CHAPTER 4
Eddie’s reputation for personal hygiene and untidiness was well known but there was no mistaking his commitment to routine.
On the first Saturday of every month he would catch the 3.36 pm train from Oxford to Bristol to attend Bristol Poet’s Night - an evening of live poetry recitals at the Ship pub at which Eddie was a regular and popular performer going, unsurprisingly, by the stage name of Huggy.
Eddie’s performances were not quite in the style of Wordsworth, Yeats or Byron. You either enjoyed his verse for their sour humour or turned the other way in embarrassment but Eddie wasn’t bothered either way. He specialised in a sort of rhyming satire through which he channelled his many aversions to modern life. It made a satisfying diversion from science, research and teaching. “Taxing but relaxing,” he called it.
Mark Dobson had phoned him the day before and so, anxious to speed things up, Eddie had suggested meeting in Bristol at the Ship.
When he felt the tap on his shoulder, he thought at first it was someone who’d found his glasses. They’d fallen off just as he’d mounted the stage for his first performance although he hadn’t needed them. If he forgot a line, he’d ad lib for a while until he remembered where he was. That night he’d finished with a poem called “My Wife’s Cat”. He’d had neither a wife or a cat for over thirty years but that wasn’t the point of the poem.
Mark Dobson and he sat outside on a wooden bench overlooking the waterfront and a view up to Brunel’s famous Clifton Suspension Bridge over the Avon Gorge and a sinking sun. Eddie drank his usual orange juice, Dobson a pint of lager with lime juice.
“I hear you’ve just returned from Malaysia,” Eddie said.
“And Bangkok and Taiwan. We have a Taiwanese client with a problem of counterfeiting. I understand you know Thailand.”
“Field trips, two or three times a year,” Eddie said. “I tramp through forests and jungles. The humidity is better than any medicine for ageing, creaking joints.”
“And you’re a part-time scientific adviser for Vital Cosmetics.”
Eddie nodded but didn’t want to jump ahead too quickly. If he was to seek the help of Asher & Asher, he needed to understand how they operated.
“We’re busy,” Dobson said after his brief explanation. “Too busy. Cases start from nothing and grow. The Taiwanese client is a good example. Co-incidentally that case also involves an energy drink like Vitals’ health drinks.”
“Totally unnecessary given a properly balanced diet,” Eddie said. “There’s no excuse in Western society. They are marketing gimmicks sold to the gullible.”
Dobson smiled and nodded. “What else do you do besides your university work and the poetry? By the way I enjoyed hearing about the cat.”
“I write articles for organisations wanting trendy, controversial pieces on sustainability, human population growth or the environment,” Eddie replied. “I’m a lobbyist on behalf of non-human life.”
“So, what’s your view on us humans?”
“Greedy, selfish parasites,” he said.
“And cats?”
“Cruel carnivores with a particularly nasty way of attracting affection.”
“Does your wife know?”
“I’ve not had a wife or a cat for thirty-five years. Melissa took the only cat I’ve ever had the misfortune to know when she left me. As soon as both had gone, I turned the room she’d used as a litter tray for the cat and a weekend retreat for her mother into a laboratory. The result is thirty-five years of accumulation: books, journals, research papers and so on. It’s just as well Melissa’s not there to see it.”
Mark smiled at the vision. “Had she tired of you?”
“Tired of my obsessions, my constant rants about the state of the world, my futile attempts to justify my past run-ins with the law and my other youthful antics that once helped fill the inside pages of tabloid newspapers. Funny thing the divorce. It was a blur then and a blur now, but I’d been engrossed in more important things and failed to see what was going on domestically. Or understand the cause. Or anticipate the effect.”
“It happens,” Mark Dobson said noting the run-ins with the police. “Mine lasted two years. Working twenty-four seven for the Fraud Squad, as I then was, put paid to mine.”
Eddie nodded. Divorced men were common enough. He took a mouthful of orange juice. “I’ve often asked myself how I’d deal with domestic problems now, in a scientific manner, at aged sixty-two and a half. It’s always worth analysing the hypothetical. Melissa saw me as a predictable bore and likely to become an increasingly predictable bore by my sixties. She clearly had foresight.”
Dobson smiled again. “Tell me about the break-in at the house.”
“Meticulous disorder is what I call my home,” Eddie said. “It’s so meticulous I quickly detect the disturbing hand of someone else. Especially an intruder. They’d even disturbed my copy of a United Nations Environment Programme report and an Interpol report on organised crime and illegal logging in south east Asia.”
“And, of course, your nuts,” Dobson added kindly.
Eddie nodded. “Perhaps I should have discussed things with Bill Hughes, the head of department, but I wasn’t ready. That’s why I’d been reading the Interpol report. I know nothing about international policing but I wanted to know what’s being done about illegal logging, counterfeit medicines, the food supplements business and the infernal cosmetics industry.”
“Why don’t you like the cosmetics industry?”
Eddie sighed. “It’s not just the cosmetics industry. It’s large parts of modern society. The self-pampering that the cosmetics industry thrives on is just a barometer of what I’m talking about. It’s the overindulgence of the west, the over expectations, the taking out of more than we put in, the selfishness, the demanding of rights without responsibilities, the look-at-me culture, the worship of physical appearance instead of knowledge and understanding and respect for life. High obesity rates are the physical manifestation of overindulgence and excess. I dislike the unnecessary material possessions and selfishness, the dumping of elderly parents to live out their remaining years of frailty with complete strangers in nursing homes. It’s inhuman but all we hear are excuses wrapped up as explanations rather than outright condemnation.
“The vanity industry, the cosmetics industry, concerns me as an indicator of what is wrong and so I’ve been trying to understand why it’s successful and yet so unnecessary. I often write to companies that claim their anti-ageing creams work. I’m merely seeking their evidence but replies are far less frequent.”
Mark Dobson, realising they were at last getting to the point, nodded his encouragement. The issue for him was whether Eddie was just a crazy obsessive with a vendetta against capitalism and society or whether he had a definite case.
“Let me give you an example,” Eddy went on. “There’s a cream called – and don’t laugh, Mark – ‘Forever Youthful’. One pink tub of this stuff sells in the US for $100. I reckon that’s almost $100 dollars profit less a few cents for the plastic tub and the label. And the label itself says, if you’ve got a strong enough lens to read it, that this concoction contains the ten most important anti-ageing ingredients known to man and that it promotes collagen production, boosts microcirculation and improves skin firmness.”
Dobson had been watching Eddie’s facial features change from amicable to concern to downright annoyance.
“It’s impossible,” Eddie continued. “It’s scientifically unproven. So, I wrote asking for the scientific evidence. They emailed me back a month later after I’d sent a reminder to say they ‘weren’t at liberty to share their proprietary data’. The fact is Mark, with just a few rare exceptions, they’re all like that. No other industry would be allowed to get away with it. So, I threatened to write an article and mention ‘Forever Youthful’ as a case study in fraudulent marketing.”
“What happened?”
“I had a most extraordinary, threatening letter from an Italian lawyer.”
“Italian? I was imagining a US company.”
“So was I, but the letter came from Italy. From Trieste.”
“Did you write the article?”
“I drafted it but I haven’t yet published it.”
“Where is the draft?”
“On my computer.”
“On your home computer? Is it password locked?”
Eddie’s expression now changed to puzzlement. “I never thought of that. You think they...?”
“Could have copied everything off your PC during a break-in? Of course.”
“I see. Oh, dear. All my personal documents. Everything. But what could they do with it?”
“It depends who they are,” Dobson said. “But if it’s someone you threatened then they’ll threaten you. The usual, soft approach is to pay you for keeping your opinions to yourself. Another approach is blackmail. The extreme approach is to make sure you are no longer around to be a problem.”
“Death threats?”
“Not just threats, Eddie. Death itself. Is there anything on your PC you really don’t want people to see?”
Eddie thought for a moment. “Tax, insurance, bank details, most is password protected. Technical facts and figures. Copied items from online research. Personal letters and articles I’ve written – and letters to big companies, multinationals, that sort of thing.”
“Are there many of that latter sort?”
“Quite a lot.” Eddie began to see the problem.
“Containing serious accusations?”
“Mostly requests for information.”
“Provocative requests? Requests tinged with threats of exposure?”
“Not as such.”
“Meaning?”
“Nothing libellous.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well...”
“You know what my partner, Colin, says, Eddie? If the bear is sitting minding its own business don’t start poking it with a sharp stick.”
“Mm,” Eddie replied. “There’s a poem there somewhere.”
“What puzzles me is why they took your nuts.”
“Ah.” They were back on more explicable ground. “As it happens, I am a world expert on krabok trees – the life cycle, nuts, oils, biochemistry and diseases. Vital use some krabok nut oil extracted somewhere in Malaysia. They import it and use it in cosmetics and claim it’s good for complexion, as an anti-ageing cream and in suppositories for curing haemorrhoids. It’s out and out pseudoscience but a year ago someone asked me for help in giving scientific credence to their claims. I refused. Only surgery cures chronic haemorrhoids, Mark. Haemorrhoid cream containing krabok oil is a mere lubricant and about as useful as a tub of butter. It was dropped. Nothing more was said.”
“Are you suggesting Vital Cosmetics are responsible for the break in?”
“Who else? krabok nuts have a high oil content – 42.97% to be precise. It helps form foam and gives hardness to soap. krabok seeds are used in botanical soaps with the usual exaggerated claims. But the krabok trees I recently found in northern Thailand had an even higher oil content than normal – 73% to be precise – and a unique element showing definite antifungal properties in my laboratory. It was an exciting discovery. Those trees looked similar to all the other trees but were a variant with a natural mutation that might have led to their survival over other kraboks. That is unseen evolution leading to the survival of the fittest, the ones best able to withstand fungal disease. That was what excited me. I published a paper. Now the trees are gone. Illegally felled.”
Mark Dobson thought about that. Eddie’s suspicions and theories all seemed a little unlikely but cases often started like that.
“If it wasn’t someone from Vital Cosmetics who broke in who else might it have been?” he asked. “Who makes his stuff called ‘Forever Youthful’?”
“The name on the pack says Bio-Kal but there is an American company also using the name Forever Youthful.”
Dobson immediately wondered about counterfeiting. “Where are Bio-Kal based?”
“It says New York on the box but I don’t believe it. There was a post office box address in Milan and the lawyer was from Trieste.”
They were still sitting outside the Ship. Darkness had fallen, their drink glasses were empty and most people had left. There was silence for a while until Mark Dobson spoke. “Listen, Eddie. I’m not sure what I can do for you right now. Normally we only work for commercial firms, businesses or private individuals with a vested commercial interest.”
Eddie recognised the bluntness of what he was saying. He removed his glasses, let them dangle on their cord and looked at him. “What you’re saying is you don’t work for individuals with what looks like a personal vendetta. Is that it?”
“Other than the break-in at home which would normally be dealt with by local police, where is your commercial interest?”
“There isn’t one.”
“Exactly. The part that interests me is a possible connection with our Taiwanese client – the counterfeit health drinks case but it’s extremely vague.”
“Do you ever work with other private investigators?” Eddie asked.
“Not often but it has happened.”
“How much would you charge to help another private investigator?”
Dobson frowned. “To do what?”
“To investigate matters more deeply and see where it all leads.”
“Who have you got in mind?”
“Me,” Eddie had said.