Her face was drawn and pale as she stood with her back to the fireplace, the album hanging limply in her hand. ‘Look, leaving Gary out of this for a minute, what is it you need?’
‘We need order forms for drugs,’ said Dylan. ‘How does the health care division order its pharmaceutical supplies, love? Do you know?’
‘Course I do,’ she snapped at him. ‘We have a fully qualified group pharmacist. Her signature has to be on all the purchase orders which we give to the wholesalers, and she has to countersign every delivery slip. She’s responsible for distributing drugs and other supplies to each of the hospitals. The Chief Nursing Officer in each place is responsible for their security after that.’
‘Do you file the copy order forms and delivery slips separately or are they in with all the purchase receipts?’
‘They’re kept separately. Joe Donn keeps them in his safe.’
‘In that case,’ said Dylan, ‘we need to get in there. Do you have keys?’
Susie had recovered her temper, but not her complexion. She was still chalk-white. ‘Yes, I have keys to everything. Take me to the office and I’ll open it for you.’
‘Better if you take your car,’ I suggested. ‘We might have to go somewhere fairly quickly afterwards. We’ll follow you.’
She looked puzzled, as, once again, did Dylan, but neither of them argued.
The evening traffic had largely died away, and so the drive to the headquarters of The Gantry group didn’t take long — fortunately, for I still didn’t want to get into any discussion with Mike about Gary O’Rourke. I had never been to the office before, so I was surprised by the modesty of the building, compared to the size of the business which was controlled beneath its red-tiled roof. It was set behind a low wall, with head-high railings and a privet hedge behind, anonymous save for a painted, blue-on-white sign on the gateway reading simply, ‘Gantry’, and for a brass plate at the door, listing the companies which were registered there.
‘Doesn’t look as if the book-keeper’s working late tonight,’ I said, as we climbed out of my Frontera in the otherwise empty car park, and followed Susie inside.
‘Fuck him if he is,’ Dylan muttered. ‘I’m not in a mood to fanny about with him.’ There was no need for concern. The building was in darkness as we stepped inside, and Joseph Donn’s first-floor office was empty.
The safe which Susie had mentioned turned out to be one of a series of fire-proof, bomb-proof, concrete-filled filing cabinets on the wall facing Donn’s varnished desk. She opened it with a key, pulled out a drawer and turned to us. ‘Which years do you want?’
‘Six years ago,’ I answered, ‘the year after that, and the last full year. That’ll let us see what’s going on. How long’s your head chemist been with you?’
‘Eight years. Her signature should be on them all. Her name’s Kerry Guild.’
I took the three folders from her, and opened the most recent. ‘I don’t know why, but something tells me that it won’t be.’
The big bold signature, ‘K. Guild’, was on the first form I looked at, and on the corresponding delivery slip which was stapled to it. It was for a consignment of paracetamol. It was on the second set of forms too, for Ranitidine tablets. The third form was an order for diamorphine. It was signed ‘Gary O’Rourke’.
I showed it to Susie. Her hand went to her mouth as she gasped, ‘Oh my God!’
‘That’s what Jan found out,’ I told her. ‘For the last five years, your health care division has been buying, quite legitimately, large quantities of Temazepam and diamorphine. Now we know who’s been doing it.
‘Our guess is that those drugs weren’t here long, only they didn’t go to the hospitals. They went to the streets, for Christ knows how many times their nominal value.’
‘But how could Gary sign those orders?’ she asked.
‘He did vocational training in the RAMC, didn’t he? What’s the betting he could prove to the wholesalers that he’s a qualified pharmacist?’
Susie sat on the edge of Joseph Donn’s desk. She looked crushed.
‘Listen love,’ I said, as gently as I could make myself sound, ‘I have to ask you this. You must have told someone about the work that Jan was doing for you, and where she had reached with it. You said you haven’t seen Gary for months. So who was it?’
She sat there, blank-eyed, and shook her head. ‘No. I didn’t.’
‘Susie, you must have told someone. I know it. Was it your father?’
We looked at her for a while, until finally, she nodded her head: not very vigorously, but she nodded it. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I told my dad, and the silly old bugger must have let it slip to Gary.’
‘Are they close, then?’
Susie nodded again. ‘I wouldn’t say Dad treats him like a son, but yes, they’re close. Gary worships him, that’s for sure.’
As I gazed down at her, I almost heard a click as the last piece of the jigsaw slipped into place.
‘Susie, I think you should give all those records to Mike, the last five years at least. Then I want you to go home, and not to talk to anyone at all, until you hear from us again. Is that okay?’
She pushed herself off the edge of the desk. ‘Anything you say, Oz.’ She pulled the rest of the records from the drawer and handed them to Dylan. ‘But Michael, don’t make it too soon before your next visit. I like my men to bring me good news, not disaster.’
We watched her as she locked the safe, then followed her downstairs, and outside. We watched her as she drove off, into what had become the night.
‘Jesus,’ said Dylan at last. ‘Gary bloody O’Rourke. The boy gets around, doesn’t he. I’ll bet he punts the drugs out through that so-called security firm he worked for. Bastard.’ I let him swear on for a bit longer before I tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Mike,’ I said, quietly and evenly. ‘Remember you and Susie were supposed to be coming to the GWA show in Newcastle, only the Lord Provost had the tickets off you?’
‘Yes: I wanted to go too, but he just commandeered them.’
‘Well that night, I stood beside Gary O’Rourke while he held the door open for his idol, his Uncle Jack. Not a single flicker of recognition passed between them. Not a “Hello, son,” not a “Hello, Uncle Jack”. Not a smile, not a twitch, not as much as a “Thank you”.
‘Yet the same Jack Gantry made a point of telling O’Rourke what Jan was working on. Why d’you think that was?’
Dylan stared back at me. I think that he could have been a bit scared by the sound of my voice. I think I was too.
‘It’s time you and I paid a visit to the Lord Provost, Detective Inspector,’ I said.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Oz,’ Mike protested, weakly. ‘This is Jack Gantry we’re dealing with, after all.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t care if it’s the Devil himself. Come to think of it, maybe it is.’
Chapter 58
I know, I should have given some consideration to Mike Dylan’s position as he directed me through the streets which led to Jack Gantry’s house. After all, I had been concerned earlier about the potential effect of our extra-curricular investigation on his CID career. But that was then.
As I drove through Pollokshields, the only thing in my mind was my wife: Jan carrying our embryonic child, Jan excited by her forensic examination of the Gantry accounts, Jan touching that washing machine, Jan in the time it took the electricity to course through her body, her awareness of what was happening before the current blew all the circuits in her brain and stopped her heart for ever.
I could have exploded, gone over the edge, but I didn’t. Instead, I did as I had before; I built that trusty shell of ice-cold anger around myself, feeding from it as we drew closer to the man who, I was sure, held the answers to all my questions of the weeks gone by. I had no clear idea of what I would do when I came face-to-face with him. All I had was determination that when I had finished, his life would be in as many pieces as mine.