Allie didn’t get as far as hanging up her coat. As she approached the newsdesk, Carlyle’s secretary caught her eye and said, ‘They’re all in the conference room. Typewriters set up and everything.’
They were all there – Danny, worried frown; McGovern, leaning back in his chair, cigarillo on the go, filling the room with blue smoke; Carlyle, feet on the desk, deep in some copy; and Frazer the Razor in the corner, issuing instructions down the phone to remind everyone how important he was. Four pairs of eyes turned to her and Carlyle waved the thin sheaf of paper at her.
‘Gil did a fine job down in Southampton. He persuaded the Maclay lad if he spilled the lot, he’d get off more lightly.’
‘Works so often,’ McGovern said. ‘You’d think folk would have learned by now what a load of bollocks that line is.’
Carlyle’s grin was evil. ‘Lucky for us they’re so gullible. Anyway, he told Gil how he met Gregor Menstrie at the Southampton Boat Show back in 1977, how they went on the piss together and Menstrie talked him into his little scheme. They’ve pulled it off a dozen times now. Maclay even showed Gil the list of names. It’s like a Who’s Who of dodgy Scottish businessmen. Who knew there was that much cash swilling round our poor benighted country?’
‘It’s the oil, isn’t it?’ McGovern said. ‘Half the names on that list are connected with the oil business one way or another. God, this country could be rich if we were cut loose from those bastards down south, always going on strike at the drop of a hat.’
‘Maybe so, but we’ll leave the politics out of this,’ Carlyle ruled. ‘This story’s strong enough on its own. Danny did the groundwork and now Gil’s nailed it down. He’s putting in a call to Conrad Jespersen in’ – he consulted his watch – ‘about an hour. It doesn’t matter if he blows us out, we’ve got more than enough to run with.’ He stood up and hoisted his trousers somewhere in the region of where his waist might once have been. ‘Danny, Peter – type up your interviews. Burns, bring yourself up to speed with Gil’s copy.’ He thrust the pages at her. ‘Soon as you’ve pulled all the interviews together, get writing. Two parts. First part, the scam and the set-up. Second part, we name the dirty dodgers. Then I’ll have my fight with the lawyers. We’ll hold back on running it till Friday and Saturday so we’ve got time to get the rewrites done so we give it a good show in Friday’s paper.’ He made for the door then paused, swinging round to turn the full beam of his most serious stare on Allie. ‘This is your big chance, Burns. Don’t let me down.’
The news editor marched out, head thrust forward at a determined angle. Danny sat down behind one of the typewriters and rolled a copy pad on to the platen. McGovern pulled a sheaf of paper from his inside pocket. ‘I knocked my copy out on my portable as soon as I’d done the interview. They keep it behind the bar at the Printer’s Pie for me.’ He laid it down beside a vacant typewriter and gestured towards Allie.
Her mouth was dry with apprehension at the scale of the task before her. She cleared her throat and tried to look as if this was just another routine story. ‘Danny, can you write up our interview with Wilson Brodie first?’ Allie asked, moving to the other typewriter. ‘I think we need that for today’s piece. We can put him front and centre as the main source for the way the system works. Points the finger away from Paragon a bit?’
Danny nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘And has anybody got the original copy? From memory, I think we can stick with the opening pars.’
The lawyer stirred. ‘I’ve got a set here.’ He picked up a sheaf of papers and proffered them, making no move to bring them to her. Before Allie could cross the room to him, Danny was on his feet, snatching the pages from the lawyer and taking them to her.
What was it about guys and their games? Always jockeying for position, always establishing the pecking order. It must be exhausting, Allie thought. But as she inserted a fresh pad into the typewriter, it occurred to her that women did exactly the same thing. Only the style was different. She laid the first page of her draft next to her and began typing.
‘Not so fast, young lady.’ It was McGovern.
She looked up, puzzled.
‘The byline. You’ve got it wrong. It should read “By Daniel Sullivan and Peter McGovern, with additional reporting by Gilbert Patterson and Alison Burns.”’
This was too much. For once, she wasn’t going to defer to a senior reporter. ‘Are you kidding me? Whatever Danny offered you at the start, you only did one interview. I’ve done two interviews and I’m writing the copy.’
McGovern shrugged. ‘Danny and I had an agreement. Without my advice, he’d never have put the story together. Just because Angus is giving you a chance to see whether you’re up to playing with the first team doesn’t mean you get the star billing.’ McGovern would probably have described his smile as ‘avuncular’. Allie’s word would have been, ‘condescending’.
‘Children, can you save this for the pub?’ Fraser Drummond butted in. ‘I need all the time I can get to go through this with a fine-tooth comb. The last thing we want is for us all to end up in the witness box because I had to rush to judgement. So can we just get the bloody story written?’
McGovern headed for the door. ‘If you need me, I’ll be in the bar.’
Allie let out a long sigh. She re-read her original story and decided the first six paragraphs were as good as they were going to get. Then she began hammering the keys.
One of the men who turned down the approach of Paragon boss Gregor Menstrie has revealed the workings of the scheme to Clarion reporters.
Menstrie offered amusement arcade king Wilson Brodie membership of an exclusive scheme to beat the taxman over dinner at Glasgow’s prestigious Ubiquitous Chip restaurant. The two men met at the exclusive Ashton Lane eatery last summer.
Brodie said, ‘I thought we were meeting to talk about investment opportunities. I run a very successful business and I was looking for ways to make my money grow. I wasn’t expecting him to try to draw me into a conspiracy to defraud the taxman.
‘Some people might think the business I’m in isn’t as respectable as running a bank or a chain of shops. But I’m an honest man and I run a chain of honest businesses. I was shocked that a man like Gregor Menstrie would be running a crooked game like this. And even more shocked that he’d think I was the kind of man who would want to be part of it.’
We asked Mr Brodie why he thought Menstrie might have invited him aboard. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ he said. ‘The only thing I can think of is that ours is a cash business. I declare my turnover and my profits to the taxman but if I was a crook, I could easily syphon off some of that cash and keep it for myself.
‘To be honest, I was insulted by his offer. I wish I’d walked out as soon as he started hinting at it, but I was curious. So I let him explain how the scheme works. He was adamant that it was foolproof. According to him, I could launder massive amounts of cash and end up with a big nest egg that the taxman couldn’t touch.’
She was over the first fence and away. The words flowed, a flying carpet carrying Allie along, oblivious to everything except the bundles of other people’s copy that were the threads she had to draw together. And the flow would continue all the way to the presses the following night, ink pouring on to newsprint, guillotines slicing the rolls into pages and binders folding those pages into the next day’s Clarion. Then, breaking into bundles like waves breaking against rocks, into liveried vans and trucks, train wagons and island ferries, carrying Allie’s words to millions of eyes, the Clarion went about its daily business.