‘There haven’t been any, after the first, when the company was started. Mr Fabricant recorded an apology; the articles allow a meeting in those circumstances, so a minute was taken, but there have been none since.’
‘No formal record of progress?’ I asked.
‘There hasn’t been any progress, Primavera. The company has lodged an application for planning permission in principle for a golf course, clubhouse and associated buildings; no more than that, just in principle. The requirement that it be formally capitalised was Mr Culshaw’s instruction; it’s never been put to me by anyone else, and I’ve submitted all the paperwork.’
‘Where is our money now?’
‘In a high interest account, offshore.’
‘How far offshore, Wylie?’ I growled.
‘The Isle of Man.’
‘Okay,’ I declared. ‘Get it back.’
He winced, hunching his shoulders as if he thought I was about to aim an axe at his neck. ‘I can’t do that, Primavera, not on my own initiative, or on yours for that matter. Technically you can now appoint yourself a director of Babylon, since Mr Culshaw held office as a representative of the Gantry Group, but even then you couldn’t simply take the money back. All expenditure above a certain level must be approved by both directors.’
‘Then the sooner I sit down with Mr Fabricant, the better. Where can I find him? Jersey, I suppose.’
‘No, Edinburgh,’ he replied.
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Can you be a little more specific?’ I asked.
‘No I can’t. Mr Fabricant’s address is a post office box.’
‘So we don’t know what our partner looks like,’ I said, ‘and we don’t know where he lives, or works. That’s what our Phil got this company into?’
Wylie nodded. ‘Yes. Gerry and I did point out that it was an unusual, possibly even an unsafe, situation, but he said he had private assurances that everything was all right. That may be the case, Primavera; after all, the money Gantry put into Babylon Links hasn’t gone anywhere.’
‘It might as well have,’ I suggested, ‘if we can’t get it back without Fabricant signing for it, and we don’t know where he is. Come on, let’s find him.’
‘How?’
‘We’ll ask Mr Google to look for him.’ I took my laptop from my bag and booted it up, then went online through the company’s network.
‘What if it’s an assumed name?’ Wylie asked.
‘Would it be legal to be a director under a pseudonym?’
‘If it was an act of deliberate deception, no.’
‘Then I’d love that to be the case, but I’ll bet it isn’t.’ I keyed ‘Diego Fabricant Edinburgh’ into the address bar and pressed the return key.
The response was instant; there were six hits, of which five led to newspaper articles. The other was for the Law Society of Scotland. I scanned the digital cuttings first, four of them were from the business sections of the Scotsman or the Herald, and each referred to corporate mergers of acquisitions in which our man had been a player. Two of them described him as ‘dealmaker’, a term I’d never come across before.
‘What does it mean?’ I asked Wylie.
‘More or less what it says,’ he replied. ‘Let’s say you want to sell your business, or make an acquisition, but don’t have a specific buyer or target in mind. You’d go to a man like Fabricant seems to be, and he’d put you together with someone.’
‘What does he get out of it?’
‘A fee, equity or both.’
There were no accompanying photographs, but the fifth item was coverage of an awards dinner, complete with an accompanying picture of a group of ten men in evening dress, lined up and cheesing for the camera. Fabricant was listed as second from the left; the image was that of a tall man, bulky, with a prominent nose and a forehead so high that it was beyond rescue by any hair clinic.
‘So far so good,’ I murmured. ‘Now let’s get more specific.’ I clicked the link on my search page that led me to the Law Society. I’d expected it to be ‘members only’, but in fact it turned out to be publicly accessible and very helpful, with a section that invited me to ‘Find a solicitor’.
I keyed in the surname, the only line I could complete, hit the button, and had only a single response: ‘D. Fabricant, Suite three, eighth floor, Cousland Tower, Lothian Road, Edinburgh.’
‘No phone number,’ I murmured. I noted the address then went on to the BT site, and keyed in Fabricant’s details. It told me that the subscriber number was unavailable.
‘Very discreet,’ Wylie observed. ‘Ex-directory.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about phoning him anyway. I think you and I should pay him a surprise visit. Is the rest of your day clear?’
‘I can make it so.’
‘Good. We’re going to Edinburgh. But first, I have to call on someone else, your partner, Greg McPhillips. I need to talk to him, urgently.’
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘I made one for four o’clock,’ I replied, ‘but I’ll need to bring it forward now.’
He pursed his lips. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Greg always has a very full diary. He may not be able to reschedule, not for today.’
‘He’ll see me, Wylie, don’t you worry. Greg and I go back more than ten years.’
I gave Gerry Meek and Cathy Black my mobile number and my room number at the hotel, then Wylie and I grabbed a taxi and headed for Greg McPhillips’ office.
The McPhillips practice had gone up in the world since I’d last had reason to consult it. From a small office just off Sauchiehall Street, it had moved into a top-floor suite in a new build block at the top of Renfield Street. Wylie had wanted to call ahead, but I’d decided that I wasn’t giving anyone advance notice of anything else that day. He paid the cab and led me towards the lift. ‘I really don’t know about this,’ he murmured. That didn’t surprise me; the Greg McPhillips I’d known was Wylie’s exact opposite, outgoing, full of himself and, when it suited him, overbearing.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Smith,’ his secretary said when he asked her if he was in. ‘You’ve just missed him. He’s gone for lunch with a client.’
‘Where?’ I asked.
She stared at me. ‘I don’t know if I could …’
I stared back. ‘You do, trust me.’
She glanced at Wylie; he nodded. ‘La Bonne Auberge,’ she said. The name was fresh on my mind; it was across the street from the building in which we stood and we’d just passed it in the taxi.
‘Then call his mobile number, please,’ I requested, politely, ‘and tell him that Mrs Blackstone can’t do four o’clock as arranged previously, but needs five minutes now.’
‘Of course, if you insist, but …’ I waited as she made the call and relayed the message, watching as she pursed her lips and nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, the phone still held to her ear, ‘he says it’s impossible.’
I signed to her to pass me the handset; she was so surprised that she did. ‘Greg,’ I chirped, amiably, ‘Primavera here. Are you still shagging that actress? Remember, the girl who was your bit on the side about twelve years ago when Oz and I were in business together in Glasgow, and we were all pals? She had a part in a TV soap and knew my sister. Did Mrs McPhillips ever find out about her?’
His sigh could have carried across the street from the restaurant without the amplification of the phone. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘five minutes; meet me in the reception area just inside the entrance.’
Wylie wouldn’t come into La Bonne Auberge with me. He said that since it was obviously personal business I was going to discuss, he had to keep well clear of it as company secretary. I could see the logic in that, but I couldn’t help feeling that after hearing what I’d said to his senior partner, he didn’t want to be within earshot of the discussion that followed.
Before I go any further, understand one thing: I didn’t, and don’t, harbour any ill feeling towards Greg. He was a good friend to Oz, and me, back in the days of our private enquiry business, and he put some nice work our way. Oz’s links with him went even further back, and one job he’d sent to him had been the start of all the fame and fortune that came his way. With that history between us, I didn’t crash his lunch date out of malice, only necessity.