“Have you had any contact with Saleema Bhatti?” Rob asked.
“I’ve not spoken to her since she left. Not a word.” Barry felt a bead of sweat crawl from beneath his hairline and slide down his temple.
“And you’re not aware of any contact between her and… anyone else here at Monument? Since she left.”
“Oh no. I mean she’s in Pakistan now, apparently,” Barry replied, before adding, “You’re not suggesting…?”
Rob quickly brought the meeting to a conclusion. “Well, thank you very much for your time, Mr Todd. We’ll look into this and get back to you if we need anything else.”
It was a relatively simple matter for the two officers to confirm the existence of the note on Barry’s file and the contents of his conversation with Angela, which they duly did. It would be harder work, but still possible if necessary, for them to prove that the £22,000 had come to Langley via an international money transfer from an account controlled by one or both of the Bhattis, and not from one controlled by Barry Todd. And if they could do that, it seemed to the two officers that they would have caught Langley Burrell in a flat lie.
“He panicked, didn’t he?” said Lindsey to her colleague as they reviewed the case together on the way back to the station. “After I came round and started asking questions.”
“Looks like it. Not done this kind of thing before. Knows there’s twenty-two grand heading toward his account so he quickly dumps the car on that sap to try and create a cover story for where it’s come from.”
“And thinks we’d be too thick to ask any questions. Amateur.”
Lindsey tried to remain dispassionate, but she felt there would be a certain justice in an otherwise unjust world if poor old Gemma could get her proper job back in the process of sending that dreadful man down. And even if the CPS declined to prosecute or the jury failed to convict, the reality was that Langley Burrell would lose his job at the very least.
In a world that no longer believed in a perfect justice awaiting beyond the grave, it seemed all the more necessary for an imperfect justice to be administered in the here and now. So, whilst it certainly wouldn’t be easy to confirm the origin of the money-transfer service’s payment to Langley, Lindsey felt it was important that Rob understood that doing so might be of benefit to him and, more specifically, Gemma, even if he didn’t seem to care that much about restoring people’s battered faith in the police’s ability to supplant divine judgement.
Forty-Six
“I hear everything you say, Sally, but the fact is no one is questioning that you have to pay us for The SHYPP and that it’s your responsibility to make sure that we receive our payment. Nothing you’ve said changes those two basic facts.”
Sally had demanded a meeting with Langley to discuss ‘the situation’. In the event, however, Langley was unavailable, so the meeting was being chaired by Ruth who, Sally was informed, was now leading on the matter for Monument. Monument’s ursine area housing manager (aka Barry Todd) was there too, presumably for some kind of moral support. Not that he seemed that keen to say anything.
“But we acted on your instructions!” Sally protested.
Ruth immediately corrected her. “No, you didn’t. You acted on what you thought were our instructions, but you didn’t check them properly.”
“Yes we did!”
“With respect, you clearly didn’t,” Ruth replied calmly, “because if you had, you would have found out that the invoice you had wasn’t the correct one. It’s the fact that you didn’t do that which has put us in this situation.”
There was a pause. Both women knew that their respective legal positions were defensible, but hardly watertight. Sally could see that Ruth’s strategy was to try to push her as hard as she could in the hope that Sally would make a settlement offer.
That was not, however, an option that Sally was prepared to countenance. Instead, she was trying to establish whether there was any way to avoid taking the ‘nuclear’ option. Sadly, it appeared that there wasn’t, so Sally cleared her throat and prepared to settle matters once and for all.
“Can I ask, have you mentioned this to the HCA?”
Ruth froze. Barry suddenly sprang up in his seat. Sally had their attention. To invoke the name of the social housing regulator, The Homes & Communities Agency, was a crime so heinous in social housing circles that it could bring any meeting to a grinding halt immediately. It was the equivalent of a low punch in boxing, and therefore could only be employed as the absolute last resort. But it immediately had the desired effect; for the first time, Ruth became flustered.
“Well, I don’t think there’s any need for us to do that. I mean, this doesn’t have a material effect on our accounts—”
As the regulator for social housing organisations, the HCA had to be kept informed of any frauds that were discovered within housing providers registered with them. But this was only the case if the fraud had a material effect on the organisation’s accounts.
“Yes,” Sally went on, “but it’s only been a couple of years since your financial controller got fired. That was for fraud, wasn’t it?”
“There was a thorough investigation by the HCA after that, and we’ve had a complete root-and-branch review of our operating procedures since then—”
“Which created complete chaos!”
“Which rationalised and streamlined everything, and introduced a range of new anti-fraud controls!”
“So it would be pretty embarrassing if any of your staff were found to have profited from this fraud, wouldn’t it?”
Indeed it would. Ruth didn’t seem quite sure how to respond.
“The fact is, Ruth,” Sally continued, “less than 50,000 out of revenues of over £49 million is well below the materiality threshold. Monument would barely notice it was gone…”
“Surely you’re not suggesting we just write it off? That’s ridiculous!”
“But for us, well, 50,000 could shut us down. That counts as material in my book.”
For fairly obvious reasons, if news of Monument’s travails reached the ears of their regulator it would, as Sally had helpfully pointed out, make things… awkward. And so there was no intention on Monument’s part to bring the whole sorry saga to their attention. Nor was there any need as, strictly speaking, the fraud was not ‘material’. But The SHYPP Trust was also registered with the HCA, so the same obligation to report material frauds also rested on them. This had one very clear consequence, which Sally helpfully spelt out in case Ruth and Barry hadn’t worked it out for themselves.
“If I leave this room knowing that you intend to pursue us for the money we’ve already paid you, you do understand, don’t you, that I will be obliged to report this to the HCA?” Sally said, innocently. “Obviously, they would need to investigate things at our end, but I imagine they’d want to have a look at things here too – just to content themselves that everything was in order. Do you really want to force me to do that?”
On balance, Ruth decided that the answer to that was no.
“Good grief, Barry, was she serious?” said Ruth after Sally had been ushered unceremoniously from the room.
“She’s never anything but. Sorry,” Barry replied.
“So where do you think that leaves us?”
“Well, if she says she’s going to report it, then she’ll report it. You can assume from that she must be pretty confident of their case. Obviously, I’ve not been told anything about our side of the story, so it’s just a matter of how comfortable you think we’d be with the HCA crawling all over our finance team.”
Ruth left a long pause before deciding not to answer. “The thing is, Barry, this merger with Three Acts is dependent on HCA approval. We won’t get that if we’re under investigation – particularly if it’s for financial mismanagement. Not after last time.”
“I can’t imagine Andrew would be very happy eithe
r, if it all fell through. Not now – not after he’s announced it and everything.”
Ruth hadn’t thought of that, but she did now. Andrew would be forced to say goodbye to his bumper pay rise, and it would all be her fault. The consequences for her didn’t bear thinking about.
“I mean,” Barry went on, “if it looks like we can’t manage £49 million, why would they let us manage twice as much?”
Why, indeed? However much it rankled, even Ruth could recognise that Monument had been caught in checkmate by the frightful Sally Hedges.
“You’re right, Barry,” she sighed. “Chasing fifty grand now will cost us more in the long run.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“Keep our eyes on the prize, Barry. We’ll just have to write it off. Like Sally said, fifty grand is basically a rounding error. We can hide it somewhere in the back of the accounts. No one’ll notice.”
“That sounds best,” Barry said.
“I guess so. Ultimately, we don’t want the HCA sniffing around, do we?”
“Oh, definitely not.”
Of course, Sally’s strategy hadn’t been without risk. But when she received Ruth’s email later that afternoon, confirming that Monument had agreed ‘as a gesture of goodwill’ that they wouldn’t be pursuing their debt, she felt that she had saved The SHYPP Trust – and probably her job. There was just one more thing she needed to do to show the board that she was in control of the situation.
Forty-Seven
The following day, Barry was called to a meeting with Andrew. Barry was never called to meetings with Andrew, so the news that he was required to attend a meeting with not only him but also Angela presaged a quickening of his heart rate and a moistening of his palms. After all, everyone had seen Langley being marched out of the building the previous day, escorted by police.
“How are you, Barry?” Angela asked. “You look tired.”
He was tired. Not the grit-eyed tiredness of a disturbed night’s sleep, but an existential weariness that made even breathing feel effortful. He’d seen it in the mirror that morning; his face looked knuckled and paunchy, like an old prizefighter.
“I’m fine. Just didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s all.”
Nights were an endurance now. Their silence pressed in on him like the sea, dark and oppressive. Sleep was impossible. The secret, which once had nestled, small and timid, in the inner chambers of his heart, had grown. And it had mutated. It was a malignancy now, eating up the goodness in him from the inside. He could hear it gnawing through his stomach in the silence of the long winter nights. He seemed powerless to stop it. Despite all the assurances he had been given, he felt as though it would burst out at any moment.
But, he kept reminding himself, as far as his involvement in the whole saga was concerned, there was nothing for anyone to discover – no money in his account, no CCTV footage of the cash withdrawals, and no link between him and Chris Malford or Shana Backley. He couldn’t be caught.
And yet, somehow, as he sat down in front of Andrew and Angela, none of that seemed to matter.
“Langley is going to be absent from the business for a little while,” Angela said. “And obviously that means we’ll be without a housing director at a crucial time.”
“We’re keen to maintain strategic focus as we prepare for the merger,” Andrew added, “and we recognise that we need someone to assist with that – and with the day-to-day running of the department – who understands the business. Who knows Monument inside out.”
“And we think that person is you, Barry,” Angela continued, smiling and doing her ‘tilty head’ thing.
“I’m sorry?”
“We’d like you to be acting housing director,” Andrew said with a wide grin.
“Me?”
“Yes,” said Angela. “You’ve been here a long time and you understand Monument better than anyone else. You practically built our housing management system, so you can help with the integration of that with Three Acts’ system. And you’ve got the respect and confidence of the staff, Barry. During a bit of… turbulence, we feel it’s important we have someone who can provide some stability.”
Barry was flabbergasted. This was not what he’d been expecting at all. They had seemed so keen to give the job to anyone except him only a few weeks previously.
“Obviously, this is only a temporary arrangement,” said Andrew. “The precise structure of the new senior team will get sorted as part of the merger. But if things go well during the temporary period…”
Barry could fill in the silence for himself.
“That would be wonderful. Obviously, I’ve wanted the job since Karen left,” Barry replied. “I was just wondering though…”
“About your salary?” Andrew asked, arching his eyebrow, playfully.
“Err… yes… Sorry.”
“Well, we recognise that you’ve stepped in to help us at a crucial time. And that things haven’t been easy because of… well, for a number of reasons,” Angela said. “So we certainly think that additional remuneration would be appropriate.”
“And now that we’ve lowered our headcount, we’ve got the space in the budget to be able to offer you something,” continued Andrew.
“How does £500 a month extra sound?” Angela asked.
“Great. It sounds absolutely great. Thank you.”
They needed him and now they finally recognised it. That was all he’d ever wanted. To get the recognition his hard work deserved. And he was getting it, Barry reminded himself, because he had seized the day and claimed what was rightfully his. What had happened to Langley was regrettable, of course, Barry recognised that. But he contented himself with the knowledge that Langley would be exonerated at some point. Probably. In the meantime, the universe was rewarding Barry for his initiative. All he had to do now was learn how to rid himself of the shadow that haunted his dreams, and then, perhaps, he could sleep again. If he could just do that, then Barry sensed that the possibilities for him were limitless.
He left the meeting with an uncharacteristic spring in his step and went back downstairs. But, instead of returning to his usual place on the desk island, he decided to take a detour – to the housing director’s office.
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you can’t go in there,” one of the executive PAs called out anxiously.
“Oh, I think you’ll find that I can,” Barry replied, breezing past her. “Check with Andrew if you don’t believe me,” he added, watching her face drop into a look of open-mouthed astonishment. Barry had decided that he was going to enjoy this. Escaping the shadow of his secret seemed tantalisingly close. And if he could do that then maybe, just maybe, it would all have been worth it.
Forty-Eight
After the weekend, Barry returned to work, not as area housing manager, but as acting housing director. There was the small matter of inducting the two temporary members of staff from the employment agency, who would be covering as area housing managers during Barry’s temporary elevation. That took most of the morning, but after lunch Barry had been invited to attend his first appointment as a member of the exec team – a budget meeting with Ruth. Never before had Barry been so excited at the prospect of discussing budgets. Their meeting had barely started, however, when Blessing knocked on the door to disturb them.
“I am sorry to interrupt, madam,” she said, “but there’s a PC Worrall to see you. Do you want me to say that you’re busy?”
“Oh, goodness me, no. Send him up.”
“Do you need me to step out?” asked Barry.
“Not at all, Barry. You’re part of the exec team now, and this is as much your problem as it is mine, so you might as well sit in. I take it you’ve worked out why Langley’s not about at the moment?”
Barry reddened slightly. “Well, I saw him being taken out… by the police. You kind of put two and two together.
”
Rob Worrall appeared to be in a brusque mood when he entered the room. He had, it transpired, spent several hours interviewing Langley, but there was still no admission of guilt. And, despite a forensic examination of his computer and his mobile phone, there was absolutely no evidence of any contact between Langley and either of the Bhattis – or, indeed, Adam Furst. Barry was relieved to learn that PC Worrall’s attention did not seem to be focused unduly on him.
“But, despite Mr Burrell’s non-cooperation,” Rob said, “we think we’ve worked out at least some of what happened after the money hit Malford’s account. Firstly, someone has taken a few grand out in cash from various cashpoints around the West Midlands.”
“Do we know who?” asked Ruth.
“’Fraid not. Whoever it was used Malford’s card, but, as Malford was dead by that point, it clearly wasn’t him. It might have been Furst – he was filmed walking off with Malford’s wallet – but we don’t honestly know. The rest of the money has gone into the Bhattis’ account here. They’ve then moved it out to Pakistan. Because they’d already told their bank they were emigrating, no one picked that up as suspicious. It looks as though at least some of it has then been sent back to Burrell using an international money-transfer service. But he’s refusing to admit anything.”
“How can he possibly deny it?” asked Ruth.
“He’s insistent the money came from Mr Todd, but we’ve checked all your accounts and there’s nothing going in or out of any of them that’s suspicious. And the money has clearly come from Peshawar – that’s where the money transfer service was based and it’s where the payment was made from.”
“So it must have come from the Bhattis!” Ruth said.
“There’s rather a lot of people living in Peshawar, not just the Bhattis. I’m afraid the CPS won’t let us assume. But that does look like the most obvious explanation. Unfortunately, if we want to confirm for definite who the money came from, we’d have to go through the Pakistani courts to get the money transfer company to tell us.”
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