Requiem (47 page)

Close up, Duggan didn’t look quite so dapper. His blazer had seen better days, his shirt collar was frayed, while his hair, which was heavy with grease or dirt or both, had discharged a sprinkling of dandruff over his shoulders. His face, which must have been quite good-looking once, appeared worn: his eyes were red-rimmed with pronounced pouches underneath, his skin was coarse and blotchy, and his teeth were heavily stained. It was no surprise when he lit a cigarette and drew on it with a deep gasp.

‘Think I might have a little something,’ he said, jerking his head towards the bar and ambling over. The barman seemed to know him well enough because he greeted him by name and, putting a glass unhesitatingly under the gin measure, gave him a double. Duggan returned to the table, cigarette jammed between his lips, eyes half-closed against the smoke. Sitting down, he dashed some tonic into his gin and took a quick swig. ‘My sister said you were trying to find Keen.’ He had a smoker’s voice, deep and throaty.

Daisy ran through her prepared story, though she took care to shift the emphasis away from Keen to the broader canvas of Acorn Flying Systems.

‘It was a limited company, Acorn, you know,’ Duggan said. ‘Can’t get anything out of a limited company if it’s got no assets. I know. I tried. Not a penny left in the kitty. Stripped bare. It was that bastard Keen, of course. Cunning little shyster. Expensive cars, Italian clothes, that sort of thing. Bled the company dry. Left everyone else to carry the can. Should have known. Nasty common little upstart.’ He took another gulp and sucked it through his teeth with a hissing sound. When he wasn’t talking or drinking he was drawing on his cigarette, dragging the smoke deep into his lungs.

‘How did you come to work for him?’ Daisy asked.

‘Had a job out in Oman which folded unexpectedly. Needed a job for the summer. Hadn’t heard about Keen’s reputation when I took it on, of course.’

‘Had you done crop-spraying before?’

Duggan’s lazy gaze fixed on her with new interest and he narrowed his eyes as if he’d got smoke in them. ‘Yup. A bit.’

‘It’s quite tricky, isn’t it? I mean, don’t pilots kill themselves regularly?’

He liked that idea. His eyes came alive. ‘It happens,’ he said, tossing off the remark with a well-practised blend of nonchalance and bravado. ‘But then just as many pilots get killed in road accidents, probably more.’ The devil-may-care persona was obviously one he enjoyed and had doubtless used to some effect over the years.

He drained his glass and, holding it at chest height, twiddled the stem slowly between thumb and forefinger. Daisy guessed she was meant to notice how empty it was. ‘Can I buy you another?’ she offered.

He attacked the next drink only marginally less slowly than the first, and she saw that his hand trembled slightly as he reached for the ashtray. It occurred to Daisy that this was not Duggan’s first drink of the day. The bad patch Jane Ackroyd had alluded to began to take on a new dimension.

‘You don’t know where Keen disappeared to?’ she asked.

He gave a dry laugh which turned into a phlegmy cough that rattled deep in his chest. ‘Christ, no,’ he said, recovering himself. ‘Don’t care either. It’s no good knowing where the bastard is if I can’t get any money out of him, is it? I just hope he’s got his come-uppance. Wrapped his BMW round a lamppost or something.’

‘He was difficult to work for, was he?’

‘Christ – was he. Always buggering things up. Phoning new instructions through, trying to make me fly over my hours, wanting everything done pronto. It wasn’t as if he provided any bloody backup. Just a mechanic, a field operator and an office girl who didn’t know her arse from her elbow.’ He stabbed his cigarette ineffectually into the ashtray so that it lay there smouldering. ‘I must have been out of my tiny,’ he snorted. ‘Sweating my guts out to finance his flash lifestyle.’

‘How long were you with the company in fact?’

‘Oh – May till September. Something like that.’

‘And the spraying – what sort of jobs were they exactly?’

‘Forest stuff. Estates, that sort of thing. Everyone was in a tizz about this beetle moth or whatever it was. They all wanted everything done yesterday.’

‘Willis Bain was one of your clients, I believe?’

He took a long slow drink, eyeing her over the rim of his glass, and she sensed a sudden caution in him. ‘Yup,’ he answered finally. ‘Did quite a bit for them. But, um …’ He hesitated, pulling out another cigarette and lighting it with an old-fashioned steel Zippo. ‘Thought you were just interested in Keen? Tracing him and so on.’

‘Wish it were that simple,’ Daisy said. ‘But I need a whole lot of background information. Evidence, facts.’

‘You’re actually trying to nail him, are you?’ he said in sudden admiration. ‘What for?’

She gave a shrug. ‘Oh, financial irregularities. That sort of thing.’

‘Bloody good. Bloody fantastic. Hope you get him!’ He drained his glass and grinned congenially, displaying teeth which were so discoloured and unattractive that Daisy couldn’t help staring at them.

‘Only thing I don’t understand is what your client hopes to gain.’ He said it so casually that it was a moment before Daisy realized the difficulties inherent in the question.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Well, it can’t be money.’

‘No.’ Daisy was thinking hard.

‘Jail then?’

Daisy spread her hands to show that this might not be so far from the truth.

‘My God!’ Duggan exclaimed with relish. ‘Keen must have upset your client very severely if they want to pin something that serious on him.’

‘You could say that.’

‘So it might be jail?’

‘It might be.’

Duggan gave a long lazy wink that was probably intended to look conspiratorial but which merely appeared lecherous. ‘Well, you can count on me.’

Daisy thought: Now I wonder if that’s true? For all his affability Duggan didn’t seem the steadfast type. Tricky and difficult, she guessed; out for number one.

She offered him another drink. He accepted readily, though not before going through the heavy drinker’s time-honoured ritual of insisting that he couldn’t possibly drink alone. She ordered a low-alcohol lager and a packet of crisps to soak it up with.

‘You don’t look like a lawyer,’ he said.

‘What does a lawyer look like?’

‘Older and uglier.’ He winked again, and this time the suggestiveness was deliberate though self-mocking.

She said: ‘Well, you know how it is, one has to overcome these handicaps.’

He laughed appreciatively, then, just as she was thinking the interview was beginning to go smoothly, he added casually: ‘You didn’t say what firm you worked for.’

‘Didn’t I?’ Was he trying to catch her out? Or was he just curious? She laughed it off. ‘I’ll give you my card.’ She went through a pantomime of rooting through her bag. ‘Well, I
would
give you a card, but I seem to have run out.’

He was waiting.

Aware that she was being forced into open lie, she heard herself give him the name of her old firm, the solicitors where she’d worked before joining Catch. ‘Here – I’ll give you the phone number.’ She wrote down Catch’s unlisted number on a scrap of paper. This lie she liked far less than the fishing story she’d told Jane Ackroyd, if only because there was a far greater chance of being found out. Duggan only had to look up her old firm and call their real number to discover she wasn’t there any more. Or to call the Catch number before Daisy had a chance to brief Jenny.

But would he bother? It was all too easy to imagine that his mind was as languid as his body. Yet those sharp little questions hadn’t come out of thin air.

She asked him about his dealings with Keen, routine stuff about paperwork, how the wages were paid, what money went through the Portakabin office.

‘Never saw the cash,’ Duggan declared, waving an expansive hand. ‘In fact he kept us so tight that we had trouble getting enough petty cash for lav rolls. Not that we used the bloody place at all if we could possibly avoid it.’

Daisy smiled. ‘You mean the hut?’ The moment she’d said it, she could have kicked herself.

Duggan’s glass paused half way to his mouth. ‘You’ve been to the airfield then?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Why? What for? Nothing to see.’

‘I was just passing. On business.’

‘Ah.’ He nodded sagely, but she sensed him carefully weighing the information.

‘Did you ever sign for things?’ she asked. ‘You know, fuel deliveries, that kind of thing?’

He shook his head. ‘Nah. Though I bloody well checked the stuff once it arrived. Didn’t trust Keen an inch.’

‘In what way?’

‘I wouldn’t have put it past him to try and give me low-grade fuel.’

‘Good God, really? Wouldn’t that have been dangerous?’

‘Probably.’ Duggan chuckled to himself. He was back in the role of fearless daredevil pilot battling against unfavourable odds. All this boyish bravado, not to mention the heavy drinking, made Daisy wonder how Duggan was ever allowed in charge of an aircraft.

Keeping her tone light, she nudged the conversation forward. ‘What about the chemicals – the stuff you used to spray the trees with – did you check that out too?’

‘No. Didn’t have to. Keen didn’t have anything to do with the gunk, thank God. Davie, the mechanic, he was in charge of measuring and mixing and all that. The gunk was delivered direct from the customer most of the time anyway. They bought it direct from the manufacturers or whatever.’

‘Of course.’ Daisy nodded vigorously as if he had just reminded her of something she knew perfectly well.

‘That way there was no chance of Keen short-changing them,’ Duggan explained in case she’d missed the point.

‘Quite. And the stuff you were using – er, remind me …?’

He shrugged. ‘We used to call it “the usual”. I’d say, is it the usual? And Davie’d say, it’s the usual. And that would be that. But the name – it was feni – fenitri … Christ, never could say the bloody word.’

‘Fenitrothion?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Was that the only stuff?’

He brushed at a fall of ash on his lapel and managed to smear it deep into the fabric. ‘Mmm – sorry?’

‘What other chemicals did you use?’

‘Other chemicals? No, that was it. Feni-whatsit.’

‘But I thought … Hang on.’ Daisy made a show of getting out her notebook and flicking through it. ‘Something else was used for a couple of jobs near Loch Fyne, wasn’t it?’ She looked up expectantly.

He wasn’t crazy about the question. He took a long sip at his gin, frowning at her over the glass. It was time for another refill, she noticed. She caught the barman’s eye and pointed in the direction of Duggan’s glass.

‘Something else?’ Duggan echoed coolly. ‘I don’t see what the hell that has to do with anything.’ His voice had an edge to it, a note of truculence. ‘I mean, how can your client be interested in the gunk we used on a particular job?’

‘It’s a matter of finding out if Keen did what he was contracted to do.’

‘But like I said, it was a limited company. It doesn’t matter if he delivered the goods, if he did what the client wanted – it’s all bloody water under the bridge, isn’t it? The only thing you can possibly get him for is fraud, and I don’t see that what we sprayed on the treetops of Loch Fyne has got a blind thing to do with how Keen managed or mismanaged the bloody finances.’

Daisy held up a staying hand. ‘It may seem that way, but the point is …’

The barman arrived with Duggan’s refill and another low-alcohol lager. While she counted out the money coin by coin, she tried to think exactly what the point was. ‘The point is,’ she said finally, ‘that if Keen was substituting cheap chemicals then it
was
fraud.’

But Duggan wasn’t buying. ‘Even if he’d pulled a fast one, it would have netted him a hundred quid at the most. Don’t tell me they’re going to nail him on a hundred quid!’

‘They got Al Capone on a technicality.’

He sank slowly back in his chair, wrists draped over the arms, cigarette and drink in either hand. ‘You’re on the wrong track,’ he announced with finality. ‘Willis Bain delivered everything. It never came through Keen.’

‘Oh.’ Daisy looked disappointed. ‘It’d still be useful to have the name of the other pesticide.’

‘I never knew it.’

‘But surely – you must have seen a name?’

‘No. Does it matter?’

‘I told you – every detail helps.’

He shook his head, his cat-eyes watching her through the curling spirals of smoke. ‘Can’t remember.’

Can’t or won’t, Daisy thought grimly. She took a sip of lager while she considered the way forward. He wouldn’t take much more pressing, she sensed, or he’d clam up altogether. Letting the subject drop, on the other hand, would be to lose what might be her only opportunity.

There was a third option, she realized, something quite different. She let the idea grow and sharpen in her mind. She’d have to push hard to carry it off, and it wouldn’t be very pretty – and that was putting it mildly – but it might just work.

She put her drink down. ‘I need to know the name of that pesticide,’ she said.

He picked some tobacco off his lip. ‘I told you,’ he said with an impatient sigh, ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Or don’t want to? Listen, Mr Duggan, I don’t like to press you, but according to my information there were plenty of irregularities at Acorn Flying Systems, and they didn’t just involve Keen.’

He was very still, the drink and cigarette for once forgotten in his fingers. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that rules and regulations were broken all the way down the line and Keen wasn’t the only one responsible.’

His mouth twisted, his voice was hoarse. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘About notifications not getting sent out. About livestock getting sprayed. About flying hours being exceeded. Shall I go on?’ The excessive flying hours was a guess, but Duggan wasn’t arguing.

He jerked forward in his chair, his face louring across the table. ‘Who the hell
are
you? What the hell’s this about?’

‘Calm down, Mr Duggan. There’s no need to get angry. I’m sure it won’t be necessary to let this go any further, not if you can find a way to help me out.’ As she said it, she wondered if this was the way practised blackmailers generally put their demands across. ‘Just tell me the name of the pesticide, and we’ll forget about the livestock.’