Rachel finally said something. ‘You should go to bed.’
I nodded, stood up, and stiffly made my way down the stairs. I turned at my door, smiled weakly at Rachel, and let myself in.
But I couldn’t sleep in that bed. I grabbed a blanket, and headed for the sofa upstairs.
Rachel and I flew back to Scotland in silence. Rachel let me think; I had a lot to think about.
I had lost Karen, although I wasn’t sure I had ever truly possessed her. I felt foolish, and I felt used. I also felt angry. My pride was hurt. What could she see in that big oaf Forrester? Or whoever it was. The more I thought about it, the more I realised it could be anybody.
But at the same time I was surprised to feel a sense of relief. Karen had never been easy to figure out. I had worked hard at the relationship, and although that had seemed worthwhile when things were going well, it was good not to have to worry about her any more. I had my own problems to think about.
I sat in my office and stared at the electronic sea. Richard’s death had sent me reeling. I wasn’t going to let Karen’s betrayal do the same thing. I felt at times like a tiny piece of driftwood, pushed this way and that by waves swirling round the rocks. Onada, Jenson, Hartman, Baker, Doogie. They were all messing me around, messing my company around. Someone, probably one of them, had threatened to kill me. It would only be a matter of time before they carried out that threat.
All I had been able to do until now was react to events.
That was going to change.
I told Rachel what I was going to do. She was enthusiastic.
First, I called Hartman. I arranged to meet him at his offices in New York on Thursday.
Then I called the SEC in Washington. I said I wanted to meet them to discuss information I had relating to insider trading in my company. They too agreed to meet me in New York.
Then Jenson Computer. Friday in Palo Alto.
Baker and Doogie I wasn’t sure about. I had better leave them to the police. And I should tell Kerr about Yoshi’s visit to the Inch Tavern. I was about to phone Sergeant Cochrane, when Susan told me that Detective Inspector Kerr was downstairs.
‘Send him up.’
Kerr looked tired and serious. He was trailed by a younger man in a smarter suit.
‘This is Detective Inspector Morland of Edinburgh CID.’
‘Afternoon, inspector. Would you like a cup of coffee?’ I asked. ‘You look like you need it.’
‘Aye, I do that,’ Kerr said. ‘White. Three sugars.’
Morland shook his head.
I slipped off to the machine and came back with two cups. ‘What can I do for you?’ I asked.
‘Doogie Fisher’s dead,’ Kerr said. ‘Murdered.’
‘What?’
‘He was found in his car at the bottom of a cliff. A walker spotted it at low tide. It looks like someone strangled him, and drove his body there to dispose of it.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Some time last night. He was last seen at eleven o’clock in a local pub with some friends. He said he was going off to meet someone. Apparently, he was looking forward to it.’
‘Do you have any idea who did it?’
Kerr sighed. ‘No. Not yet, at any rate. But Inspector Morland and his colleagues are working hard on it.’
‘Do you think there’s a link with Richard’s death?’
‘We don’t know yet. But it’s obviously worth checking. Doogie’s dog was shut in his bedroom, which suggests that he might have met someone in his flat, and then left. He may even have been killed there. So far we haven’t been able to find a note of any appointment. There’s nothing in his diary.’
‘No one saw anything?’
‘There are a lot of people wandering around that area of Edinburgh at night, and it’s quite a transient population. No one would think anything of seeing a stranger. We have vague descriptions of about six different people from a girl of fifteen to a man of fifty-five. Oh yes, and a young man of about thirty, tall with dark hair.’
‘Oh, I see. That’s why you want to talk to me?’
Morland cleared his throat. He had listened disapprovingly as Kerr had rattled on. To him, at least, I was a suspect.
‘Where were you last night, sir?’
I winced as I remembered. Creeping into my own bedroom, to find my girlfriend’s underwear all over the floor.
‘I was at my house in London. I flew back up to Edinburgh this morning. Hang on, I’ve probably still got my boarding card.’ I fished it out of my pocket, and showed it to Morland, who peered at it closely.
‘Thank you, sir. Do you have any witnesses we can talk to, just to confirm that?’
‘Yes. Rachel Walker was there. And so was my ex-girlfriend, Karen Chilcott.’ Kerr raised his eyebrows at this. ‘Inspector Kerr has already met her.’
Kerr nodded to Morland.
‘Have you any idea why Doogie Fisher was killed?’ Morland asked.
I shook my head and glanced at Kerr. ‘No, none. No more than Inspector Kerr and I have discussed. Wait a moment.’ I dug out the printout of the e-mail BOWL had sent me the day after the break-in. ‘Have you seen this?’ Morland nodded. I had sent a copy to Kerr. ‘By the way, did you get round to charging him with that burglary?’
‘No,’ said Kerr. ‘There wasn’t enough evidence. But frankly we were more interested in linking him to your brother’s murder.’
‘He could still have done it,’ I said.
Kerr scratched his ravaged nose again. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. You have no idea what he’s referring to here?’ he asked, looking at the e-mail.
‘No, none. Although by the sound of it, it’s pretty damaging to FairSystems.’
‘Well, whatever it is, it must be important. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Doogie was murdered for possessing it. We still don’t know why your brother was killed. But we think his killer was someone he knew. Perhaps your brother had the same information as Doogie. Perhaps he was murdered by the same person.’
It sounded possible. Plausible.
‘There is something else I should tell you,’ I said, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable.
I pulled the photograph out of a drawer. ‘This is a picture of Yoshiki Ishida. He works for Onada Industries, the Japanese company that recruited David Baker to help them take over FairSystems. The regulars at the Inch Tavern identified Yoshi as the Hiro Suzuki you have been looking for.’
Kerr grabbed the photograph. ‘How long have you had this picture?’
‘About a week.’ I could feel my face reddening.
‘And why didn’t you show it to us earlier?’
‘I wanted to show it to Yoshi myself. He says he was just up for the weekend to play golf. I think there’s more to it than that.’ I couldn’t have given it to them earlier. Their questioning of Yoshi might have endangered our negotiations. That was something I couldn’t risk.
Kerr was angry. ‘Listen, sonny. When you get information like this, you tell us right away, OK? We’ll ask the questions.’
I held up my hands. ‘OK, OK. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.’
Kerr got up to go, taking the photograph with him. ‘Someone killed Richard and Doogie because they got in his way. It seems to me you’re getting in a few people’s way, yourself. So you’d better take this seriously.’
‘I will,’ I said.
As the two policemen reached the door, I called after them. ‘Have you spoken to David Baker about Doogie?’
Kerr turned and scowled. ‘He’s legged it. He had a row with his wife and left home two days ago. We don’t know where he is. But we’ll find him.’
24
We were crushed into the metal box twenty feet underground with at least a hundred other human beings. It was rush hour. Rachel and I had arrived in New York the night before. Our plane had been four hours late, so we had checked into an airport hotel. We took the subway into the city to save on expenses.
There was silence in the carriage as
it lurched along. My head was jammed six inches away from a banker who had eaten something very spicy the night before. The air-conditioning was fighting a losing battle with the heat; it was boiling in there. Even in my lightest summer suit, I was sweating hard. Rachel stood about a yard away from me. She was looking good in a tight black top and trousers. No bra. Her summer clothes, I supposed. I hoped Hartman would appreciate them.
Her eyebrows suddenly shot up, and she reached down behind her. ‘Excuse me!’ she said in her loud, clear Scottish accent. The press of people drew away from her. Oh oh, another weirdo. ‘Excuse me! Does this belong to anyone? I found it on my backside!’
She held up a hand. The hand was attached to a besuited arm, which was in turn attached to a small man with glasses, a Wall Street Journal and a briefcase. He looked like he wanted nothing to do with the offending item.
‘Ah, it’s yours sir. Please keep it in your own pockets in future. It will do less damage there.’
The man went bright red, and everyone in the subway car cracked up. He scurried off at the next stop.
Hartman’s offices were in a nondescript tower block near the Rockerfeller Center. He had one floor, the twenty-sixth. The name on the door was Hartman Capital.
We waited in reception, watched over by an elegantly dressed black woman. On one side was a door labelled ‘Hartman Capital Employees Only’. People scurried in and out. As the doors swung open we could catch a glimpse of a small trading room, maybe twenty desks. But just a glimpse.
After twenty minutes a man in his mid-forties thrust his way through the doors. He was tall and spare, balding, with what remained of his hair close-cropped. He walked straight up to us, and, ignoring introductions, said, ‘Come through.’
He took us through the door opposite the trading room, into a small conference room with a view of the flanks of the next-door skyscraper.
‘Sit,’ he said, gesturing to some chairs. He walked round to the other side of the table, pulled a chair back, and sat with an ankle crossed over his knee. He stared at us through black framed glasses, the pyramid he made of his fingers tapping his chin. In most people this might appear a relaxed pose, but not in Hartman. He was listening, hard.
There was silence for a moment. ‘You wanted to see me. I only have ten minutes, so you had better get to the point.’
I did. ‘Mr Hartman, I know you have a stake in my company.’
‘Hartman Capital has a small stake in FairSystems, yes. One point two per cent, I believe.’
‘We think that when you add in the stake of companies associated with you, your stake becomes much larger.’
Hartman’s brows narrowed slightly. ‘My other financial interests are none of your concern, Mr Fairfax.’
‘They are when in total they own a big chunk of my company.’
Hartman just snorted. I waited, hoping to lure him into saying something. But he waited too. He wasn’t going to say anything.
‘I know that you, through your various investment interests, voted against me at the recent Extraordinary General Meeting. What I want to know is, what are you doing with my company?’
Hartman smiled a thin smile. ‘Nothing. It’s just an investment like any other. The company makes no sense by itself. It should link up with another partner that’s financially stronger. When it does, the share price will go up. I’ll make some money and sell out. Easy.’
‘And what happens to people who get in your way?’
‘If they’re doing the wrong thing for shareholders, and there’s a move to remove them from the board, then I’ll support that, naturally.’
‘What about other ways of removing them?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know my brother Richard was murdered?’
‘Yeah. I heard. Bummer.’
He was goading me. I didn’t respond.
He stirred himself. ‘Fairfax, if you think I killed someone over your chicken-shit little company, you must be crazy.’ He pointed back towards the way we had come, back towards his dealing room. ‘I have two billion dollars under management through there. Your entire company is worth, what, fifteen million tops? Why am I going to get a guy killed over that? Even if I am into getting guys killed, which, by the way, I’m not.’
I sort of believed him. I tried another tack. ‘You have a reputation for being extremely well informed about companies in which you invest.’
Hartman laughed, a short sharp bray. ‘I like the way you put that. Yes, I am well informed. I do anything I can to get as much information as I can, legally. It pisses off some people. But it’s good for the markets.’
‘Oh yes?’ I said.
‘Oh yes. You ever hear of the lead steer?’ I had, but there was no stopping him now. ‘The market is like a herd of cattle in a stampede. Except they’ve all got to follow someone. Some smart beast has got to be in front deciding where to run. And that’s me. I’m the lead steer. I get the information first, and show the other guys which way to go. They need me.’ He was really animated now, waving his arms. ‘These securities laws are all bullshit. Someone’s always going to know more about stocks than the dumb widows and orphans. Hell, no one knows more about FairSystems than you, and you’re allowed to buy and sell shares, aren’t you?’
‘Well, not till two years after the initial placement,’ I corrected him.
‘OK, OK. Detail. But after that? You can buy and sell shares all day long to guys like me who are trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Who can blame us if we try to get an edge?’
‘Even if it’s against the law?’
Hartman calmed down a touch. ‘No, I don’t break the law. But what I’m saying is, they should change the fucking law.
‘Anyway, you wanted to know what I want from your company. It’s simple. I want you to quit screwing around and sell it. Then I can take my money and go find something a bit more interesting to invest in. Got it?’
‘I’m not going to sell,’ I said.
‘Jeezus!’ exclaimed Hartman. ‘Another one of these fucking freeloaders! Anything to keep your job! It’s management like you that brought this country to its knees, until we investors got smart and started demanding some shareholder value from our companies. You just want to keep your fucking job. Well, tough shit!’
I ignored the fact that I was English with a good job already and we were talking about a Scottish company. It was obvious that Hartman already had clear ideas on this issue. Still, at least I knew where he was coming from. I’d got what I wanted.
‘There’s no point in continuing this discussion any further,’ I said. ‘Goodbye, Mr Hartman.’
‘Yuk,’ Rachel exclaimed, when we were safely out of the building. ‘Talk about a capitalist monster! People like him should be lined up against a wall and shot. Where’s Lenin when you need him?’
‘Maybe. But I don’t think he killed Richard, do you?’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I wouldn’t put something like that past him in a mega takeover. But FairSystems is just too small.’
‘You know what the worst thing is?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘When Project Platform comes off, and the shares jump to a hundred dollars, that bastard is going to make a fortune.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Rachel sadly. Then she brightened. ‘Still, at least we can help the SEC with their inquiries.’
‘That will be a real pleasure.’
We emerged from Chambers subway station into Foley Square, beneath the imposing columns of the Federal Courthouse. We made our way behind it, past a row of fast-food kiosks to a small scruffy plaza littered with bored-looking cops, just hanging out. Opposite a large ugly red sculpture was an even uglier brown block, the office of the United States attorney. It was from here that much of the work that had led to the convictions of Ivan Boesky, Dennis Levine and Martin Siegel had been carried out. The convictions had brought tremendous publicity to Rudolph Giuliani, the former US attorney. He was now mayor of New York.
&n
bsp; When I had called the SEC in Washington, I had eventually been put through to a lawyer called Adele Stephenson who had agreed to meet us at these offices.
We were escorted through a range of narrow corridors to a conference room. There, four people were waiting for us. As we entered they all sprang to their feet. One of them offered his hand.
‘Good morning, Mark. My name is Adele Stephenson. We spoke on the phone.’ She was about forty, with a lively, intelligent face. ‘This is my fellow attorney from the SEC in Washington, Mike Lavalle. And this is Tony Macchia, and Dan Gilligan from the US attorney’s office here in New York. We’re cooperating on this investigation. Please have a seat.’
Rachel and I sat down. It was interesting that both the SEC and the US attorney’s office in New York were involved. Steve was right, this clearly wasn’t just another routine investigation. But it wouldn’t have surprised me if the current US attorney had developed a special interest in financial crime, after the success his predecessor had made of it.
‘Thank you for seeing us,’ I began.
‘Not at all. It’s good of you to come all this way. And believe me, we’re very interested in what you’ve got to say.’
‘As you know, I’m the acting managing director of FairSystems. As you may also know, my brother was murdered a couple of months ago.’
‘Yes, we had heard about it from the police in Scotland. I’m sorry.’
‘Thank you. I’m not sure how much you know about FairSystems?’
‘Assume we know nothing. Tell us from the beginning.’
So I went through FairSystems’ history since my brother’s death, and the interest shown in the company by Jenson, Onada and Hartman. I told them I was sure that the activity in the shares showed that illegal stakes were being built up by Hartman and possibly by Jenson Computer as well. I also told them of Richard’s suspicions that the stock price was being manipulated and about his murder.
All four listened. All four took notes.
Trading Reality Page 34
