The officers displayed their crested warrant cards; she leaned over the divider to inspect them.
‘Thank you, detectives,’ she said. ‘If you’ll take a seat; Mrs Stewart’s running a little late.’
‘No worries,’ Pye replied. ‘We’ll stand, if you don’t mind. We’ve been sitting all the way from Edinburgh. You worked here long, Ms Mega?’ he asked, casually.
‘Six months. I’m just completing the integration process.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Hold on.’ She stepped back to the board, flipped another switch, and announced their arrival to someone called Linda, then rejoined them. ‘All new employees have to spend time in each department before we’re finally assigned, regardless of our skills. I have a First in Chemical Engineering, but when I started here Mrs Stewart stuck a brush in my hand and had me sweeping the factory floor for a month.’
‘Not in that suit, I’ll bet,’ Haddock remarked.
‘Nor these shoes,’ she laughed, raising a foot to display heels that accentuated her height.
‘Is all your management located here?’ Pye asked.
‘Our executive management, yes; Mrs Stewart is the chief executive officer, as I imagine you know. She runs the place. We have a parent company, but that’s based in Edinburgh.’
‘Yes, we know that too. Do you see much of Mr Higgins here?’
‘I’ve never seen him. Rory visits once a month, and once every three months Mrs Stewart and Mr Orchard, the production director, go to a board meeting in head office.’
‘Rory?’
She looked at Haddock. ‘Mr Higgins Junior.’
‘He’s informal, is he?’ the DS asked, lightly.
‘Not with everyone,’ she replied. ‘He and I have a little history, away from business. We’ve been on a couple of dates.’
A very small frown suggested that there might be no more to come.
‘Didn’t you like the movie?’ Haddock ventured.
‘It shows, does it?’ she said. ‘The first time, I did. Second time, I didn’t like where he took me: a seedy little pole-dancing bar at the top of Leith Walk. We met the owner, Callum, a business friend of his, Rory said. He may have been, but they both spent a little too much time eyeing up one of the dancers. I went to the ladies, then left by the side door. We haven’t spoken since.’
‘Did you . . .’ Pye began, but before he could ask whether there had been a third man present, a tall, lean, brooding guy, a door burst open and a stout middle-aged woman bustled into the reception area.
‘Gentlemen,’ she exclaimed, ‘sorry to have kept you. I’m Linda Lee, Mrs Stewart’s PA. She’s ready for you now; follow me, please.’
She turned on her heel and headed in the direction from which she had come; following was their only option. She led them along a wide corridor. The far end was open, affording them a glimpse of a factory floor, filled with machinery and lengths of white material. The sharp sound of power saws assaulted their ears, until their escort opened a door on the right and ushered them into a small anteroom with another door beyond. It was open; another woman stood there, framed by it. She was the antithesis of her receptionist; she was clad in blue overalls and her white hair was wild.
She took a step towards them, extending a hand. ‘Joan Stewart,’ she announced, in an accent that was pure East Fife. ‘CEO. Come into my sanctum; it’s the only oasis of quiet we have in this bloody great shed.’ She held the door open for them, standing aside as they entered. ‘Coffee, gents?’
‘No thanks,’ Pye said, as the trio settled into chairs. ‘We’ll get straight to business if you don’t mind.’
‘Fair enough,’ Mrs Stewart replied. ‘I’m curious to know what that might be. You weren’t very forthcoming with Linda when you made the appointment.’
‘We want to talk to you about your company’s acquisition of Mackail Extrusions.’
The woman underwent an instant attitude change; her open demeanour closed up tight. ‘Destry didn’t acquire Mackail. We bought its assets from the liquidator. There’s a big difference.’
‘What about its order book?’ Haddock asked.
‘We weren’t interested in that. It didn’t have many clients, other than ourselves, and those it did have were all our competitors. We bought a facility and brought it in-house, that’s all.’
‘Bought it cheap?’
‘Market value plus five per cent.’
‘Was it an auction?’
‘No, we did a private deal.’
The DS pressed on. ‘When you say “we”, who do you mean? Did you handle it yourself?’
She shook her unkempt head. ‘No. The negotiations were all done by our parent company. I wasn’t party to them.’
Pye leaned forward slightly. ‘Mrs Stewart,’ he said, ‘it’s been suggested to us that Destry contrived to bring about the bankruptcy of Mackail Extrusions by withholding payment unreasonably for materials supplied.’
She bristled, visibly, almost comically, sitting bolt upright, her jaw jutting out as if she was ready for combat. ‘Suggested by whom? Hector bloody Mackail? Who are you guys anyway?’ she demanded. ‘The Fraud Office? If you are, this conversation’s over.’
‘We’re not, and it isn’t. We’re mainstream CID and we’re investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Hector Mackail.’
She blinked, once, twice, a third time. ‘Hector’s dead?’ she gasped. ‘I never knew. What happened? He didn’t bloody top himself, did he?’
‘No,’ Haddock responded, ‘somebody did that for him. Hit-and-run. It didn’t make the national press, not at the time.’
‘Well, I know nothing about it. I can assure you of that.’
‘We’re not suggesting that you do,’ Pye assured her. ‘All we want to do is establish the truth of stories we’ve been told, that Mr Mackail had a grievance against Destry and its parent company. It’s a straight question, Mrs Stewart, in an unrecorded conversation. Did you starve him of funds or did you not?’
She took a breath, making her round cheeks even rounder, then let it out in a sigh. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘Hector was naive. He turned out a good product but he was no businessman. He responded to the slump in the home improvement industry by jacking up his prices, not cutting them. He was his own worst enemy; he’d have gone bust anyway.’
‘But you helped him?’
She nodded. ‘The parent company told me to make him a decent offer for his business. I did but he turned it down. He got quite aggressive with me about it. When I reported back, I got the word to put the squeeze on his cash flow. It didn’t take long after that till the bank called in his debt and he went under. That was no surprise,’ she added, ‘not with that bank.’
‘Why not?’ Haddock asked, curious.
‘Because Eden Higgins has a twenty-nine per cent stake in it, held personally, not through the holding company. Some of the subsidiaries bank there.’
‘I see,’ Pye murmured, fighting off his surprise. ‘What’s the history of Destry?’ he asked.
‘My late husband and I founded the business twenty-five years ago,’ she said. ‘Initially we did replacement windows, but pretty soon we expanded into conservatories. James died from cancer in two thousand and three, but by that time the business was secure. He’d always majored on design and manufacture while I did everything else. The product range was established when he passed away, so it wasn’t difficult for me to carry on.’
‘When did you sell to Mr Higgins?’
‘Two thousand and six. I recruited Justin Orchard after James died, to replace him, and by that time he was well established in the job. He had an idea for a new product range, free-standing modular glass garden buildings. I liked it, but it would have taken a lot of working capital to get it going, plus it would have been a gamble at a time when the economic storm clouds were just starting to show over the horizon. Around that time I met Eden Higgins at a Scottish CBI gathering. Do you know him?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Haddock chuckled. ‘We’re just humble plods.’
‘So was his sister, I believe,’ she countered. ‘That’s why I asked. Anyway, we got talking. He had just started to diversify at the time, but he still thought like a furniture guy. Anything you could furnish, he was interested in it. A couple of weeks later he came to me and made me an offer for a controlling interest in the company, with an injection of new working capital. It was a great deal; I still have a one-third stake in a business that’s gone from strength to strength under his management. I don’t have any stake in Higgins Holdings, nobody else does, but I still draw salary, and dividend, from here.’