She had picked the rendezvous – a café called Tea-Tree Tea on Bread Street. There was a bearded guy behind the counter and he tutted audibly when Fox ordered coffee. Fox had arrived twenty minutes early, giving him time to scan the newspaper. He’d added a cheese scone to his order, and settled himself at a table by the window. The sun outside had some warmth to it, hinting that spring was maybe finally on its way. Linda Dearborn arrived for the meeting ten minutes early. She smiled as if in recognition.
‘Linda?’ he asked anyway.
‘I hate to say it,’ she laughed, ‘but you do look like a cop. I think it’s the posture, or the way your eyes flit around all the time – Max is just the same.’ She had placed her heavy-looking satchel on the chair next to Fox.
‘Well, I’m not sure you look like a news-hound,’ Fox responded.
‘It’s my day off.’
‘You’ve chosen a brave get-up.’ She didn’t seem to understand.
‘Bare legs in winter.’
She looked down at them. ‘With what this tan cost, I can’t afford to hide them. Some of us suffer for our art, and my legs are a work of art, don’t you think?’
‘What can I get you?’
But she was already bounding towards the counter. The proprietor had perked up, and knew her order before she got the chance to tell him. Lapsang souchong with a slice of lemon. Fox pretended to read his paper while the two of them chatted. Dearborn stood on tiptoes with her elbows on the counter. She twirled a hank of hair while she talked. Fox tried not to think how attractive she was. She was Max Dearborn’s sister. She was a journalist.
The proprietor insisted on carrying the tea to the table for her. She thanked him with a crinkling of her nose, then sat down next to Fox rather than across the table from him, having removed her satchel from the chair. She crossed one leg over the other while he assumed an interest in the art on the walls around them.
‘Nice place,’ he said.
‘It’s handy – my flat’s on Gardner ’s Crescent.’
Fox nodded and turned his attention to the window. There were two shops across the street. One was a hairdresser’s, the other a vet’s. Linda Dearborn had leaned down to find something in her bag. When she placed the laptop on the table, she peered down the front of her own blouse.
‘Almost a wardrobe malfunction there,’ she pretended to apologise.
‘Does the act always work?’ Fox asked, fixing his eyes on hers.
‘Mostly,’ she eventually conceded.
‘Well, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the effort, but maybe we could…’ He tapped the laptop. Dearborn gave a little pout but lifted the screen anyway and switched the machine on. Fox looked away as she typed in her password. Twenty seconds and a couple of clicks later and she was angling the screen towards him.
‘Companies House is all well and good,’ she began. ‘But it helps that my newspaper hasn’t yet scaled down its business desk. The accountants aren’t even halfway through dealing with everything Mr Brogan left behind, but what seems clear is that CBBJ was buoyed in the early days by large injections of cash. As far as anyone can tell, these weren’t always accompanied by effective paperwork. ’
‘Meaning?’
‘We don’t know where the money came from. But there are plenty of other actual shareholders.’
‘Would one of them happen to be called Wauchope Leisure?’
Dearborn ran one long-nailed finger down the mouse pad, the names and numbers on the screen scrolling with her.
‘Not quite,’ she said, placing the cursor over a name and highlighting it – ScotFuture (Wauchope).
‘Would that company be Dundee-based, by any chance?’ Fox asked.
Dearborn just nodded. ‘Remember you asked me to look at Lovatt, Meikle, Meldrum’s client base? They just happen to represent a company called Wauchope Leisure. As far as I can ascertain, LMM’s job was to disguise the sleaze factor in a series of adverts for lap-dancing clubs up and down the country. Meantime, Wauchope’s managing director has been put in jail…’
‘Fancy that,’ Fox mused. When the journalist saw she wasn’t going to get anything more out of him, she turned her attention back to the screen.
‘There are a lot of small companies listed here – private companies, meaning they don’t have to file much in the way of information about themselves. The lads on the business desk were intrigued. Charles Brogan seems to have had friends all over the country – Inverness, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Motherwell, Paisley… and further afield, too – Newcastle, Liverpool, Dublin…’
‘I don’t suppose these friendships survived the financial melt-down, ’ Fox mused.
‘No, I don’t suppose they did. Anyone who bought into Salamander Point, for example… well, nobody seems to think they’ll get back more than five pence in the pound.’
‘Ouch.’
‘And our benighted banks take yet another hit – Brogan had loans totalling just over eighteen million, and he was behind on his payments.’
‘Could they go after his widow?’
‘Unlikely – that’s the beauty of a limited company.’
‘Is Joanna Broughton’s name on none of the paperwork? She wasn’t company secretary or anything?’
Dearborn was shaking her head. ‘She didn’t hold a single share.’
‘Yet her initials are right there in the company’s name.’
‘That’s why I dug back a little further. She was a partner at one time, but her husband bought her out, around the same time she started her casino.’
‘Does CBBJ happen to own a slice of the Oliver?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She cupped her chin in her hand. ‘And neither does Wauchope Leisure. So where’s this all leading, Malcolm?’
‘You tell me.’
‘You think some of the money in CBBJ was dirty?’
‘Is that just an inspired guess?’
She smiled. ‘It’s what my business editor thinks. Problem is, the paper trail is almost impossible to follow.’
‘Maybe if you gave it a bit longer…’
She stared at him. Her eyes were almost violet. He wondered if they were tinted lenses. ‘Maybe,’ she said. Then: ‘By the way, how’s suspension treating you?’
‘Can’t complain.’
‘That’s funny… sort of.’
‘Because I’m in the Complaints, you mean?’ He watched her nod.
‘Story is, you were trampling all over your brother-in-law’s murder.’
‘He wasn’t my brother-in-law.’ Fox paused. ‘And it’s not a story.’
‘Oh, but it might be, if you let it.’ The tip of her tongue protruded from between her lips.
‘Grieving Cop Errs on the Side of Zeal – that’s about as much as you could do with it.’
‘But now all that zeal seems aimed at Charles Brogan…’
‘Do you reckon your own zeal will get you anywhere?’
‘My editor describes me as “tenacious”.’
‘But so far you can’t prove a link between Brogan and Ernie Wishaw?’
‘I know they met several times.’
‘But nobody saw any money change hands?’ Fox guessed. Dearborn angled her head to one side.
‘Strange, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘The way he went missing just after your friend Vince died? Took me about fifteen minutes to make the connection – Vince worked at Salamander Point.’ She looked like a schoolgirl with a gold star on her latest essay. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ And, when he didn’t say anything: ‘See, Malcolm? I’m not just a pretty face.’
‘I never thought you were.’
‘Hot water?’ a voice from behind them called. It was the proprietor, standing with a fresh pot in his hand.