by Tobias Hill
At the other end of the line there is a sound that might be laughter. ‘He is an inspector, after all. It’s his job to hear things. You don’t think I told him, do you? Do you?’
‘No.’
‘Christ, I can’t have seen him in years. I imagine that everyone at the Revenue knows by now. Don’t they? It’s hardly top-secret information anyway. Anyone who doesn’t should be sacked for lack of enterprise.’
She almost flinches. This is also what he is like: sharper than she will ever be. It is two years since his own enforced retirement. His voice is less forgiving when he is sober. She knows he still blames the Revenue, but there are occasionally times when Anna wonders if he blames her too. If he knows that he should.
‘So Carl Caunt knew. Good for him. And what did you say?’
She adjusts the phone against her shoulder. ‘I told him that it was a random investigation, and that there were no inconsistencies. I said I didn’t want any help.’
‘And how many lies did this entail?’
‘Three,’ she says, ‘I think.’
‘That’s rather a lot, Anna. For such a little amount of telling.’
She takes a deep breath. ‘Can I talk to you about it?’
‘You know you can. But not like this.’ Anna is not sure whether he is talking about the telephone line or himself.
‘When?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Where?’ she says, and Lawrence says:
‘Here.’
His apartment is old, dark, gentlemanly. An extension of himself, or something he would like to be. There is a shaving mirror by the window overlooking Little Venice. In the kitchen, florentines in a paper box. On the desk, a mechanical clock with a steel face. By the bed, a small vase of violets. She knows all these things as he opens the door, smiling, and that nothing will have changed. Somewhere a singer is practising to the sound of a piano. It sounds almost real.
‘You look tired. They work you too hard.’
‘It’s not them,’ she says, and Lawrence nods.
‘What can I get you?’
‘Coffee.’ She follows him into the kitchen. The smell an alchemical admixture of tobacco and old cooking. ‘You always make it better than me.’
‘Of course. It takes years of practice.’
‘I have years.’
‘Hah. Not enough. I also bought some cakes. You must be hungry … will you stay for supper?’
‘I have to get back.’
‘You do work too hard,’ he says, disappointed. ‘I hope they appreciate it.’
‘They seem to.’
‘They haven’t still got you buried away under Complaints?’
‘No, I have an office on the thirteenth floor.’
‘The thirteenth.’ Lawrence briefly affects a pose of respectful disbelief.
‘With a window.’
‘A window! Well, we are going up in the world.’
She leans in the doorway and eats with her hands. Catching the honeyed crumbs, watching him work. His movements are economical with experience. It is how she remembers him. Not here but at the Revenue. Not doing these small things, but what he cared for most. Keeping watch. Setting the record straight.
She remembers the way he worked. A kind, instinctual, and relentless man. When he was like that, lost in the investigation, he was the perfect inspector. People said so, and Anna still believes it. The very best.
Later he became other things. When his drinking became more extreme Lawrence could be cruel. His exactitude became unforgiving, little by little, and most of all to the illiterate or innumerate, the unrepresented, those clients least able to ask questions back. But it was Anna who was the first to notice it. It was Anna who was closest, after all. Everyone knew that, in the place where everyone knew everything. It was Anna they came to first, when the complaints began.
She can remember herself, too. A decade younger. Not the youngest prospect, nor the brightest, but talented, in an unassuming kind of way, and set to shadow her more talented senior. Close to him as a shadow. Learning what came to him by instinct. Letting herself be taught. Loving him, of course. It seemed inevitable that she should love him. She thinks this was something else he tried to teach her.
Love. Of course. It takes practice.
‘There!’ he says, pouring the coffee into small cups. For Anna he adds hot milk. As he turns she smiles, so that her face will show nothing else. ‘Alright?’
‘Perfect.’ She does not drink.
‘Why don’t we go into the study,’ he says, and they do. The desk lamp is on under its green glass hood. Outside the night is coming on.
‘Now tell me again,’ Lawrence says, settling back, ‘about your John Law,’ and Anna says nothing. Now it comes to it she isn’t sure she wants to talk about him, after all. She is still thinking about how strange it feels to be back here, in Lawrence’s place. There were times when she almost lived here. She is thinking of the sex. Of Lawrence’s skill as a lover, at once shocking and unsurprising. The passion of an old man. The appalling nights of failure, and the lovemaking when it came always fiercer, more desperate. The slack, warm musculature of his limbs.
It is a quiet room, this one, a natural study. She has always liked it, envied it, even. There are only the small or distant sounds of the mechanical clock. The singer floors away, singing piano scales.
‘Anna?’ says Lawrence, and she looks up.
‘Yes. There is an inconsistency.’
‘I see,’ he says, surprised. It is not what he expected to hear, though he recovers well. Anna finds both things reassuring. She has been thinking it is a mistake to have come, though she needed this, needed talk. And it is too late now.
She drinks the coffee. Her mouth fills with its fine bitterness.
‘So. What form does this inconsistency take?’
‘A deposit box.’
‘Containing what?’
‘Nothing really, the usual hardware. Gold, a number of platinum ingots. But they aren’t in his name, and they aren’t declared among his assets.’
‘Then among whose assets are they? The wife’s or the son’s?’
‘The son. Nathan Law.’
‘So. A vault into which funds are diverted, under the son’s name, with a suitably uncooperative financial institution,’ says Lawrence; and none of it is a question. Anna doesn’t ask him how he knows. It is because he does, because he has the talent to feel his way through money, that she is talking to him at all.
‘The Depository of the Gulf of Tartary,’ she says. On the desk, the clock ticks softly behind its steel face.
‘Perfect. And the Board chose you? Why not someone in corporate tax?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, although she thinks she does. Absently Lawrence taps his cup, as if there is something he is trying to put his finger on.
‘Clients have a tendency to talk to you, don’t they? You always had a talent for opening them up. Do you think that could be it?’
‘Maybe. Maybe it’s just because the discrepancies are in Law’s personal accounts. There’s no need to involve corporate inspectors.’
‘Nor to rock SoftMark’s boat any more than necessary. And how are they hidden, these discrepancies?’
Again she doesn’t answer. Now she has the chance to explain, she finds herself reluctant to do so. She leans forward, quizzical. It is no longer an issue of trust. It is more to do with a kind of possession. Of having Law to herself.
‘Anna?’ Lawrence peers down at her, his concern exaggerated, amused.
‘They’re hidden between numbers.’
‘What can you mean?’
‘I mean that Revenue figures are rounded up or down to the nearest cent. To consistently round the figures the wrong way is fraud. Most people wouldn’t have enough money to make it worth their while. It doesn’t make much difference to us either, and if it does – if a few figures are rounded the wrong way – the amount written off is more than balanced out by the time we save in processing. Bu
t Law cares. The greater the transaction, the more accurately it is likely to be calculated, to the tenth or hundredth of a cent. And Law lives in a daily world of huge transactions. His fractions are worth millions. Last year his wealth was estimated to be greater than that of the billion poorest people on earth. Did you hear that?’
‘I try my best not to notice these things.’
‘If Law stakes ten billion on an overnight fall of a hundredth of a percentage point in the electric livre, he becomes a millionaire all over again – that’s why he cares. And his annual accounts contain millions of expenses, disbursements, percentile profits, fractional commissions. Now it turns out there are also millions more than there need to be. His accounts are designed to generate as many divisions as possible. Finally every loss is rounded up, every profit rounded down. Because the fractions in the calculations are so small, no one has ever noticed. The figures have always been below the threshold where searches were designed to pick up errors. Two months ago, a new computer program was installed which examines individual entries down to one thousandth of a soft –’
‘Please.’ Lawrence puts out a hand. ‘Stop. I’d almost forgotten how inane money can be. How long has this been going on?’
‘Thirteen years. The Revenue has been deciding what to do for weeks.’
‘And lo, they decided on you. The Board smiles on you, mortal.’ He gets up, looks at her sharply, goes to the window. ‘How much?’
‘Hardware to the value of four million. The compound tax is three times that.’
‘I see,’ he says again. And then nothing else. He stands with his back to Anna, looking out at the Grand Union canal. She sees that it has begun to rain steadily outside, fine as net curtains. Upstairs the singer has stopped singing.
‘You’re surprised,’ she says.
‘Not that he would want more.’ He shrugs. ‘But yes, I am.’
‘Why?’
‘For one thing, that it should be such a small amount.’ He turns back to her. ‘Not to you or me. But I find it curious that he should take a chance with his life for that. Because his life must be very precious to him, don’t you think?’
‘Yes.’
‘The rich tend to value their lives very highly. Have you found any other undeclared vaults and accounts, stashed away?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I rather imagine you will. Four million in Soft Gold?’
‘Yes.’
‘Six million dollars. You know I still think in paper, it’s how I know I’m getting old. Four million must be nothing to him. How long will it take him to make that?’
‘Thirty-four hours,’ says Anna. She thinks: and seven minutes. Because she has already thought of this peculiarity. She has accrued the salient facts. To make legitimately what he has secreted away will take John Law less than two days. Awake or asleep; in terms of money it makes no discernible difference. ‘Is there anything else?’
‘Certainly,’ says Lawrence. ‘There is the fact that the Revenue should have discovered this at all. With all due respect to you and Her Venerable Majesty’s highly trained servants. But this is John Law, the inventor of perfect money.’
He is gesturing, now, as he talks. It makes him younger, Anna thinks. Just for an evening, he is doing what he loves. She thinks: I have given him that. She thinks: I am thinking of the wrong man. She watches him sit down, the desk lamp firing his face with light, hardly able to contain himself.
‘If he wanted to avoid his dues, why would he not use cryptography? The immovable inspectors meet the unbreakable code. But no. Instead he attempts to hide this shabby business with false accounting. It’s such a primitive way to go about things. It’s almost pathetic. What else did the Board tell you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing? Well, they have always relied rather heavily on the dignity of silence. Anna, do take care, won’t you?’ says Lawrence. And sixteen miles across London, John Law looks up from his night’s work at nothing, distracted by it only for a second, before he goes back to the blank white page.
For two more days she studies him. She suspects that she is as ready as she will ever be, that by the law of diminishing returns, if nothing else, she must be learning less with each hour she spends. All the same, she studies.
There is no end to it. She moves through accounts in old money and Soft Gold, and online – there is no off-line, anymore – through sites and search engines, realms and domains. It is a world where she feels submerged. Half deafened, half blind, her hands pale and slow in a world of uncompromising quickness. It is as if she is waiting for something.
On the last day of the month she writes to him. It is still early, her office is barely halved with light. The electronic mail is bright as stained glass. She addresses the Cryptographer in the language of the Revenue, which is old, stilted, and relentlessly precise. She asks Mister Jonathan Keir Law to contact her. She asks for his primary business receipts over the last three years, his full-time and part-time staff lists and share dealings, and a meeting at his earliest convenience. She tells him that he is under investigation. Nothing else. After all, she is under no obligation to reveal the strengths of her position, or its weaknesses.
The reply comes within hours. Not from the Cryptographer, but from his personal accountants, a firm based in Philadelphia and Brussels. A Margaret Mutevelian informs Anna that Mister Law is in the United Kingdom. That he will be glad to submit his records immediately, if it is convenient. That he can meet her in five days, if she wishes, at his place of business. And as Anna reads this, the monitor bent towards her, her own bent head reflected in the glass, she realises that she is not ready, after all. That perhaps someone who feels as ordinary as her will never be ready for someone like him.
‘Anna Moore,’ Anna says to the door with no name. ‘To see Mister Law.’
‘Law,’ the voice on the line repeats. Politely but neutrally, as if it has never heard this one syllable.
‘John Law.’
‘Yes,’ says the voice. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have any record of another external appointment today.’
‘Can you check again? Three o’clock. I’m here to see him at three.’
There is a faint sound, the crustacean scuttle of computer keys. ‘What company do you represent, madam?’
‘The Inland Revenue.’
‘The Revenue,’ says the voice, lightening. ‘Oh yes. One moment, please.’
She looks away. Lunchtime traffic crawls towards Farringdon. She sees that a cyclo has overturned up by Hatton Garden, spilling bright-green plastic crates. It is an old-fashioned winter for the day, at least. The light seems preternaturally clear and sharp. The cold has put colour in Anna’s cheeks. It makes her seem younger, although this she does not see.
There is enough time for a germ of anxiety to unfurl itself inside her. The old fear that what she does is more than what she is. The Revenue. Oh yes. Then the door opens behind her, and she turns to see a room full of flowers and a small man with large pores, a surprising moustache and an apologetically sweet smile.
‘He’s downstairs,’ he says. ‘I’ll take you. I’m Terence. Sorry about the flowers.’
It is like walking into a wedding or a funeral. The reception desk is buried under a slew of lilies, maidenhair ferns and delivery forms. The scent of bouquets fills the long room. ‘Your card,’ Terence asks, and Anna hands it to him, a sliver of black lacquer embossed with her golden fingerprint. He uncovers a SoftMark laptop among the lilies, inserts the card into a slot. ‘Thumb?’ he says, and she presses it against the screen, feeling the invisible resistance of static.
‘Is something happening?’ she asks, and Terence shrugs.
‘Nothing special.’ He hands the card back to her. ‘Nothing in particular. You know,’ he says, and beams up at her, as if she does. ‘This way, please.’
There are windows at the far end of the room, a deep courtyard, fountains. They reach them before Anna can think of anything she needs to say.
&n
bsp; ‘Has Mister Law’s accountant arrived?’
‘Mister Law’s accountants have been here for some time.’ Terence motions her into a waiting elevator. ‘There are a number of visitors here today. Have you been here before, Inspector?’
‘Anna.’ They start to descend as she says it. Her voice jumps with the velocity. ‘Just Anna.’
‘Of course. You’re not the police, are you, after all?’
The floors pass slowly. Basement Three, Basement Four. The odour of lilies follows them down. Anna thinks of Asphodel Nine. The dream of cleaning potatoes. The text of a secret.
‘I have been here once.’
‘I knew it,’ says Terence. The cubicle walls are lacquered to a finish. He winks at their reflections. ‘It’s the computers, you see. SoftMark computers never forget a face. Have you met Mister Law? Do you know him?’
‘Not really,’ she says. And then, ‘No.’
‘Everybody says that.’ Terence is perpetually smiling. ‘They say it just like that. Here we are now. Basement Six.’
The doors slide open. Beyond them is a great hall, a space of acres or hectares that Anna has seen only once but dreamed of many times, her mind embellishing it with a resonance and substance it does not quite possess. There is an echoing sound – a hubbub – that she associates with stadia and termini. The money hall is full of people and laughter, the clash of their voices. The crowd is so large and the scene so unexpected – Anna has readied herself for something so different – that her stomach lurches with a phobic sensation of panic. She is suddenly acutely aware of her work clothes, plain and handsome, and the briefcase at her side. The floor is black as far as she can see.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Happening?’ Terence looks surprised, as if he has only just noticed they are not alone. ‘Oh. These will be new investors.’
‘But what are they doing?’
He looks around, as if to check. ‘Just as you see. They come to see how the company ticks. Or they come to get drunk and tell their friends about it later. But everyone needs investors, even Mister Law. No man is an island, even one who owns islands. I’ll find him for you, if you’ll just wait here. Anna? Inspector?’