by John Dysart
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Trail of
GREED
John Dysart
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by John Dysart
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
The right of John Dysart to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 978-1-909300-19-4
Published by The Choir Press, Gloucester
To my mother, father and Jud – and anyone else who recognises bits of themselves.
About the author
John Dysart was born in Fife and graduated from St Andrews University with an MA in Economics and Politics. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant in Glasgow he pursued a career in Europe working for various international companies. He spent the last fifteen years working as an independent consultant before turning to writing. This is his first novel. He currently lives in France.
Chapter 1
A knock on the door at three o’clock in the afternoon of a fresh Thursday in May.
“Now who the hell could that be?” I thought to myself, slightly annoyed at being disturbed from my reading. I put my book down on the table at the side of my armchair, levered myself reluctantly upright, cursing my bad back, and went to open the door.
I wasn’t expecting anybody. I very seldom had callers now – unless it was Mrs. Clark from next door with some delicacy that she had baked that morning.
I could see no one through the smoked glass panel in my front door and wondered, for an instant, if it was some kids playing tricks. The old prank of ringing the doorbells of elderly people living alone and then running off up the street had not yet died out. In a way I was glad. I’d done it myself as a boy and, annoying as it was, I reckoned it was pretty harmless.
I opened the door. If it was somebody trying to sell me something I was ready to send them packing.
“Yes?” I enquired politely as the door swung back. “Good afternoon, sir. I’m sorry to disturb you, but are you by any chance Mr Robert Bruce?” was the response from a well-dressed man, who looked about my age, standing a few yards back on the path. There was a slightly nervous, enquiring smile on his face.
Neatly dressed in an open-necked shirt and jacket, he had a full head of grey hair, cut short, and a small, slightly bronzed, face lit up by bright brown eyes. About five foot ten, I would guess. He was one of the lucky ones, like me, who had stayed slim with age and didn’t have to worry about how to cope with a paunch which prevented him from seeing anything below waist level.
“Yes. What can I do for you?” The man’s face relaxed into a genuine smile and he thrust out his hand to be shaken. I automatically returned the gesture before I realised that such a greeting was not quite habitual in a small Scottish village in the middle of Fife. The unusualness of the encounter was confirmed by his next words.
“Mr Bruce, my name is Pierre Collard. I am French, as you can probably tell from my accent, and I am over here in Scotland for a visit.”
I could think of nothing suitable to say except “Welcome to Scotland”.
“Thank you.” he replied. “Actually I have been here a few times before but, there are a couple of specific reasons for this particular visit.”
Being naturally friendly, and having assessed him as an interesting-looking character who seemed to pose no danger, I responded amiably.
“How can I help you?” “Mr Bruce, this may seem strange to you, but I am staying just down the road at the Fernie Castle Hotel for a few days. I am travelling on my own and would like to invite you to dinner this evening. Perhaps I can explain to you then?”
That rather took me by surprise and I reflected for an instant. A stranger turns up on the doorstep and invites you out to dinner. Not a very usual scenario.
“If you don’t mind me asking – why me? Do you often knock on people’s doors and invite them out to dinner?”
“To your second question – no.” He smiled. “And to your first question, I have a particular reason – two actually – but I would prefer to explain to you over a good meal. The hotel has an excellent wine list and, as I do know a little bit about you, I thought you might appreciate sharing a bottle of Château Maucaillou with me. Would you be so kind as to accept my invitation?”
“Why not?” I said to myself. He looks like a nice guy and I instinctively accepted. It sounded better than the bridie and peas that I had planned.
“Fine.” I told him. “At what time?” “How about seven thirty?”
“It’ll be a pleasure.” He thanked me for accepting and proffered his hand again by way of a goodbye, returned to his car which he had parked ten yards up the road and, with a wave and a “See you tonight”, he drove off down the main village street.
I watched the car disappear and went back inside, closing the door thoughtfully. It would make a change. He had looked pleasant and interesting and I genuinely enjoyed meeting new people. There was always something to be learned from anybody, no matter whom. It was a philosophy I had had all my life and I didn’t see why I should drop it just because I was “getting on a bit”.
My life for the last three years had been a quiet process of adjusting to the solitude of widowhood. That knock on the door was about to change all that and add to it a dimension that I would never have imagined.
After thirty-nine years of a very happy marriage, my wife Liz had passed away suddenly from a totally unexpected stroke. The following six months had been very difficult as I had had to adjust to the immediate loneliness and the prospect of a solitary retirement. Life can deal some pretty nasty blows.
Our son Callum had made his life in Australia and we had had no other children. So I had eventually sold the big house in Stirling and returned to my roots – the Howe of Fife. I now lived in a perfectly comfortable little cottage (minimum upkeep) in the tiny village of Letham and had slid into a calm, but reasonably satisfactory, rhythm of life suitable to a fairly fit sixty-seven year old. I had my books, the garden, my golf course was only five miles away and there were plenty of other great places to play within an hour’s drive. I wasn’t complaining but I have to admit to a little boredom from time to time.
I tried to return to my biography of Talleyrand but couldn’t concentrate. M. Pierre Collard clearly knew who I was and he had announced two reasons for his trip. I had no real connection with France apart from a few camping holidays when Callum had b
een young and, after he had grown up and gone off to conquer the world, a few golfing weekends in Brittany and Normandy. I spoke a bit of the language but that was all. I pondered over this for a while but soon came to the conclusion that there was no way on earth that I was going to guess what this was all about. I’d have to wait until the evening.
I didn’t know then that I was about to make a lifechanging discovery and thoughts of fraud, corruption and murder were definitely not on the agenda.
I pottered around in the garden for a couple of hours until it was time to organise myself for my evening out. I was actually rather intrigued by the idea of getting to know M. Collard a bit better and decided that Fernie Castle deserved a relatively smart Bob Bruce. So I dug out a notworn-very-often pair of smart cotton trousers and ran an iron over a shirt. I slipped on my old blazer and set off in anticipation of an interesting evening.
The Fernie Castle Hotel is only about two miles out of the village and is a comfortably elegant place. Previously home to a wealthy family whose name I couldn’t remember, it had been bought by a brewery and turned into a first- class hotel. They had got their strategy right because the central part of Fife (the Howe) doesn’t lack money. It is very rich arable land and there are a large number of well-to-do farmers. There are also the country estates of many who had made their piles of money in the second half of the nineteenth century from coal, jute, linoleum and the financial markets of Edinburgh.
M. Collard was waiting for me in the reception area of the hotel. Deep blue carpet on a stone-flagged floor, granite walls and a couple of suits of armour on guard. We greeted each other with another handshake and he suggested we repair to the bar for a pre-dinner drink.
Ensconced at a table in the corner of the dimly lit bar I watched him go up and order the drinks. He was obviously perfectly at ease in his surroundings. The girl behind the bar seemed impressed by the Gallic charm and he came back shortly with a pair of inviting glasses of a nice, deep amber liquid that was not unknown to me.
“Alors, M. Collard, comment allez-vous ce soir?” I asked him, with, what I hoped, was a reasonable imitation of a French accent.
“Verry weel, tank you verree mooch!” he replied with a grin.
We clinked glasses and quietly appreciated the first sip of what he informed me was a fifteen-year-old Glenmore.
He sat back and looked at me for a few seconds, as if trying to weigh me up. I had nothing to worry about so I just left him to it.
He then proceeded to explain to me that he had already been twice to Scotland but had only toured the west and the north – the Highlands and the Islands. This was the first time he had visited Fife and he loved it. Not so rough and barren – more akin to his Normandy. He had been to the charming fishing villages along the coast. He had visited the ancient Palace of Falkland and climbed the hill behind the village. It had been a clear day and he had seen the two Forth bridges in the far distance. From the top of the East Lomond you can see practically all of the county, or Kingdom to give it its proper name. He was planning a trip to St Andrews the next day.
I fully agreed with his comments on the beauty of the area. I had been raised in the village of Falkland and the whole area was home to me. That’s why I had moved back here two years ago.
“Robert – may I call you Robert?” he asked, “Shall we go and see what the chef has to offer this evening?”
“Certainly. But if you don’t mind, I prefer Bob,” I replied. “As you can imagine, with a name like mine, I suffered a lot of teasing when I was young and decided Bob was better.”
“OK, Bob, let’s go and eat.” I had my father to thank for the Robert. When my mother had questioned his choice, apparently his reply had been “If he gets hassle at school it’ll be good for him”. It certainly got me into a good few fights in my early years but, with hindsight, I now felt that Dad hadn’t got it far wrong.
Once we were seated and had perused the menu we decided that a local fish dish to start with and a good Aberdeen Angus steak would be perfect for both of us. The Château Maucaillou was ordered and once uncorked was put reverently on the side table to be served with our steak.
Still very curious about this unexpected visit and invitation, I broached the subject that I had been pondering over that afternoon.
“So, Pierre, what’s the particular reason for this trip and how come you knocked on my door this afternoon?”
“Research into family history,” he replied. “Let me guess. One of your ancestors was an officer in Napoleon’s army, like MacDonald?”
“No. Not so far back as that. In fact my father was Scottish.”
“With a name like Collard?” “No. That’s my mother’s name.” He saw I was intrigued and he then went on to explain. “There are quite a few of us in France of our generation who were brought up not knowing who their fathers were. It’s not surprising when you think about it. At the end of the war there were thousands of British, American and Canadian soldiers, young and away from home, and French girls are quite attractive. Many of the girls married and went back home with their soldier husbands. Some didn’t. My mother was one that didn’t and I was born and brought up not knowing who my father was – although I had a rough idea.”
The fish arrived and we both seized our utensils and got stuck in. I was intrigued, being a bit of a history buff.
“Go on,” I said. “Well, to cut a long story short, I am sixty-nine years old. I was born in 1944. I wasn’t the only boy in the village not to have a father. Some had been killed, some had gone home. When I was old enough to ask, my mother explained to me that my father had ‘gone away’. It was only later, when I was about ten, that I wanted to know more. She then told me that my father had been a young Scottish officer. He had been dropped into occupied France to liaise with the Resistance in preparation for the Normandy Landings. My mother was also in the Resistance and they had become firm friends. I suppose it is practically impossible for us to imagine the stress that these young men and women were under. It was only after he left that my mother discovered that she was pregnant. I was born and she raised me on her own. She never married and she kept a photograph of him beside her bed until she died about fifteen years ago.”
Pierre finished off his fish and sat back with a satisfied look on his face – a handsome firm-featured face, slightly tanned. His brown eyes turned on me as if hoping that I was interested.
I was. “So you’ve decided to trace back your roots?” “That’s about it,” he replied. “How far have you got? Is there any way I can help?” He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. He carefully extracted two photographs, lent forward and placed them on the table in front of me.
Chapter 2
I set down my wine glass and picked them up. They were slightly faded and crinkled at the edges and he had clearly kept them in his wallet for years.
One was a formal studio photograph of a young soldier in officer’s uniform; the other had been taken outside and was of the same man, not in uniform this time, standing beside an attractive brunette, his arm around her shoulders. They were both smiling at the camera.
“This is your father and that’s your mother?” He nodded. “And you said that you’ve come over here to find out what happened to him?”
He nodded again. “But, in fact, you do know what became of him,” I said. “I know now – but I only discovered about a year ago. I had obviously wondered all my life and when I retired I decided to try to track him down.”
I sat back in my chair and looked at him closely. He said nothing but was watching me attentively.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” I shot at him. “Absolutely not. These two photographs sat on my mother’s bedside table for about forty years. As I said, she only discovered she was pregnant after he had had to leave to go back to Britain. She hadn’t expected to hear from him again because she knew he had a fiancée back in Scotland. They had both known that their relationship would be temporary. There was a war on a
nd at that time nobody knew how it was going to turn out. Bearing in mind that they lived constantly under the threat of arrest, or worse, they lived out their romance knowing that it would be short lived. He never knew of my existence.”
I managed to register most of what he was saying whilst my mind was racing in all sorts of directions.
“My mother absolutely forbade me to attempt to find out what had happened to him. As she said, he might well have been killed. Better to remember what we had, she used to say. However, after she died and I retired, curiosity got the better of me and brought me over here.”
My consternation was slowly subsiding. I picked up my glass and took a large mouthful of that delicious wine and let it roll around in my mouth before swallowing it gently. I put the glass back down and looked at him again. Still that same half-nervous, half-questioning expression on his face.
I held up the photograph of the smiling couple. “I’ve never seen this photo in my life, but this one,” holding up the studio portrait, “has hung on the wall of my mother’s bedroom all my life.”
“And . . .?” Although I had had a shock I somehow adjusted to it rather quickly. I suppose it was because I rather liked this guy.
I looked across at him. He was clearly nervous about my reaction. I shook my head slowly from side to side and allowed my mouth to form a half-smile.
“The randy old bugger!” I said, slowly, pausing gently on each word.
This man’s father was the same man that I knew as my father. It sounded incredible but there was the evidence in front of me. There was no way he could otherwise have had a copy of the photo I knew so well. My sister and brother also had copies.
I had to believe Pierre’s story. It rang true. And, as Pierre had said, I’ll bet Dad wasn’t the only one.
It was perfectly understandable that such circumstances could have happened. I knew Dad had spent a year in France but knew no details. We kids had assumed that it must have been very dangerous. Whether his relationship with Pierre’s mother had been love or simply an intense friendship between two people living on the edge I would never know but, knowing Dad, I figured that I understood how it could have happened. He had come back to my mother and they had had a very happy marriage so I felt no need to criticise him. He had never known about the pregnancy, how could he?
