by Stan Mason
’Well there’s no sense in waiting until the bomb goes off, is there? And, if you don’t mind, I’d like fifty per cent of the fee paid in advance.’
Rigby paused to review the offer for a moment. ’If you’ve solved those cases on the Continent, you must be very fluent in a number of languages,’ he posed.
’That’s correct,’ replied O’Keefe. ’I speak about ten languages fluently.’
’Ten!’ echoed Rigby with a red warning light flashing in his brain. ’You speak ten languages well enough to risk your own life each time!’
’It sounds to me as though you’re lacking faith, Mr. Rigby.’
’Okay... give me a run-down on the conversation you had with the criminals in Italy... in Italian!’
There was a pause at the other end of the line and then came the assent. ’In Italian... okay... in Italian!’ O’Keefe cleared his throat for the onslaught and then gave it all he had. ‘Cumma outta there! Cumma outta thatta banca you rotten banditos you! If you no cumma outta there I blow you rottena heads offa. An’ de Mafia will getta yah too!’
The banker held the telephone woodenly to his ear unable to believe what he had heard. ‘That’s the Italian, is it?’ he managed to say half in amusement.
‘You got it. Frightened the criminals out of their wits.’
‘I’m not surprised. Would you do the German version as you did at the Deutsche Bank?’
There was another silent pause as the man prepared himself once more. ‘Schweinhund!’ he barked down the line, ‘Kommen sie outta die banking hall or you vill be zent ot a conzentration camp! You vill obey my orders... do you hear? Ve are confiscating your house und arresting your family. We haff vays of makin you... ’
‘That’s fine, O’Keefe!’ interrupted Rigby at the end of his tether He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the pathetic performance. ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you!’
‘But you haven’t got my number,’ bleated O’Keefe.
‘Exactly!’ snapped the banker curtly, replacing the receiver into its cradle and staring dumbly at Betty Brewer. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he told her as if in a state of shock. ‘Don’t ask me to explain because you wouldn’t believe it either., They say there are more lunatics in the streets than there are in the asylums. That was one of them... and damned expensive at ten thousand pounds!’
His secretary shrugged off the words as though he had failed to communicate. She was hardly interested in rhetoric. ‘I’ll order some coffee and sandwiches,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want to find myself in Sandra’s bad books for letting you go hungry.’
‘Good idea,’ he muttered, running his tongue over his lips. ‘Did you manage to contact Ben Howard?’
‘He’s on his way up.’
‘Good girl! I’ll let him take the rest of the crank calls.’
The telephone rang on Betty Brewer’s desk and she answered it swiftly. ‘Your wife’s on line one.’
Rigby extracted another cigarette from his gold case and lit it, deliberately stalling for time. ‘I thought we agreed to call her Sandra.,’ he chided after inhaling deeply.
‘It’s not Sandra,’ he was told smartly, ‘it’s your wife!’
He adjusted his thoughts for a few moments to coincided with the situation. The woman was a thorn in his side, baiting him, annoying him... being a pest all the time. His initial reaction was to shot at her violently so that she would contact him directly any more but on reflection he realised that it was better to hold his temper while matters between them were critical. ‘Yes, Diane,’ he answered curtly, beginning to feel his stomach tense up inside him.
‘Hello, dear husband,’ she greeted warmly. ‘I’ve been thinking about our conversation earlier... ’
‘Don’t tell me!’ he fired at her cynically. ‘You not only want the proceeds of my house but the lease of my apartment as well. And the contents of my miserable bank account... and the short change in my pocket!’
She was taken aback by the savageness of his attack but remained calm. ‘I think you ought to hear what I have to say first before taking off at a tangent,’ she chided. ‘It could be to your advantage.’
‘I must be frank with you, Diane, Anything other than abuse would be to my advantage. You’ve been sniping me, cutting me and riling me for as long as I can remember. I don’t understand your reasoning any more and I’m not going to be your whipping boy!’
‘Let’s not go round in circles, John. It won’t do either of us any good.’ She paused to compose herself. ‘I want to apologise for this morning. I was out of line.’
This time it was his turn to remain silent and worried thoughts began to appear at the back of his mind. The woman was capricious but her apology made him extremely suspicious. Perhaps there was another man in her life and she now wanted to marry him. No... that was out of the question. She wouldn’t attack him on the telephone in the morning and change her mind in the afternoon. ‘You don’t have to apologise to me. Not any more,’ he countered, shrugging his shoulders to his secretary who pretended that she was not taking any interest in the side of the conversation she was able to hear.
‘I acted badly, John. I admit it.’
‘Well this is a new turn of events to say the least’ he uttered in surprise. The tenseness eased in his stomach but he still remained suspicious. ‘I never wanted to be your enemy. What’s the problem?’
‘There’s no problem,’ she returned quickly. ‘I just thought I’d ring to apologise. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’
‘Does this mean you’re not going to press for the proceeds of the house?’
‘I wouldn’t be ringing if I still felt malice, would I?’
‘Are you serious?’ He was stunned at the sudden change of attitude towards him. ‘You’ve not been drinking or taking drugs, have you?’
Her laughter could be heard loudly over the telephone. ‘Oh, John! Sometimes you can be so naïve. I love you when you talk like that!’
He jibbed at her terminology but made no comment. As far as he was concerned, the woman was going out of her mind. ‘What about the divorce? Do you still feel the same way about it?’
Instinctively, he knew that he wasn’t going to win the battle but there was no harm in trying.
‘I haven’t had time to give it sufficient thought,’ she lied. ‘But you never know.’
‘Don’t tease, Diane,’ he riposted testily. ‘Just say ‘no’ if that’s what you mean... then we’ll both know where we stand.’
‘I called you to apologise not to submit to a total surrender. I’m not giving up the things I want just to suit your book!’
‘The things you want?’ he repeated slowly.
‘Why don’t we have dinner together one evening, then we can talk it over in depth. There are other options you know.’
He began to feel the tenseness rising inside him again as his blood-pressure started to surge on an upward path. There was something sinister about the conversation that he cared not to think about. ‘What other options? What are you talking about, Diane?’
She deliberately made him wait for the answer. ’I think we ought to talk about that in person. Not on the telephone.’
’What are you up to?’
’I miss you,’ she told him sincerely, lowering her voice so that it trembled slightly. ’I’m certain that somewhere beneath those enamelled layers of your life there’s a lot of feeling for me.’ She paused for a while before venturing forth again. ’Well say something!’
His mind searched for an appropriate reply. ’You want me to say that one doesn’t fall in love with a woman and live with her for many years without feeling something deeply for her for ever,’ he rattled off to humour her.
’Precisely. After all those years of marriage, there must be something still between us. Don’t you a
gree?’
‘What do you want, Diane?’ He enquired at the thought of her taunting him in this way.
‘Why don’t we forget about the house and start all over again... just you and me. A honeymoon in Bournemouth at the same hotel as last time or a week in Paris. We can begin again with all our differences settled. We may be older but I believe we can set off some of those sparks again. Let’s have dinner together this evening and talk it over.’
‘You’re incredible!’ he gasped. ‘You were the one who made us separate! We’re not compatible any longer, you told me. Now you want to reverse it all. Don’t you understand what’s happened in the last few months? You’ve become lonely and have changed your mind but I got on with my life. I’m involved with another woman and it’s eating you like a cancer.’
‘Don’t fool yourself, John,’ she retorted angrily. ‘She’s far too young for you to secure a personal relationship. Can’t you see that? Think about the age difference for a start. With you and me we could have a very settled life of leisure and happiness.’
‘We had that before... until you made us separate!’
‘Every marriage faces a crisis at one time or another. Now we have a second change and we ought to take it.’
You must be quite sick at the way things turned out, my dear wife. That’s the luck of the draw in life’s great lottery. There ware winners and losers... and you’re one of the losers. One thing’s for certain... our life together is over for good. When you told me you wanted a separation because you didn’t love me any more, that was the end of it for me. It really hurt!’
‘They were just words, John. Just words!’
‘I’m not really concerned, he rattled vociferously. ‘You drove us apart and now you won’t release me. Has anyone told you how tedious you are?’
He heard her sigh at the other end of the line. ‘You were never any good for me,’ she muttered bitterly. ‘Never any good!’
‘You’ve really got to get it through your head that it’s over between us. There’s no getting away from it.’
‘When we were married, it was for ever too!’
‘I don’t want you to be part of my life any more, Diane. I can’t say it more plainer than that! If you give me a divorce, okay. If not, you’ll have to answer for your misgivings in hell!’ There was no sound from his wife and he became concerned for a moment that his message had not been heard. ‘Are you still there?’
‘I’ll make you sorry for what you just said,’ she snarled angrily. ‘I’ll make you very sorry, John Rigby! Just you wait and see!’
He was faced with a bitter prolonged argument but this was quickly settled as the line went dead. She had hung up on him and the whole matter was forced back into the melting-pot again... the divorce, the house, and Sandra! Apologies by either of them were useless at this stage and he was convince that she would never let him go. She had a fixation that while they were legally bound, there would always be a chance for reconciliation. However she was fooling herself. Her folly had led her to the brink of distress and she was being forced to pay for it with loneliness and suffering which she had inflicted upon herself.
Betty Brewer tried to capture his attention by waving a telephone receiver from the vantage point of her desk. ‘Wiz Prescott’s on line two,’ she called out, trying to penetrate his thoughts. ‘On line two!’
He returned to reality and sat upright in his chair to pick up the receiver. ‘Hi, Wiz, what can I do for you?’
‘I thought you were the one who contacted me!’
‘Of course... sorry! Computer fraud. I’ve a meeting with the Old Man this afternoon. Can you let me have some information of value please?’
Prescott drew on his vast reservoir of knowledge. ‘Only a few big cases have come to light so far. Two in the United States and one in Amsterdam. Most companies prefer their shareholders not to know about it. A big cover-up situation, if you get my drift.’
‘Anything in the banking line?’
‘Hm... one in New York. A manager began systematically to rob dormant accounts at the savings banks where he worked. A little from each one over a period of eighteen months. Creamed off over a million dollars before they discovered what he was doing.’
‘How did the auditors catch him?’
‘Huh... if it was up to the auditors, he would have got away with a billion dollars and they still wouldn’t have found it. He was caught because the police raided his bookmakers and found his name as one of the heavy punters. They traced it back and found that he was a banker with a modest monthly salary. And then it all came to light.’
‘Didn’t the bank have any idea at all?’
‘Not a clue! How could they? He was just taking small amounts from each dormant account which hadn’t been used by customers for years.’
Rigby shook his head sadly. It was a deplorable state of affairs to consider that computer criminals might be in the bank, fleecing it at this very moment and no one had the faintest idea that it was happening. ‘Any other types of fraud concerning banks?’ he asked with concern.
‘Plenty of them,’ replied Prescott full of self-assurance. ‘Some normal, others weird.’
‘Give me a weird one.’
‘Some of the theft is small. There are cases of people walking into computer centres and removing valuable magnetic tapes and discs rather than criminals writing complicated fraud programs. Simple supervision is far more effective than elaborate investigation.’
‘Do you have a list of the main security checks needed for computer system safety?’
‘I could fax some across to you in fifteen minutes. Would that be all right?’
‘Look, Wiz, I think it would be better if you brought it with you to the Old Man’s office at two-thirty. Cornelius Strangeway and I have a meeting there with him at that time. You could contribute to the discussion. I mean what I know about computer fraud could be put into a thimble and lost.’
‘I’ll come only if you’ll allow an interface between me and the Old Man. You see, he always plays it straight down the line whereas sometimes I have to break the rules to get results. We have a kind of love/hate relationship these days, Get my meaning?’
Rigby smiled at the words of the other man, warming towards him immediately. ‘Don’t worry, Wiz, you’re in good company. The Old Man and I have already crossed swords. See you at two-thirty.’
He turned to his secretary and motioned for her to produce her shorthand pad. ‘In case I forget, just make a note that Wiz Prescott’s to join me in Mr. MacDonald’s office. Thank Heaven’s the bank’s still got someone with character, guts and spirit!’
The door opened and a waitress from the Refreshment Club wheeled in a trolley bearing a flask, two cups and two plates of sandwiches. Betty Brewer rose quickly and received the refreshments gratefully.
‘Don’t eat these too quickly or you’ll give yourself heartburn,’ she warned him like a mother, placing a plate of sandwiches in front of him and pouring him a cup of tea. Before he could begin to enjoy the nourishment, however, there was a knock on the door and Ben Howard entered the room.
‘Ben Howard!’ greeted Rigby exultantly, grateful for the man’s assistance. ‘How are things in Business Development Division these days? No... don’t answer that. I haven’t the time. I see you’ve grown a moustache since we parted.’
Howard touched the hair beneath his nose sensitively. ‘You’ve got to look the part in Business Development Division,’ he began earnestly. ‘Word has it you’ve a real humdinger on your hands. A hold-up at Croydon branch. It’s going through the grape-vine like wildfire.’
‘Strange how bad news travels so fast. Yes, it’s the reason I need your help this afternoon. I assume you’ll be available for an hour or so?’
‘No problem,’ replied the junior eagerly.
The young man was
clearly excited at helping his old boss with a matter of such prime importance. Rigby decided to take him down a peg before the action started in case the man accommodated ideas of his own.
‘It’s all very simple, Ben. All you need to do is to answer these red telephones if either of them rings. The operators will put calls through if they have a connection with Croydon branch. Have you seen the front page of the Gazette?’
‘No, not yet,’ admitted the younger man.
The senior executive waved the newspaper in front of him. ’Here it is. The man’s unidentified at present. We want to trace anyone connected with him. It’s vital... do you understand?’
’Do I have carte-blanche to say what I like?’
’Just play it by the rules, Ben, will you? We have a serious problem on our hands. Do you want a sandwich? At that moment, one of the red telephones rang and Rigby moved towards it, stopping at the last moment to motion his assistant to deal with the call. ’You may as well start now. Good luck!’
Howard hesitated for a few moments allowing the instrument to continue ringing before he ventured to answer it. ‘How can I help you?’ He listened for a short while making a few noises of accord. Then he took closer order, uttering a variety of sounds as the conversation lengthened. ‘Can you be certain of that?’ he enquired. ‘I see. Can I have your name and address? Ah..ha... okay. Thank you for calling.’ He replaced the receiver and stared at the others. ‘Waste of time,’ he uttered dolefully. ‘A woman was robbed three months ago and believe that the two men in the photograph in the newspaper were the robbers.’
‘Don’t be disappointed, Ben,’ encouraged Rigby, trying to raise the man’s morale. ‘We’ll get lots of crank calls but one of them will be different. That’s the one we want. We’ll just have to wait patiently.’