Part 32 (1/2)

'Have some more coffee, Roddie.' Jack refilled his cup and helped it to his mouth, encouraging him to swallow.

'Let's talk some more about Tymar,' Jack persisted.

A thought floated across my mind, one that I tried to dismiss but it lingered. Jack had used this technique before.

'What do you want to know?'

'Roddie, I want to know everything.' I couldn't see the smile on his face but I could hear it in his voice. 'Let's get started, Roddie. Who first asked you to start Tymar?'

Jack's pen was busy scratching. He knew he was on his way back to the big-time and he wouldn't rely on a tape recorder to get all of this down.

Roddie thought for a moment, then went on.

'Robert Girvan yes, it was Robert who asked me. The request was rather surprising because he was a partner in another firm; he was McCoy's partner before he was busted. I asked him why he didn't do it inhouse, and he said he wanted to keep his business life separate from the law firm. He was paying me well, so I wasn't going to object.'

Lavender flashed me a look that said, 'I told you so.' If it had been possible, she would have danced in front of me singing it. Eddie squeezed my arm.

'We all make mistakes,' he mouthed. I think I loved Eddie at that moment.

Roddie helped himself to more coffee.

'So, what did Robert Girvan want Tymar for?'

'Well, at first, Jack, I had no idea. I thought it might be a property company or something, then he made an unusual request. One that I was quite happy to comply with since it involved me getting paid a lot of money.'

He wiped his brow with a pristine monogrammed handkerchief.

'I was under pressure, Jack; you have no idea what it's like working with that woman. She is quite simply infuriating. Brodie MacGregor is irritatingly good at what she does, earns a lot of fees, but that puts the rest of us under pressure. Then when I had my little contretemps with Kailash and the firm started haemorrhaging money as a result of the scandal, Brodie made no secret of the fact that it was my fault.'

'Wasn't it?'

Jack asked all the questions I wanted to put to Roddie.

'No,' Roddie whined. 'I've told you. I just wanted to reunite father and child what could be wrong with that?'

'The father was a paedophile some people may say that was wrong.'

'Jack, Jack ... her father was a very important man; such men are always the subject of rumour and conjecture. In any event, she was long past the age when her father would have been interested in her if he did indeed have those proclivities.'

'So you didn't like Brodie?'

'Haven't I just said that? She came in here a n.o.body. I gave her a start and how did she repay me? She made me look a fool in front of my partners by bringing in double the amount of fee income that I did. I was forced to work harder just to maintain my position, at a time when I should have been winding down. That's when I thought I could go to Kailash if she had paid me enough money I could have retired and everything would have been all right. But that's not her way; she has to destroy a man. Did you see what she did to me? It was a set-up but it looked bad. Do you know what the worst of it was?'

Jack shook his head; but we all did, nodding like those dogs in the back of a car.

'The worst of it was that I had to ask Brodie for help.'

Jack poured himself some water.

'Let's get back to happier things then. Tymar is your revenge on Brodie, isn't it?'

Roddie replied, 'Robert Girvan's special request was that he needed to buy a woman's ident.i.ty as a cover for the bank account and company. I sold him Brodie's; he didn't object. In fact, when he had to work under the little b.i.t.c.h, I think it kept him going when she was giving him patronising handouts.'

'So, Brodie's financial details are on all the registration doc.u.ments of the company?'

'That's right! All her details except the important ones. Like a scan of her iris or her palm print, so that means she can't actually access any money.'

'What does Robert Girvan use Tymar Productions for?' asked Jack.

'I don't know, but it's highly illegal, because lots of cash flows through the accounts. Tymar Productions is supposedly a film production company. Not a bad idea if you want to launder money. I was always rather amused by the name myself,' he said, starting to giggle like a schoolchild.

'Tymar Productions?' Jack repeated, and shook his head.

'Oh, and here was me thinking you were meant to be clever! Don't you see it? TYMAR? Take your money and run.' Roddie Buchanan continued to giggle at the hilarity of it all.

Jack gave him enough coffee to send him to sleep and I was left with the prospect of seeing Robert Girvan as myself.

He had taken my ident.i.ty.

He had stolen me from me.

He was a man pretending to be a woman when it suited him, in this mess of confused men and women.

Suddenly, a thought swam into my head as if my dreams had come back in one piece.

The voice behind the camera.

How sure was I that it truly was a woman? Was that why I hadn't been able to place it?

Was Robert Girvan behind everything?

Chapter Forty-Four.

'It worked then?' the Alchemist asked.

'Like a charm,' I replied, meeting him at court straight after Roddie's performance. He nodded as if he had known that it would.

He had changed.

Not metaphorically, but literally. His hair had been dyed back to his natural colour and he wore a suit. Not a cheap suit like the ones my punters normally borrowed it looked expensive and, from the way it hung on his scrawny frame, I would say that it was handmade. His white s.h.i.+rt was not new, that would have been too nouveau riche, but it was spotless and freshly ironed. Of course, he wore his school tie. It was not the same school tie that Tanya and Moira had worn in the video it was even posher. I was surprised; Moses had not done Bernard's background justice.

Bernard's public-school acolytes were not at his side. They had been replaced by his mother. It was obvious that Bernard had been a late baby. Mrs Carpenter came from the same generation as Mary McLennan and, from the look of her, I would say she was just as strict.

On stout flat brown shoes she marched towards me. Thankfully, I was in my suit and the court gown hid any lingering stains that might have remained from breakfast.