“This is an interesting one,” he said. He pulled out another picture. It was of Purdy walking up a street somewhere in the city, not readily identifiable, with a young, shapely blonde woman on his arm. They were obviously talking to each other in a very friendly fashion.

“Why?” we asked.

“She’s not his wife.” He pulled out a glossy AIM brochure which had a photograph of a group of people taken at some public event and in the middle of the group was Purdy with a dark-haired lady standing next to him.

“That’s his wife,” said Mike, pointing to her. “That’s great. Purdy has a mistress. That could be useful. Do you know who she is or where she lives?”

“Yes. We have a name and an address. She is a divorcee and runs a hairdressing salon in the High Street. We’ve quite a few photographs of her.”

“Fine. Keep away from her now. We don’t want to run any risk of her finding out she’s being watched. As long as we know how to get to her if we need to.”

“Anything else?” asked Pierre. “We’ve only managed to come across two blokes who he seems to frequent. He goes to a squash club down in Leith twice a week. He always plays with the same guy. We followed him there on Tuesday and after he’d gone I had a look at the board of court reservation and his name was up every Tuesday and Thursday with the same guy and at the same time. It’s obviously regular.”

“Who’s the guy?” “Don’t know yet,” he replied. “We only have a name, Bill Dewar. But I’ve asked Doug to find out more . . . just in case.”

“And the second person?”

Mike pushed a photo over to me. “He’s lunched twice this week with this man.” I picked it up and looked at it. It was only a three-quarter view and taken through a window but the man looked distinctly familiar.

Then I thought I had it. I pushed the picture across to Pierre.

“Mean anything to you, Pierre?”

He stared at it for while.

“This man was at the conference.” “Correct. I think that’s a man called Gavin Reid who could well be AIM’s lawyer. Personally I don’t much like the look of him. Could you check him out as well, Mike?”

We broke up around three. We agreed that Pierre would bring Sophie round the next morning and, as he hadn’t much else to do, he’d go down and play Lundin Links, which I told him was another of Dad’s favourite courses.

Mike would be going back to Edinburgh to check up on Gavin Reid and Purdy’s squash playing friend, Bill Dewar.

Chapter 10

The next morning I got up early. There hadn’t been a woman in the house since Liz died, apart from my cleaning lady and Mrs Clark. There was a distinct male atmosphere to the place. There wasn’t much I could do about that but at least I could tidy up a bit.

I opened all the windows to let the air in. Books were tidied away and the place was given a good vacuuming. Checked out the bathroom. Made sure it was presentable and clean. I definitely needed to clean the kitchen. Last night’s frying pan lying in the sink was not a good idea.

By the time I’d done all that I was exhausted and my back was aching.

I sat down for a minute and looked at Dad’s picture on the opposite wall. I told him a bit more about Pierre, about Mike and Heather’s reaction to him and the news that their Dad had a secret past. I told him that we didn’t mind in the least. After all, he didn’t know anything about Pierre but, “I’m sure that you’d approve of him if you’d met him”, I told him.

I cleared the desk where my PC sits to give Sophie some working space.

I realised that I was thinking thoughts about Sophie that I really shouldn’t be. Forget it, I told myself. I’m past all that, and she wouldn’t be interested. I’m far too old. Sad, but there it is. Liz’s picture in the corner seemed to nod approval.

Pierre and Sophie arrived at around ten thirty. Pierre didn’t stay as he had organised an eleven thirty tee-off time.

I showed Sophie around, offered her a cup of coffee and helped her to connect up her laptop.

“I’ll leave you to it,” I said. “I’ve got some gardening to do. Make yourself at home and if you need anything just call.”

She settled down to do battle with the world wide web and I went out to get on with some pruning and weeding.

I popped in occasionally to check that all was well. Sophie was totally concentrated. She’d pulled her hair back and fixed it with a rubber band behind her head and she had a neat pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose.

The screen of her laptop was showing screeds of numbers, letters or formulae cascading down at a tremendous pace. There were half a dozen discs lying on the table beside her and a pad and a pencil with notes. Whatever she was doing was completely beyond me.

She turned and smiled when she heard me. “Everything ok?” I asked. “Sure. But this could take some time.” There was the day (about forty years ago) when I would have said “Take all night if you want”, but instead I replied that there was no particular hurry.

I pottered around in the garden for another half hour then went in to suggest to Sophie that she stop for a while and we’d have a bite of lunch. The computer was still crunching numbers at a vast rate.

I proposed some fish pâté and Chablis which I had in the fridge. This was met with approval. We sat outside in the sun, but sheltered from the wind.

Over lunch I learned how she and Pierre had worked closely together for years. How it was Pierre that had given her her chance to develop. The company had paid for her to have extra training and it had been a great place to work. She had been very sad when Pierre had sold out but she had understood. She obviously had a great affection and respect for my elder brother and they had clearly been good friends as well as colleagues. She knew all about his history and his desire to find out more about his father.

I got up and brought out Dad’s picture and showed it to her. She had seen the tiny copy that Pierre had but she was fascinated by the larger framed version.

“Wow,” she said. “There’s really quite a family resemblance isn’t there? You all seem to have something of him in you. With Pierre it’s the shape of the head. I can see his mouth and chin in you and that’s definitely Mike’s eyes.”

I told her a bit about myself, my career, Liz’s early death and Callum out in Australia. I told her about Heather and something about Mike. Our upbringing and education, which had been so different from France.

She told me how delighted Pierre was at having discovered an unknown family.

“He seems to have been rejuvenated by about ten years. It’s great for him.”

“And how about you? Where’s home? No husband or kids?”

She smiled. “No. Unfortunately – or fortunately, I’m not sure – I found out in my early twenties that I couldn’t have children. Most guys want them and I never found anyone that I wanted to see over the breakfast table every morning for the rest of my life. It’s no big deal. I can have a bit of fun when I want to and move on when I feel smothered. I’ve been very successful in my career and have the money to enjoy complete freedom.”

Half of me could understand that but the other half, far larger, thought back with affection to the wonderful years I had had with Liz.

I asked her how she was getting on with the task in hand. “Slowly,” was the reply. She then proceeded to give me an idiot’s course in hacking, explaining about IP addresses, ultra high speed scanning programmes and a whole lot of other technical jargon which was way above my head.

“And they won’t know you’ve been in there?” “Not if I leave no trace behind.”

“And if you do?” “Well, first of all, they’d have to be pretty good. Most companies use external IT people and they don’t give the same service as your own internal people. But if they do find out it’ll because I left a trace. Normally you clean out all traces before you leave. But it’s not fool proof.”