by Allan Frost
Poor me, indeed! Tom Bleak hadn’t devoted the whole of his working life cheating customers just to let a fortune slip out of his fingers by trusting Frank Fiddlit.
He sloped out of the inn without attracting attention, although Sarah wondered later how an empty tumbler found its way onto the table.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Could the inn have a ghost or ‘presence’? No, not possible. Ghosts don’t exist unless you’ve had a few drinks, and she was quite sober.
It was well after midnight when an extraordinary meeting of the Priorton Plotters met at the office of Fiddlit & Wynne. Conversation was heated so there was no need to light the fire.
‘We’re wathting our time! We’ll never thucctheed!’ Neville Strubble buried his head in his hands.
‘All that money just slipping away! Fiddlit, you’re useless!’ yelled Tom Bleak.
‘Calm down, both of you! Keep your heads! I told you, there’s nothing to worry about!’
‘Tho you thay! We’re not thtupid!’
‘There could be hundreds of claimants!’
‘Yeth, hundredth! Jutht becauthe of that thodding advert.’
‘Will you two shut up!’ Fiddlit was well and truly hot under the collar, especially since he’d had to fork out for another suit at Oxfam to replace the one his pipe destroyed. Keep calm. Be reasonable. ‘Even if Augustus and Elizabeth bred like rabbits, so what? No one has ever claimed the estate, and nobody ever will! It’s four hundred years ago, for God’s sake!’
So much for keeping calm, but what do you expect when you have to deal with a Doubting Thomas and a Nervous Neville?
‘We thould never have gone to court!’ said Strubble.
‘Don’t be so pathetic! We had to get a ruling to wind up the estate, remember? If we don’t get that, all our plans will be scuppered!’
‘It wath a bad idea,’ Stubble muttered lamely.
‘And how do you propose to pay off your gambling debts?’ the solicitor asked pointedly. ‘Get a newspaper round?’
‘That’th being thilly.’
‘It’s you who’s being silly! How many more times do I have to tell you that nothing can go wrong? This Eason fellow is only interested in how Priorton Hall fits in with research he’s doing on the Gunpowder Plot. Not in the history of the family!’
‘That’s not how it sounded to me in the pub,’ said Bleak.
‘And didn’t he say it would be impossible to track down any Wilton descendants who happen to have the misfortune to be alive now? Especially if they changed their surname. Have you any idea how difficult it is to trace your family back beyond the 1700s? It’s well nigh impossible. I once handled Probate for someone who needed to do just that.’
‘What happened?’
‘He finished up owing me more in fees than the estate was worth. The point is, Eason won’t be able to prove a link between Augustus Wilton and anyone alive today.’
‘You can’t be thure,’ said Strubble defiantly.
Don’t lose your temper!
‘Look, Neville,’ Fiddlit said condescendingly. ‘If Mr Eason wants to investigate, let him. I’ve been in this game long enough to know it would take months, years even, to prove a link. Don’t you think enquiries were made at the time Augustus disappeared in the first place? Of course they were. And what did they find?’
‘Nothing,’ whispered Strubble.
‘Bleak? Have you anything to add?’
‘I think we should dispose of this historian before he discovers too much. I can arrange an . . . accident,’ offered Bleak, trying to judge the solicitor’s reaction. Strubble’s didn’t count.
‘Oh, so we’re supposed to resort to violence, are we?’
‘It’s just that I have one or two, er, acquaintances who have special talents and are always willing to earn an extra bob or two.’
‘I’m sure you have. Am I to assume I’ve represented them once or twice in the past?’
‘You may have done.’
‘And therefore known to the police?’
‘Probably.’
‘And you’ll expect me to defend them in court when they get caught.’
‘They won’t get caught.’
‘They can’t be exactly members of Mensa if they’ve already allowed themselves to be arrested! Can they?’
‘What’th Mentha?’ asked Strubble.
‘Oh, shut up, you moron!’ retorted Bleak. ‘Can’t you see we’re trying to make sure nothing goes wrong with the plan?’
‘Well, you’re not exactly helping much, are you?’ said Fiddlit, exasperated with them both. ‘Advocating murder! My God, all we’re trying to do is make an honest fortune. Anyone would think you both wanted to go to prison!’
‘If it’th honetht, why are we behaving like crookth?’
‘Strubble,’ said Fiddlit, whose patience was about to reach breaking point. ‘Be a good boy. Just keep your mouth shut and your brain disengaged.’
‘So, no heavies, then,’ said Bleak. He sounded very disappointed.
‘How many more times do I have to spell it out! There is nothing to discover at Priorton Hall! Don’t you think I’ve checked? Eason’s only interested in the Gunpowder Plot! Do you think I’d let him wander around the Hall if there were any danger? No, of course not! Just trust me! I’m a solicitor!’
VI
Tom Bleak returned to his heavily mortgaged detached luxury residence on the fashionable outskirts of Wellingley. He hadn’t built the house, of course; he wouldn’t want to live in something guaranteed to collapse three weeks after the warranty expired.
Unfortunately, buying the house with its Georgian-style frontage, paviored drive, large conservatory and extensive garden had stretched his lines of credit rather more than he’d expected. Furthermore, additional expenses involved with the scheme to build the housing estate at Priorton Hall meant that he’d had to take another high-interest, short-term loan from the very man he’d helped set up in business two years ago. Even though Elias Dolphin, a loan shark in the worse sense of the phrase, was currently taking a few months’ respite at Winson Green, his shoal of dedicated enforcers collected repayments, without fail, every month. Needless to say, Dolphin’s fishy case was yet another of Fiddlit’s never-ending list of unsuccessful briefs.
Bleak had managed to keep up with the payments, so far without too much difficulty, but he begrudged paying extortionate amounts in interest. The six month delay imposed by Judge Foot-Wart had thrown all his finely-assessed calculations into disarray but, provided the scheme came to fruition and building work got under way before the end of the year, he should just about keep the creditors happy and his head above water.
He sat, clutching another brandy (a Hennesy, not like the one supplied earlier by Frank Fiddlit which tasted like it had recently left a petrol refinery) and puffed a cigar. His tired thoughts turned to his ex-wife Barbara.
She’d been very faithful during their two year marriage; faithful not to him but rather one of his long-suffering customers who came to the house every day to pester him when a promised eight week extension job took Bleak and the defatigable Gerry Bilt fifty-six weeks to complete, and then not even to the full specification.
Barbara, it transpired, formed a very close, sympathetic relationship with the man and eventually ran off with him. To cap it all, she’d even sued Tom for a few thousand pounds alimony which Judge Foot-Wart took great pleasure in agreeing. He felt sure it was solely because the video evidence in the earlier case stuck vividly in the judge’s mind and affected his judgement. So much for British justice!
It would be a very different story when the money came rolling in from Priorton Hall exclusive estate homes. We’d soon see if the judge and all his blue-blood cronies, with their stiff collars and upper lips, thought Bleak was beneath them then, oh, yes!
He let his eyes wander around the lounge. Souvenirs from far-flung exotic islands like Majorca and Teneriffe sat silently gathering dust on shelves or hung from nails in the wal
l. Tom Bleak believed in giving the right impression. Successful businessmen always displayed trophies from expensive holidays; the fact that he’d never ventured further than Barmouth on the Welsh coast was irrelevant. He’d seen enough travel programmes to give plausible itineraries.
None of the potential customers visiting his home guessed these souvenirs came from a bric-a-brac stall on Priorton market where the art of keen negotiation resulted in purchasing the whole stock for a little under nine pounds. The stall holder, who had a twitchy eye and nervous tic, seemed quite happy to offload everything and beat a hasty retreat. Nice chap. Seen his photo on TV since, possibly on Crimewatch. Or Watchdog. Whichever.
Being a Self Made Man carried many responsibilities, not least in making sure he had enough cash in his pocket to pay Gerry Bilt and whoever else happened to be working on any particular site at any given time. There was one thing he could rely on with Gerry, and that was he never swore. At least, not as far as Tom knew. It gave potential customers a good impression, almost acting as a counter-balance to his own smarmy way of talking. Gerry understood Tom’s approach very well; say all the right things, make sure you added one or two comments like, ‘We’ll have to see whether anything unexpected arises after the job starts’, always a good way to cover additional work and plant a seed that the final bill could (as opposed to will) be slightly larger than the initial quotation.
Fortunately, most customers have no idea how much materials cost nor whether a bathroom suite or accessories are actually of the quality (or even the brand) specified in a detailed breakdown of work. Having charged for up-market goods, Tom would tell Gerry to get something cheaper but which looked very similar. Gerry made a few extra pounds for himself by buying goods of even poorer quality but that didn’t matter provided the customer didn’t realise until after the job had been completed and the final invoice paid. It was very rare for the deception to be discovered.
Using other tradesmen (a loose term devised to cover anyone who could wield a tool, look as though they knew what they were talking about and remembered to tut and shake their head at the right moment) was another area where extra cash could be made. The surreal world of bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers and electricians resembled a Medieval closed-shop Guild; they all seemed to know or be related to each other, half of them had various lengths of time to run on their drink-driving bans or had just been released from or about to begin a prison sentence, usually for violent behaviour.
Without exception, each and every one disappeared from site soon after opening time. Pubs acted as ad hoc employment agencies (rather like the labour fairs held in towns throughout the country until the late nineteenth century) as well as places where common labourers could preserve the ancient British tradition of boasting and magnifying their prowess while rapidly falling under the influence of alcohol.
A common practice is to take a deposit for a future job and use the money to make up the shortfall on a current one, where the deposit has been largely frittered away in the pub or at a bookie’s. Unless the customer understands the way in which these reprobates function and takes steps to amass incontrovertible proof, the simple answer to adverse criticism and threats of court action is to walk off the job, thus leaving the client with unfinished work which no self-respecting cowboy would touch with a barge pole unless induced by an even greater incentive.
Life is full of winners and losers and, provided householders recognise their position as losers, construction workers are content to accept their long-established roles as winners. Such an erudite philosophy is what keeps Tom Bleak in the forefront of his chosen profession.
Chosen profession.
Sounds rather grand, doesn’t it? Actually, it was the result of encouragement from his father who’d advised him in no uncertain terms that ‘you’d better get a job, sorry, you’re not sponging off me’.
As it happened, Mr Bleak Senior was going through a bad patch at the time; none of his reliable contacts wanted to work with him until he’d paid money owed to a brickie who’d helped him out when cash was scarce (his wife had run off with an aggrieved customer, taking all the savings underneath a floorboard with her: it’s surprising how the experiences of one generation have a habit of repeating themselves on the next).
So, without knowing what the future held and armed with an ‘O’ level pass in woodwork, Tom Bleak embarked on a career as general dogsbody in his father’s business. Little by little, he learned everything there is to know about sounding plausible, obtaining deposits and making excuses. It was nothing less than a stroke of genius to form a limited company; the magistrate whose signature was needed on the Companies House application form was one of Tom’s clients whom he discovered in bed with an Austrian au pair while his wife was away at her mother’s. Asking for a signature on an official document is not exactly blackmail.
Being a company director not only sounded impressive in the world of cowboy commerce but also enabled Tom to enhance the various scams he had developed over the years. He felt happier knowing that, if everything went pear-shaped, he could legally wind up the company and start again under a different name without losing any of his hard-earned assets. As it turned out, the general public and even government departments regard limited companies as being somehow safer to deal with than sole traders and Tom was rather taken aback to receive invitations to tender for building contracts. He hadn’t expected to find people clambering for his services.
Naturally, he made mistakes before he learned how to reword the exact phraseology of penalty clauses to his advantage, a facet of job-seeking which stood him in good stead with unwary householders as well as councils and other businesses.
He could give the impression of carrying the weight of the world’s troubles on his shoulders, struggling to satisfy clients despite personal adversity. He’d forgotten how many times he’d used his mother’s ill health and death as an excuse for delays; she must have been buried some twenty or thirty times over the past five years. As a reliable excuse, it took some beating.
Tom even devised a sheet of excuses ranging from his mother’s death to helping the police track down a driver who almost killed a three year old child playing on a roadside verge; Tom, needless to say, was the only witness and therefore felt obliged to put his business responsibilities in abeyance until he’d done all he could to help the authorities.
All he has to do is put a copy of the Excuse Sheet with the customer’s other papers and tick each one off when they are used. He’ll regard it as a personal victory when he manages to tick every box before a job is finished. The list is constantly growing; Tom keeps a Post-It note pad in his pocket to jot down new inventions or when he overhears a trade acquaintance boasting about a unique personal calamity. There’s more to project management than meets the eye.
Tom cannot say no to any job, irrespective of its size or complexity. He’s a strong believer that everything’s possible. After so many years in the business, he has a rough idea how much materials cost and approximately how long the work will take. He has the ability to make a rapid calculation, double the result and add a further twenty percent ‘for contingencies’. It’s a well known fact that, the higher the quote, the better the chances are of winning the contract. People always assume a low quote means a poor quality job.
Yes, he’d done well for himself, had Tom. OK, so keeping creditors at bay was a constant headache because, despite an inbred reluctance to part with hard-conned cash, keeping suppliers and subcontractors happy was essential to the flow of money coming in.
However, the recent court cases involving his wife and her lover had knocked quite a hole in his reserves; both had been followed by an unwarranted suspicion of his ability and severe doubts about his self-promoted reputation (hitherto enhanced by a folder full of spurious references and photographs of desirable properties in no way remotely connected to Bleak Homes Limited, which no one ever bothered to check).
Nevertheless, there was no way in which Tom Bleak would forego
those few luxuries he enjoyed so much: a good brandy or passable whisky and an expensive cigar.
He blew one final smoke ring towards the ceiling and stubbed the remainder of the cigar on the arm of his leatherette chair. He didn’t realise the ash tray had fallen onto the carpet and cursed as the unmistakable smell of toxic fumes assailed his nostrils.
He refilled his glass, picked up the ash tray and lit another cigar before kicking off his shoes. Surely there must be more to life than the shallow image of respectability presented to an undiscerning public? Was he really happy with his lot? Probably not. He was getting tired of constantly ducking and diving; he felt sure the constant pressure was the cause of the pains in his chest. Could be indigestion, of course, but there was always the threat of a heart attack or liver failure.
And he wasn’t getting any younger. That was, he believed, the reason why finding another woman to drape over his arm at unmissable social events (like comedians’ night at the Royal British Legion) was more difficult than it used to be. In fact, he and Barbara married only because she thought she’d been made pregnant after losing control during a heavy drinking bout at the Just One More Tavern near Priorton Hall.
Ah! Barbara! She’d had traits he couldn’t quite understand. Like honesty. Hadn’t she told him on their wedding day that he wasn’t the most handsome catch and she was only doing it for their impending child? Even when the pregnancy proved to be false, she’d remained faithful for the rest of their married life until that prat came along and spoiled everything. He’d given her everything a wife could want: new washing machine, tumble dryer, microwave and cheap plastic jewellery. Was she grateful? No.
Tom sighed and took another slug. Perhaps he should try being honest with folk. That was what some rival builders seemed to do, even though their profits couldn’t be as high as his. On the other hand, they always appeared happy, had wives and children. Never ended up in court. There must be something to be said for clean-living and reliability. God knows, he’d tried deceit and lies but maybe, just maybe, he ought to reconsider.