By All Means (Fiske and MacNee Mysteries Book 2) (12 page)

Fiona wasted no time on pleasantries.  ‘We’ve got a meeting with a senior official at the FO tomorrow morning at eleven.  I talked to someone in the Crown Office this morning and he’s just got back to me to say that they’ve agreed to a meeting with the Advocate General’s people.  They want me there to explain why we need them to intervene.  And I want you there to tell them, directly, why it’s so important that you get these emails.’

‘Christ, Fiona, you don’t hang about, do you?  I’ll talk to Esslemont, and if he agrees, which he will, but I have to give him his place, I’ll get admin to book us on a plane.  Might have to be quite early, though.’

‘That’s fine.  Bob can get the kids off to school, and it’s his turn to be home for them tomorrow afternoon’.

‘Bit of a military operation having kids and a job.   I’ve just been talking to Colin MacNee.  He and Janet are taking on an
au pair
.’

‘We thought of that, but we’re managing on the basis of my flexitime and the goodwill of his colleagues at the university.  Why so interested?’

‘Always concerned for my colleagues.’  She rang off.

*

‘Aisha’s just heard back from Strathclyde about Nuttall.  She’s following up on his application to Ebright, so she asked me to let you know what they’ve come up with.’

Vanessa had managed to finish her sandwich and was sipping a cup of camomile tea.  ‘Go on, Sara.’

‘They sent a PC to the mailbox shop where Nuttall’s birth certificate was sent to Simon Mathieson.   He doesn’t have a box there any more – he only rented it for three months, from mid-April to mid-July – but one of the staff said he recognised the picture of Nuttall as someone who had had a box there.  He couldn’t say for sure whether Nuttall was the person he knew as Mathieson, but he was pretty certain he had been there.’

‘Better than nothing, I suppose, but hardly conclusive.  I guess we have to find Mathieson, if that’s his real name.  I suppose it’s too much to hope that he’s already known to us?’

‘I checked the databases for both Nuttall and Mathieson. Nothing known.  Aisha is asking Ebright what checks they make before taking someone on, but uniform have checked all the names we collected on Vermont One and from Ebright and nobody has come up with a record’.

‘I assumed that was the case.  Someone would have told me if anything had popped out.  Bloody slow progress, this.  Not much better on Keller, though I’ve got a meeting in London tomorrow that might help with the emails.   Get Strathclyde to do what they can on Mathieson.’

DC Aisha Gajani appeared the door.

‘You know, Aisha, you sort of materialise rather than just coming in.  What’ve you got?’

‘Well, Nuttall, or whoever he is, first applied for a job with Ebright in late May.  His address was at the mailbox shop we already know about, but it’s quite feasible that his mail was being picked up by Mathieson, because you can have multiple names listed for the same box.  I’ve just checked with the shop again, and one of the names listed for the box rented by Mathieson was, you guessed it, Thomas Nuttall.  You would have thought that Mathieson, if it was him, would have applied for the birth certificate in Nuttall’s name, but he didn’t.   Maybe he didn’t think ahead to the point where his new identity would apply for a job.  Or maybe he thought that Register House might cross-reference to Nuttall's death certificate.  Whatever, it’s another link between Nuttall and Mathieson.’

‘And Ebright?’

‘They do a basic criminal records check after they’ve decided to offer someone a job.  Nuttall came up clean.  I’ve seen his application and he claimed experience, which Ebright didn’t verify, in offshore work.  Since Nuttall is dead, I thought I’d see if any of the major employers ever had a Simon Mathieson on their books.  Might take a while.  Should I carry on with it?’

Vanessa spread her hands in front of her and shrugged. ‘Might as well.  Can’t do any harm. And it might help us find him.  Now I need to get the DCS to sign off on my trip to London tomorrow.  He’ll have to inform the Chief.’

*

Jack Eisner was in his hotel room drafting an email to Cy Packard at Burtonhall HQ when Vanessa Fiske knocked on his door.  Colin MacNee was with her.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Eisner.  I’m Detective Chief Inspector Vanessa Fiske and this is Detective Inspector Colin MacNee.’  They both showed heir warrant cards and Eisner beckoned them in.

‘We understand that you work for Burtonhall, Mr Eisner, and we would like to ask you some questions.  We are investigating the murders at Grampian Royal Hospital and on the Vermont One oil platform, both of which are managed by companies owned by Burtonhall.  Are you happy to talk to us?’

Eisner looked uneasy. ‘Sure.  But I don’t know what I can tell you.  I’ve only been here a few days.’

‘Let’s start with what you do for Burtonhall.’

‘I’m the Director of Security.  I report directly to the CEO and he asked me to come over to see if I could help with the PR aspects of the unfortunate events at the hospital and on the rig.’

Colin MacNee looked at him with distaste.  ‘“Unfortunate events”? There have been two murders, Mr Eisner.  This isn’t a Lemony Snicket adventure.’  Colin caught a glance from Vanessa and backed off.

‘How much do you, and Burtonhall generally, know about what the two dead men, Jamieson and Keller, were doing here?’

‘Almost nothing.  Cy Packard, the CEO, takes a close interest in all Burtonhall’s investments.  That’s why he sent me over.  To find out what’s going on and to protect our reputation.’

‘Come on, Mr Eisner.  You’re pretty high paid help for a PR man. Let me ask you directly, have you, or your Mr Packard, seen the emails that Peter Keller sent from the hospital?’

‘No.  Burtonhall is not involved in the day-to-day management of the companies it owns.  Any reporting would have been directly to Hedelco.  And Ebright in the case of the Vermont One.’

‘Could you get them if you wanted to?’

‘I guess Cy could get them. But they would be commercially sensitive.  We’d want to keep them confidential.’

Vanessa looked unimpressed. ‘I’m sure you would.  But if you haven’t seen the reports, why are you here?’

‘Reputational damage can go to the bottom line.  I’m here to try to prevent that happening.  And with senior politicians taking an interest, the press coverage will continue.  We need to manage that.’

Colin was about to intervene but Vanessa touched his arm.

‘Thank you, Mr Eisner.  Please let your CEO know that reputational damage, as you put it, might be less if he ensured that we have sight of Peter Keller’s emails to Hedelco.  And please let us know if you intend to leave Aberdeen.’

Eisner had already opened the hotel room door.  As they walked down the corridor, Colin again started to speak.

‘Let’s talk in the car, Colin.’ Vanessa said, firmly.

As she got into front passenger seat, Vanessa said, ‘Spit it out.  I think I know what it is.’

‘How the fuck does he know that the First Minister has stuck her oar in?’

‘How indeed?  He seemed much more certain than press generalisations would justify.  We need to find out who’s leaking, and why?’

As Colin started the car, Vanessa turned to him. ‘And what was that about Lemony Snicket?’

‘The girls have been reading it.  You get sucked in.  You’ll understand eventually.’

*

Not long after the detectives left his hotel room, Eisner reached for his burner to read a text.

DCI trying to get emails.  Mtg 2moro in London Foreign Office to discuss getting US govt to help.

Eisner immediately sent this information in an encrypted email to Packard.  The response was almost immediate.  Packard would talk to his Chairman.  It was time to deploy the ex-PM.

*

At 9.23 p.m. that evening, one of Mancuso’s security staff, doing his routine round of inspection at Last Cairngorm, found a suspicious package at the bottom of the indoor ski slope. 
The slope was housed in one of the buildings that had caused most controversy when the development was under consideration for planning permission by Mid-Aberdeenshire Council.   As he had been trained to do, he immediately left the building and began to contact security control by radio.   As he was walking away, he was lifted off his feet by the blast from a huge explosion.   Apart from some bruising and a sprained wrist, he was unharmed.  As he got up, he looked back to see the ski slope building engulfed in flames.   As he hurried to the security control room, there was a loud crash as the roof collapsed on to the slope.

*

That same evening, 130 miles south west, in Cumbernauld, the duty IT Manager at Mercury Fulfilment, a US-owned warehousing and distribution centre, providing services to several online retailers, began to get calls from customers who had been unable to order items, and from staff unable to dispatch them.   The IT system had become unresponsive. It was failing to accept valid credit and debit cards, returning postcodes as unrecognised, declaring stock items, even when they were clearly visible to warehouse staff, unavailable, and refusing to allow returning customers to log on, apparently because their passwords were invalid. 

The IT manager quickly realised that his systems had been hacked into.  He called the chief executive and told him that the company was under cyber attack and that if he did not close down the system entirely, the whole business would be at risk.

Customers worldwide began to email and telephone to complain. When the message, “Mercury Fulfilment apologises for the temporary unavailability of its services.  We hope to be back online very soon” appeared on an otherwise blank website, messages began to trend on Twitter and other social media asking “WTF is going on at Mercury?”

The first response of the company to press enquiries was to play down the significance of a ‘glitch’ in its systems, but as soon as the IT specialists in press, television and radio got involved, the words ‘cyber attack’ became the entirely accurate shorthand for what had happened to Mercury Fulfilment.

CHAPTER EIGHT

James Michael Roskill - "James" to his colleagues and fellow investors in Burtonhall and the other companies whose boards he adorned, "Mike" to his family and his oldest friends, "RosKILL" to the protesters and campaigners who remembered nothing about his career except the two short and bloody wars in oil-rich Central Asia that his government had waged in defiance of international opinion - had served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for a little under four years.  Before that, he had been Foreign Secretary for six years and, since leaving office and resigning from parliament, he had shown little restraint in using his influence and access in the interests of the businesses through which he was in the process of becoming very rich.

For much of Roskill’s time at the Foreign Office, and throughout his premiership, Sir Justin Carey had been Permanent Secretary at the FO and head of the diplomatic service.  Carey was nearing retirement and could look forward to immediate elevation to the House of Lords when he left.  Despite the restrictions on the practice of senior civil servants using the so-called "revolving door" between government and private business, it was well known that he was looking around for directorships that would draw on his wide experience of government and international affairs but, more significantly, provide him with a supplement to his already generous pension.

When Eisner told
Cy Packard about the meeting at the FO that Fiona Marchmont had engineered, he immediately called Burtonhall’s chairman.

‘Richard, the Scottish police are going to the British Government tomorrow to get them to ask the Feds to put pressure on Hedelco to release the emails that their man sent back from Aberdeen. We need to prevent that.  I don’t need to tell you why.’

Richard Seaton had served as Secretary of State under two presidents. His second term had coincided with Roskill’s premiership.   They could hardly be described as soul mates:  Seaton was a hardcore conservative Republican and Roskill had spent his entire career ducking and weaving around the centre ground of British politics.  But their political interests had coincided around what had become known as “liberal interventionism” and they had become very close during the Central Asian wars.

‘What do you need me to do, Cy?’, Seaton asked, in a tone that suggested that he already knew.

‘I need you to talk to Roskill and persuade him to talk to Carey at the British Foreign Office.  Carey should be able to call off the dogs.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

*

'James, I know you usually need more time before you try to intervene on our behalf with your high level contacts, but this is serious, and it's urgent.  We need you to prevent the Brits going to the US government to get them to put pressure on Hedelco to release the emails that their man sent back from Aberdeen.'

'Not easy, Richard.  If this were a simple commercial matter, I would have no reservations about speaking to Carey.  But it's a criminal investigation into a particularly unpleasant murder - two murders if we include Vermont One - and it crosses the devolution line.  Even after two hundred years, you Americans know how sensitive what you call "intergovernmental relations" can be.  There's a lot of press speculation here about the interest the Scottish First Minister is taking in the police investigation.  I'm not sure I want to get into the middle of this.'

'Not like you to be so squeamish.  I’ve been approached by several members of the board and, more importantly, by some very big Burtonhall investors.  They're getting nervous about the publicity this is generating. We need to try to close it down.'

‘As I say, I’m not comfortable with this.  I don’t even know whether I can reach Carey.’

‘Come off it.  Burtonhall pays you handsomely. That should help you to be comfortable. And of course you can speak to Carey.  He worked for you for the best part of ten years.  Not to mention that you went to school with him.  I’m asking you to do this not only for Burtonhall, but as a personal favour to me.’

There was silence and then Roskill muttered something that might have been, ‘OK.’    And the line went dead.

*

Vanessa Fiske and Fiona Marchmont met at Aberdeen airport at six o’clock on Tuesday morning.   As they headed for the gate to catch the 0630 flight, Vanessa made a quick detour to pick up the Aberdeen
Gazette & Times, The Times
and
The Guardian
.   On Monday, the papers had picked up Aaronson’s story in
The Globe
, but they had done little more than what Harry Conival contemptuously described as ‘copying out’.  If they were going to do any serious follow-up, it would be today. 

The running was being made by the
G & T
.  The chief crime reporter had a piece about the slow progress on the double murder enquiry and about the difficulty faced by the investigating officers in getting information from the American companies that owned or operated the ‘facilities’ (‘When did we start using that Americanism?’ Vanessa thought) where the bodies had been found. He rehashed the stuff about ownership and the recruitment to the investigating team of an expert in company accounts.   But it was his closing paragraph that made Fiske angry, and frustrated that she wouldn’t be able to talk to Colin MacNee or to Esslemont until she got to London.

It was already widely known that the First Minister is taking a close interest in the case.  However, the
G & T
can reveal that detectives have approached the UK government to get them to intervene with the Americans to persuade the two companies directly involved – Hedelco and Ebright Offshore Drilling – to release emails that the murdered men are believed to have sent back to their head offices in the USA, in encrypted form, before they were killed.  Reliable sources say that a high-level meeting will take place today (Tuesday) at the Foreign Office in London to discuss this. It will be attended by the senior investigating officer, DCI Vanessa Fiske, and by North East Constabulary’s legal adviser, Fiona Marchmont.

As they strapped themselves in, Vanessa passed the paper to Fiona.  ‘You can skip most of it. It’s bog standard space filler. But look at the last paragraph.  Somebody is giving out confidential information. And I think I know who it is.’

Vanessa hadn’t noticed the reports, only in the
G & T
because the news had broken too late for the early editions of the London-based papers, of the explosion at Last Cairngorm and the cyber attack on Mercury Fulfilment.

*

DC Duncan Williamson was trying to persuade Bernard Donovan at Hedelco’s GRH office, to let him compare the enhanced picture of the hospital murder suspect with the pictures held on the HR database of male employees of the same apparent age.

‘Here we go again, Detective Williamson.   You can’t really expect me to let you roam freely in the personal records of our employees. I wouldn’t be surprised if your Data Protection Act made that illegal.  I have no wish to be unhelpful.  Indeed, my head office has instructed me to co-operate as much as I can with your inquiries.  But we do have a duty of care to the people who work here.'

‘Duty of care?’ Williamson thought. ‘He’s been doing what the Americans call “lawyering up”.’

There was no point in taking this on if there was another way.

‘Mr Donovan, if our IT people could find a way to compare the pictures you hold with the picture of the suspect without accessing any other information, not even the identity of the people in the photos, would that work?  If we got a match, we would ask you to identify the suspect.’

‘Can that be done?’

‘I really don’t know.  But if it can, will you help us?’

Donovan smiled. ‘Let me think about it.  I’ll give you an answer when you let me know it can be done.’

‘Next stop, Dongle Donaldson’, Williamson thought, and dialled his number.

*

Paul MacIver read the morning papers in his flat before setting off for the First Minister’s office in St Andrews House on Calton Hill.  The Scottish titles, with deadlines later than the Northern editions of the London papers, all led with the explosion at Last Cairngorm.  There was no more than a news brief about the computer problems at Mercury Fulfilment in any of the papers. That was a story, MacIver thought, that could be labelled “developing”.

None of the reports gave a definitive cause of the explosion, mainly because the fire and rescue service, and the police, were saying very little, and because Frank Mancuso, Last Cairngorm’s security chief, had ensured that the guard who had been reporting the suspicious package when the blast went off, and who was suffering from shock, was kept well away from the press.

Speculation about sabotage, even terrorism, would start before the evening papers hit the street and would probably be the main story by the time the television and radio news broadcasts went on air in the early evening.  Making any kind of link between events at Last and at Mercury would take a little longer.  MacIver smiled and thought carefully about how he would advise the First Minister to respond.

*

On the flight to London, between sips of fizzy mineral water and trying not to think about the cooked breakfast that was being served to most of the passengers, Vanessa Fiske went over with Fiona Marchmont the reasons why she needed early sight of the Hedelco emails.  Fiona tried to anticipate the objections that might be raised by Foreign Office officials and their legal advisers and to formulate answers to them.  She emphasised, again, that any intervention would have to be political. Even if it involved the legal attaché in Washington, that route would be quasi-political because it might involve the US Attorney General and his opposite numbers in Massachusetts, where Hedelco was registered, and possibly in Delaware, because of Burtonhall’s ownership of the company.

‘This is far from a done deal, Vanessa. The fact that they were persuaded to set up a meeting so quickly is a good sign, but it will all depend on who’s represented and at what level.  It’s not impossible that the final decision will be taken by the Permanent Secretary, or at least be run past him.  So we might not have this sorted today.’

Fiona was suddenly aware that Vanessa had lost concentration and had gone very pale.  She was just about to put out her hand to grasp Vanessa’s arm when Vanessa lurched forward, grabbed a sickbag from the seat pocket, and retched into it, trying, unsuccessfully, not to draw the attention of other travellers.   Fortunately, the middle seat of three was unoccupied, with Fiona at the window and Vanessa on the aisle.

Fiona moved into the middle seat and put her arm round Vanessa’s shoulder and whispered  ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.  As you probably guessed when we spoke last night, I’m pregnant.  Nobody at work knows except Colin MacNee and Chris Jenkinson, and now you.  My DS has worked it out and everybody else is speculating on why I keep nipping off to the loo.  So I’ll have to go public soon, but I thought I’d wait until I have a scan next week’.

‘So you’re about six or seven weeks?  First three months are the worst, as you probably know.  I take it you’re happy.’

‘Yes, we are.  And thank you for confirming that I’ve got another six weeks of this to look forward to.’

‘My pleasure.   Worth it, though. I’ve done it three times.’

Vanessa laughed.  ‘I may come to you for advice.  My mum’s a long way away, and my sister shows no sign of breeding.  Then again, neither did I, as far as anyone could tell.’

*

Dongle Donaldson and Duncan Williamson were sitting in Bernard Donovan’s outer office in the Hedelco Suite at GRH.

Sharon Archibald, as always, offered them a ‘hot beverage’ and, as always, Duncan declined, with thanks.

‘You know, Sharon, I’m spending so much time here that you should name this seat after me.  A nice little brass plate saying, “The Detective Constable Duncan Williamson Chair”, would be nice.’

‘Oh, you’d really have to speak to Mr Donovan about that, Sergeant’, Sharon said, with her usual sweet but vacant smile.

Fortunately, Donovan came out of his office at that point, so relieving Duncan of the need to explain the joke.