‘Will your friendship with Alice make you less than objective in investigating Welsh?’ he asked.
I was almost offended by that. ‘No, why should it?’ I retorted. Then the penny dropped and I saw the wider picture. ‘It was Welsh who was tipped off?’
‘That’s right.’
I shrugged. ‘I’ll be objective,’ I promised, ‘don’t you worry. I’ll also be well motivated.’
‘Good. Now here’s what I want you to do. First, run a check on Companies House for every company of which Freddy Welsh is a director. Find out who the other directors are; you never know, maybe Varley’s name will be among them.’
‘What’s his business?’ I asked. ‘What does he do?’
He tapped the folder. ‘That much is in there,’ he said, ‘from what Tarvil tells me. I haven’t had time to read it. He’s a builder, incorporated under the name Anglesey Construction PLC. I want you to access his company records, preferably without him knowing about it.’
‘All of them? That might not be easy.’
‘I know. It may be we’ll have to go in with a full search warrant for his home and office premises, but our brief is to try and avoid that. His company will have auditors; they will have signed off on his annual accounts. Find out who they are and then go see them, armed with a court order to access information.’
‘Won’t it be difficult to get one?’
George winked at me. ‘This is Special Branch, Sergeant; we deal with national security and organised crime. A sheriff will give you an order just for the asking.’
I was sceptical about that, but I shouldn’t have been. Just over two hours later, I was in the offices of an accountancy firm called Garland Pyke, facing a rather uncomfortable but sharp-suited thirty-something auditor across a designer desk that was so large that if I’d been a client I’d have demanded to know how much it cost before I signed a cheque to cover a fee note. I’d gone on my own; I could have taken Tarvil with me, but he’s so large that I was worried he might have frightened the guy.
‘I feel a little awkward about this,’ Mr Magnus Garland admitted.
‘Mr Welsh is a long-standing client, and his business is of great value to our firm. It could be very awkward for us if he found out about this.’
‘In what way?’ I challenged. ‘You’re not afraid of him, are you?’
He flinched, slightly. ‘I wouldn’t say that, Detective Sergeant, but he’s certainly not a man I’d go out of my way to cross.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ I assured him. ‘What we do is as confidential as it gets. This is one of those meetings that never took place. Now, can we get down to business? I’ve established that Mr Welsh is the controlling shareholder in a company called Anglesey Construction and that you’re his auditors.’
‘That’s correct,’ Garland acknowledged.
‘That’s his only business?’
‘To the best of my knowledge.’
‘And it’s profitable?’
He nodded. ‘Very. It’s ridden out the recession well. The pre-tax profits have dropped, naturally enough, but the last full year figure was still in excess of two and a quarter million.’
‘Where are the records kept?’ I asked: a big question.
‘The books for the current trading year are in Mr Welsh’s office, as you’d expect; but everything that’s been audited is stored here.’
That was exactly what I wanted to hear. ‘How far back does it go?’
‘By law a company must retain its records for seven years,’ he explained, ‘but Mr Welsh insists that everything about his company should be demonstrably above board, so everything’s here, going all the way back to the formation of the company, what, fourteen years ago.’
‘Have you been his accountant all that time?’ He didn’t look old enough.
‘No,’ Garland replied. ‘Initially, my father handled his business, but he’s. . no longer in practice.’
‘I can still speak to him, though?’
‘He isn’t in practice anywhere,’ Garland said, laconically. ‘I’m afraid he’s dead. He passed away three years ago. I had to work hard to persuade Mr Welsh to let me keep his business. Sometimes I feel as if I’m still on probation with him, so you’ll forgive me for being nervous about this.’
‘I understand that,’ I told him. ‘Look, I might as well ask you straight out, when you sign off on the Anglesey accounts as true and accurate, are you always satisfied that they are?’
‘Absolutely,’ he insisted, a wee bit huffily. ‘We’re stringent in our interpretation of what’s allowable and what isn’t. HMRC can inspect a company at any time, and nobody wants to fall foul of those people. Mr Welsh’s standing instruction is that when there is doubt over whether a particular piece of expenditure is allowable against tax, the benefit of it always goes to the Revenue. In other words, we don’t take any chances. As a result, on the two occasions that the accounts have been inspected, they’ve passed with flying colours.’
‘Was there any specific reason for those inspections?’
‘No. They were purely routine, I’m sure of that.’
I pressed him a little. ‘If there had been a motive for those checks, would you have known?’
He pursed his lips. ‘Not necessarily,’ he conceded, ‘but I’m sure there wasn’t.’ He leaned forward, his elbows resting on the enormous desk. ‘Look, I’m not naive, Ms McDermid. I can work out why you’re here. You suspect that Anglesey Construction PLC might have been used for the purposes of money-laundering.’
I didn’t; I’d gone in there with an open mind, but I let him run with what he’d begun.
‘Well,’ he went on, ‘I can disabuse you of any such notion. We’ve been scrupulous in examining the source of every payment made into and out of the company and you can take it that the firm’s bankers have also. Even if we wanted to turn a blind eye to something, we couldn’t; regulation and supervision are too tight these days. As for Mr Welsh’s personal dealings, we supervise those too; one of my partners handles his tax return, and I can assure you that it’s a true account of all his income.’
‘What happens to the company profits?’
‘Some are retained, some go into the pension funds of Mr and Mrs Welsh. . I assume you know she’s his co- director. . and the rest they draw as dividend. It’s paid into a personal bank account from which they pay any higher rate tax that might be due, calculated by this firm, as I’ve said, and agreed with HMRC. Clean as a whistle, I tell you, clean as a whistle.’
To my ear, he was a wee bit too insistent; he had the sound of a man who hadn’t questioned his client in as much detail as he might have, and was hoping that the wool hadn’t been pulled over his eyes.
‘That’s all very instructive, Mr Garland,’ I told him. ‘But it’s not the main reason why I’m here. We’ve got a particular interest in any payments that might have been made to a Mr John Varley at any time.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘You don’t need to know that.’
‘Is he a supplier? I’ve supervised the audit for a few years now, so I’m familiar with most of them. That name doesn’t ring any bells. Give me a clue. Come on, I’m being frank with you.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t do that, not at this stage.’
He leaned back in his leather swivel chair, the kind that I’d love but can’t afford. ‘Have it your way, then,’ he drawled. ‘I might have been able to make it easier for you. As it is, you’re going to have to go through the purchase ledgers and thirteen years of receipts. You can take it that my staff will have cross-checked one against the other, so that will save you a bit of time, but you won’t be able to finish them before we close, so I suggest you come back on Monday and do it then.’
I pushed the court order that I’d shown him earlier back across the desk, or rather, halfway across, because that was as far as I could reach. ‘Read that,’ I told him, ‘and you’ll see I’m authorised to remove all the records I need. I can do that, or you can leave someone here with me to lock up after I’m done. Your choice.’
‘Oh really!’ he moaned. ‘I can’t ask any of my people to do that.’
‘Okay, I’ll take them with me.’
‘No, no.’ He held up a hand, palm out, as if to resist. ‘No,’ he sighed, ‘I’ll wait with you. Not that it’s going to do you any good,’ he added. ‘You won’t find any payments to anyone called Varley in there.’
He was right, God damn him. I didn’t.
