A Little Bit on the Side (19 page)

He was also realistic enough to know that the present opportunity would almost certainly be a one-off, and what Jack was looking for was a safe inflation-proofed home for his £30,000, where he could tuck it away for the ten or fifteen years that might have to be endured before he could tell the Revenue to stuff their job, and turn full-time to the things that really mattered in life, when his nest-egg really would be of use, and could be gradually utilised without attracting attention.

Other things being equal he’d have added a couple of thousand of his own, and put the money into a property, where market prices were racing away well ahead of inflation, but like fast cars and flashy living that was a little too open to public scrutiny, and questions might be asked to which he could offer no answer.

Only after much searching and thought did Jack find what he was looking for: Krugerrands. He’d seen an article tucked away in a financial column
Fancy a Flutter on the Price of Gold,
and by the time he’d read through to the end his mind was made up. In most respects the one-ounce coins offered all that he was looking for. They were compact, easily portable in the quantity he had in mind, incorruptible should he be eccentric enough to bury them, and recommended as a reasonable hedge against inflation.

They would indeed have been the perfect solution for Jack had he not been obsessed almost to the point of paranoia with the technicalities of handover, and en-suring that he could not be observed, and certainly not photographed, in the act of receiving or collecting his booty. His fixation on this one aspect came in part from recollections of real and fictional accounts of ransom demands that went awry at just that point, and in part from his recent absorption in the espionage world with its tradecraft, lamplighters and dead letter boxes.

Ever since the prospect of payment became a reality he had worried away at the problem without finding an answer which wouldn’t either have him exposed and identified collecting the Krugerrands, or leave the Krugerrands, albeit for a brief period of time, unsupervised and insecure. Not until the false bomb alert, when the building had been evacuated using all emergency exits, did he find a solution: an elegant solution, he thought, that entailed just one more brief meeting with Martindale, kept the Krugerrands secure, and totally eliminated any risk that Jack might be observed as he collected and slipped away with them. Now he was ready to answer Martindale’s question.

‘The method of payment, if I can deal with that first, has given me a great deal of thought. For obvious reasons a cheque is a non-starter, and I’m equally unenthusiastic about the idea of a bag stuffed with notes.

The solution I’ve arrived at may sound a little long-winded and cloak-and-dagger in approach, but it will be slightly less costly for you, and eliminates any need for us to meet again except briefly, so may I ask you to bear with me while I explain.

I would like payment to be in Krugerrands. You may have seen references to a ban on their import, but you will still find advertisements for their sale. Prices fluctuate, but of late they seem not to have topped £90 per coin. If I were to suggest a payment of three hundred one-ounce coins to conclude the matter that would come to say £27,000, possibly less, which might be some compensation for my rather unorthodox arrangements for the handover.

I have in fact prepared a brief aide-memoire to cover this aspect of our arrangement which also includes the names of a couple of Krugerrand dealers.’

At this point Jack handed to Martindale a typed sheet containing the following details:

Taking the paper Martindale read it carefully a couple of times before commenting.

‘An abatement, I think that is the term you use, of ten percent is certainly welcome Mr Manning, and I see what you mean by cloak and dagger. I’ve no great objection to proceeding as you indicate, but is all this fuss really necessary?’

‘I can see that you might not think so, but I’m chiefly concerned with keeping my own position absolutely secure, and this will do so.

Turning to the invoices, the arrangements for delivery to be given in the telephone call will include the exchange of the Krugerrands for all the incriminating documents. I appreciate that you will need to be satisfied that you are given everything, and to that end have brought with me photocopies of everything that I hold. It will give you an opportunity to familiarise yourself with what you will be receiving, and I am sure that should you feel the need to ask him Mr Stevens will confirm that they are complete. Oh and you’ll need this to bring the coins in.’

He handed to Martindale the holdall he had been carrying with him.

‘So now it’s just for me to get the coins, and then telephone you with a date for delivery. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, but you’d better have a couple of dates available in case I can’t fit in with the first you propose.’

‘And apart from that brief meeting that will be the end of the matter will it?’

‘Absolutely, and come the election I will watch the results for this division with particular interest’

‘Goodbye Mr Manning. I can’t say it’s been a pleasure to do business with you, but I suppose we might say that we have reached an outcome to our mutual satisfaction.’

‘More so for each of us perhaps, than if had been across the desk in my office. Goodbye Mr Martindale.’

Jack offered his hand which Martindale shook without another word, and went on his way.

Jack had fully expected that there might be further delay at this point, but Martindale’s connections were evidently such that he was able to obtain the Kruger-rands promptly, and little more than two weeks had elapsed before Jack received another personal telephone call.

‘Is next Thursday 13
^th
convenient for our arrangement Mr Manning?’

‘It is. I will expect you to be ready at the telephone box at 12.30. Have you got everything quite clear?’

‘Quite clear.’

‘Then thank you for calling.’

Later that evening, leaving Kate to her TV, Jack strolled over to Jimmy’s where he collected his envelope with the invoices and stopped for a drink and a chat.

‘Code books?’ asked Jimmy, nodding at the envelope.

‘Sort of,’ Jack replied. ‘Something for the confessional perhaps, but not at this time.’

In Wolverton the Revenue occupied the whole of the seventh floor of their office block, and a little before 12.30 on the 13
^th
Jack left his desk, and walked to the store room on the corner of the office building, from where he could readily overlook the telephone box which stood at the foot of the steps to the Town Hall. Martindale, unaccompanied, was already there waiting, holdall in hand, and the telephone booth was empty.

Returning to his room Jack stopped off to let the general office know that he would be taking a longer lunch break than usual, then locking his door to ensure a few moments of privacy, lifted the telephone and dialled the number of the Town Hall telephone box. Martindale must have been standing with the door half-open for he answered almost immediately.

‘Martindale here.’

‘If you stand with the Town Hall at your back, you will be looking along the High Street. Walk down the High Street and take the first turn left. A short way along it, just beyond the Boots store, turn left again into the entrance to a private car park. Directly opposite, on the far side of the car park, you will see some emergency exit doors at the rear of the offices and shops. One of them will be slightly ajar. Open the door and step inside. I will be there to meet you.

Hand me the holdall with the Krugerrands, and I will hand you the papers. When we are each satisfied with what we receive you may leave as you came, shutting the door firmly behind you.

Have I made things clear, or is there anything you want to ask me?’

‘No that’s fine. I understand.’

Apart from its one entry and exit the car park was a quadrangle totally enclosed by the well-secured backs of four ranges of tall offices and shops, and so reproduced in the cheapest possible provincial and commercial terms the configuration of the Somerset House courtyard, the very heart of the Inland Revenue: an aspect of his final arrangements that gave Jack particular satisfaction. He also considered it a deliciously ironic touch that Martindale, a stranger to the town, would be totally unaware that in following his instructions to the letter, he would be delivering the Krugerrands to the very doors of an Inland Revenue Enquiry Branch office.

In the time it would take Martindale to walk to and through the car park Jack took the back staircase, used only as an emergency fire exit, to the ground floor which contained the boiler room, a couple of storerooms and the emergency exits which opened to the car park. It was as usual deserted.

Opening an emergency exit door slightly, Jack waited until he saw Martindale entering the car park. He was unaccompanied and remained so as he crossed towards the emergency exit, opened the door and stepped inside. Handing an envelope of documents to Martindale, Jack took the holdall and tipped the contents on to the floor. They took little time to check: thirty packs with ten Krugerrands in each, all neatly wrapped in clear plastic as requested. Everything seemed to be in order.

‘Satisfied?’ asked Jack. Martindale merely nodded and stepping outside gave the door a firm push. It closed with a reassuring click, but Jack tested it just to make sure. Access from the car park to the building was now impossible.

Placing the Krugerrands in a different holdall brought with him from his office (he really was carrying his tradecraft to extremes) he left the delivery holdall on the floor, walked through to the main entrance at the front of the building, and out into the bustle of the lunchtime crowds in less time than it would have taken Martindale to leave the car park.

That morning, abandoning his usual allocated space behind the office, Jack had parked on one of the little side-streets just a short distance away on his usual route out of town, and it took him a few minutes to walk to the car. Placing the holdall with the Krugerrands on the passenger seat, he resisted the urge to take one more look at them, and set off for home. With Kate at school in Barlow, he would have plenty of time to do what was needed, and return to the office without occasioning any comment.

His mood as he drove the twenty miles to Barton was a strange mixture of elation and anti-climax. Elation that he had carried off his little bit of private enterprise with meticulous attention to detail and in a thoroughly professional manner. Anti-climax, in part because he realised that for several months his disillusion with the daily round at the office had been lightened by the excitement of the affair which was now over, and in part because it was a triumph he could share with no one. The fact that, as Martindale had correctly stated, he had considerably more than double his gross annual salary sitting on the seat beside him seemed not of itself to be important.

At home he transferred the packs, each reassuringly weighty despite being so small, to a secure cash box which (his final precaution against the worst possible scenario) he concealed in a secure place in the barn, where he would leave them for a few years until it was absolutely clear that there would be no repercussions.

In the weeks that followed the settlement of the Campion affair Jack applied himself to his work with a vigour that stemmed more from a search for a modest degree of self-satisfaction than any sense of loyalty to a department which left him and his colleagues to nail the small fry, while the avoidance sharks swam free and flourished.

It was with no expectation of any immediate change in his position that he faced the future, and he was therefore surprised when he received, on the same day and addressed to him personally, two of the buffcoloured Head Office envelopes that were almost invariably the harbingers of change, generally unwelcome. His initial reaction before he opened them was that something must have gone horribly awry with his recent private venture, and that nemesis awaited him. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

In the first he found notification of the promotion that he thought had probably passed him by. In the second he was informed that in eight weeks time his tenure at Enquiry Branch would cease, and that he would then take up the position of District Inspector at Barlow. There was also enclosed a note from his immediate superior congratulating him on the effective way in which he closed down the Scott Stevens fraud which had become a centre of infection for the whole area.

He gazed at the documents with a mixture of delight and incredulity. If he’d ever given any credit to the notion that the arc of the moral universe tended towards justice, it would have been destroyed by the perverse timing of this reward so soon after such a calculated act of malfeasance in office. As a card-carrying atheist he attributed neither good nor bad luck to the hand of fortune or the supernatural, but at such a time he found it hard to resist the thought that the Lord helped those who helped themselves.

At lunchtime he celebrated his good fortune with his colleagues in the nearby Marquis of Granby, and feeling that he could afford to spread himself a little, drove home with two bottles of the best the nearby off-licence had to offer for his evening with Kate when, hugging the knowledge of his transfer to himself, he told her only of the promotion. The following Saturday over lunch at The Parish Pump he repeated the exercise with the Gillans, again mentioning only his promotion.