Out of control (9 page)

I set off down south on Monday morning planning to stop again at Birnam and make a couple of phone calls. Going home via Stirling wouldn’t be too much of a detour and I was quite looking forward to seeing if I could assist Helen. Here was a way to help her and to make up in some degree for what had happened with Liam.

As soon as I was ensconced in the deserted lounge of the Birnam Hotel with my coffee I pulled out my phone and dialled a number.

“Ian McLeish speaking.”

Ian was an old acquaintance who had been appointed to sort out the mess at AIM. I had helped him and he had gained a lot of kudos from his work there. He owed me a favour.

“Hi Iain, Bob Bruce here. How are you?”

“Fine thanks. What can I do for you, Bob?”

“A small favour. Do you by any chance know any of the partners at Albion Venture Capital?

“Yes. Alec Smith is a buddy of mine. Why?”

“Could you please give him a call in the next five minutes and tell him to expect a call from me? Could you tell him we know each other and I’m someone to be trusted?”

“Anywhere except on a golf course!” he replied. “Sure I’ll do that. No problem. Do I need to tell him what it’s about?”

“Don’t worry about that. It’s just that I need to speak to him as soon as possible. I’ll call him in fifteen minutes.”

*

I whiled away the next ten minutes flicking through the newspaper marvelling at the rubbish they managed to find to fill up the spaces in between the advertisements. A three word headline and a photograph was all that filled the front page! I checked the latest report on Justin Rose’s performance in some tournament on the American golf circuit and noted that he’d cashed in another three hundred thousand dollars for four days golf.

I 
amused myself by calculating that he had won just over a thousand dollars for each shot that he’d hit which compared rather favourably with my golf economics. In my case each shot cost me about fifty pence. It’s interesting to think that if you’re a professional, the fewer shots you hit the more you earn per shot. Whereas, as an amateur, the more shots you take the less each shot costs you.

I got through straight away to Alec Smith and introduced myself. He had just heard from Iain and was quite happy to listen.

I told him that I was a consultant working with Helen Mackie of Bioscope and she had informed me that she had heard that Albion had just received a proposition for their shares in her company.

He wasn’t yet aware of this but promised me he would speak to the portfolio manager about it.

“I don’t know the details of the offer,” I said “but I understand that it is reasonable. I know you have a business to run but I wondered if you could possibly delay your reply, at least until I have a chance to discuss it with Helen and possibly with yourself.”

“Is there any particular reason for this?”

I had prepared my answer in advance because I had expected this question.

“I know that Bioscope has just lost out on a recent patent application but the company has two other important projects which you may not be aware of and which, in our view, could have a major positive effect on the value of the company. Helen and I would like a week or so to finalise a presentation to you so that you can make a better judgment on the proposition you’ve received. We’ll come and tell you about them. I wouldn’t like to think that you might sell now and miss out on a future gain because you didn’t have a chance to examine things properly.”

He laughed at my pitch but agreed that my request was reasonable and we fixed on a date in ten days time for a meeting.

I thanked him and hung up. We’d bought some time which is always important. I finished my coffee and headed down the A9 for Perth and then Stirling.

Helen and I had arranged to meet at a small Italian restaurant. I arrived five minutes late, having eventually found a car park after ten minutes of cursing the bloody one way system in the middle of town.

We ordered and I proposed that Christian name terms were called for. Although I’m getting on a bit I still prefer that. She agreed.

Helen graciously started the conversation by asking after Liam. I told her that we had tracked down the boy Rémy in Edinburgh and how that had led us back to his girlfriend and we had proof that she had indeed been behind a targeted operation against Liam. I felt it better to say nothing about her murder.

“Well, I suppose in a way I’m glad for him. And I’m glad I was wrong in accusing him of what I did. But I was pretty upset at the time as you can imagine. We’ve more or less got over our disappointment.” She shrugged her shoulders with a wan look.”That’s life I suppose.”

Our pasta arrived and we set to. Then she went on.

“In any case, LyonPharma have still got their clinical trials to do. Who knows what that will bring up?”

“What clinical trials do they have to do? ”

“Have you any idea the testing that will have to be done to make sure that this drug would have no side effects?”

“No.”

“Probably at least three years of testing. Then they’ll need to get approval from the authorities. But if all goes well, it would be so much better than anything that’s available it would make a fortune. I’d have had to link up with a bigger company anyway to be able to finance the research and have access to a distribution network.”

“And it wouldn’t have been LyonPharma?”

“No way. I’d have been looking for a company with a better reputation than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll bet you they bring it onto the market within two years. They’ll cut corners, fudge the results and push it through. It’s been done before.” I was dumbfounded by her comment.

“How would they get it through the authorities?”

“Big money talks. Don’t kid yourself.”

I looked at her in amazement. I’d heard of cases of drugs being withdrawn from the market because unexpected side effects had cropped up but had assumed that these were genuine mistakes. Very sad for the sufferers but I could understand that you can’t test a drug for ever and you can never be one hundred percent sure. If in the meantime a treatment saves thousands of lives at the expense of a few unfortunate cases of unforeseen side effects, I suppose on balance it’s worth it. But too cavalier an approach was definitely unacceptable.

“Anyway we’re now concentrating on the other two projects and they’re going better than we had hoped.”

By now we were onto the coffee.

“Helen, does anyone outside the company know about these other two projects or their status?”

“No. They know what they are but they don’t know yet that we’ve made significant headway recently and are looking pretty good.”

“What area are they in?” I asked.

“Cancer identification – but I’m not telling you anymore,” she replied with a smile.

“So what’s the reasoning behind this offer that the French have made to buy Albion’s shares? Where’s the logic in that?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering. And the only conclusion I can come to is that they might be hoping that, if they are a shareholder, they can get access to all the work we have done which might help them in the clinical trial period. They wouldn’t have control but it would be difficult not to give them access. I don’t know what the legal position is on something like that.”

I thought about this for a moment. I suppose it was a possible reason. Even if legally a minority shareholder couldn’t insist on access to internal company documents they certainly could if they had majority control and if Antoine de Clermont sold his shares to them as well they would have fifty two percent. Game over.

I still didn’t want to mention my fears about de Clermont because I didn’t know what Helen’s relationship was with him so, while I ruminated, I steered the conversation towards her general background. I asked her what she’d done before starting up Bioscope.

“Oh, it’s not a very complicated story. I was born and brought up in France. My Dad worked for a multinational company in Lyon. I went to school and university there and, being Scottish, I went on to do a PHD at Edinburgh.

“I had a boyfriend back in France so, after that, I went back to Lyon to work for a pharmaceutical company in their R&D department. That’s where I met Antoine. I stayed about six years. Antoine left and went to LyonPharma but we kept in touch because we’d worked so well together.

“Then the boyfriend bit didn’t work out. I had a few ideas that I wanted to work on so I got back in touch with Richard whom I had met at Edinburgh and ‘here I am’. We each had a bit of money and I got in touch with Antoine. I’d heard about his dreadful accident and thought that perhaps he might be interested in an investment opportunity. He put in some money as well and we trailed around the Venture Capital companies in Edinburgh and Glasgow until we found these two.”

“And is there any danger that the other one might sell their shares?”

“And we lose control you mean? No. I’m quite sure of that. I certainly hope not anyway.”

“Well, I’ve got us some breathing space. I’ve fixed a meeting with Alec Smith in ten days time. Can you and Richard work up a convincing enough presentation with a business plan that shows them it would be in their interests to hang on to their shares? “ We spent some time discussing the kind of information that was needed and how it could be presented.

“If you want to run it by me beforehand just let me know. If that works you’re safe.  
If not….we’ll see.” 

She agreed to that and we parted company - she to get started right away on her presentation and I to drive back home via my favourite watering hole in Glendevon.

I had a lot of thinking to do.

I ordered a nice cold glass of Chardonnay and took it outside to sit on one of the black wrought iron chairs and to soak up the sun before it disappeared behind the crowding hills. There was hardly any traffic going by on the twisty little road through the narrow glen – another of my favourite stretches of road.

Scotland has many such gems - some just a few miles, some longer and I suppose we each have our favourites.

From Monimail, just a mile from my home in Letham there is a stretch of a few miles which wends through the hills to join the main road to Newburgh. It skirts Lindores Loch with Lindores House sitting on its promontory brooding over the gray flecked waters in winter and smiling at the smooth glassy surface in summer. Perhaps there’d be a man out on the loch, sitting peacefully in a small boat with his rod, trying for trout.

There is the Pass of the Cattle with its horrendous hairpin bends which snakes its way up and over to Applecross.

Or the lovely little single track road that wends its way through the heather down to Kylerhea at the southernmost tip of Skye where the two-car ferry waits to take you over to the mainland to Glenelg. From there the road snakes up and over the hills. At the top, before plunging down to the head of Loch Duich, you can park the car and walk just a few hundred yards north to appreciate one of the most magnificent views in Scotland - to the left, Eilan Donan Castle, the ancient seat of the MacLeods, visible in the distance where Loch Duich, Loch Long and Lochalsh meet at Dornie, and in front, the skyline of the Five Sisters of Kintail .

And there are plenty more.

Sipping my wine I reflected over the events of the last couple of weeks, being able now to add an extra layer of information after my lunch with Helen.

Liam had been indiscreet and been fired from Bioscope. He seemed to be getting over it especially now that he knew he’d been set up. It now seemed definite that the perpetrators had been LyonPharma or an agent of theirs.

Helen Mackie had been the subject of a deliberate piece of industrial espionage, depriving her of the opportunity to develop her product. She seemed now, however, to be resigned to that and had other projects which no one knew about.

The patent may or not have be worth a lot of money but they wouldn’t know until clinical trials had been done and, in any case, she couldn’t have gone it on her own – not enough cash. She would have had to have tied up with some big company.

I must remember to make sure that our presentation includes good cash flow projections.

Then there was Irina, the girl who had, through Rémy, got the critical information out of Liam on instructions from France. She had been arrested for drug possession and had been fished out of the Forth having been, according to the police, murdered before she was chucked in. I agreed with Ross that her death was far more likely to have something to do with the band of criminals who were trafficking girls from Romania into France than anything to do with the patent story, but was it possible there could be a connection?

I could just leave it at that. Liam was safe and I didn’t see how I could do anything about Irina’s death? I would help Helen try to stave off the share sale. But what else?

There was a ‘what else?’, however, still niggling away in the background - the subject of Antoine de Clermont, friend of Pierre, who had helped get Liam the job and who lived near Saumur where the letter to Irina had come from.

That led me back to this offer from LyonPharma to buy shares in Bioscope. It wouldn’t give them a majority but, if Antoine de Clermont was in any way involved and acting in concert with them, their combined voting rights would give them control.

While I mused the sun had slowly dipped below the skyline and the hillsides were in deep shadow. Time to go before it became uncomfortably cool.

Conclusion? As I finished off my wine I decided that I would wait and see. Certain things were in motion. I’d see what the results were.

Pierre had gone to France. He would come back with information about LyonPharma and, I hoped, some idea about this guy Dugain.

I had asked Steven to see what he could find out about LyonPharma’s Edinburgh operation.

I had a meeting fixed up with Albion Venture Capital in ten days time to try to persuade them to hold onto their shares.

That should be enough to be going on with. I couldn’t see what else I could do.