False Pretences (2 page)

‘When I left hospital,' he said, looking out of the window and not at her, ‘I found my balance had gone. Not my physical balance – that came back quickly enough – but my ability to live on the surface of life. I looked at myself in the mirror and realized that, though I wore the same clothes, I was no longer the same man.'

Bea nodded. A near death experience can do that to you.

‘Money and sex, that's all my friends talked about. They expected me to join them in the usual round of parties and pub visits. I couldn't. I rang Maggie a couple of times, but she didn't want to know. Oliver intercepted my last call to her. He was kind enough to meet me at the pub and try to explain how she felt. I understood she wasn't ready to see me again yet and left her alone.'

He hadn't understood, of course. His forehead creased when he spoke her name. But this was not the time to try to explain Maggie's complicated love life.

‘I'd lost my enthusiasm for my old job, couldn't see the point of updating websites to sell expensive trivia any more. I gave my notice in at work, moved to a room in an elderly lady's house. It's quiet there. Healing. And I can make her life easier by doing odd jobs, mowing the lawn, changing light bulbs, that sort of thing. It seemed to me that if I'd been given my life back again I should try to do something useful with it. Someone at church told me of a temporary job that—'

‘Which church? St Mary Abbots?' This was her local church and the one her husband had loved.

‘Er, no. That's a bit – elaborate – I suppose you could say. Beautiful but dark. No, I go to St Philip's. Do you know it? It's not so fashionable, of course, but I found it friendly and they've a beautiful garden. Anyway, I applied for the job and got it. It was for the Tudor Trust. Have you ever heard of it? It's a charitable housing trust, very old established, very respectable. They wanted someone to create a website for them. I'd hardly started when the receptionist-cum-office-manager left in a flurry of hissed accusations and red faces. There was no one to answer the phone, so I did, and somehow I slid into taking over most of her work. They were pleased with me and asked if I would stay on till they could reorganize the office. I found out later that that was just an excuse. They hadn't employed anyone of mixed race before, and though some of them thought it was the right thing to do, others took time to come round to it.' His tone was ironic; he'd dealt with slurs about his background before.

‘The Trust was set up in the nineteenth century when some well-to-do members of the aristocracy built blocks of flats in the City to house deserving cases. They have an office down there to assess applications, collect rents, deal with everyday maintenance, but the headquarters is in an early-Victorian house overlooking Kensington Gardens and that's where I work. It's all very old-fashioned and upright and well meaning. I liked the feeling that I was working with good people, helping to make other people's lives a bit easier.'

He stopped, his eyes flickering over Bea, into the garden, back to his fingers, and up again.

She prompted him. ‘It was your personal Garden of Eden. How long did it take you to realize there was a snake in the undergrowth?'

‘Months. I didn't want to see the problems. I soon got to grips with the office manager's job in addition to handling the website, and they made the post permanent. Yes, I was naive, but so were most of the board. Do you know, only one of the directors has ever had any business training, and the only one who has an enquiring mind is the oldest of them all and the frailest? The directors were all born with silver spoons in their mouths. They treat the premises like a club, come in for lunch most days – which does cost a lot, but they regard it as their perk – and only a few actually put in some time for the Trust.

‘They don't take a salary; they're entitled to an honorarium and expenses, but not all of them take even that. When one director retires or dies, someone of similar background is suggested to take their place. Noblesse oblige, they said. One of them was kind enough to explain it to me.' A tight smile. He was probably as well educated as any public school boy.

Bea grunted, all disbelief. ‘So because they were members of the privileged classes, they did it for love not money? Untrained? Not a sensible way to run a company. What happened? No, let me guess. Somebody from the real world exploded their bubble. Auditors?'

‘Yes. A new man. His father had retired, after having done their books for some twenty years or more. The son discovered the Trust was operating at a loss, and being a trust all the directors were liable to make up for the losses. He said they must bring in someone to sort it out immediately. What a tempest that raised! They had never, ever . . . couldn't understand, etcetera. Lord Murchison – he's the great granddaddy, the one on the wrong side of ninety – proposed bringing in a grandson of his to retrench, reorganize and resurrect. But this young man – who's in his fifties, by the way – wouldn't come without an appropriate salary. It sounded sensible to me, but the proposal split the directors. They couldn't believe that a man should want to be paid to work for a Trust! Unheard of! Obviously not a pukka wallah.'

Again that tight smile. ‘Some of them really do talk like that, you know. Unbelievable. Anyway, the board fragmented, some wanting to bring in their own nominee, some wanting to wind up the Trust, sell the buildings and be done with it. The one thing they all wanted to avoid was publicity. I could see the whole thing dragging on without resolution for months. Meanwhile, we were haemorrhaging money.

‘So I started to look at the figures myself. My computer was linked with the one at the office in the City so I could access all the necessary information. The rents were coming in OK and were on a par with similar accommodation in that area. The staff in the offices – that includes those who manage the day-to-day work of collecting rents, the people who go out into the field to inspect the properties, and the ones at head office – are paid at slightly below the going rate, because they've been sold on the idea that it's a privilege to work for a Trust. The Trust owns the Kensington HQ; the rates and utility bills are reasonable. True, if that building were sold and the Trust moved to a smaller place in the suburbs they'd save a mint, but the directors can't imagine locating to a less prestigious venue.

‘The biggest outgoing – and it's huge – is on maintenance, but the Director responsible was always saying that they need to do more, because elderly buildings need money spent on them to keep up with today's Health & Safety regulations. Fire doors. Lifts. Heating. Rewiring, and so on.

‘I started to look at the cost of maintaining the buildings. For years the Trust had put all its maintenance work out to a building contractor called Corcoran & Sons. Recently Great Granddaddy – Lord Murchison – had suggested diversifying by splitting the work between Corcorans and another firm, in which he had shares. Naturally,' his voice flattened, ‘they wouldn't consider using a firm whose directors they didn't know personally.'

‘As usual the directors had been divided in their opinion about using a firm new to the Trust, but he'd overridden them to arrange for this second firm to rewire one building while Corcorans rewired another. Both contracts had just been completed and the invoices received. As part of my job I opened the post and took the bills through to the Maintenance Director for checking and payment, and I happened to notice that one bill was for twice the amount of the other. For the same work.

‘We are not talking peanuts. The Maintenance Director saw that I'd spotted the discrepancy and remarked that it was always better to use good workmen, even if they were more expensive, rather than those who bodged the job. He sold that idea to the board, who agreed to continue with Corcorans, though they did murmur that perhaps they ought to ask one or two other firms to quote for jobs as well. The figures burned into my brain. I started to go through invoices from Corcorans for the past few months. They'd been charging astronomical sums for changing a couple of light bulbs. The repair of a door hinge would pay a family's gas bill for a quarter.

‘There were a number of small maintenance jobs on hand waiting for attention. I arranged for half of these jobs to go to Corcorans as usual, but I asked the firm recommended by Lord Murchison to attend to the rest. Corcorans came in at roughly double what the others would have charged.

‘I didn't know what to do. I'd overstepped the mark, I'd gone behind the director's back, and I told myself that if there really had been anything wrong, someone else would have spotted it, and that if they continued to ask for quotes, the scam – if there was a scam – would die a natural death.'

Bea nodded. She could see how tempting it must have been to do nothing.

‘Only, the more I played around with the figures, added up a possible overspend here and there, the more I realized that, if someone had been fiddling the books, they might have got away with half a million, maybe more. I assume that Corcorans had either been greedy and been taking the Trust for a ride or, perhaps, that someone in the Trust had been taking a kickback for throwing work their way.'

He braced himself. ‘The only person who could have swung such a scam was the director in charge of maintenance, who was on excellent terms with the managing director of Corcorans, even had him in to lunch once a month. This particular director bullied the staff and fawned on the other directors. He referred to me by names that, well, if I'd wanted to make trouble, meant I could have taken him to a race tribunal. I told myself it was a cultural thing, that he'd been brought up to think the British were top dogs, the Empire lives on, public schools rule OK.'

Bea nodded. Oh yes, she could well believe that Zander would bend over backwards to avoid being thought prejudiced. ‘Don't tell me; he was a public school type who wasn't trained for the job but thought the world owed him a good living? Someone with a triple-barrelled name such as Montgomery-Peniston-Farquahar?'

A dimple appeared on Zander's cheek. He really was a most attractive man. ‘You've missed something. The title. He's an Honourable, and his wife is a Lady. He told me that, if we ever met, I must call her “Lady Honoria” at first and then “My lady”.'

‘But in the end you did take your research to the board of directors. And . . .?'

‘I thought I might be laughed out of court, because the evidence was all circumstantial. He put up a brilliant defence. I wondered – I still wonder – if he was more stupid than sly. I can hear him now, saying that good workmanship always costs more but is economic in the long run. He pointed out that he'd given the best years of his life to the Trust and had never taken a penny more than the honorarium and expenses which they were all allowed.'

‘What did he live on, if he only took an honorarium from the Trust?'

‘Stocks and shares, inherited wealth. He said he'd done his best, had been tearing his hair out trying to make ends meet, and would of course resign if they wished. I could see the board of directors thinking that of course he'd meant well, and if he'd misjudged Corcorans, well, they might have done the same thing. One of them even started to blame himself that he hadn't spotted the problem earlier.'

‘They preferred to think him incompetent rather than criminal? Hmm. Ignorance is no defence in law, and usually gets thumped for it.'

‘I could see they were going to close ranks against me and that I'd be out on the street in no time. So I chanced everything on one question. I asked if he'd show his bank statements to Lord Murchison, to prove that he'd not received any kickbacks from the builders. He collapsed, and I was sent home.

‘I don't know what went on after I left, but that evening he had a heart attack and died. The verdict of heart failure was accepted with some relief by all and sundry, and no one uttered a word about people fiddling the books.

‘Unfortunately his widow is a formidable person. She said that we'd driven her husband to his grave. She vowed to sue the Trust for libel, slander and the cost of dry-cleaning the clothes he died in. The Trust couldn't afford to pay her off and couldn't afford to let it be known that one of their directors had been accused of embezzlement. Delegates of directors traipsed out to see his wife, trying to resolve the situation. Eventually they succeeded . . . but she's asked for my head on a platter.'

He flicked a finger at the cardboard box. ‘These are the personal contents of his office. She's requested that I take them out to her, when I understand she'll decide whether or not I am to keep my job. The directors wipe sweat off their brows. Most of them would be happy to see me go in order to close the books, but one in particular would like to play fair. He advised me to grovel and said that, if I do get the sack, he'll see that I get some kind of pay-off. It's true that I do feel responsible for the Honourable Denzil's death. If I hadn't pointed the finger at him he'd probably still be alive and, even if he was as corrupt as I imagined, I couldn't wish death upon anyone.'

‘It's weighing on your mind?'

He lifted his hand and let it fall. Yes, it was. Bea remembered now that this man believed in a loving God, that he attended church and read his Bible. He was a man who tried to do the right thing in a world which didn't much care about right and wrong any more. If it ever had done, which she thought unlikely.

Bea laced her fingers and leaned her chin on them. ‘What do you want me to do?'

‘I need backup, someone to come with me when I take this stuff back to his wife. I need an impartial observer. I understand that Lady Honoria shared her husband's view of people of mixed race, and to be frank I'm not sure how much more racial abuse I can take. If she starts . . . No, I know it's no good losing my temper with her. When I was first advised to grovel to her, I thought that I'd tell her to get lost. But I like the job, and I don't see why she should be able to get me sacked for what I did. Then I thought that, if she tried to sack me, I'd say I'd go to an industrial tribunal and then all her husband's little ways would come out into the open. She wouldn't want that, would she? Oliver's told me a lot about you and the problems you've solved for other people. I thought that if anyone could, you might be able to face her down, point out the law to her.'