By All Means (Fiske and MacNee Mysteries Book 2)

by Alan Alexander

  'What did Dongle come up with?' Neil asked.

  'Lots of technical stuff. Jamieson kept using the phrase 'run to failure' to describe how some of the systems on Vermont One were being operated. I think I can guess what that means but I'm not sure I understand the significance. He also criticised the amount that was being spent on maintenance and the effect that this might have on production.'

  'Anything else?'

  'He said that he thought the operational managers on the rig were taking risks with health and safety. That part of his reports was less firm, seemed to be based on impression rather than hard evidence, but he obviously thought that his concerns were serious enough to be reported to the Audit and Risk Committee. And he said that the offshore unions were becoming uneasy about the conditions that their members sometimes had to work in.'

  Neil refilled his glass and brought the Highland Spring over for Vanessa. 'That's quite a list. I'm no expert, but if Jamieson was right there must be a risk, at least, that the rig would have failed an official inspection and would have to be shut down. Can't see Ebright, and more importantly, Burtonhall, being very happy about that. It's what's called a red risk, one that endangers the business, and the Audit and Risk Committee would want to mitigate it.'

  'Hardly a motive for murder, though, unless you get deep into the kind of conspiracy theory that seldom explains this kind of crime. Who would have known what Jamieson had found, except the people who read his encrypted emails? This murder had to be committed by someone already on Vermont One, most likely "Thomas Nuttall", and if he did it, why did he do it? As I said, I'm getting nowhere fast.'

  'What about the financial expert you brought in from Strathclyde? Anything from him?'

  Vanessa sighed. 'Mainly generalities. He's been through a load of public domain stuff on the three companies and, as he put it, there's no smoking gun. He doesn't think they're making much money, but he doesn't see anything that might make Ebright pull out of the North Sea or Hedelco fail to break even, at worst, in their management contract at GRH. Nor does he see anything illegal. Nothing hidden, no money laundering, nothing like that. He's going to see if he can get access to banking records, but he doesn't seem hopeful.'

  Neil shook his head. 'They're American companies, the parent company registered in Delaware, so I'd guess he'd have as much trouble getting bank records through legal processes as you will getting Hedelco's emails. It should be possible, though, to get a hold of the prospectuses sent out by Burtonhall to likely investors. They're not quite public documents, but they're not secret or confidential. Financial journalists quite often get copies. They would give you an idea of what Burtonhall expected of the two companies. You might mention that to him.'

  'I will. But if any of your contacts have them...'

  'OK, I'll ask around. Now, do you want to go out to eat?'

  *

  Jack Eisner received Gilbertson's first text message in the middle of the evening.

  Police investigating fin posn of rig co, hosp co and parent co. Have emails sent from rig. Have some idea what Keller was investigating at GRH. Looking for Thomas Nuttall as prime suspect in rig murder. Contact from First Minister re commercial aspects.

  Eisner immediately called Cy Packard.

  'Cy, they're digging deep into the company. You need to tell me if they're going to find anything that might produce the kind of publicity here that I'll have to manage. Because if they are, I'll need some professional PR help.'

  'Hell, no, Jack. If they're relying on stuff that they can Google, we're in the clear.'

  'Is that supposed to make me feel good? We're not talking some hick police operation here. The detective leading the investigation is pretty smart, and she's called in specialist help. And we need to assume that the press is digging around as well. Nobody will be relying on Google.'

  'Hedelco will refuse to release the emails without a court order and if the Scottish police go to court they'll be there till hell freezes over. And by that time, they'll have nailed somebody for the murders and we'll be home free.'

  'Cy, don't be so fucking naive! Ask yourself if you'd be happy to tell the Board that's your strategy. If the Scottish First Minister is taking an interest, so will other politicians. You need a better handling plan than waiting for it to go away.'

  'Don’t tell me how to do my job! Just make sure we don't get any bad publicity.'

  *

  On Sunday, the Globe, sister paper of the Financial Post, ran, on its business pages, a piece by Ben Aaronson about the financial position of Ebright and Hedelco. Neither was making a lot of money on its Scottish operation, but there had been little sign that they would pull out. Aaronson speculated about the murders, and about whether they were connected, given the common ownership of the two companies by what he described as the ‘highly secretive’ private equity company, Burtonhall:

  Burtonhall, registered in Delaware to minimise the possibility of public scrutiny of its operations, has forecast, in its prospectuses to investors, profits from all its investments within three years of acquisition.

  This, of course, includes Ebright and Hedelco, and it implies that if profitability is not achieved within the promised timeframe, Burtonhall will disinvest to protect returns to investors.

  Vermont One, the oil platform where American engineer Harvey Jamieson was murdered a week ago on Friday, began production just under two years ago and its profitability is unclear. Oil experts say that its financial performance has been, to an extent, shored up by the steadily rising price of Brent Crude. Sources suggest that Jamieson was undertaking a technical audit of the rig. If he had found anything that might adversely affect the platform’s performance, that would be a real concern to its operator, Ebright, and to its ultimate owner, Burtonhall.

  The management contract for Grampian Regional Hospital, awarded to Hedelco eighteen months ago, was highly controversial politically and it is thought that Hedelco trimmed its margins very tightly to secure the contract, which runs for twenty-five years. Operational management of the hospital remains in the hands of local clinicians overseen, ‘aggressively’, according to doctors and unions, by a small team of American lawyers, accountants and contract managers.

  For differing reasons, the health service and the oil industry are central to the policies of the Scottish Government, and therefore to the independence project, so it would be surprising if the First Minister and her colleagues were not watching the situation very closely.

  Aaronson went on to list the big names on the Burtonhall board and to suggest that the presence of so many high-profile political figures, added to the concerns of Scottish ministers, made it unlikely that the two murders would remain "purely a matter of criminal investigation".

  *

  On Sunday Morning, Paul MacIver, Special Adviser to the First Minister, was in his flat in Edinburgh’s New Town. He had just been out to the newsagent in Howe Street to collect the Sunday papers and he was working through them, his practised eye quick to pick up anything that was relevant to his job or to his other activities.

  Most of the Scottish titles had already relegated the double murder story to the inside pages and the UK papers, with the exception of Aaronson’s piece in the Globe, ignored it entirely. It was possible, and from MacIver’s point of view, highly desirable that other papers would, on Monday, pick up on the Globe piece and run with it. Contrary to his advice to his boss, he needed both the press and the police to continue to pursue what she had called the “commercial” aspects of the double murder enquiry in Aberdeen. If that didn’t happen spontaneously, he would have to give it a push.

  MacIver got up from his kitchen table and fetched his briefcase from the living room. He took out his disposable mobile phone – he didn’t watch much television or read American detective stories, so he probably wasn’t familiar with the term “burner” – and brought up on the screen the text that he had received on Thursday night. It was time to move things on.

  CHAPTER SEVEN


  ‘The General Register Office issued a certified copy of Thomas Nuttall’s birth certificate last May. It was ordered by a Simon Mathieson and it was sent to an address in Glasgow. Turns out that the address is one of these private mailbox services that will give you an address without a box number, because lots of organisations won’t send stuff to a box number. I’ve asked Strathclyde to take the enhanced picture of Nuttall – the one from the Gateshead CCTV footage – to the shop and see if anyone recognises him as Simon Mathieson. They should be co-operative. Their business depends on staying on the right side of the law. I expect to hear something soon’.

  DC Aisha Gajani was reporting to the Monday morning meeting of the enquiry team.

  ‘Anything on his NI number?’ DCI Vanessa Fiske sounded a little weary, partly because of how she was feeling, and partly because of her frustration that the investigation wasn’t moving as quickly as she would have liked.

  ‘We’ve been on to the usual suspects and leaned on them a bit. It looks as though one of them – a private enquiry agent, also in Glasgow, as it happens – got Nuttall’s NI number from a contact in the DWP and supplied it, “for the usual consideration” (Everybody here was getting good at ironic quotation marks, Vanessa thought), by telephone to someone with a Glasgow accent. Again, this was a few months ago, probably at about the same time as the birth certificate was obtained.’

  ‘Well, that narrows it down to the quarter of a million or so men with Glasgow accents. Progress at last. Thanks, Aisha. Duncan?’

  ‘We now have a pretty clear idea of the areas of hospital operations that Keller was investigating and what we learned from Donovan’s “top team” (There it was again. Vanessa smiled.) seems to be confirmed by the CCTV footage. We put all the Keller sightings together and Donovan’s people identified where he was in most of them. Now we need to know what significance to attach to what he was looking at. It wouldn’t half help if we could see his emails.’

  ‘I’m working on that’, Vanessa said, ‘But it’s not easy. Anything else?’

  ‘Far be it from me to praise uniform. Nobody in CID had much time for me when I wore one. But one of the PCs who was looking at the footage was alert enough to notice that in several – not all – of the sightings the same so far unidentified male was also visible. May be nothing, but I’m having the images enhanced and we’ll see if anyone, or any system, can recognise him.’

  Vanessa grinned. ‘I shall ignore your descent into chippiness, Duncan, and simply say good work. When do you expect to have the pictures?’

  Williamson said he would have them later that morning and that his first port of call would be the HR department at GRH.

  ‘So we’ll have enhanced CCTV images of possible suspects for both murders? That puts us in a better place than we were when I clocked off on Friday. But we still need more on motive. The Jamieson emails help, but even there we’re dealing with inference rather than evidence. I now need to take some advice on what we know about Keller’s activities at GRH’.

  ‘I mentioned his areas of interest to Janet at the weekend.’ Colin MacNee was speaking for the first time, and DCS Esslemont greeted his introduction with a sharply raised eyebrow. Esslemont was old school in every possible way, and he would never have considered discussing details of his work with his wife. But these were different times, so he let it go, and simply listened to what DI MacNee had to say. After all, he hadn’t objected to Fiske’s taking advice from her partner on the financial issues.

  ‘She was struck by the fact that three of the four areas Keller seems to have been looking at - diagnostic procedures, usage of operating theatres, and laboratory procedures – are what she described as “manageable”, for which read capable of being rationed to control expenditure or, if you’re a cynical sod like me, to maximise profit. You can’t do that so easily with, for example, A & E or intensive post-operative care. But you also can’t do it without affecting quality of care and, probably, outcomes for patients. So, any recommendation that affected the ability of the Hedelco people to manage expenditure in these areas would, I guess, hit the bottom line.’

  ‘What was the fourth area?’ Esslemont spoke for the first time.

  ‘Sub-contract management. And again, that’s an area where management pressure can be applied to costs, sometimes in areas that directly affect patients, like transport though it's not something that a medic like Janet would know much about.. Hedelco’s operation at GRH includes a substantial contract management section, some managing their contract with the health board, but some engaged, as one of the “top team” put it to Duncan and Stewart, in holding subcontractors’ feet to the fire.’

  Esslemont frowned. ‘But if Keller was killed because of what he had turned up, who benefited? As you often ask, Vanessa, “Cui bono”.’

  ‘The answer to that, sir, just might be Burtonhall and its investors.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, Keller was reporting directly to Hedelco’s head office in Boston, not to Burtonhall, whose interest is entirely on what Colin called the bottom line. They promise investors that all of their companies will be in profit within three years. If Hedelco wanted to avoid contract penalties, or the threat of government inspection, they might intervene in a way that delayed profitability. Burtonhall is, apparently, famously hardnosed when it comes to returns to its investors.’

  ‘Or they might decide to disinvest, which might leave the health board, and the government, with a real problem. We need to see these emails. And we need to find out what Burtonhall knows.’

  ‘Boss.’ Stewart Todd held the same rank as Duncan Williamson, but when they worked together, as they often did, he usually deferred to Duncan’s seniority, so this was his first intervention. ‘One of Donovan’s “top team” mentioned that Burtonhall had sent somebody senior over to find out what’s happening with Hedelco and Ebright. Maybe you could talk to him.’

  ‘Thank you, Stewart. Do we have a name?’

  ‘Sorry, no. That’s all I got. But Donovan should know.’

  ‘Or Tammy Wootten at Ebright. Let’s talk to them both. Colin, get on to your friend Donovan. I’ll tackle the lovely Tammy.’

  *

  As soon as she got in on Monday morning, Fiona Marchmont, NEC’s in-house lawyer, spoke to a senior civil servant in the Solicitor General’s office in Edinburgh. She explained the problem of obtaining the emails that Peter Keller, who had been murdered at Grampian Royal Hospital ten days before, had sent back, in encrypted form, to his employers in the United Sates.

  ‘The Senior Investigating Officer believes that the emails may help to establish a motive for the murder, but Hedelco, the company that manages the hospital on behalf of the NHS, and who employed Keller and sent him to do some kind of technical audit of the hospital’s systems, are refusing to hand them over. Going to court is really out of the question. It would take forever. So I need some help to find a political solution.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  Fiona Marchmont had dealt with Gavin Aikman before. She had found him not exactly unhelpful, but reluctant to take any action until he was absolutely satisfied that it was right legally, administratively, and politically. Being ultra-cautious had got him to his current level. He wasn’t going any further, but that didn’t mean he was prepared to take more risks. On the contrary, and rather like DCS Esslemont, he wanted to serve out his time until retirement, doing his job (‘entirely to his own satisfaction’, Fiona thought, remembering an apocryphal performance appraisal), making no waves, and causing no difficulty for his superiors.

  ‘We need to get the US authorities to put some pressure on the company to release the emails “voluntarily”. That will need some help from the Foreign Office. I can’t approach them directly. Cross-border sensitivities make it important that we do this absolutely by the book. We’re investigating two murders, possibly related, both of American citizens, and both involving US companies working in Scotland. I need the Advocate General’s office to talk
to the FO and persuade them to get the Embassy in Washington – they still have a legal attaché, I hope, even after so many rounds of cuts – to intervene with the appropriate Federal and State officials.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Aikman asked drily.

  ‘I know it’s a tall order, Gavin, but can you help or not?’

  ‘I’ll have to talk to my masters, but I can’t see any reason not to approach the AG’s office. Give me a couple of hours. I’ll try to get back to you by lunchtime. Early afternoon at the latest.’

  ‘Thank you. You should know, by the way, that the First Minister is taking an interest, ostensibly because she’s a local MSP, but probably because of the importance of US investment in Scotland.’

  ‘I’m glad you told me that. I shall need to tread carefully.’

  *

  ‘I got the au pair job.’

  Shelley Mehring was a PhD student from Oklahoma, registered at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. She had completed all of her course work and her three years of registration and was now writing her dissertation. Her topic was the multiplier effect on the regional economy of foreign investment in the North east of Scotland and one of the companies she had studied was the Last Corporation. Her contacts there had led to an expenses-only internship, but she needed to find a paying job until she could complete the thesis.