by John Dysart
There was dead silence. You could have heard a budgie burp.
The younger generation looked shocked. The older generation woke up.
The MC jumped in. “Sir, I think your question is out of order.” “I’m sorry,” I replied. “Perhaps I didn’t frame the question correctly. What I meant was that if investors had put their money in other funds they would be three and a half million pounds better off.”
Meanwhile Purdy had rallied from the shock and recovered. He stood up and signaled to the MC that it was ok.
“Mr . . .?”
“Bruce,” I replied. “Thank you for rephrasing your question. You must admit that the way you put it the first time could have led to misunderstandings.”
I smiled at him.
“Let me explain.” He started by trying to cast doubt as to whether my numbers were correct and then veered back to the rubbish he had trotted out during his presentation. He gathered steam and managed to steer people’s thoughts away from the question I had asked.
When he sat down the MC quickly wrapped things up so that there would be no chance of any more questions from the floor, thanked everyone for coming and invited us all to take a drink outside before taking our leave.
A few of the old guard smiled at me and patted my arm as they passed on the way out.
Most of the audience accepted the offer of a drink and were milling about, slowly congregating into groups. I preferred to stand off on the side by the window and observe. The largest group was near the bar where Purdy was holding court. A few of the young brigade were gathered round him, hanging onto his every word. I also noticed with interest that Keith’s lawyer, whom I had met the other day at the golf course, was there too, frowning and making the occasional comment into Purdy’s ear. He must work for AIM as well, I thought to myself.
Steven approached me diffidently and made a show of introducing himself, handing me a business card.
“That was a nasty one.”
“It was meant to be!”
“Do you mind if I write about it?” “No, but keep it factual – as we agreed. Don’t go wild . . . yet. He didn’t like my question at all, but he was pretty good at covering it up. I think something is going on. I’ll tell you about it in a couple of days – ok?”
“Fine.” I could see that Purdy had noticed us chatting. He wasn’t going to come and speak to me in this public environment, that was for sure. But I did expect some kind of reaction to the potential embarrassment I had caused him.
I saw Alice hovering nearby so I excused myself from Steven and welcomed her with a smile as she came forward.
“You seemed to have rather set the cat among the pigeons,” she said.
“Well, that was the idea.” “Bob,” we were on Christian name terms now. “Do you think it would be possible that you could phone me sometime?” She slipped a small piece of paper into my hand, “So that you could advise me on what I should do about my investments? And, in the meantime, can I give you this?”
She handed me a large brown envelope. It felt as if it contained probably about twenty pieces of paper. I tucked it under my arm.
“It’s copies of my dealings with AIM. Perhaps you could look through it?”
“With pleasure,” I replied. Over her shoulder I could see Alan Purdy again glance in my direction. His brow furrowed for a fleeting second as he saw us talking. He turned and made a quick remark to a younger man standing beside him. The man flicked a look towards us and nodded. He immediately detached himself from the group and, accompanied by one of his colleagues, came purposefully over to us.
“Mrs Hetherington, nice to see you here,” said the colleague, taking her by the arm and leading her away from me.
At the same time the other man addressed himself to me. Looking at my name badge which I had not yet had time to hand in he said, “Mr Bruce, may I introduce myself. David Firkin. I work for Mr Purdy at AIM. I hope you enjoyed the conference.”
It was clearly a manoeuvre planned to break up our little conversation. My guess was that Purdy didn’t want me talking to Alice. The question was “Why?”.
Chapter 7
It was immediately clear to me that Purdy had sent his henchman over to find out who I was and what, if anything, I thought I was up to. He could not afford to show that he was upset by my question.
“I found it very interesting,” I said. “Are you an investor, or a potential investor?” he asked, looking again at my badge.
“I’m semi-retired,” I answered. “I came along because I have several clients whose money I look after. The kind of people that AIM seems to be interested in. So I thought I’d find out what you have to offer.”
“Interesting. Have you got ten minutes? I could perhaps give you some more insight into our approach if you have the time and, if you think it worth it, we could arrange a more formal meeting later. Do you live in Edinburgh?”
“No. I live over in Fife in a small village called Letham. Do you know it?”
“No, I’m afraid not. Look, we have some meeting rooms here. Why don’t we take five minutes if you’re not in a hurry?”
It was a good salesman’s pitch and I decided to go along with it. Perhaps I’d learn a bit more.
Firkin’s colleague had by now joined us, having helped Alice on her way and we repaired to a small meeting room just off the lobby.
The room had been set up for just such eventualities. There was a table in the centre with six chairs around it. There was a jug of coffee, cups and biscuits on a buffet standing against the wall. The view from the window down Princes Street was magnificent.
“Coffee? Let’s sit down.” Firkin’s colleague, who was so far nameless, pulled out a chair for me and I took my place. He sat down opposite me and Firkin brought us three coffees. “No Name” looked about thirty. He was fairly big and muscular and, although he was dressed as all the others in a grey suit, shirt and tie, none of these things looked as if they belonged to him. He didn’t look like a young investment banker. He seemed to me more like a scrubbed up truck driver. But then appearances can be misleading, as Dad had always told me.
We chatted generally for a while. Firkin gave me the pitch about the personal approach to investing – the fact that AIM specialised in advice to suit individual circumstances. He was smooth, but there was no doubt he was trying to wheedle out of me as much information about myself as he could. How many clients? About a dozen. What kind of investment amounts? On average about a couple of hundred thousand. Where did my clients come from? All over the place – mostly in the country or in smaller towns. I kept away from the big cities.
No Name was taking notes, laboriously. His pen didn’t really seem at home in his large hand but he was making a valiant effort.
After about ten minutes I had had enough and said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to go now. I have a train to catch in fifteen minutes.”
“No problem. It was really nice meeting you and don’t hesitate to call me next time you come through to Edinburgh and perhaps we can have lunch and discuss what AIM can do for your clients.”
I got up and turned towards the door.
“Just before you go, Mr Bruce . . .”
I turned back. “I presume you are who you say you are, but, if by any chance you are not, I would be a bit more careful about the way you ask questions in a public conference.”
Firkin said this with a smile. No Name had stood up, towering above his colleague by a good six inches, flexing his fingers after all the unaccustomed note-taking he had been doing. There was no smile on his face.
“That sounds rather like a threat to me.” “Just some friendly advice.” “Thank you,” I said and left the meeting room. The lobby was practically empty by now but I did see Purdy sitting in an armchair in the corner talking earnestly to Gavin Reid, the lawyer I’d met through Keith. I noticed them but made sure that they didn’t realise I had seen them.
On the drive home I thought over what had happened that day and promised myself to
call Alice and get a decent chance to speak to her.
Pierre and I had agreed that we would have supper together and compare our impressions of the day. I had invited him round to the house and, not being the best of cooks, decided on a carry out Indian meal from the Rajput in Cupar, which was only five miles away. I figured it would also be fitting as Dad had been a great fan of Indian cuisine.
Pierre arrived, as agreed, about seven and we settled ourselves comfortably in my small dining room with a mountain of spicy food and rice and a few bottles of beer.
Once the edge had been taken off our hunger I asked Pierre about his few days up north. He had had an excellent time. The weather had been fine. He’d played a couple of rounds of golf. He’d visited a couple of distilleries and had brought back two of bottles of whisky for Mike and me. They were in the hotel.
We then got onto the day’s events. I told him about Steven and the fact that there might be some comment in the papers the next day.
“Your question was just right,” said Pierre. “I was watching Purdy when you delivered the missing three and a half million. I’ve rarely seen a guy look quite so concerned – and he did not like it one bit.”
“I have to admit he recovered rather quickly,” I replied. “Sure. But as far as I’m concerned he definitely showed signs of being very uncomfortable.”
As I opened another beer, he asked me if Steven had any background knowledge of AIM.
“No, but he has agreed to do a bit of discreet digging.” Pierre added a few more observations. “When I joined Purdy afterwards he seemed to be only three quarters there. He was chatting to everyone more or less as normal but you could see that his brain was churning away in the background. I noticed him glance across at you a couple of times.”
“I know. I saw it too – especially when I was talking to Steven. Did you see me with the little old lady? She told me before we went in that she was worried about the return she was getting from her investment and that was why she was there. When she came up to me afterwards it didn’t take long for Purdy to send over a couple of guys to break up our conversation. Interesting, isn’t it? She gave me an envelope of papers to look at and asked me if I could give her a call because she wanted some advice from me. Hold on a minute.”
I got up and went through to the sitting room where I had deposited Alice’s papers and brought them back to the table.
“Have a look at these and see if they seem familiar to you.”
I handed the envelope to Pierre and he pulled out what turned out to be a couple of statements full of numbers and copies of a few letters and standard quarterly news bulletins.
Pierre perused them one by one and handed them over to me.
“Just like the stuff I get,” he said. “Bloody hell,” I said, looking at one of the statements. “Are you telling me that they hit you guys with a two and a half per cent management fee as well?”
“Sure. It’s standard practice, so I’ve been told. Mind you who knows if everyone has the same level of management fee? There’s potential there for a bit of fiddling.”
I did a quick calculation. “At two and a half per cent that’s a hundred grand for you,” I said.
“I know,” Pierre replied ruefully. “Not funny is it?” I grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil. “Let’s see now. If he is buggering about with clients’ money and siphoning off, say, three per cent just to be conservative, that’s one and a half million on fifty.
If he’s taking two and a half per cent management fees as well from everybody that’s another one and a quarter million which makes a nice round sum of two and three quarter million quid.”
I paused for a second as I did a few more mental calculations.
“And if he’s been doing that for the last five years or so that comes to a very useful thirteen point seven five million pounds, less a bit of tax somewhere.”
I sat back in my chair and looked across at Pierre. “Bob, I’ve told you the money doesn’t really mean much to me. For your information I got about ninety million when I sold the company and not too much went on tax. Most of it has been invested sensibly. I don’t really have to worry. But,” he said, with emphasis, “I do not like being taken for a fool and I don’t like crooks, especially those that prey on the elderly.”
“There’s another thing.”
“What?” “The two guys that Purdy sent over to break up the chat I was having with Alice wanted to have a little meeting.”
“Why?” “Ostensibly to sell their products to a potential investor.”
I then told him about the veiled threat I had received at the end of the meeting.
Pierre’s reaction was immediate. “That does it, then. We need to do something.” “Like what?” I asked. Pierre thought for a moment. “Here’s what I would like to do. We agreed that we’ve both got time on our hands. You can’t work in the garden and play golf all the time. I’m a bit bored. As far as I’m concerned today was confirmation of my suspicions. We need to see how we can expose the bastard.”
I thought this over for a minute. He was right. These kinds of crimes never got investigated properly. One reason was that they were often too difficult to prove. Another was that regulatory authorities seldom had teeth and the police, being more and more short handed and more and more snowed under by paperwork, just didn’t have the time. Government by objectives had gone crazy and playing by the rules was a slow process.
We were a couple of old farts who had time on their hands. Pierre could obviously supply financial backing and I had got to the stage in life where bending a few rules to achieve a morally correct objective was not going to bother me one bit.
I summarised this to Pierre and grinned. He lent over the table and stuck out his hand. I took it and thereby committed myself to a course of action which was going to have some startling consequences.
“Let’s plan the next steps.” We banged around a few ideas for the space of half an hour. As far as Purdy was concerned I was the thorn in his flesh. Pierre was just a client. We agreed to keep it that way. Our connection would be kept secret.
I would talk to Steven as soon as possible and get him digging on the promise that, whatever came out of it, he would get an exclusive.
I would go and see Alice and find out if she knew any other fellow investors. Meanwhile we should bring Mike into the equation.
“He has contacts from his old army days – guys that can do a bit of following or digging and if we can find out anything that proves that Purdy has a lot more money than he should have we’ll have a lever on him.”
We agreed to get Mike over the next morning and get things moving.
Pierre left to go back to the hotel and I turned in, reeking of curry and beer. As I dropped off to sleep I thought of Liz. She would definitely approve of what I was doing.
I called Mike the next morning and he agreed to come over and we’d meet at Fernie Castle for a bar lunch.
After we had related to Mike the events of the conference and he was completely up to date on everything he was more than happy to get involved.
“So you want me to see if I can dig up any dirt on Mr Alan Purdy?”
“Can you?” we asked.
“No problem. I have a couple of guys who would be just right. I knew them in the army. Mac lives up near Perth and does freelance house painting which bores him rigid but he likes the freedom it gives him. I’ll see if he’s free. Can I offer to pay him?”
“I’ll organise that,” said Pierre. “There is also Doug, who used to be an explosives expert, but that’s beside the point. He can do other things. He can’t find work very easily at the moment. He’ll be up for a bit of tax-free cash.”
The plan was launched. I knew what I was going to do, Mike would organize Mac and Doug and Pierre would stay in the background.
“Right little bunch of musketeers, we are,” said Mike, finishing off his beer. “We should call ourselves the Three Musketeers. We need a name. I like names.”
“
The Three Musketeers is a bit old-fashioned,” said Pierre. “Well, how about The Bruce Brothers?” I said with a grin. “One of my favourite films.”
We discarded that as being too frivolous and after bandying about a bunch of alternatives – some of them distinctly unusable in female company – we decided we would be APA Consulting (Athos, Porthos and Aramis).
As we were about to leave I mentioned to Pierre that we had an invitation to go through to visit Heather for lunch on Saturday. He was delighted and we decided that he and I would meet Mike on the way so as to arrive together. Our sister could be a bit daunting on occasions and I preferred the idea of presenting a consolidated front.
Mike had to go back home. He had an appointment in Dundee, he said.
“Which will no doubt result in a new photograph in the living room?” I asked mischievously.
“You never know.”
Pierre looked mystified.
I called Alice when I got back home and asked her if I could come over and see her the next day. She promptly suggested that I come for lunch. She would rustle up a salad.
I set off the next morning at ten thirty and drove north at a leisurely pace, over the hills and down into the fertile valley of the Tay. It was sunny and I felt invigorated. I had something to do. My brain was operating again and trying to imagine what we were going to discover.
I have to admit that most of my life had centred around the need to forge a career and look after my family. The idea of having the luxury (the time and the money) to do something to help others – to right a wrong, to punish a wrong doer – in some way or other appealed to me. I had a new purpose.
I skirted the fair city of Perth and drove north. Alice had given me directions to her house once I got to the village. They were simple to follow and I arrived at about a quarter to twelve.
