Acts & Monuments

by Alan Kane Fraser

  “Can you do that?”

  Rob shifted slightly in his seat and took a deep breath. “Well, we could. But, to be honest, the cost of doing that is not worth it for a fraud of this size. To send our officers out to Pakistan, to pay for a Pakistani QC – it all mounts up. And the judgements… Well, let’s just say they can be a bit more hit-and-miss in Pakistan than we would normally expect here.”

  “What about the Bhattis? Can we track them down?” asked Ruth.

  “Well, there again; they’re in Pakistan now. We’ve got no contact details for them out there and they’ve got no family in this country who we could get to give us their contact details. Given the size of the fraud we’re looking at, the costs involved in progressing this, well – I’m going to be honest – for a commercial fraud they’re prohibitive.”

  Barry tried to stifle a sigh of relief. He felt the first stirrings of the knot in his stomach slowly beginning to untie itself. It appeared that everything Alun had told him was, broadly speaking, true. Ruth, however, had not quite given up yet.

  “So what’s the point at which it would be worth you pursuing this?”

  “For a commercial fraud against an organisation of this size and with an offender overseas? Probably a million quid, if I’m being honest.”

  Barry wanted to laugh. He wanted to laugh more than at any point in the past three months. What had he ever been worried about? He’d been beating himself up at the potential consequences of stealing less than fifty grand. That feeling in the pit of his stomach, that voice in the back of his head; that sense of being watched – they were all trying to conspire to make him feel guilty. But he’d got a further £950,000 worth of moral headroom before the police would consider him as having done anything wrong – or, at least, wrong enough to warrant any kind of punishment (which, in the absence of a celestial CCTV system, was surely the only kind of ‘wrong’ that mattered).

  “So what about Langley?” Ruth asked.

  “I don’t think the CPS will authorise charges unless he admits it, but his solicitor’s probably told him that, so he’ll just keep schtum. Of course, the burden of proof is higher in a criminal court. I’ll send you my report when I’ve finished it and if you want to take civil action to recover your money – or at least some of it – well, your chances are better. And if you want to go down your own disciplinary processes, that’s between you and him. But you’ll have my report anyway.”

  “And what will that say?”

  “Pretty much what I’ve just said: that we’ve worked out roughly what happened, but the amount of the fraud and the fact people have fled overseas means we can’t really justify continuing the criminal investigation.”

  “So that’s it?” Ruth asked.

  “I’m afraid so. Obviously, if we can find this Adam Furst and establish some link to the fraud then it might get reopened. But, for various reasons, I’m not convinced personally.”

  “I thought he was key to it all,” said Barry.

  “I think that’s what they wanted us to think. It’s quite common with fraudsters,” Rob explained. “They try to focus your attention on someone who’s not important or only very peripheral, so that you’re not looking at the people who seem unimportant but are actually central to the whole thing. It’s how deception works. Like a sleight of hand. I must say, they’ve been very clever. But at the moment… well, like I say, there’s nothing more we can do.”

  Barry had been told to expect this, but it didn’t make it any less surprising to hear. Langley would be sacked, but it would cost a lot of money for Monument to try to reclaim the money from him through the civil courts and that was bound to attract the attention of the HCA. Frankly, Monument’s finance team could do without the publicity at the moment, so they would probably just have to write the money off. It all felt extremely satisfactory indeed. There was just one thing he needed to check.

  “Can I just ask? Does this mean that you’re finished looking into the rest of us? We’re ‘free to go’, to coin a phrase?”

  “Oh, yes, Mr Todd. We’re satisfied there’s no evidence linking anyone else we looked into to any of this. The rest of you aren’t under suspicion. My report will confirm that, so you can all rest easy. No more production orders, no more questions about your bank accounts or ‘who-said-what-to-who-and-when’. That’s all over.”

  “All over?”

  Rob nodded.

  “Well, that’s a relief!”

  Indeed, it was. It was all over – and nothing bad had happened. Except to Langley, who, frankly, deserved it. But even that was only a modest punishment – there would be no trial and no conviction. All that would happen is that he would lose a job that he should never have been appointed to in the first place. There was a certain justice in that, Barry felt.

  But, as for everyone else, well, The SHYPP would be no worse off and Barry would be considerably better off. The Bhattis might have been rather unfairly apportioned some of the blame for the whole saga, but they’d never know. And they’d also been able to access 80 million Pakistani rupees which they wouldn’t have been able to access without Barry’s help – which in turn, was only made possible by Monument’s (unwitting) help. Even Monument hadn’t genuinely suffered – not really. All that would happen was that their surplus would be £6.95 million rather than £7 million. It was hardly enough to shift the world on its axis. There would be a brief note in the accounts (which no one would read) and things would carry on pretty much as before. But they would be spared the indignity of an HCA inspection – as, indeed, would The SHYPP. Andrew would even get approval for his beloved merger, which was, as Ruth had pointed out, the bigger prize in all of this.

  So in the grand scheme of things, Barry concluded that small matters such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ were hardly worth worrying about. Even PC Worrall had suggested as much. If the small number of negative consequences were outweighed by the hugely more beneficial positive consequences, then in what sense was it even fair to describe his actions as ‘wrong’ at all? The world was now a better place overall, and it was all thanks to the actions of Barry Ronald Todd. When looked at like that, Barry couldn’t help feeling that he deserved a medal.

  Rob left Ruth and Barry to get on with their meeting, but by then Barry had other matters on his mind. Principally, the £20,000 that the Bhattis were still waiting to pay back to ‘Christian Malford’. Given the ongoing police investigation, Barry had felt unable to issue any payment instructions to Saleema for fear of somehow creating a trail that could be traced back to him. However, now that he had received assurances that the police investigation was closed, it felt safe to finally respond to her request for payment details.

  “I’m sorry Ruth, but I just need to send a quick text. Is that OK?” Barry asked. He took his bank card out of his wallet and texted the account number and sort code through to Saleema with a request that the outstanding funds be sent through to ‘Mr Malford’ at her earliest convenience.

  *

  As it was now the new year, the third quarter invoice for The SHYPP was due to be raised. It should, of course, have been raised before Christmas if Langley’s instructions had been followed, but the ongoing police investigation had put a stop to that. However, now that Barry had confirmation that everything was concluded from the police’s perspective, it felt important to get on to the matter of The SHYPP’s quarterly invoice without further delay. If he wanted to land the housing director’s job permanently, the first step would be expertly guiding The SHYPP’s next payment into Monument’s coffers without undue complications, and he intended to do precisely that. Barry was wise enough to know that his diversion of funds due to Monument was not a trick that could be repeated. His first phone call when he returned to his desk after his meeting with Ruth had ended, therefore, was to the offices of The SHYPP Trust.

  “Oh, hi Sally. It’s Barry… Barry Todd… From Monument.”

 
“I know where you’re from,” replied Sally, acidly.

  “Yes, sorry. We’re just looking to raise the next invoice and – given our difficulties with the last one – I just wanted to make sure we got everything right this time. Is Marilyn about?”

  There was a long pause.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid Marilyn doesn’t work here anymore.”

  Forty-Nine

  The following day was Barry’s first external appointment as acting housing director – a seminar for senior housing professionals on ways that housing associations could get around some of the government’s new rent and housing benefit restrictions. Circumventing the clearly stated intention of government policy was what now passed as ‘risk management’ and ‘prudent financial planning’ amongst social housing professionals.

  The seminar was to be held in central Birmingham, so Barry got a train into the city centre and then headed on foot toward the venue. Needles of rain pricked his skin like a conscience. But as he approached Chamberlain Square and the museum and art gallery on the way to his destination, he noticed a sight that brought him up short. The old Birmingham Central Library was being demolished and now stood with most of its interior exposed, like a rather pathetic, naked figure.

  Barry felt a certain twinge of nostalgia. He’d spent many a happy hour in his teenage years studying in the central library. The huge inverted-ziggurat structure meant that it could accommodate far more works than anything anywhere else in the West Midlands, which meant that Barry had had unlimited access to the best art criticism in the world for free. And he could access it in a building that sought to echo the great Mesopotamian culture of the past. Just as it had been built on learning and knowledge, so a new great culture had been built in the industrial heartlands of Britain by a huge, democratising extension of access to information.

  Barry had known that there was some plan somewhere to demolish the central library, but he couldn’t quite believe that it would happen. It was, after all, probably the last, and certainly the finest, Brutalist monument left standing in the city. But now it was being consigned to history, after barely forty years. Brutalism was being expunged with a thoroughness that was, well… brutal.

  The central library was not the museum and art gallery: it lacked the aesthetics. Its insides were all on the outside, like a body with no skin. It isn’t that it’s ‘wrong’, Barry thought, it’s just that it seems contrary to how people want to live – they want ornament, they want beauty.

  But, for all that, Barry couldn’t help but feel that there was something admirable about the building that was being so unceremoniously demolished. It gave a glimpse of what kind of city a past generation thought Birmingham could be. It had created a place that valued knowledge and free access to it. All of which made Barry feel slightly uncomfortable. The central library that was being demolished didn’t represent Birmingham’s past; it represented a future that had once seemed inevitable, but that now seemed utterly implausible. Even in the supposedly philanthropic world of social housing, it was accepted that the vision embodied by buildings such as the central library had died when people like Neville retired or were ‘forcibly exited’ from the sector. Maybe that’s why it had to be demolished, Barry thought.

  And that thought made him sad. Because Barry didn’t mind betraying people like Langley, but he did mind betraying Neville. He felt a certain twinge of regret that he couldn’t quite shake as he reflected that the same fate as Neville had now befallen the unfortunate Marilyn, not as a result of the actions of some venal careerist, but because of him.

  Barry had liked Marilyn. She’d always seemed like a decent person; one who, unlike so many others, didn’t feel the need to trample on others to get what she wanted. And yet now it appeared that Barry had unwittingly trampled on her. As he walked on to his seminar, he wondered if his affection for yesterday’s forgotten future really was based on something more substantial than nostalgia.

  The seminar, of course, was utterly tedious, which gave Barry’s mind a chance to wander. Firstly, he wondered if the final £20,000 that he had requested from Saleema the previous day had arrived in his account yet. She had promised to send it to him straight away. He decided, therefore, to duck out of his seminar at the first coffee break to check his bank balance.

  When the paper statement from the cashpoint confirmed that the payment from Saleema had indeed arrived in his account, Barry breathed a sigh of relief. It was almost over. Within the next few days he could be mortgage free; Lauren’s university maintenance would be taken care of, and he would also have his own car without having to depend on the none-too-reliable largesse of Monument Housing Association. He could decide in his own time whether he wanted to remain in their employment. But if he did, it would now be on his terms.

  Part of him wanted to stay; to become the permanent housing director and run the department as he always felt it should have been run. How Neville would have wanted him to run it. Yet he wondered if he was capable of doing that anymore. Obviously, he was technically capable – he always had been – but there was a different kind of capability that Neville had always looked for in his team, which Barry felt he had somehow lost. And that made him sad too.

  He wondered if his mood might be lifted by sampling the sultry charms of Iulia. There had been something of an uneasy truce between Barry and Iulia since their argument before Christmas. The festive break (and the inevitable frantic return to work afterwards) meant that it was now four weeks since Barry had been able to pay her a visit, and a fecund stirring in his loins was the inevitable result. He had heard nothing further from her and so he hoped that their little disagreement had been forgotten about.

  He decided, therefore, that, rather than return for the session on ‘Double Leaseback Agreements with Private Landlords as a Means of Avoiding Social Housing Rent Cuts’, he would make a call to check if Iulia was available.

  “Ah, Miss Nicolescu? It’s Mr Todd here. From the housing association. Can you talk?”

  “I not want to talk. I am at work for morning.”

  “Glad to hear it. I just wondered if you were free at all after lunch? For one of our… sessions.”

  “I am at work.” She attempted to snap the conversation closed like a book.

  “I understand that Miss Nicolescu, but we have an… arrangement. It’s been four weeks now. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me—”

  “I start arrangement. Now I stop arrangement. That is my – how you say? – New Year Resolution.”

  Barry paused for a moment. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t accept that, Miss Nicolescu. I was very clear, I hope, that our arrangement has to continue. It’s not in your interests to end it.”

  “Do what you want!” Iulia snapped back. “I work now. I not need you anymore. It over, Meester Todd. Over.”

  “I don’t think you’ve thought this through,” said Barry, desperately. “There are… implications. The Romanian Migrants Welfare Association.”

  “You not dare contact them.”

  “I assure you, I very definitely would. I’d have to… to protect myself.”

  “Then I tell the housing people what you do!”

  “Not if Costel gets to you first.”

  “I not stupid, Meester Todd. I protect myself. The photo – the photo of you. I keep copy – hard copy – in very safe place. Not in my flat. If anything happen to me, my friend send photo to housing people.”

  “And I’ll lose my job. But, you… they’ll know where you are. You’ve always said it yourself; they’ll kill you if they know where you are.”

  “I rather die than have sex with you again!”

  “But I’m only trying to help you!”

  “You not help me. You say you help me, but you only think about yourself.”

  “Please don’t make me do this.”

  “I not make you do anything. You do it yourself. If you
want to, you not do it.” There was a pause at the other end of the line before Iulia continued deliberately. “I promise you I not tell the housing people. I not tell the housing people if you don’t tell where I am.” She paused again.

  “Look into your heart, Meester Todd. That is what I do. And that is why I stop now. There is goodness in my heart – just a leetle bit left. I not let you crush that.”

  “There’s goodness in my heart too, but I can’t just let this go. You could hold it over me – forever. I’d never be free. I’d always be worried about people finding out.”

  “And if they not find out? Everything is OK, then?”

  “Well, yes… in a manner of speaking.”

  “Then there is no goodness in your heart. Not anymore. What you do – these are bad things. You know they are bad things, but still you do them. And now you threaten me if I do not carry on doing bad things. You are a bad man, Meester Todd. A very bad man!”

  And with that, she hung up.

  Barry stood for a moment in silence. She had, it seemed, thought of everything. Even if he now phoned the Romanian Migrants Welfare Association, he would not be safe. The incriminating photo had been printed off and lodged with a friend who had been told to hand it in to Monument if anything happened to Iulia. Whilst it remained in circulation, she held Barry in a rather awkward embrace, undergirded by the threat of mutually assured destruction. He needed to get that photo if he was ever to be free.

  It seemed impossible, after all, she had given no indication of where it was, except to say that it wasn’t in her flat. But then a half-remembered fragment of conversation floated to the forefront of his mind: “The friends I come with – they all go back now. I have no family here. Shakira, next door – she my only friend here.”

  It was hardly proof, but it was his only lead. He walked back to the train station and looked for the next train to Coleshill.