“As Bob told you, the conference, the meeting with Alice and the burglary all raised our curiosity. I happen to be a wealthy man and the fact that I was perhaps being defrauded of a few hundred thousand pounds honestly did not worry me too much. That may seem strange to you but it’s true.
“So I organised the hacking into the AIM systems. I know full well it was illegal but I’m perfectly prepared to take full responsibility.
“When we saw what Purdy was doing to elderly, helpless people – look at the comments on these lists – we decided we wanted to do something about it. Bob and I discussed it at length.
“We knew that if we went to the authorities – the police or the financial regulators – it would probably take months of investigation and there was no surety that Purdy would be adequately punished. Don’t forget, we couldn’t produce our proof because that could put us in prison.
“So we decided to take the law into our own hands. I know it’s not very fashionable nowadays but sometimes it is the right thing to do. We met with Purdy and presented him with the evidence and forced him to make reparations and to resign.”
Ian was looking more and more astonished. I could understand his concern. He had just taken over the management of an important company whose chairman had just resigned. His job was to be caretaker for six months or so and hand it over to a new man. He was not going to want to be involved in anything likely to get him in trouble.
“So, what did you do?” he asked.
I took over. “Pierre, let me explain.” “As Pierre said, we had a meeting with Alan Purdy.” I wasn’t about to give the lurid details of masked men, kidnapping, the collapse of Purdy and the relief he showed when he saw his escape route.
“And . . .?”
“He admitted wrongdoing and agreed to set up a trust fund of five million pounds to recompense the people he had defrauded and to resign from AIM.”
I pulled out another file from my briefcase and pushed it across the table. He picked it up and opened it. The first document was the trust agreement, naming Pierre and me as trustees. The second was a bank statement from the Bank of Scotland showing a credit balance of five million pounds.
Ian raised his bushy grey eyebrows and looked at us both, laid the documents carefully on the table in front of him and sat back in his chair.
“I heard that Purdy’s house is up for sale. Apparently he’s leaving the country. Needs warmer weather for health reasons. Is that anything to do with you?”
“Perhaps – indirectly” “So what do you propose I do now?” “We want to transfer the management of the fund over either to you personally or to AIM to manage the correct distribution of the funds to the people that should have had it in the first place.
“I think you’ll find that your auditors are bent. We don’t see how Purdy could have done what he did without sweetening their fees to turn a blind eye. If that’s the case you can persuade them to find a way of getting that money back into the company and out to the investors. You can threaten to get them struck off if they don’t. Once that is done I suggest you change your auditors.”
“Bloody hell! You’re asking me to blackmail the auditors!”
“No. We’re asking you to help to correct a wrong. Purdy has been punished. True, he won’t spend fifteen years in jail which is where he ought to be but he’s out of the way and won’t dare show his face back in the UK again. He still has enough to have a reasonable retirement but nothing like what he had planned. What’s the alternative? If we hadn’t acted Purdy would still be screwing people left, right and centre. If we had tipped off the authorities we’d have got nowhere and the reputation of AIM would have been mud. This way you can repair the damage and clean up AIM before handing it over. You may need to tell your successor but he should see the logic. Anyway he won’t have to worry because nothing will have happened on his watch.”
“No, only on mine!” “Have you got another option?” I asked. Ian was leaning back in his chair. He crossed his hands over his ample stomach and pursed his lips, looking thoughtfully at the documents lying in front of him. There was silence for a couple of minutes.
I was myself wondering if we had been a bit naïve in thinking we could hand over the fund just like that. But it did seem better to me that AIM should manage the process. It was really their money to be distributed and it struck me as more logical that they should control the process. There must be a way they could do it and avoid all the negative publicity that would come from making the whole thing public. It must be in the interest of AIM’s auditors to find a way otherwise they would be obliged to admit collusion in the whole scam.
Ian eventually stirred. “One thing for sure is that I can’t keep this to myself. Some of my colleagues are going to have to know about it. And I’m going to have to understand how he managed to keep it quiet inside the company.”
“My guess,” I replied, “is that he divided things up into very separate functions and didn’t let anyone see the whole picture. I can well imagine him managing to do that. Firkin is probably the only guy that knew anything about it. He could well be the man who fed the comments into the database. These comment boxes are not available to anybody who simply accesses the system. They are protected by a password which our expert managed to crack.”
Ian’s eyebrows shot up. “This expert of yours must know what he’s doing.”
We made no comment. A few more minutes of silence and suddenly Ian galvanized into action. He stood up abruptly and his chair, on its five wheels, went careering off across the room.
“OK. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll keep all this stuff if you don’t mind. I‘ll have to talk to the board. They are ultimately responsible and I can’t clean this mess up without letting them know what has been going on. This expert of yours – would he be willing to come here to AIM for a week and do a review of our IT systems and “accidentally” discover all that you guys have already discovered? That way the information is officially inside the company and then I can explain to the Board without getting you involved. Once they are aware of the problem they’re going to be shocked. I can then – say, a couple of days later – tell them of your visit which we’ll say took place after our IT review and what it discovered. How’s that?”
It made sense to me. I looked at Pierre. He nodded his agreement.
“Fine,” said Ian. “Where is this expert of yours? Is he in Edinburgh?”
“Our expert is, in fact, a ‘she’,” I replied. “Her name is Sophie Lamarre and she used to work for Pierre in his IT company in France. She now operates as an independent consultant. At the moment she is staying with my sister in Doune.”
“Would she be willing to do this? I’ll put her up in a good hotel in Edinburgh and pay her five grand for a week’s work. The objective is to generate a report that I can present to the Board which explains all this.”
“Pierre, what do you think?” He fished in his pocket for his phone and got through to Sophie straight away. They conversed in French for a few minutes which neither Ian nor I could follow. Then Pierre hung up.
“No problem,” he said. “She can be here on Monday morning and she’ll ask for you.”
“That’s settled then,” replied Ian. “We’ll give your Sophie a week to produce a report. I’ll speak to the Board and we’ll take it from there. You hold on to the trust fund documents but don’t do anything yet about contacting the investors and I’ll call you back in about ten days. OK?”
Business being concluded we got up to go. Ian accompanied us down to the ground floor and we took our leave. He was looking distinctly preoccupied.
Just as we were leaving I suggested to Ian that he be careful about Firkin. “I’m pretty sure he was in on the whole thing,” I warned him.