Final Demand (19 page)

That afternoon, as she lay sunbathing, she heard a voice: ‘I thought you were dead.' The next-door boy gazed at her over the fence.

‘I'm not dead. I'm getting a tan.'

‘I heard you yelling,' he said. ‘I thought you was being murdered.'

‘Oh, nobody'll murder me.' She closed her eyes.

Sooner or later he'll make a mistake.

Or someone will.

On a hot morning in August, in a bungalow in Hastings, an elderly couple were eating breakfast. Ted and Muriel Cox had eaten breakfast together for forty-two years. On the veranda, the sun shone on a sleeping cat.

Ted and Muriel were that rare phenomenon, a contented couple. Not so rare amongst the elderly, for they had no vocabulary of dissatisfaction. They had not been brought up with those words. Their marriage had carried on, unanalysed, for nearly half a century. Besides, they were both of a cheerful disposition. The world's evil washed over them; petty irritations only briefly unsettled them.

There was one such irritation that morning; minor even by their standards. Muriel was opening the post. From one of the envelopes she pulled out a cheque. For a moment she thought: A windfall. Then she realized that it was signed by her own husband.

Through her glasses, she peered at the accompanying letter. ‘It's from some building society in Leeds!' she shouted; Ted was deaf in one ear. ‘They say they can't accept this cheque because you wrote last year's date, you silly billy. They say you've got to change it and initial it.' She passed him the cheque. ‘I mean, we all do it in January, but it is August now, dear.'

‘What?' he asked, distracted.

She thought he hadn't heard. ‘I said—' She stopped.

He was examining the cheque. ‘It's written out to N. Taylor.' He looked across the table at her. ‘Do we know an N. Taylor?'

Muriel thought for a moment. ‘What's our window cleaner called?'

‘Shawn. And we don't pay him ninety pounds.'

She took back the cheque. It took her a moment to realize.

‘This is our phone bill,' she said.

It was the following Thursday. The weather had broken; rain lashed down. Natalie's car was buffeted by the wind as she drove to work.

She was in a good humour, however. Colin had agreed to a week in Penang at the beginning of September – cocktails, huts beside the pool. She pictured herself soaking in the sun like one of his lizards, but with better skin. Like all those who have won an argument, she felt warmly towards the loser. That morning she had decided to buy Colin a motorbike, a 1,000-cc Harley, the one she had pictured Kieran buying all those months ago, in her former life. It had been some time since she had bought Colin a present. Thank goodness he seemed to have stopped the
how can we afford it?
conversations. They had been starting to annoy her.

She had also made another decision. It was no fun at NT any more, with her friends gone. In the autumn she would give in her notice. By then she would have stashed away well over fifty thousand pounds in her various accounts. Maybe more. She was no miser; she didn't sit huddled over her building society statements, totting them up. In fact she simply stuffed them into the zipped pocket of her travelling bag, pushed to the back of her cupboard, where they radiated an energy sensed only by herself.

All good gamblers know they should quit while they're ahead. She was going to jack in her job and enjoy her freedom, certainly for a year or two. At some point she would think about
what to do next. Her plans for the future were somewhat vague, but who cared? Sometimes they included Colin, sometimes she couldn't quite picture him in the same scenario. But nothing had happened yet, so why bother worrying about it?

It was still raining. Natalie parked the car and sprinted for the door. She wore new shoes. She didn't count her money but she did count her shoes – she adored shoes – thirteen pairs she had bought in the past months. Colin had made a special rack for them. By the time she reached the lobby this pair, pale suede, were soaking wet. She remembered this, later, for the shoes never recovered and she never wore them again.

She remembered thinking another thing. Leafing through the brochures, she had found several holidays in Thailand. Not once had the thought of her father crossed her mind. It was as if he had never existed.

She was considering this, with a mild sort of surprise, when Mrs Coles, the new supervisor, walked over. She seemed to have been waiting for Natalie. There was an odd expression on her face. In fact, there was an odd atmosphere in the room. The new girl, Maxine, hadn't said hello; she had stayed still, a blur through the frosted glass. And nobody seemed to be doing any work.

Mrs Coles came close to Natalie and said, in a low voice: ‘Natalie, could you come with me? You're wanted in the MD's office.'

‘
I DIDN
'
T DO
it,' said Natalie.

She was sitting in a police station, somewhere in Leeds. It was a small, windowless room and stank of the cigarettes smoked by all the people who had said the same thing. ‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

On the other side of the table sat a detective, in plain clothes, and a female police officer built like a trucker. ‘You know that's not true, Natalie,' said the detective. ‘We have your statements here, from the account you opened at the Bradford and Bingley. That's the building society that sent back Mr and Mrs Cox's cheque. Since January this year you've paid in a hundred and seventy-six cheques, to the total value of fifteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty-five pounds . . .'

Was it that much? thought Natalie. She felt a throb of pride.

‘We've traced them all back to NuLine customers. As you gathered from Mr Smythe, your Managing Director, NuLine are taking this extremely seriously, as well they might. This is fraud on a very large scale.'

She hadn't called it
fraud
, even to herself. The word removed it from her – it did feel, in fact, as if somebody else had done it.

‘What I'd like to know,' said the detective ‘is how much more you've got hidden away.'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘I think you do, Natalie.' His eyes twinkled; he gazed at her legs as she recrossed them. The woman looked on, stonily.

There was a tape-recorder whirring, like on
The Bill
, and a downtrodden duty solicitor straight out of Cental Casting. Natalie was the femme fatale, her black skirt riding up her thighs. She was that woman in
The Last Seduction.

She had been given her rights.
If you are asked questions about a suspected offence, you do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence.

They had charged her with fraud, handling and deception. ‘It would make everything a lot easier for yourself, and save everybody a lot of time, if you just told us about it now,' said the detective. He had one of those trim beards that looked quite attractive when seen from the front, but with an abrupt, shaved line around the jowls. It made his neck look fat. ‘You're a bright young woman, I'm sure you can see that if this went to trial, in a Crown Court, the jury would without a doubt find you guilty. You haven't a hope in hell.' She had an urge to point it out:
Don't shave your neck, use clippers.
Maybe his wife liked it that way, but Natalie doubted it. ‘We can take a statement now,' he said.

Natalie crushed out her cigarette in the foil tart case. ‘I didn't do it, and that's that.'

She remembered the name of a solicitor Farida had used and phoned him up. It was only three o'clock but the day seemed to have been going on for weeks. Could it really have been that same morning when she had stood in the MD's office facing Mr Smythe, a stunned Phillip Tomlinson and two policemen? As she was driven away, faces had appeared at the NuLine windows. She had waved at them, like royalty.

Natalie waited in the lobby of the police station. Out in the street a hearse slid past, slowly. It was heaped with flowers: GRANDPA. Other black cars followed it, then a van saying THORNTHWAITE AND SON: BUTCHERS. She thought: All that fuss when a human being dies, and there's a van full of dead meat. Nobody's mourning all those animals. Nobody's even kept the legs and shoulders together.

She was starting to feel weird, as if she had left the dentist's with a numb jaw and the sensation was returning. Where was
Colin? She couldn't get through on his mobile but she had left a message at work. It made her uneasy, to think about him. She felt very alone, sitting on her plastic chair. Light-headed too, for nobody had given her anything to eat. Were they trying to starve the truth out of her? She felt sick, from the sweet tea.

And then the solicitor arrived and drove her to his office. He was a man, thank goodness, a large bluff Yorkshireman called Mr Wigton. She was better with men. And now she was sitting in his office, which was up an alleyway. Its window overlooked the rear view of Sainsbury's. A huge lorry was backed into its opening; unseen, its contents were being disgorged.

‘Now, my dear, there's something you must understand. You needn't tell me anything you don't want to; what you choose to tell me, it's entirely up to you.' Mr Wigton had a large moustache, which he stroked. ‘I'm here to act on your instructions, and we shall put up as good a case as we possibly can, you may be sure of that.'

A long way away she could hear the normal sounds: the lorry rumbling, a man shouting. Mr Wigton's office looked curiously temporary – flimsy partition walls, sparse furniture, as if when Natalie left it would be dismantled. There had been no secretary in the lobby either, just an abandoned desk.

She took a breath. ‘Say – just say – they found me guilty. What would I – you know – get?'

‘We're certainly looking at a custodial sentence. Eighteen months, two years maybe, depending on the judge. But let's not consider that. We shall fight it all the way.' He smiled at her, in an avuncular way. ‘You're a bright girl, I can see you have plenty of fight in you.'

‘What would be the defence?'

‘That's what I'll discuss with counsel. Computer error – there's plenty of that about. Only last week I got a phone bill for six hundred pounds, turned out to be somebody tapping into an – ahem – an adult chat line in the Philippines.' He shuffled together the three pieces of paper that lay on his desk. ‘We'll present you as a victim of a corporation cock-up, if you'll
pardon the expression. NuLine trying to cover it up, trying to keep their shareholders' confidence; after all it doesn't look too good, does it? Especially with a big takeover in the pipeline. But these mistakes happen, don't they? We all know that. And there you are, the scapegoat, and all because your initials happen to be the same.'

‘They weren't.'

‘Come again?'

‘I made them the same.' Natalie spoke in a rush; it was such a relief, to confide in somebody. ‘I found a bloke whose surname began with T and I married him.'

The response was gratifying. Mr Wigton slumped in his chair, his chin resting in his hand, and stared at her. ‘Can you just run that by me again?'

‘I found this bloke – Colin – and I married him.'

‘You married a man just to give yourself the initials N.T.?'

She nodded. Mr Wigton looked enthralled. Natalie was starting to enjoy herself. So absorbed were they that neither of them heard the outer door open and somebody enter the reception room behind them.

‘Did he know?' asked Mr Wigton.

‘God no. He's sweet . . . he doesn't know anything. I mean, I liked him, of course . . .'

Mr Wigton's shoulders were shaking. He stroked his moustache, to hide his mirth. ‘You're a clever girl, my dear,' he said, ‘but not quite as clever as you think.'

‘Why?' she demanded.

‘You didn't need to go to all that trouble. You could have just changed your name by stat dec.'

‘What's that?'

‘Statutory declaration – Bob's your uncle. Don't even have to do it by deed poll. Anybody can have any name they want.'

He was laughing at her! ‘Oh, I thought of that,' she said, stung. ‘But it would have looked a bit suspicious, don't you think? Suddenly just changing my name?'

Mr Wigton shook his head. His shoulders were still shaking. ‘The poor bugger.'

‘What?'

‘Your husband. The poor bugger.'

She shouldn't have told him, of course. Just then she heard a noise in the other room. They swung round.

It was Colin. He had sat down, suddenly, in a chair.

They were sitting in Colin's van, outside the lawyer's office. It was rush hour. Traffic roared past; in the van, however, the silence was terrible.

‘I can't believe it,' said Colin at last. ‘I can't believe what I heard.'

‘It wasn't like that,' Natalie blustered. ‘Not really. I mean, I'm very fond of you and everything, you know that, Colin. It just popped into my mind, after I met you.' She reached out to touch his leg, and stopped. ‘I mean, Farida had an arranged marriage and they've been getting along like a house on fire, she really likes him—'

‘Fuck Farida.'

She jumped. Colin never swore.

‘Haven't we been happy?' she said. ‘Really happy? Nothing can change that, nothing can take that away, it's all quite genuine, honestly—'

‘How can you say that? What sort of person are you?' He swung round to face her. ‘I thought you loved me—'

‘I do!' She put her arm around him but he shook it off.

‘I thought – how could she love me?' He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I was over the moon, I couldn't believe my luck . . .'