Robert Young - Gatecrasher

He smiled at her, unwilling to argue and then followed her as she started up the path to the front door.

‘Come on then. Start talking.’

She put the mug on the table in front of him and then sat in the chair opposite.

‘From the start then. Who are you? What’s going on?’

‘Like I said before, I work for an investment analyst in the City. Mainly I just do research on investment companies, funds, fund managers. I read prospectuses every day, examine portfolio construction…’ he let the sentence trail off and shrugged at her. ‘Nothing of earth shattering significance. And I have nothing to do with Griffin at all. I am nobody!’

‘And yet you called me the other day pretending to be a local journalist.’

Campbell pulled a business card from his wallet and slid it across the table. Then he pulled out his credit cards, driving licence and tube pass so she could see that the name was the same on all of them. ‘See. Nobody. Says it right there.’

She nodded and said nothing.

Campbell recounted the story of his party that Saturday night and the uninvited guest on his kitchen floor. He told her about the phone call from the hospital administrator and the trip to the police station. She looked concerned when he told her of the burglary and then genuinely shocked when he explained finding the disk under the oven in his kitchen. He barely needed to emphasise his point that the man must have had a real motivation to make such an effort to hide it when he could scarcely even breathe.

Her eyes wandered over his black eye and puffy lip again as he went through his ordeal at the hands of Slater and Gresham and then widened in disbelief as he described his escape through Spitalfields Market and Liverpool Street station.

‘That’s pretty much when I rang you.’

‘Oh my God! That’s unbelievable.’

‘I know. If I hadn’t been there…’

‘Are you ok? I mean, do you need painkillers or something?’

He shook his head, eager to talk now, to share the burden. ‘What I have found out so far is a little surprising. I mean, certainly it’s a lot of speculation on my part — you have to make a few assumptions. But you shouldn’t find that too hard given what I’ve just told you and the state of my ribs.

‘Your company was the brainchild of two men in the mid-1980s. One was an expert on antiquities, rare and valuable artefacts and so on. The other a bit of a financial and business brain who did the deals and the negotiating. All perfectly above board and legal. That kind of thing is pretty specialised though which meant that they had to become experts at moving difficult and sensitive items to and from difficult and sensitive places. Such expertise has a wide cache. It is a valuable commodity. Before you know it they’re even shifting guns. Again, all legal and above board. Private contracts, security firms.’

Sarah was nodding as he spoke, obviously familiar with this potted history of her employer.

‘You know this I guess. Sure. Well the arms trade is not exactly full of kindly benefactors and philanthropists set on world peace and the eradication of poverty,’ he said.

‘What are you implying?’

‘I think that one or possibly both men got caught up in some… questionable activity. I found a number of references to the shipment of unspecified goods to Tunisia and then Liberia. I don’t presume they were selling fine art and ancient sculptures to the starving Liberian public.’

Sarah shook her head. ‘Guns obviously.’

‘Well… not that obvious really. There is no direct reference to any arms that I could see — everything is coded, reference numbers and that sort of thing. But there were some unnecessarily complicated transactions in those particular cases and some interesting shipping records. But I have found something else. Like I said, I’m making a few leaps of logic here.’

‘Guesses.’

He nodded but held up a hand that she listen, before dismissing. ‘Western companies that set up operations in third world countries often do so in quite lawless areas. As such they are generally required to provide their own security arrangements. The same is true in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Or was true at least. So you get firms who are ostensibly mining companies — geological surveyors, oil — who also have close ties, even subsidiaries that are involved specifically in providing security — in certain circumstances, that can be quite extreme. I’m talking guns, troops, vehicles. Serious personnel and serious hardware and ex-military guys.’

Sarah was listening intently to Campbell now. He changed tack.

‘Michael Horner is an investment expert. Before Griffin he worked in the city for two different investment banks. He was very successful in a short space of time, real whiz kid. When he set up the venture with Geoffrey Asquith it was a sideways step into a new area of industry. But he never cut his investment ties and continued to play the markets. Shortly after the first shipment of arms to Liberia — of which there were several more over about three years — Horner, or at least a hedge fund of which he was a director — invested heavily in two private security firms. He also personally bought stocks in three mining companies who have clearly established links to these security firms.’

‘How the hell do you find this stuff out?’

‘It's all there if you know where to look, albeit fairly well hidden. Shareholder registers, Companies House searches, that sort of thing. Transparency and corporate governance and all those buzzwords. Anyway, about three months later, the Sierra Leonean government contracted those same security firms in separate operations near the capital Freetown and further inland in the diamond areas and in both cases they assisted government forces in pushing back rebel troops and securing the territory. Subsequently those related mining companies were awarded diamond-mining licences in Sierra Leone. Michael Horner profited handsomely. In both instances.’

‘Slow down Daniel,’ Sarah said frowning. ‘You’re saying he was insider trading?’

‘Keep up because there’s more. I’m saying that he may well have been or he may have just got in to those firms on the off chance that they won the deals. The point is he was profiting from the civil war. Not just that, but these other, more mysterious shipments were going to Liberia. Liberia was generally acknowledged to be the source for most arms supplies to Sierra Leonean rebels. I think Horner was providing guns to both sides one way or the other.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Quite. When the UN tried to go in and stop the fighting, the rebels — the RUF — repeatedly stalled on agreements to disarm. The rebels held huge areas of rich diamond mining country. According to what I’ve found out the official production of diamonds for Sierra Leone was,’ Campbell shuffled through some papers, ‘in 1998, 8,500 carats. The Belgian Diamond High Council in Antwerp had it at 770,000 carats.’

‘Quite a profitable war.’ Sarah said looking stunned.

‘Yes but for who? 75,000 people were killed between 1991 and 1999 in the civil war. 75,000 people. Quarter of a million women and girls were raped or abused. Some unbelievable human rights abuses and atrocities against the civilian population — limbs hacked off, eyes gouged out. Half the population was displaced by the conflict. Half. Sierra Leone has the world’s third biggest reserves of diamonds but in the year 2000 the average annual income was $100. $100 per year. In 2000 it was at the bottom of the UNs Human Development Index — the poorest in the world. Most of the soldiers that fought for the RUF — the rebels — were children. The average age was about fifteen. Most of them were addicted to alcohol and hard drugs. Horner got rich off that.’