by Paul Hoffman
As she pulled down her skirt she was shaking. She went into the washroom and put down the wooden lid of the toilet and sat for five minutes. Then she stood up and looked at herself in the cracked full-length mirror: a middle-aged woman whose best asset was her legs – not plain, attractive enough if she took the trouble with lipstick, powder, spray. There were a million like her and yet, vibrating in her stomach like a tuning fork, she could feel his fear, his compulsion, his desire and shame, but above all the driven nature of it all. It was something you had, an inheritance that was nothing to do with being beautiful – a terrible, irresistible gift. Slowly she reached down and lifted her skirt a second time. But something of what she had seen in his desperate look was with her still and she saw herself through his eyes. How long her legs seemed, how hidden. The gauzy nylon seemed to pull the eye from the knee to the hidden upper thigh, to the secret inner thigh; and then the sudden shock of white between her legs, drawing attention to itself all the more by being underneath the fine transparency. Yes, she thought. Yes, I see. The surge in her stomach returned. It was not a surge of desire for Neil, but of the desire to be desired. And it was different from the desire to touch and be touched. She looked for a moment longer, then pulled her skirt down to her knees and went back to finish her work.
The offices of Laird, Colbourne and Cantrell, accountants, were in a sound nineteenth-century building clearly influenced by Pugin, although not as ornate. A too aggressive recent cleaning, the subject of litigation, had caused some damage to the stone and given the gargoyles a slightly blurred quality and a disconcertingly contra-dictory appearance, at once satanic and mellow. Inside it was quiet because the walls and the carpet were thick, and also because of George Winnicott.
In April 1993, £400 million pounds worth of damage had been caused to the Baltic Exchange by a thousand-pound IRA bomb contained in a lorry parked next to the building. In response Winnicott had devised a drastic plan to ring the City with permanently armed roadblocks, a security wall that had removed most of the traffic from the streets of the Square Mile. As a result, respiratory infections had fallen dramatically, and seven people who would otherwise have been knocked down and killed were instead working at their desks oblivious to their debt to the silver lining of extreme Irish Nationalism and George Winnicot’t, former head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad.
For the moment Winnicott sat in a large office gazing mystified at the arched Gothic window facing out onto Gutter Street. ‘Why is the floor halfway up the window?’
McCarthy, who had been thinking about the coming interview, looked up. ‘Oh, that. When they refurbished this place it was supposed to be offices for the new futures and options exchange markets. They couldn’t refurbish these old buildings internally with the same dimensions because the kind of computerised screen trading that had come with the Big Bang needed miles of cabling and lots of air-conditioning. It all has to go in between the floors, and there was so much of it that they had to push the floors upwards. Then the market crashed and no one wanted a place like this until Laird’s got it for a song. Makes you feel queasy, doesn’t it? As if the inside is slipping.’
The door opened and a middle-aged woman walked in followed by a sleek-looking younger man. She was dressed smartly: a simple black Jaeger jacket and a checked skirt from Marks & Spencer, the shortest of the three lengths they offered. The man exuded confidence of a not entirely convincing kind, while the woman seemed apprehensive. The introductions began. The smart man, Wexler, was a solicitor who clearly knew McCarthy quite well. Wexler turned to the woman beside him. ‘This is Jane Healey.’
They sat down.
‘If you don’t mind my asking, Scott,’ said McCarthy pleasantly to Wexler, ‘why are you here? Mrs Healey asked to see us after she resigned from her post as TLC’s auditor. Why would she need the company solicitor present?’
Wexler leant back in his chair. ‘As you’ll see, Mrs Healey’s position is a difficult one. They always are in these circumstances. She simply felt my advice might be useful.’
Jane Healey looked at Wexler and her eyes filled with dislike. ‘Perhaps I’d better explain the background,’ she said quickly, her nervousness now mitigated by her obvious annoyance at Wexler.
For the next ten minutes she laid out her eighteen-month relationship with TLC. She did not touch on any problems, merely setting out the company business and her responsibility for auditing the accounts.
As soon as she finished, Wexler spoke. ‘In my view, it would be best if this interview were to take place on a section-two basis.’
‘Why?’ asked McCarthy.
‘You know as well as I do that a resigning auditor is in an extraordinarily difficult position legally. An auditor’s primary duty is towards his or her client, and reporting fraud or possible fraud’, he emphasised the word dramatically, ‘without the prior permission of the client is a violation of professional ethics and in breach of the civil law.’
‘Has there been a fraud?’ said McCarthy innocently.
‘If you were to interview Mrs Healey under section two then it would no longer be legally dangerous for her – and for this company – to discuss the matter with you. She would be under an obligation to answer your questions and the duty of client care would not apply.’
‘I’m sorry, Scott, there’s no question of us doing that.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘Very simple. Until now we had no reason to view TLC as anything more than a reputable insurance group. We still don’t have a reason, and until you give us evidence to the contrary I can’t give you an order under section two.’ He looked straight at Jane. ‘It’s not the case that you’re worried you yourself might be implicated in any way?’
Wexler protested as if personally offended. ‘There’s absolutely no question of any wrongdoing on our . . . Mrs Healey’s part. Absolutely none.’
‘No,’ she interrupted softly. ‘I’m not implicated in any way.’
‘You still want to talk to us?’
‘Yes, although I’m afraid you might find this a little frustrating. I’m an auditor, not a fraud investigator.’
‘Of course,’ said McCarthy. ‘When did you become concerned about TLC?’
‘Well, after about eight months I talked to the management team.’
‘Anyone in particular?’ asked McCarthy casually. She paused for a moment. Winnicott had seen this a thousand times: the moment when someone has to overcome the unpleasant sensation of getting other people into trouble.
‘Allan Nancarrow, mostly.’
McCarthy finished writing.
‘I’m not saying he was involved in anything,’ she said sharply.
‘Of course not.’
‘I pointed out to them that they needed to exercise more thorough controls in some areas.’
‘So, you were suspicious that there was . . . wrongdoing?’
‘No.’ She was much more at ease now and clearly glad to be talking. ‘I’m an accountant, Mr McCarthy, not a policeman. It was just bad practice. It never occurred to me that people would be involved in something criminal – an auditor doesn’t go looking for fraud. That isn’t my job.’
‘What did Mr Nancarrow say when you confronted him?’
‘I didn’t confront him. He said he’d look into it.’
‘And did he?’
‘Apparently. When I returned to TLC a few weeks later they’d obviously made an effort to at least look as if they’d changed some of their practices. Certainly I didn’t see the salesmen wandering in and out of the assessment section. Except once.’
She was evidently hoping to be drawn out, but McCarthy said nothing.
‘I saw one of the salesmen walk up to the assessment section and take out a security card – the section was supposed to be secure so you had to have one of those credit card things to get in. If he’d just gone in, I don’t suppose I would have even noticed – they’d been so much better about staying out. I’d have put it down to one lapse. But when he s
aw me, he looked startled, put the card in his pocket and tried to pretend he wasn’t going in.’ She stopped again, clearly wondering if, now that she was saying it aloud to the FS, it sounded insubstantial. ‘Of course what drew my attention after he covered it up so badly was the security card. Why did he still have one?’
McCarthy said nothing for a moment, concentrating on making notes. ‘My impression is that something else made you feel this business over the salesman and the assessment office was important – is that right?’
‘Yes. The oil and gas side of the business was outselling its rivals by half as much again.’
‘Good salesmanship?’
‘Possibly – but the differences are too great for that, surely? And another thing. Their financial records were extremely complicated, and I couldn’t see why. There was no obvious reason, in terms of accountancy practice, why that should be so.’
‘What did Mr Nancarrow say to that?’
‘He said that the accountancy staff were very old-fashioned.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Well, they didn’t seem to be hiding anything. All the figures added up for tax purposes – certainly the Revenue weren’t worried.’
‘Then what was the problem?’
‘No one could give me a plausible reason for the way the accounts were structured. Nancarrow’s explanation about old-fashioned accounting methods was complete rubbish.’
‘But the figures checked out?’
‘Yes. But I started doing some reading up – the Americans and Australians have a much more determined view of these things.’
‘Aren’t we straying outside your remit, Mrs Healey?’ said Wexler who seemed to have abandoned the pretence that he was representing her interests rather than those of her employer.
‘No, we’re not,’ she said.
She really dislikes Wexler, thought Winnicott.
‘In one report by an Australian forensic auditor,’ she looked at both McCarthy and Winnicott, ‘that’s someone who specialises in finding fraud . . .’ she trailed off. ‘I’m sorry – teaching you to suck eggs.’
‘Not at all. Please go on, Mrs Healey.’
‘Well,’ she continued, ‘there was one case, a very sophisticated Revenue fraud, where in order to throw any investigator off the trail, they didn’t just make it very complicated, they built in what he called audit breakers – devices that were designed to make it impossible to follow the movement of funds. The intention was to use these very complicated structures to make the fraudulent transactions undetectable. They didn’t go into as much detail as I would’ve liked. But one of the features of the fraud was what they called a pseudo-audit-breaker.’
McCarthy laughed. ‘Now that’s one even I’ve never heard of.’ As he had intended, she was pleased with this.
‘They were used to exhaust the investigators by pulling them down into transactions that were extremely and unnecessarily complicated, but which turned out to be legitimate. It would take weeks sometimes to find out that what looked suspicious was actually quite proper. And they’d vary them. Sometimes there would even be mistakes that meant the fraudsters lost money or paid too much tax. When they were confronted they just admitted they should do things differently or that it was the way they’d always done it. Accounts just have to be true and fair, they don’t have to be . . . entirely in line with current accounting practice.’
‘And you think that the unnecessary complication of transactions at TLC might have been put down to these pseudo-audit-breakers?’
‘You can’t answer that, Mrs Healey,’ said an annoyed Wexler. He looked at McCarthy, his eyes full of aggression. ‘You know as well as I do, Michael, that we’re in a cleft stick here. If you want to pursue this further then the whole thing will have to be done formally. Given that, it seems to me that we should end the interview at this point, don’t you agree?’ He stood up, smiling and dismissive. McCarthy did nothing, but Jane Healey reluctantly got to her feet. ‘Of course, Michael, if anything substantial comes to light and we’re legally able to pass it on then we’ll get in touch.’
‘I thought Mrs Healey had resigned,’ said McCarthy pleasantly.
‘Yes,’ replied Wexler sourly.
‘She hasn’t been replaced by another auditor from this firm, has she?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Wexler stiffly.
McCarthy smiled again. ‘Then I don’t suppose there’s much chance of anything substantial coming to light then, is there?’
Wexler did not respond and was not expected to. Jane Healey held out her hand to McCarthy. She turned to Winnicott, but as she did so a look of alarm crossed her face.
‘Is anything the matter, Mr Winnicott?’
Wexler, Healey and McCarthy looked at Winnicott. He’d gone white. He stood up quickly to reassure everyone watching him that he was in fact full of energy. ‘I wonder if I could trouble you . . .’ He looked at Wexler, who stared at him blankly then realised what he wanted. They said a further round of goodbyes, then Wexler led him down to a discreet-looking door.
‘I’ll wait for you in the lobby,’ said McCarthy. He was about to ask Winnicott if he felt ill, but decided this would be unwelcome. He turned and walked towards the lift.
Winnicott rushed inside the toilets and leant against the wall, staring into the expensive smoked-glass mirror that took up most of another. Then he felt something pushing inside his chest. He stared, horrified, then began to speak. ‘I want them to know,’ said the woman’s voice, determined but slurred like a slow tape-recording. ‘You’re going to have to let me tell them why people are so . . .’ the voice struggled, searching, ‘. . . irregular . . . jagged . . . asymmetric . . . rough . . . disproportionate . . . uneven . . . bumpy . . . strange.’
Steven Grlscz walked out of the flats and waited at the kerb for a taxi. Within two minutes he’d flagged one down. ‘Soho Square,’ he said, and was about to get in when someone appeared at his side. It was the policeman, Roache, smiling pleasantly. Grlscz’s heart mislaid a beat.
‘It’s all right, Mr Grlscz,’ he said laddishly. ‘I’m going your way. I’ll drop you off.’ He gestured towards a blue Mondeo.
Roache brought Grlscz up to Healey’s office, chatting amiably as they climbed the stairs. ‘The thing about identity parades is that there’s always an element of luck involved. The Russians have a saying, I’m told.’ He paused, delight and malice in his eyes. ‘ “He lies like an eyewitness.” ’ He sighed as if in regretful fellow feeling. ‘In my experience, juries set a lot of store by a positive identification. But you know, Mr Grlscz, sometimes at night when I can’t sleep, well, I worry. I worry about miscarriages of justice.’
By now they had arrived at a glass-paned door. Roache knocked and opened it, showing Grlscz through.
Healey was behind a desk. ‘Please sit down, Mr Grlscz,’ he said.
‘Am I under arrest?’ asked Grlscz softly.
‘It depends.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I could arrest you . . .’
‘Then arrest me,’ interrupted Grlscz. This was the indignation of a man who’d had enough of being cooperative. A man who had been, perhaps, afraid or confused and intimidated by what was happening to him, but who had finally, indignantly and with cause, had enough.
Healey continued, placatingly. ‘But I’d rather not. If I arrest you, then everything is a matter of record. Things are written down. Conversations are taped. It all gets very formal, very solid. And I’d rather just sort it out, ask a few questions and get some answers. And if – as I expect – it all makes sense, then it’s as if it had never happened and you can forget about it.’
‘Why did I have to empty my pockets when I came in?’
Healey looked mournfully at the small pile of Grlscz’s personal effects lying on the table between them.
‘Yes. I’m sorry about that. It was a misunderstanding. They shouldn’t have taken them from you. My apologies.’ He gestured for Grlscz to take them
back and watched him as he replaced the various keys, wallet and notebook in his jacket.
‘If this is just a chat,’ said Grlscz, ‘then I’d rather it was just between the two of us.’
Roache looked at him resentfully.
‘Of course,’ said Healey, all accommodation. He nodded to Roache, who sauntered out as if he’d been going to leave anyway.
‘He’s a cocky little sod, your colleague,’ said Grlscz, deciding that some expression of a genuinely held irritation would be appropriate.
Healey did not react. ‘You had a card in your wallet . . .’
‘You looked in my wallet?’
‘I shouldn’t have, I admit. But it seemed simpler than going through the business of arresting you.’ He held out his hands in a gesture that said: It’s up to you.
Grlscz laughed.
Healey smiled as if they were co-conspirators in a game. ‘You had two cards in your wallet. Both in your name.’
‘Yes.’
‘One of the cards is a business card and the phone number on it is in the phone book as well.’ He held up a small cream-coloured card, very simple, with just a name and number printed on it. ‘The phone number on this card. It’s unlisted.’
‘So?’
‘Well, maybe it’s just me but I found it odd. Small but odd. At first. So I called up and got your phone records for the unlisted number.’
Grlscz said nothing but he looked shocked.
‘Now the phone records are very interesting because you’ve had the unlisted number for eighteen months, and yet you’ve never made a call on it. I’d call that odd.’
Healey watched Grlscz. He had the numb look of someone who had been caught out, was considering lying then thought better of it. There was a long pause as Healey watched him run through all the ways that whatever he was trying to explain might look less damaging than it probably would be.
‘It was a way of picking up women,’ he said at last.