk away from a story that could make his career, a story he could be proud of breaking. But what would it do to his parents?
Danny forced himself to join in the Christmas rituals. The exchange of presents – a new Marks and Spencer jumper from his parents, a flashy silk tie from Joseph – then cans of beer for the men and a sweet sherry for his mother. Roast turkey dinner with enough leftovers to keep them going for a week. Clootie dumpling and cream, the old silver threepenny pieces his mother had hoarded wrapped in greaseproof paper stuffed into the pudding to endanger the teeth of the unwary. Then After Eight mints and the queen on the box. Goldfinger, with local hero Sean Connery playing James Bond. Followed by stupid game show Christmas specials that Marie laughed along to while the three men dozed in their chairs. Then the big film. The Sting, with Robert Redford and Paul Newman. The story of the complicated con trick made Danny uncomfortable, and he couldn’t ignore the nagging reminder of Redford in All the President’s Men. Bob Woodward would know exactly what he needed to do next.
As the titles rolled, he pushed himself out of the settee and groaned as he stretched. ‘I’d better be getting back to Glasgow,’ he sighed.
‘I thought you were staying, son?’ His mother looked hurt.
‘I’d love to, Mum, but I’m on the day shift tomorrow, and the weather forecast isn’t great.’
‘Be a good excuse for skiving, if you got snowed in,’ Joseph drawled.
‘That’s no way to think,’ his father said, almost stern. ‘Danny’s got responsibilities to his shift mates. If he’s not there, somebody else has to pick up the slack, is that no’ right, son?’
‘Aye, Dad. And I’ll be back for the New Year. No way am I missing that.’
It took another quarter hour for him to escape, his mother insisting on packing up a turkey leg and a massive wedge of dumpling to fortify him in the coming days. But at last he was on the road. He pushed his cassette of Power in the Darkness into the slot and turned up the volume, the punching beat of ‘2-4-6-8 Motorway’ driving everything else from his mind.
Boxing Day was just like any other in the life of a daily newspaper. Next morning, Danny was due to start his shift at ten, but he arrived an hour early and headed straight for the library. The duty librarian looked up from his breakfast, so startled to see anyone in his domain at that time of day that he squeezed his bacon roll so hard the brown sauce oozed out and coated his fingers. ‘Christ, Danny, you gave me a fright,’ he exclaimed. ‘Where’s the fire?’
‘Nothing to worry about, eat your roll. It’s not cuttings I’m after, I just want to look something up off the reference shelves. No need for you to get off your backside.’ Danny gave him a cheeky smile and carried on past the grey metal shelves with their impenetrable filing system that no reporter had ever been permitted to learn. There was no chance of the librarians being made redundant, not while they were the only ones who knew how to find whichever brown envelope was required.
The reference room was at the far end. Three walls of books and a long table under the window with its unrivalled view of the car park and the brick wall beyond. The shelves contained a collection of reference books that encompassed an astonishing range of subjects. From Jane’s Fighting Ships to the Michelin Red Guide: Great Britain and Ireland via Crockford’s Clerical Directory, Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage and ten years’ worth of Whitaker’s Almanack. What Danny was looking for was on the bottom shelf – an unbroken line of fat spines in pastel shades. Blue and grey, pink and coral, ochre and green, they encompassed the current phone directories for the whole British Isles. He crawled along the floor till he found what he was looking for and pulled out the volume that included Southampton.
Danny sat cross-legged with the thick directory in his lap and looked up ‘Maclay’. There were two entries in the residential section of the book. One was a James T. Maclay in Burgess Road. The other was a W. J. Maclay, Applewood House, Applewood Lane, Hythe. Not for the first time, Danny wished phone books were illustrated. It would be helpful to see the houses attached to the addresses, just to give forewarning of the kind of person you were dealing with. It was a mad idea, he knew that. The books would have to be impossibly cumbersome, and they’d take forever to compile.
He moved on to the business section at the back of the book and turned the pages impa
tiently. Maclays didn’t just have a listing, they had a box advert across two columns. ‘MACLAYS, the premier boat broker on Southampton Water. Luxury craft specialists.’ Complete with a line drawing of a sleek two-masted yacht. And an address and two phone numbers.
What if the mysterious names on the paper weren’t racehorses? What if they were boats? Otherwise, what did a boatyard have to do with insurance? More to the point, what did it have to do with his brother? He needed Peter McGovern.
It was another two nail-biting days before the financial correspondent came back to work. Danny tracked him down to the pub in the early afternoon and plonked a large whisky in front of him.
McGovern tipped his glass in a salute. ‘A merry Christmas to you too. So, did you manage to make good use of the festive season?’
Danny hesitated. Was he giving too much to McGovern? Could he trust him not to double-cross him and punt the story as all his own work? It wouldn’t be the first time Danny had had his fingers burned by a so-called colleague. On the other hand, McGovern had been giving him useful information, not keeping it to himself. And Danny was all at sea when it came to the financial stuff.
Reluctantly, he took out his notebook and opened it at the page where he’d made his notes. ‘I found another list.’ He showed the page to McGovern.
He frowned. ‘Graeme Brown . . .‘ He held up a finger to stop Danny interrupting. Then he gave a satisfied smirk. ‘Launderettes. And some suggestion of drugs as well. You’d need to ask Wee Gordon Beattie about that. His cop contacts keep him current on the bottom feeders. So again, you’re looking at somebody who potentially might be in a position to evade the taxman.’
‘There was a name on the other side of the paper,’ Danny said, mentally filing away the new information. ‘I did a bit of digging and I discovered Maclays of Southampton are boat brokers. They specialise in luxury craft. That’s maybe where these guys are spending their money?’
‘Nice work,’ McGovern said slowly. ‘But it’s not much use to them out on the ocean wave, is it?’
7
International Directory Inquiries had suggested where to look next in his quest to follow the money. The only Jespersen listed in Nassau was Jespersen Marine with an address on Frog Cay. Danny waited till late afternoon when the newsroom was a cauldron of clattering keys, cigarette smoke and desperate focus on getting stories to the newsdesk early enough to claim a spot in the first edition. Then he called the number, drumming his fingers on his notebook as the unfamiliar foreign ringtone sounded in his ear.
He was on the point of hanging up when the insistent bleep was interrupted by a bass voice with all the gravel of Louis Armstrong. ‘Yeah, this is Jespersen’s. Can I help you?’
He’d been rehearsing his approach, but in the moment, Danny lost his grasp on what he’d planned. ‘You sell boats, right?’
‘That’s why we’re called Jespersen Marine, sir. Buying and selling boats is what we do. You in the market?’ The line was amazingly clear. Danny had never made a transatlantic call before and he’d been expecting something more akin to tuning in to Radio Luxembourg on medium wave on the transistor radio he’d listened to under the bedclothes in his teens.
‘My name’s David Black. I’m calling from Scotland. My boss is in the oil business and he’s thinking about selling his boat.’
‘O-K,’ the man said, stretching the first vowel to three syllables. ‘What kind of boat is it?’
Danny cleared his throat. ‘I don’t have the details. He just asked me to check out a couple of boatyards. It’s a sailboat, a big one, sleeps half a dozen.’
A ripe chuckle came down the line. ‘You’re going to have to give me more information than that before I can tell you whether we’d be interested. You need to send us the boat’s spec, its age, that kind of stuff. And some photographs. Then we can have a proper conversation.’
‘I can arrange all that,’ Danny said. ‘What’s your name? And your address?’ He scribbled the details on his notepad. ‘How do you deliver the sale proceeds back to your clients?’
‘We can do a bank transfer anywhere in the world. Or we can help set up a local account here, if that’s what they want. Makes it easier to reinvest in a new boat. Where is the boat right now?’ Conrad Jespersen asked.
It wasn’t one of the answers Danny had prepared. ‘The Canary Isles,’ he improvised. ‘Lanzarote.’ His armpits felt clammy.
‘Hmm. Gonna take upwards of three weeks to sail her here, so you’ve got time to FedEx that info across to us here and we can call your guy and let him know whether we’re interested. I’m taking a guess that he’s not gonna be on the boat.’ He chuckled again.
Danny made an attempt at a conspiratorial laugh. ‘Not much chance of that, he’s a bit of a fair-weather sailor.’
‘Is he thinking of replacing his boat? Because we are the top dogs round here when it comes to luxury craft. New or classic.’
What to say? ‘He was talking about maybe a catamaran.’
‘We can help there. We’re the best show in town, David. I’ll look forward to getting a package from you. You have a good day, now.’
‘Thanks. You too.’
Danny replaced the receiver and exhaled deeply. The man at the next desk raised his eyebrows and glanced across. ‘Christ, Danny, you sound like a whale coming out the water.’
‘Just a tricky wee call,’ Danny muttered. A tricky wee call he’d negotiated well enough to have worked out how his brother’s clients were getting their money ashore. Or should that be ‘offshore’?
That had been his last newsgathering act of 1978. Now he was starting the working year by trying to get a rough draft of his story down on paper. Sure, there were holes in it. But for Danny, the best way to make sure he asked the right questions was to write what he thought of as ‘the story so far’ before the crucial interview. What he’d learned over the New Year break had made clear the path ahead. As he’d told Allie Burns on the train, his next long weekend would provide him with the perfect opportunity to plug those holes with hard facts.
But that night, he was struggling. The adrenaline buzz of his train journey had dissipated and finding the right way into the story wasn’t easy. Danny had never worked a story as big as this, and he was surprised by his anxiety levels. He had his own tried-and-tested ways of dealing with stress, but tonight, he instinctively knew he needed a different solution. He needed to talk to someone who understood the game. But not someone like McGovern who would try to steal his story out from under him. Or deliberately unsettle him out of jealousy.
Someone like Allie Burns.
She was on the night shift, he recalled. Writing up her dramatic ‘baby on the train’ story. He checked his watch. Just after nine. Gavin Todd would be on his break, leaning on the bar of the Printer’s Pie, a large whisky clenched in his grasping wee fist. At his side would be Allie’s shift partner, accompanying the boss because he was senior to her and therefore entitled to extend his break to match Todd’s. Allie would have to settle for holding the fort till they returned.
Danny picked up the phone and rang the news reporters’ line. As he could have predicted, Allie answered on the second ring. ‘Daily Clarion newsroom, Alison Burns speaking.’ Using her given name because that was the rule. He was Daniel Sullivan on his bylines, she was Alison. Except on the night when she’d annoyed one of the news subeditors, who’d marked up her copy as being by Alister Burns.
‘Hi, Allie, it’s Danny. Have you had your break yet?’
‘Me? No, I’m minding the shop while the big boys fill their boots.’
‘I was wondering if you fancied a curry?’
A pause. ‘Tonight?’
‘Yeah, I’m kind of wrestling with that story I was telling you about. I could do with a friendly ear to bounce it off.’ Another pause. ‘My treat,’ he added.
‘And there was me thinking it was my irresistible
wit and charm that you were after.’ She sounded amused rather than offended.
‘Another time. Tonight it’s your brains I want to pick.’
‘You talked me into it. I’ll have fish pakora, lamb bhuna and a paratha. I’ll see you in the canteen at half past ten. They should be back by then.’
‘Deal.’
‘And bring a couple of cans of lager, Danny. It’s thirsty work, listening.’
Allie put down the phone, wondering why Danny Sullivan had chosen her as his sounding board. He probably thought she owed him, since he’d handed her the miracle baby splash when he could have legitimately hogged it himself. She hardly dared let herself think it was because he liked her, or trusted her. Back in her local paper days, she’d been burned more than once by so-called mates.
She’d never forget the time she’d been sent on a training day at the local TV station. They’d been shown round the news operation, beginning in the copytaker’s room. Looking over the shoulder of one of the typists, Allie had been stunned to recognise the sentences appearing before her. Word for word, they were the very ones she’d written the previous afternoon for the next edition of her own paper. ‘That’s my story,’ she’d blurted out.
The copytaker didn’t even pause, nodding towards the copy pad next to him on the desk. Allie picked it up and read the first three paragraphs of her story. But it wasn’t her name at the top of the page. ‘By Andy Barratt,’ she read aloud. Her fellow trainee, a friendly guy who was always interested in her stories, just as she was in his.
‘The thieving shitehawk,’ she growled. Not only had he sold her work out from under her, he’d exposed her to any blame that might accompany the leaking of the story ahead of their own paper using it. And because TV news stories didn’t come with bylines attached, the finger would point straight at her if anyone from her newsroom spotted it.
That day had taught Allie an indelible lesson. Now, she guarded her work carefully and doled out her trust in very small doses. Maybe Danny Sullivan was someone she could depend on. Or maybe he was just trying to ingratiate himself, all the better to betray her down the line.
