Falling (13 page)
For a start it is wholly handwritten.
On the left side of the page there are a series of dates going back two years
and more. In the centre, lined up with the dates are sums of money ranging from
a few thousand pounds to over sixty thousand pounds. On the right, again lined
up with the dates, is a list of names. George recognises some of them. He spots
six people who all work in his building. There are two people from the same
business on the fourth floor and the other four are all from different
companies. George can’t think of any connection between the companies. Some of
the names he recognises seem to have a dozen or more entries on the sheet.
George totals up the amounts against a man called Stephen Mulligan. One hundred
and sixty two thousand pounds! I ask what Mr Mulligan does. George thinks he is
the financial director of a firm called Brightmile. I ask what they do and he
is unsure. Something to do with mobile technology he thinks.
The sheet has a number 4 at the
top and looks like it is one of a sequence but the rest are missing. The dates
stop six months ago but there could easily be sheets after and at least three
before. George leaps to the word bribe and I can’t think why not. He totals the
sheet and whistles when he works out there is over a million pounds on this sheet
alone. He searches through a few more of the typed sheets but can’t make head
nor tail of them.
I decide to make another cup of
tea and George follows me into the kitchen. He suggests that we go and see
Charlie. After all, the parcel belongs to him. If it has anything to do with
his truncated flight and the two thugs then we need to figure what to do next.
The police told George that
Charlie was at the Royal and I pick up the phone and dial directory enquiries.
I get the number for the hospital and re-dial to enquire when visiting time is.
The girl at the other end tells me and we have a couple of hours to kill before
we can go visit so we sit down and talk. George opens up and I get some clarity
on exactly what went on this morning and then we flip through the sheets again
and talk and talk and talk.
I reach the point where I don’t
want to talk anymore but George seems blind to my subtle suggestions and there
is no way I am going to come straight out and ask for sex. I sigh as he starts
to put the sheets in page order. I play along until it is time to go see
Charlie Wiggs.
I’m half dozing when I sense that
there is someone in the room with me. Quentin is standing at the doorway.
Oozing geekery. I glance at the clock. It is just after five o’clock. My
hangover is still hanging around in the background. Before I ask Quentin what
he wants I pop another two headache killers. I rub my stomach. A stomach pill
follows the headache killers.
I ask if anyone has triggered an
e-mail. He shakes his head. I ask if he has cracked the passwords. He shakes
his head. I ask him what the hell he wants. He asks me to come through to the
main room. I follow, stepping across the jumble sale that he has going on
across my carpet.
He gestures for me to sit down
next to him in front of Leonard’s laptop. I slump beside him but keep a
respectful distance. At close range his aroma can kill.
He runs off at the mouth about
some techno issue or other. I wait for him to settle down and get to the point.
He pulls up a screen full of files and clicks on one. The screen fills with
numbers, all neatly tabulated. I stare at them but they make little sense.
Quentin tells me that these are the files that Leonard has sent to his
‘strategic locations’. I ask him what they mean. He smiles. A toe-curling smile
of wasted enamel and rotting gums. He highlights the entire spreadsheet with
the mouse. He pulls down a drop down from the menu bar and hits the word
unhide. The sheet transforms and words appear next to the numbers. I take the
mouse from him and scroll across and down the sheet. I minimise the page. I
open up another file and repeat the unhide function. I do this with six files.
I fall back on the sofa with my head in my hands.
The calls to ‘the Voice’, Quentin
cracking the codes, the slow disappearance of my hangover. All had lulled me
into a sense of optimism. In a few seconds Quentin had undone this. A click of
a mouse, a spreadsheet and a cold knife entered my gut.
I had figured that Leonard might
have some details that would be bad news in the public domain. What lay in
front of me suggested that Leonard was far more dangerous than I had believed
possible. I had expected the files would contain some records of the money that
had exchanged hands over the years as we had ‘grown’ our business. Oil in the
wheels of commerce as Robin would say. Karen called it ‘balls money’. Once they
take it, you’ve got them by the balls.
The thought of Karen reminds me
of my liaison with the HR devil. I park the thought and look at the sheet in
front of me.
To understand the pit that had
just opened in front of me you need to know a little about Retip.
Robin, Karen and I have a tech
background - all be it not a very good one. Robin has been fired from two
start-up companies for incompetence. Karen has spent a few months in a low
security establishment for siphoning off funds. And me: well let’s say that I
have a string of broken companies hanging around my neck. All in all an
unlikely trio to launch a new business. A business that has, to date, performed
exceptionally well.
Retip (UK) Ltd is essentially a
middle man organisation. We identify customers with tech requirements and
suppliers who can service the customer’s needs. Then we put them together. Not
a very original model. In these days of internet search and instant
communication we should have lasted all of ten minutes. In such a high tech
world it is easy to cut out the middle man unless they can add value or have a
little edge. We had a little edge. And that edge is called a backhander.
Across the globe there are myriad
firms with people in charge of purchasing tech equipment. Every one of them
falls into three basic categories. Those who take a regular bung to move a deal
in the right direction. Those who won’t and those who will - but for one reason
or another haven’t yet dipped their hand in the till.
The first group are not thin on
the ground but they are cagey. Those in this group that survive cover their
arse well. They do this by only dealing with people they know. Newcomers, even
newcomers bearing gifts are rarely welcome.
The second lot are a waste of
space to our organisation.
The third group are another small
but lucrative bunch. People who have yet to feel a brown envelope. Bung Babies.
Value Virgins. Kickback Kindergartners. Call them what you want. To us they
were a gravy train.
Karen had been the queen of the
market. She had a nose for it. We hit the technology tender market hard. Unlike
many of our competitors we door-stepped the customer. Karen would exercise her
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang style child catcher nose and we were in.
At the start we were crap at the
whole game. We barely survived. As the years unfolded we got better. The key
was figuring a way to lock in our customers better than a cashback offer at
Marks and Spencers. Karen was great at spotting potential ‘customers’ On the
back of this we got good at turning their greed into profit. And then we hit
real pay dirt.
Out of the blue we got a call
from a firm we had never heard of but they had heard of us. They knew of a
tender about to pop out of the European Union money machine. They were barred
from bidding. Would we do it on their behalf? For a fee of course. Legit. No
backhander. No hassle. We did. And we made good cash. The second gravy train
had pulled in at the station. We got on board. Our reputation for winning
tenders grew. So did our legit trade. It was a great double-sided combination -
bung or fee - both generated cash for us.
Then we got an altogether different
call from an altogether different type of organisation. One that had need of
methods to wash cash through our system. They could think of nothing better
than big European contracts to clean their ill gotten gains.
Now these were serious people. Serious
people with serious consequences if you crossed them. However they paid at the
top end of generous. They asked few questions - as long as they got their cash
and as long as their names never showed up any place they shouldn’t.
It was a complex business keeping
the three strands of our business working. Leonard had been a star at juggling
the small bungs and the legit trade. However, as far as I was aware, he had no
knowledge of the serious money laundering.
Staring at me from the computer
was clear evidence that this wasn’t the case. I knew at once that Robin was to
blame. The lazy tosser. We had agreed he would handle the money laundering side
of the business - it was all we asked of him. The rest of the time he was
either buying, sailing or selling a yacht. He had gotten lazy. At some point he
had handed over the laundering to Leonard. Without telling me!
The spreadsheets in front of me
contained chapter and verse of the laundering operations. Names, times, amounts
- a veritable smorgasbord of information that was now hours from being made
public. There were twenty files in total. This told me that Robin had been
shirking his duty for at least a year. I was no longer in danger of a spell
behind bars. I was now in danger of a far, far worse fate. So was everyone who
worked with me. So was anyone who even knew me well. If these sheets got in the
wrong hands the clients would declare nuclear war. There were thousands of
years of jail time typed into these sheets for our clients. I put my head back
in my hands. This was shit of an altogether different dimension.
I left Quentin to his code
cracking. I grabbed my mobile and walked into the garden.
I knew Robin was on his latest
yacht somewhere off the south coast of France. If he was close to the coast he
would have a signal. I dialled his number and waited while my call bounced
around the planet. The long drawn out ring tone of an international call
sounded in my ears. After five rings it tripped to Robin’s answering machine. I
left a message. I made it clear that pretending he hadn’t checked his mobile
was not something I was going to buy. I told him to give me a call right away.
I pulled up Karen’s details and
stared at the numbers. This was going to be awkward. I hit the dial button and
started to walk in circles to calm myself down. Karen picked up on the third
ring. I hadn’t blocked my caller ID so she would have known who was calling.
We had a few moments of inane
chatter. Then I told her we needed to talk about last night but now wasn’t the
time. She was surprised that the call wasn’t going to be about last night. I
gave her the bare bones of the story so far. Not all of it. I omitted ‘the
Voice’ and the work he was handling. When I finished there was a predictable
silence at the other end. I waited for her response. Just then my phone buzzed.
There was no caller ID. I told Karen I had another call. She asked if it was
Robin. I told her I didn’t know. She told me not to answer it and let it go to
voice mail.
So I left it.
The second call vanished. Karen
took an audible breath before launching into her own spiel. She went to the
heart. If the documents got out then she was sure that Robin would do a runner.
I rejected that. Robin had a wife and mansion in Scotland. Correction said
Karen - he has sold his house and split with Lyndsey.
When?
Last month.
And when was I to be told?
She didn’t have an answer. I
suddenly felt like checking the company bank account. I also felt good that I
hadn’t told her everything. I told Karen she needed to come round. She said
that wouldn’t be a good idea. A lightbulb went on - ‘Et to Brute’. The phone
went dead.
There are moments in your life
when you wonder just what happened. This was one of them. As of yesterday I had
a thriving business. I had a future that looked rosy. Now I was looking at the
thin end of squat. I re-dialled Karen. Her voice mail answered. I re-dialled
Robin. Zip. I walked back to the main room and into my office. I fired up the
computer and waited for the mandatory ten minutes that Bill Gates steals to let
me use the thing. I accessed the internet. I drew up the company on-line bank
account. I pulled the password from my wallet. I went through the security
procedures. I was rewarded with the current trading balance of our main
account.
How much crap can one person
take? There should have been the thick end of two and a bit million in the
account. The balance read less than a hundred thousand. I clicked on the latest
statement. Amongst all the day to day stuff were two transfers for a million
each. It didn’t take a genius to figure where the hell the money had gone - the
Robin and Karen retirement fund. I looked up the other three accounts we held
with the bank. They were bare. Strangely the first thing that came to mind was
my romp with Karen. She must have known that I would find out about the cash?
So was last night some sort of goodbye bonk? I tried Karen and Robin again.
Nothing. I tried Karen’s home number. Another blank.
Karen lived less five minutes
away. I knew her husband was currently in Spain on some property deal. I’d go
and face the bitch down. I told Quentin to call me as soon as anything came up.
I jumped in the car - burning rubber in getting to Karen’s house.
I drew up at the main gate. It
was a hell of a house. Nine bedrooms. Five main rooms. A granny flat. Topped
off with a swimming pool. The lawn was immaculate. The whole deal would not
have looked out of place in one of those glossy house magazines. It occurred to
me that Robin’s house was none too shabby either. In fact of the three I was
the pauper in the poor house. Why had I never noticed it before? Karen’s garage
door was closed so I couldn’t tell if her SLK was at home. And there was
another thing; Karen had three cars - none under forty thousand in value. Robin
had two in an even higher price bracket. I had a single five series BMW. Top of
the range but still nowhere near the value of either of my fellow directors’
motorised worth. The feeling in my stomach was not getting better.