Dead Horsemeat

Thursday 5 October 1989

Lavorel sends the new boys to stake out Transitex, with instructions to establish an exact timetable of the company’s operations, to be corroborated by tapped phone conversations, while he pays a visit to his former colleagues in the Fraud Squad to find out a bit more about Transitex.

A quick and easy task. A small family firm which belonged to a certain Jacques Montier until last year. It imported low-quality meats from South America, which were processed into dog food in an old factory. A year ago, the company was sold. Taken over by a property developer, a certain Perrot. Too good to be true.

‘Stop. Why would a property developer want to get involved with a meat business?’

‘Perrot split Transitex into two companies. He kept one of them, Transimmobilière, a real estate company, which took over the factory and the land it stood on, 10,000 square metres in the middle of Paris’s 20^th arrondissement. Then he demolished the factory and is building a housing development on the site. Let’s do a quick calculation… the price Perrot paid for the whole of Transitex is lower than the sale price of 10,000 square metres of building land in the 20^th. There are two possibilities: one, there was some restriction on developing the land which was removed after the sale, or the former owner is an idiot. In any case, Perrot’s come off very well. We should talk to the lawyer.’

‘Get me the details of this supposedly idiotic former owner. What about the other company?’

‘It’s kept the Transitex name and is continuing to import meat from South America. It’s been bought by a certain Pierre Aubert.’

Lavorel listens to the new boys’ report. Transitex’s activities are perfectly legitimate and give little cause for concern. Around midnight, a meat lorry arrives from Rungis market. The driver parks the lorry in the hangar and leaves. The secretary arrives at nine o’clock in the morning. The tapped conversations reveal that she telephones customers – butchers’ shops in the Paris area, no supermarkets or institutions apparently – to confirm or change their orders. Around midday, a driver collects the lorry, does the deliveries, then drives directly up to Le Havre where he reloads the next day. There is a rota of three lorries and four drivers. One lorry arrives at the company’s premises each night. The secretary works every morning, six days a week. The company is closed in the afternoons. The vet only seems to pay rare visits. In short, a nice little business that seems perfectly uneventful.

‘Import-export: I’m going to find out how customs clearance works at Rungis. And you, get in touch with a guy called Jacques Montier and ask him why and how he flogged Transitex to Perrot.’

At eight o’clock in the evening it’s chaos in the customs house at Rungis. A constant stream of around fifty HGVs and a perpetual coming and going – drivers, vets in white coats and uniformed customs officers. The air is heavy with the cloying smell of meat. Lavorel eventually finds the man called Mariani with whom he has an appointment. Mariani starts off by looking through his files.

‘Transitex, yes, I know them. Their lorry usually arrives around 11 p.m. Wait there. I’ll come and fetch you as soon as it gets here.’

Lavorel, sitting in a corner, settles down to do a crossword.

An hour later, Mariani’s back. He takes him to a lorry manoeuvring into the customs bay. Transitex. The driver switches off the engine and gets down from the cab. Holding a sheaf of papers, the customs official checks the door seals and watches the opening of the rear ramp. A vet in a white coat stands a little way back from the lorry. The doors open. The lorry is full of beef half-carcases hanging from hooks on a rail. On the floor of the lorry, under the carcases, are some large oblong cases.

The customs official and Lavorel enter the lorry.

‘You see, all the documents seem to be in order: shipper Irexport, Dublin. Approved slaughterhouse in Killary, Ireland. I’ll check a few carcases. Here, no problem, here’s the Killary stamp.’ He opens one of the cases, full of offal. ‘You see, you can barely make out the stamps, but it’s always the same with offal, the ink runs.’

‘Is this what always happens? Nobody else comes near the lorry?’

‘No, you can’t load or unload stuff here. Now let’s go down and see what the vet thinks.’

He is young and fairly disenchanted. He says OK. Mariani stamps a few documents, the driver locks up the lorry and moves off.

Lavorel turns to the vet.

‘Can you tell me what your health check consists of?’

‘You really want to know? I stand near the rear door when it’s opened, but not too close, question of habit, to get a good whiff of the first wave of smells. I can tell whether it’s fresh and clean or if the meat is warm. That’s it. Otherwise, I have a very small budget for having samples analysed, and anyway, by the time you get the results, the meat has long since been eaten. There are two vets here for more than a thousand tonnes of meat. Have I answered your question?’

Lavorel backs away from this outpouring and takes Mariani aside.

‘You can’t rely on a health inspection to detect the presence of drugs, fair enough. But could you get your Irish friends to check the slaughter and shipping side of things in Ireland?’