I nodded slightly again. Customs and Excise duty, value added tax and income tax paid by the shopkeeper meant that three-quarters of the selling price of every standard bottle of whisky went in one way or another to the inland revenue. One quarter paid for manufacture, bottles, shipping, advertising, and all the labour force needed between the sowing of the barley and the wrapping in a shop. The liquid itself, in that context, cost practically nothing.
‘Three times this year,’ Gerard said, ‘a tanker of Charter’s hasn’t reached its destination. It wouldn’t be accurate to say the tanker was stolen, because on each occasion it turned up. But the contents of course had vanished. The contents each time were bulk scotch. The Customs and Excise immediately demanded duty since the scotch was no longer in the tanker. Charter Carriers have twice had to pay up.’
He paused as if to let me catch up with what he was saying.
‘Charter Carriers are of course insured, or have been, and that’s where they’ve run into serious trouble. The insurers, notwithstanding that they rocketed their premiums on each past occasion, now say that enough is enough, they are not satisfied and are withholding payment. They also say no further cover will be extended. Charter’s face having to raise the cash themselves, which would be crippling, but more seriously they can’t operate without insurance. On top of that the Customs and Excise are threatening to take away their licence to carry goods in bond, which would in itself destroy a large part of their business.’ He paused again for appreciable seconds. ‘The Excise people are investigating the latest theft, but chiefly because they want the duty, and the police also, but routinely. Charter’s feel that this isn’t enough because it in no way guarantees the continuation of their licence or the reinstatement of their insurance. They’re extremely worried indeed, and they applied to us for help.’
We were speeding by this time along the M40. Another silence lengthened until Gerard eventually said, ‘Any questions?’
‘Well... dozens, I suppose.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as why was it always the scotch that was stolen and not the gin? Such as was it always the same driver and was it always the same tanker? Such as what happened to the driver, did he say? Such as where did the tankers turn up? Such as how did you connect it all with Zarac?’
He positively grinned, his teeth showing in what looked like delight.
‘Anything else?’ he asked.
‘Such as where did the scotch start from and where was it supposed to be going and how many crooks have you turned up at each place, and such as does Kenneth Charter trust his own office staff and why wasn’t his security invincible third time around?’.
I stopped and he said without sarcasm, ‘Those’ll do to be going on with. The answers I can give you are that no it wasn’t always the same driver but yes it was always the same tanker. The tanker turned up every time abandoned in Scotland in transport café carparks, but always with so many extra miles on the clock that it could have been driven as far as London or Cardiff and back.’
Another pause, then he said, ‘The drivers don’t remember what happened to them.’
I blinked. ‘Don’t remember?’
‘No. They remember setting off. They remember driving as far as the English border, where they all stopped at a motorway service station for a pee. They stopped at two different service stations. None of them remembers anything else except waking up in a ditch. Never the same ditch.’ He smiled. ‘After the second theft Kenneth Charter made it a rule that on that run no one was to eat or drink in cafés. The drivers had to take what they wanted with them in the cab. All the same they still had to stop for nature. The police say the thieves must have been following the tanker each time, waiting for that. Then when the driver was out of the cab, they put in an open canister of gas... perhaps nitrous oxide, which has no smell and acts fast... it’s what dentists use... and when the driver climbed back in he’d be unconscious before he could drive off.’
‘How regular was that run?’ I asked.
‘Normally twice a week.’
‘Always the same tanker?’
‘No,’ he said contentedly. ‘Charter’s keep four tankers exclusively for drinkable liquids. One of those. The other three made the run just as often, but weren’t touched. It may be coincidence, maybe not.’
‘How long ago was the last load stolen?’ I asked.
‘Three weeks last Wednesday.’
‘And before that?’
‘One in April, one in June.’
‘That’s three in six months,’ I said, surprised.
‘Yes, exactly.’
‘No wonder the insurers are kicking up a fuss.’
‘Mm.’ He drove quietly for a while and then said, ‘Every time the scotch was destined for the same place, a bottling plant at Watford, north of London. The scotch didn’t however always come from the same distillery, or the same warehouse. The stolen loads came from three different places. The last lot came from a warehouse near Helensburgh in Dunbartonshire, but it set off from there in the normal way and we don’t think that’s where the trouble is.’
‘In the bottling plant?’ I asked.
‘We don’t know, for sure, but we don’t think so. The lead to the Silver Moondance looked so conclusive that it was decided we should start from there.’
‘What was the lead?’ I said.
He didn’t answer immediately but in the end said, ‘I think Kenneth Charter had better tell you himself.’
‘O.K.’
‘I should explain,’ he said presently, ‘that when firms call us in it’s often because there are things they don’t necessarily want to tell the police. Companies very often like to deal privately, for instance, with frauds. By no means do they always want to prosecute, they just want the fraud stopped. Public admission that a fraud was going on under their noses can be embarrassing.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘Kenneth Charter told me certain things in confidence which he didn’t tell the police or the Customs and Excise. He wants his transport firm to survive, but not at any price. Not if the price in personal terms is too high. He agreed I should bring you in as a consultant, but I’ll leave it to him to decide how much he wants you to know.’
‘All right,’ I said peacefully.
We left the motorway and Gerard began threading his way across the semi-suburban sprawl to the north of London where one town ran into another without noticeable difference.
‘You’re an undemanding sort of man,’ Gerard observed after a while.
‘What should I demand?’
‘How much a consultancy fee is, perhaps. Conditions, maybe. Assurances.’
‘Life’s like the weather,’ I said wryly. ‘What comes, comes. Even with a sunny forecast you can get wet.’
‘A fatalist.’
‘It rains. You can’t stop it.’
He glanced at my face for almost the first time on the journey, but I doubt if he read much there. I’d spoken not bitterly but with a sort of tiredness, result of failing to come to terms with my own private deluge. I was in truth quite interested in the stolen scotch and the tankers, but it was on an upper and minor level, not down where it mattered.
As if sensing it he said, ‘You’ll do your best for me?’
‘Such as it is,’ I assured him. ‘Yes.’
He nodded as if a doubt had been temporarily stilled and turned off the road into an industrial area where small factories had sprung like recent mushrooms in a concrete field. The fourth on the right bore the words ‘Charter Carriers Ltd’ in large red letters on a white board attached to the front, while down the side, like piglets to a sow, stretched a long row of silver tankers side by side, engines inwards, sterns out.