‘I can walk away if you’d rather,’ I replied.
‘No, no,’ she laughed, ‘don’t do that. I need all the business I can get.’
‘Times are tough?’
‘They’re okay, but you know how it is in this trade. It takes a while to build up a solid customer base; at my stage you grab all the work that comes your way.’
‘Hopefully you’ve learned not to take on work without knowing exactly who your client is?’ Her basic naivety had been at the heart of the initial difficulty between us, and later it had come back to bite her.
‘Oh yes,’ Carrie replied. ‘I’m very careful who I work for now.’
‘Do you want to work for me?’
‘Is it legal?’ she asked, with a smile.
I grinned back at her. ‘Anything that isn’t I’ll be handling myself.’ I opened my briefcase and took out a folder. ‘I need you to run background checks for me on a list of people. I want to know if any of them have a grudge, overt or hidden, against this man.’ I took a photo, one that I’d printed myself, from the file. ‘Do you know who he is?’
She took it from me and studied it, carefully. ‘That’s Eden Higgins, isn’t it, the businessman?’
‘Got him in one. How much do you know about him?’
‘Personally, nothing. Although . . .’ she hesitated. ‘A few months ago, his wife made a claim against the insurance company I worked for, and I checked it out.’
‘Much involved?’
‘Quite a bit. A suite of her jewellery was nicked, a necklace, matching bracelet and a pair of earrings, Christ knows how many carats of diamonds in the lot. She and her husband were staying in a country house hotel in Argyllshire, attending some sort of international business summit. When she arrived she deposited the jewels in the hotel safe. The following evening, when she wanted them for the main event dinner, they were gone.’
‘Did the insurers pay out?’
‘They had to,’ she said. ‘There was some talk of arguing that the swag had been left at the owner’s personal risk, but that fell very quickly and they settled for the full insured amount.’
‘How much was that?’
‘Two hundred and fifty thou. The irony was that we insured both parties, but it’ll be the hotel’s policy renewal that’ll be hammered next time round, for its owners were held at fault.’
‘Have the jewels been recovered?’ I asked.
‘Not a chance. The local Inspector Clouseau was baffled, and the Pink Panther got away with it.’
‘Was anything else taken?’
‘Nothing. That was remarked on at the time. One of the other guests had a large quantity of bearer bonds on his possession, and they’d been signed into the safe too. They were left untouched, yet they were worth ten times what the jewellery was. The thief couldn’t have been as smart as he thought.’
‘Or a lot smarter than the police reckoned,’ I countered.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Let’s say you’re the Pink Panther. You’re after jewellery. You find it, and alongside it there’s a few million quid in out-dated old-fashioned, but still entirely legal tender, and,’ I added, ‘entirely untraceable, bearer bonds. What are you going to do?’
‘Fill my pockets,’ Carrie chuckled.
‘Are you really?’ I asked.
‘Why not?’
‘Possibly self-preservation,’ I said. ‘Look, you’re a jewel thief, it’s what you do. Mainly, almost invariably, you’re actually stealing from insurance companies, not individuals. If you’re good enough to evade Clouseau, and you have a safe market for the gear, you’re free and clear.
‘But,’ I continued, ‘yield to greed or temptation . . . a hell of a lot of temptation, I’ll grant you . . . and trouser the bearer bonds, you are stepping into the unknown. Those things are a risky form of security and, historically, they’ve been used by some very risky people. Yes, they are untraceable and you could be set up for life, but the chances are you’d spend the rest of that potentially short life looking over your shoulder.’
‘I see what you mean,’ Carrie admitted. She looked up at me and winked. ‘I wouldn’t like to steal your bearer bonds.’
I smiled. ‘Best not to, I agree.’ I paused and then went back on subject. ‘I take it you didn’t meet Eden Higgins in the course of your work for your company.’
‘No. Only his wife and his son, who’s quite tasty as I recall.’
‘So you have no preconceptions of him?’
‘No. He’s just another very successful bloke. Why do you ask?’
‘Because ultimately,’ I told her, ‘he’s your client. You’re working for me, and I’ll pay you, but my assignment is from him. By the way, you never told me; which insurance company did you work for?’
‘Edinburgh Co-operative.’
That was okay; the Princess Alison was insured with another firm, marine specialists.
I handed her the folder. ‘Get to work. Remember; confidential and none of the subjects find out that it’s being done. I could have gone to the business staff at the Saltire with this, but they’d have asked why I needed to know, so don’t you take that route either. Don’t go asking journalists.’
‘Why do you need to know?’ she ventured.
I shook my head. ‘Just you concentrate on the task, and leave it at that.’
‘I’m thirty-five quid an hour,’ she said, bluntly. ‘Plus exes.’
‘That’s fine, but don’t take the piss. Any extra costs above a hundred, you clear with me first.’
I gave her my card with all my contact numbers on it and left her to get on with the job. I didn’t ask what else she had on her plate, but the lack of paper on her desk had made me think that it might not be much.
My second appointment didn’t require a taxi trip or even a long walk, only a stroll up a quarter of the Royal Mile to the Higgins Holdings headquarters on the Mound. But it wasn’t Eden that I’d arranged to see.
Luisa McCracken greeted me nonetheless; in the absence of her boss and his son, she seemed to be in charge of the small staff of analysts and accountants.
‘Was the list satisfactory?’ she asked, as soon as she met me in the foyer.
‘Entirely,’ I replied. ‘You’re a fast worker. I didn’t expect it until the afternoon.’
‘When Mr Higgins asks for something,’ she explained, ‘he never says “As soon as possible”, but that’s what he means. Have you known him long?’
Her question took me by surprise; I’ve always assumed that the term ‘confidential secretary’ is all-embracing, but apparently it wasn’t in her case.
‘Twenty years,’ I said. ‘I met him through Alison.’
‘Ah, of course,’ she murmured. ‘His sister was a police officer in Edinburgh, so you and she must have worked together. I should have realised.’
I could have enlightened her further, but I didn’t see the need. ‘I’d never met Mrs Higgins until yesterday, though,’ I volunteered. ‘Not properly at any rate.’
‘Rachel takes nothing to do with the management of Eden’s companies,’ the secretary retorted, with a little sharpness in her tone that started me wondering whether she had ever harboured ambitions beyond the workplace.
‘Wasn’t she involved at the time of the jewel theft?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t that take place at a business event?’
She frowned at me, over her long eyelashes. ‘How did you know about that? It was never reported in the press.’
‘You said it yourself. I used to be a police officer.’
‘But it happened in Argyllshire,’ she said. ‘You were based in Glasgow, were you not?’
I pinched Carrie’s analogy. ‘You don’t think Inspector Clouseau circulated details of the stolen items to every police force in the country?’
‘I suppose he would have,’ she conceded. ‘As for your question, yes, that was a business event, but sometimes it’s necessary, or at least desirable for him to be accompanied. That’s as much as Rachel ever has to do with the business . . . apart from owning half of it,’ she added.