Wearing Purple

Chapter 57

I don’t know why, but I didn’t tell Dylan about the message; not then at least. I suppose I reckoned he had enough on his plate, and that if I overloaded his brain a few circuits might blow.

All the way out to Susie’s I wrestled with it, trying to get my head round it, trying to imagine what motive Gary O’Rourke might have had for breaking into my flat that could be connected with the GWA business. Maybe he had rumbled me and wanted to find out a bit about me. After all, he hadn’t been in Barcelona. He’d been back home in Glasgow when Jan died.

Maybe he hadn’t taken the papers. Maybe that was another burglar. Maybe they had passed each other in the hallway and said hello. Maybe another special forces trained explosives expert had booby-trapped my washing machine. Or maybe Gary had done it in the hope that I’d do my own washing when I got back from Spain.

So many maybes, only one certainty: Gary O’Rourke had been in our flat, searching our desk, pulling our washing machine out of its housing.

Dylan didn’t notice my silence as I drove the pair of us to Clarkston, because he was wrapped up in his own. I hoped that he was genuinely concerned about the effect of the business on his girlfriend, rather than beginning to fret after all about the impact on his own career if it blew up in our faces.

It was just after eight when we arrived at Susie Gantry’s semi-detached house. Fortunately she was in; we ace detectives hadn’t thought to call to find that out before we left.

There was none of her sparkly, nervy bonhomie as she opened the door. I guess the expressions on our faces must have ruled that out; that and the fact that she noticed Mike was carrying his briefcase.

‘Hello boys,’ she greeted us, as she showed us into her sitting room. ‘You look completely puggled. I take it you haven’t just dropped in for a drink.’

‘Not just that, love,’ said Dylan, ‘although I won’t say no. We’ve picked up the trail that Jan was on. We need your help to take it further.’

‘I’ll do anything I can. What do you want?’

Mike was about to tell her, when I interrupted. ‘Before that, Susie,’ I asked her, ‘does the name Gary O’Rourke mean anything to you?’

She stared at me, frowning, puzzled. ‘Of course it does. He used to work for the group, as our supplies manager. He’s my cousin.’

Dylan’s head turned towards me as if it was on a swivel, then swung back to his girlfriend. ‘He’s what?’

‘My cousin. He’s my Auntie Norah’s son; she’s my father’s sister. I haven’t seen him in months though; not since he said he was fed up and went off to take a job with Everett Davis.’

‘Have you got a photograph of him?’ I asked her.

‘I should have.’ She crossed to a cabinet set against the wall and took out a thick album, then leafed through its pages. ‘There you are. That was taken at last year’s May Ball in the City Chambers.’ She held the volume up, pointing to a photograph. I recognised all three people in it at once. Susie was in the centre, flanked by the bulky figures of her father on her right, complete with chain, and a blond man, whom I had last seen only twenty-four hours earlier.

‘What made you ask that?’ she queried.

‘He’s the guy who took those papers from my flat.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she gasped.

‘I’m afraid it’s true. One of Mike’s SOCO buddies lifted his prints from my desk.’

Glancing at Dylan, I said, ‘Sorry mate, that was one of the messages on the message service tonight. I should have told you earlier, but I had to get my own head round it first.’

I turned back to Susie. ‘Can I ask you something else as well? Is there any way he’d have been able to get hold of a key to the flat? You see, there couldn’t have been any sign of a breakin, otherwise Jan would have noticed it when she came in. If she had done, she wouldn’t have done the washing. She’d have called the police.’

She frowned again, and chewed her lip. ‘Well,’ she began. ‘We did have a bit of a problem with the woman who bought your flat first. We didn’t get full payment for a while, so we decided to keep a set of keys on the Q.T., just in case we needed to take drastic action. I thought they’d been handed over, though.’

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.’