New Guard (CHERUB) - Robert Muchamore Page 0,42

scrapyard,’ Ryan noted.

James nodded excitedly as his fingers tapped keys. ‘Big coincidence, or what?’

Ryan grabbed a tablet and started his own Google hunt, as James used the MI5 database to access tax and mobile phone records for the other two engineers.

‘Gordon Sachs, Kam Yuen,’ James said, as he looked at a pair of Vodafone bills on his laptop screen. ‘Neither filed their personal tax return this April. Both stopped making calls on their mobile phones – Gordon in October last year, Kam stops a few weeks earlier. And that’s around the time Chris Carlisle was found dead in his hotel.’

‘You think all three got murdered?’ Ryan asked. ‘I’ve got a phone number for the fourth employee.’

James looked confused. ‘There were three engineers.’

‘And a company secretary,’ Ryan said, as he rattled James’ own printout. ‘Morag Henderson.’

James grinned. ‘Good Scottish name. You think I should call her?’

Morag was in her seventies and it took several minutes for James to convince her that he wasn’t trying to sell life insurance, or no-win-no-fee legal services. He explained that he was a police officer, doing some routine paperwork related to the death of Chris Carlisle, and that he wanted to fill in some blanks relating to his career with OME911.

‘The company was set up by myself and a group of maintenance engineers who worked for OME,’ Morag explained in a thick Scottish accent, as James set his phone to record the call. ‘When OME went under, there was still a lot of their equipment installed at oil wells around the world. We bought software and spares from OME and sent engineers all over the world to keep the pumps and control panels running.

‘When we started in ’95, we had six engineers, but the three senior engineers retired, leaving Gordon, Kam and Chris. Over the years most OME equipment was gradually replaced. Even the newest OME gear is now more than twenty years old.’

‘So the business just dwindled to the point where it shut down completely?’

Morag laughed. ‘That’s what we always expected to happen. But the US placed export sanctions on Libya, Iraq and Iran. That stopped them buying new pumping equipment for their oil wells. So the OME equipment stayed in place. And it’s good stuff, some of it’s forty years old and still going strong.’

‘So Gordon, Kam and Chris were the only guys who could fix these oil pumps if they went wrong?’ James asked.

‘Not so much the pumps,’ Morag said. ‘The OME equipment was solid and simple, not like modern kit which is all computerised. Most mechanical things can be fixed locally, but the control consoles do require specialised knowledge. And if you’re losing twenty thousand dollars a day because your oil well has shut down, it’s worth paying the best engineers a few thousand to fly in and fix it properly.’

‘So why did you shut down?’

‘Age and politics,’ Morag explained. ‘Chris was sixty-four when he died. Kam and Gordon are well into their fifties. And with the Arab uprisings, the climate the guys were working in was getting more dangerous all the time. When Gaddafi ran Libya, the guys got three thousand dollars a day, stayed in good hotels and were escorted by armed police. After the regime collapsed, oil industry workers started getting kidnapped and held for ransom. Even guys who had mercenaries guarding them and the political backup of a big oil company were getting murdered in Iraq.’

James nodded. ‘So it just got too dangerous?’

Morag sighed. ‘It wasn’t a question of if one of the guys got kidnapped. It became a question of when. I was getting phone calls with guys offering us fifty thousand dollars to go fix control consoles in Libya, but it was just too dangerous for a Scotsman to set foot over there. The guys decided to retire after we got a very good offer for our diagnostic equipment and spare parts inventory.’

‘Who from?’ James asked.

‘My memory’s not what it was,’ Morag said. ‘Stocky little Asian fellow with a Brummie accent. God, what was his name?’

‘Martin Jones?’ James suggested.

‘Yes,’ Morag said. ‘Lovely fellow. Most of his people called him Uncle. He took us all out for wonderful Thai food after we signed the deal.’

‘Cool,’ James said. ‘So when did you last see Kam and Gordon?’

‘Chris’s funeral, I suppose. They’d both moved down south, because they were always flying in and out of Heathrow. We’d courier parts to their hotels from our warehouse in Aberdeen, but I’d only see them in the flesh a couple of times