‘May I see the correspondence?’
McGraw got up from his desk and opened a filing cabinet. He took out a dossier and handed it to Steven without comment. Steven flicked through it and found the official letter from Pentangle giving invoice instructions. There was nothing of interest in it save for the Pentangle reference to be, ‘quoted in all correspondence’. It was SigV. Steven read this as, Sigma 5. He felt glad he’d come.
NINE
As he drove across town to his hotel, Steven kept thinking about the designation, Sigma 5. Although Pentangle’s front men, Childs and Leadbetter, had denied having anything to do with sending samples of Agrigene’s crop at Peat Ridge for independent analysis, finding the code, SigV on their invoice instructions to McGraw’s firm in his office was, he thought, just too much of a coincidence. Sigma 5 might not be a company name in its own right but it might well be the code name given to some project they were funding. In fact, that would probably make more sense, he thought.
But why concoct the story about the lab report being sent anonymously to Rafferty’s lawyers? He supposed that it could be that they did want to associate themselves overtly with something that wasn’t entirely above board — bribing a government scientist to produce a misleading report would certainly come into that category. But whatever the reason, if Rafferty and co had seen fit to lie about it, that fact alone suggested that they were working to a different agenda.
As he drove along Melville Drive, the stretch of road running between the green park areas of The Meadows and Bruntsfield Links, Steven’s phone rang and he pulled in to the side to answer it.
‘Jamie Brown here,’ said the voice.
‘Who?’
‘Jamie Brown of The Scotsman, we met in the pub at Blackbridge last Sunday. Remember?’
‘Of course. I’m sorry.’
‘I said I’d get back to you when I’d looked into whether or not Crawhill Farm was on the market.'
‘Oh yes, I remember,’ said Steven, feeling embarrassed that he’d gone ahead and asked for himself.
‘Apparently it’s not, and hasn’t been in the past thirty years. Mind you, I suppose that doesn’t rule out some kind of private deal going on between Rafferty and another party but as far as the normal agencies are concerned, it’s no go.’
‘Pity,’ said Steven, ‘another beautiful theory spoiled by an ugly little fact, as someone once put it.’
‘It’s not entirely bad news though,’ said Brown. ‘I did manage to establish that Rafferty does have a strong business association with an outside commercial interest.’
‘You have been busy.’
‘It’s a venture capital outfit called, Pentangle.’
‘Sounds like a folk group,’ said Steven.
Brown was unabashed. ‘But here’s the really strange thing,’ he continued. ‘It doesn’t exist. ‘It doesn’t seem to be registered anywhere and none of our finance people on the paper have ever heard of it.’
‘I don’t think you can read too much into that,’ said Steven, keen to discourage Brown from digging too deeply in his patch. ‘Venture capitalists are often shy retiring creatures. They seldom like the glare of publicity so they may not exist as a corporate entity. They’re probably just a group of very wealthy men calling themselves, Pentangle for the sake of convenience.’
‘Maybe,’ agreed Brown. ‘But here’s another strange thing. Steven Dunbar isn’t on the staff of any environmental department or agency in the UK. He doesn’t exist either…’
Steven closed his eyes and cursed silently. Brown had turned out to be a better investigator than he’d thought. ‘I didn’t actually say that I worked for them, just that I had an interest in the environment,’ he pointed out.
‘So who do you “actually” work for?’
‘The Sci-Med Inspectorate,’ Steven admitted. ‘When we last spoke we weren’t officially involved. I was just having a nose around.’
‘But you are now?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s interesting. Could we meet?’
‘If you mean for interview, no.’
‘Off the record?’
‘Purely on that understanding.’
‘Just tell me where.’
‘My hotel, The Grange in Whitehouse Terrace. 8 o’clock in the bar.’
Steven pressed the ‘end’ button and let out his breath in a long sigh. He tried looking on the bright side. At least it was Brown and not McColl, the other scribbler he’d met in the Castle Tavern but this was a complication he hadn’t bargained for. He would have to be careful but, trying to look on the bright side, he reckoned that Brown, with his connections, could actually be a help.
When he got back to his room he contacted Sci-Med and asked if they had anything for him. They, like Brown, had drawn a blank on Pentangle and also on Sigma 5 but thanks to the co-operation of Inland Revenue, they had obtained details of Gerald Millar’s bank account and retirement package. Steven asked that they E-mail the figures to him so he could go through them at leisure. They said they would do this in the next half-hour. Steven stripped, had a shower and changed into casual clothes while he was waiting. The file was there when he switched his computer back on.
He found the financial details interesting. Gerald Millar had been given, ‘full enhancement’ on his pension rights in contradiction of what he understood should happen and from what Roberta at the Ayrshire lab had told him. This simply did not fit with a member of staff having requested his own early retirement. It was the deal given to staff being retired compulsorily at the ministry’s request when years of service were enhanced artificially to increase the size of their pension. Steven noted that they had also increased the associated lump sum payment. ‘Nice one Gerald,’ he murmured.
In addition to the retirement package, there was another recorded payment of thirty thousand pounds, paid into Millar’s bank account and marked down as the proceeds from the sale of shares in two named companies. Nothing odd in that, thought Steven but then his suspicious nature gave him second thoughts. The money might well have come from the sale of shares but had Millar actually owned these shares in the first place? The payment could conceivably have originated from a third party who had just laundered it through an apparent share deal. He replied to the E-mail with this self same question for Sci-Med
It was just after seven and Steven thought he’d use up the time before his meeting with Brown looking into the niggling little problem of executive responsibility out at Blackbridge. He’d been under the impression that the Scottish Executive had clear and exclusive rights to decide on matters agricultural in Scotland but from what he’d overheard at lunchtime at the hotel there seemed to be some confusion about this. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food still seemed to be playing a leading role. He connected his laptop to the Internet and sought out the web pages in succession of both the Scottish Executive and MAFF.
It was hard going, navigating his way through a sea of irrelevance but in the end he came up with something called, ‘The Main Concordat between the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food and the Scottish Executive’. This long document outlined an agreement between the two bodies to respect each other’s territory and keep each other informed, co-operate wherever possible and generally be good pals. It struck him that the words in it had been very carefully chosen by someone doing a fair impression of tiptoeing through a minefield and reminded him of a prayer. ‘Lord, help me not to stand on people’s toes, particularly those that are attached to the arses I may have to kiss tomorrow.’ He finally came across one telling statement that said, ‘This Concordat is not intended to constitute a legally enforceable contract or to create any rights or obligations, which are legally enforceable. It is intended to be binding in honour only.’