Trail of Greed: Fighting Fraud and Corruption... A Dangerous Game by John Dysart

to see if he had found out anything.
    His article in the Thursday paper had been just right. A brief report of the conference with no reference to the awkwardness caused by my question. It was neutral on the issue of AIM’s results, which would not please Purdy very much. But he couldn’t complain. It was factual.
    Pierre was quiet and thoughtful as I did my little “where we’re at” speech.
    He left me in the early afternoon. As he was leaving he informed me that, as not much was likely to happen in the near future, he was going to go back to France for a few days. He would be back on Wednesday or Thursday. He didn’t tell me why. But then why should he? I simply nodded and asked him to call when he got back.
    Nothing happened over the next few days. I called Alice a couple times. She was delighted with the painting. She and Mac had agreed on an olive green for the woodwork, which she thought would brighten things up and would go well with all the shrubs and trees she had in the garden.
    I spoke to Mac who had nothing to report except that he was eating like he hadn’t done in a long time. Alice was spoiling him and was clearly enjoying having someone to cook for. His only complaint was that he had to play Scrabble every evening and she always won.
    I tried to get in touch with Steven but his assistant told me he was out of town and wouldn’t be back until the end of the week.
    I managed a round of golf. I went over on Tuesday and bumped into Keith in the clubhouse. He was about to go out with Jack and he invited me to join them. I played reasonably well. Jack was not on form with his putting and Keith thumped his way round the course, cursing bad shots, complaining about the greens when he missed a putt and celebrating as if he’d won the Open when anything went in from over ten feet.
    On Thursday morning I had a call from Mike who suggested that he come over and report on his and Doug’s efforts over the last three days. We agreed to a bar lunch at Fernie. He’d come over himself and leave Doug on the job.
    Just as I was about to leave the phone rang again. It was Pierre.
    “Hi,” he said. “What’s new? I’m just back and wondered if you fancied lunch.”
    I told him I was meeting Mike so his arrival was well timed. We’d see him in about half an hour.
    Mike was waiting in the bar. No sign, as yet, of Pierre, so we settled down for a debriefing on Edinburgh.
    We had hardly started when Mike glanced up and said “Here’s Pierre”.
    I looked round over my shoulder and saw Pierre wending his way through the chairs and tables towards us with a smile on his face. He was dressed in his usual tidy, elegant way – blue, cotton, neatly-ironed trousers, soft brown loafers, fresh cream shirt. His face was, if anything slightly more tanned than before. A couple of days in the sun, I thought.
    Mike and I glanced at each other. Mike raised his eyebrows. We had been expecting him but we had not been expecting him to be accompanied.
    We got to our feet as he approached and shook hands and welcomed him back.
    “Hi, guys. Good to see you,” he said and then stepped back to motion forward the person who had been following closely behind.
    She was a distinctly attractive lady and looked as if she was in her early forties. She had an open and friendly expression on a face that was tanned and very appealing. She was an inch or so taller than Pierre, slender with shoulder-length black hair and was dressed neatly in a blue cotton blouse and a white denim skirt which stopped just above the knees. Bare legged. Sandals with just enough heel to tighten up the calf muscles. There was no doubt the picture was exquisite. She took a pace forward and shook us each by the hand. There was a whiff of a seriously expensive perfume in the air.
    “It’s good to meet you both,” she said, with a slight touch of a French accent. “Pierre has told me all about you.”
    Pierre pulled out a seat for her and we all sat down again, Mike