by Anne Baker
‘Mrs Parks is very happy to let him get on with the filing. It’s a routine chore and a pain if you can’t retrieve things when they’re wanted again. Why would he want to take that on?’
‘You’re saying he might be doing something he wants to hide?’
‘I’m just saying it’s unusual behaviour for a busy accountant.’
‘It is.’
Chloe watched Uncle Walter unlock a large drawer in his desk and take out a lot of files. She knew he kept senior staff files in there and that he personally controlled everything to do with them.
He lifted from the pile a file with the name Francis Lovell Clitheroe neatly printed on top, opened it up and pushed it over towards Chloe.
‘Because he’s drawing up the accounts and he’s fairly new here, it’s the obvious place to search for an answer. But I can’t see it and I’ve already looked several times. He’s very well qualified: a chartered accountant with a degree in economics. He should know what he’s doing.’
‘I see there’s a letter here from the Institute of Chartered Accountants confirming he is a member.’
‘He’d lost his certificates, but I took no chances when I took him on. I even did a police check to make sure he had no record.’
‘Really?’
‘He’s handling my money, Chloe.’
‘Age thirty-six.’ She frowned. ‘He looks younger than that. You’re not suspicious in any way about him?’
Her uncle gave her a wry smile. ‘I was when I first noticed there was less in the bank account than I’d expected. But everything about him seems rock solid. He’s polite and very deferential to me. His mother’s a novelist. Joan enjoys her books; she’s read several of them.’
‘Yes, she bought Mum one once for her birthday, and she praised it so much we all read it.’
‘How is Helen?’
Chloe shook her head. ‘She’s not at all well, has a lot of pain. She’s not able to read much any more and asked me if I’d read to her. That was the book she wanted. Serenade at Midnight by Rosamund Rogerson. We’re about halfway through and enjoying it over again.’
‘You won’t find any clues in that.’
‘No, the only way is to have a long, hard look through Clitheroe’s files when he isn’t around.’
‘You think he could be hiding something?’
‘I don’t know. The only other way is to ask the auditors to run another check on what he’s done.’
‘But I can’t keep doing that. It would tell him I don’t trust him, wouldn’t it? I’ve thought about this. I think I’ll come in this weekend and have a nose through his books. I wish I knew what to look for.’
‘Shall I come in too, Uncle? I know a bit about accounts, and two heads are better than one.’
‘Would you mind? You can take time off later.’
On Saturday morning, Aunt Goldie was cross because Chloe was getting ready to go to work. ‘Peggy won’t be in today, you’re leaving me to do everything here,’ she complained. ‘It’s not easy, you know, to look after two children as well as your mother. I expect you find sitting in front of a typewriter more restful.’
Chloe couldn’t deny it, and that made her feel selfish. The office gave her something of a social life too; she enjoyed the company of the other secretaries. Uncle Walter arrived to drive her into work and she was pleased to find he’d brought Auntie Joan to stay with her mother.
‘I’ll have a lovely morning,’ she told Chloe, ‘playing with the babies and chatting with your mum.’
‘That makes me feel better about leaving them.’ Chloe smiled. ‘I feel I’m being pulled in half a dozen different ways.’
‘Walter feels bad about this. That he’s sneaking behind the backs of his staff. He needs someone with him and he says you think faster than he can. Anyway, it’s keeping it in the family, isn’t it?’
When they reached the office, Chloe found the atmosphere very different. It seemed unnaturally dark and quiet, each typewriter hidden under its cover. She shivered. ‘It feels full of ghosts.’
‘Souls, not ghosts. If the staff knew, they’d hate us doing this.’
‘If they have nothing to hide, they won’t care,’ Chloe pointed out.
‘I wish I had a better understanding of accounting. If Tom Cleary hadn’t gone to New Zealand, I’d ask him to come in and help.’
‘Uncle Walter, I’ll do my best for you.’
‘I know you will,’ he sighed. ‘I’ve always kept a key to every file cabinet and desk I’ve ever bought.’ He produced four enormous bunches of these. ‘So nothing can be hidden from us.’
They went to the accountant’s office. ‘Clitheroe talked me through his figures and said, “I want to prove to you that my figures are correct.” At the time, he convinced me they were, but . . .’
‘You think they might not be?’
‘If they are, and my business is losing its profitability, I need to rethink how I’m managing it. And be quick too, while I still have a credit balance in the bank.’
‘We need to look at everything from a different angle.’ Chloe pulled up a chair to Clitheroe’s desk and opened the cash books and journals on it.
Walter sat beside her. ‘I wish I knew more about how figures can be manipulated.’
‘Well, I heard one story of how company fraud took place. Names of non-existent employees were added to the staff and wages were drawn for them. We could start by checking how much is being paid out in wages and salaries.’
‘I don’t think it’s that simple,’ Walter sighed. ‘I know from looking at the total that it can’t be that. That amount hardly varies.’
‘Then which totals do vary? Did you say you were spending more on supplies?’
‘Yes, we are, but it’s harvest time. Some things are seasonal, and we buy more when prices are low at the height of the season; things like barley meal, flaked maize and products made from beans and peas and sugar beet. Things we use to make up the various feeds.’
‘We could check what Don Tyler has ordered over the last few months, and whether it’s more or less than last year.’
‘He’s honest, I’m sure. I’d stake my life on that.’
‘OK, but we need to check orders against delivery notes. Then the amount delivered against the amount of feed manufactured. And that against sales and the stock being held. And all of that against the figures for the same months last year.’
‘That should do it, shouldn’t it? Hang on, it’ll be impossible to get figures for the current time. Manufacturing is ongoing; there’ll be feed everywhere, in the machines, the drying room, in unlabelled sacks and packets.’
‘Right, let’s go back a bit and check the month of July. You noticed the problem then?’
‘Yes, but it’s getting worse, more noticeable.’
‘Let’s find Don Tyler’s orders and get started.’
They worked till lunchtime. ‘I should take you out for something to eat,’ Walter said.
‘It’ll take up too much time.’ Chloe made them tea and dug out the chocolate biscuits, and they carried on until four o’clock.
Her head felt woolly after checking backwards and forwards. Everything they looked at seemed to add up right. They could find no fault with the figures.
‘Is disappointment with my business making me a suspicious old man?’ Walter asked sadly.
‘We have yet to find out,’ Chloe told him. ‘Shall we come again tomorrow?’
‘Perhaps we better had. I’ll get Joan to make us some sandwiches.’
On Sunday, they worked harder, and Chloe felt she’d got into the swing of it. But they still failed to find any false figures.
‘Clitheroe will be back in the morning,’ Walter sighed.
‘We’ve been careful to put things back as we found them; he may not know. Anyway, it’s your business.’
‘I don’t want him to think I’m suspicious of him if he’s honest. It would make it harder to work with him. And we’re no nearer.’
‘We are. We know which figures are correct.’
‘They all seem correct.’
‘We must give it more thought. I now have a better idea of how your accounts are put together.’
‘I don’t know about you, Chloe, but right now, I’m too tired to think at all. We’ve drawn a blank after all that.’
He drove Chloe home, where they found that Joan and Aunt Goldie had postponed cooking Sunday lunch until the evening. The kitchen was filled with heavenly scents of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Rex brought Helen in from the summerhouse, where he’d kept her company for much of the afternoon. She was brighter than she’d been for a long time, and with Joan and Walter keeping the conversation going, Chloe felt they had a jolly and sociable evening.
On Monday morning, when Leo sat down at his desk, he noticed immediately that his beaker of pens and pencils contained an extra biro of the basic sort provided by the firm for its staff. It gave him an uneasy feeling that somebody had been in his office over the weekend. He opened his desk drawers and looked carefully at everything, but nothing seemed to have been disturbed.
He told himself he was being silly. Other staff were in and out of his office from time to time. Any one of them might have left a biro on his desk. The cleaner had been in, of course; he could smell furniture polish. If the pen had been dropped on the floor, she might have tidied it into his beaker. Staff could be notorious careless with anything freely provided.
He opened his file cabinets, but again, nothing was noticeably changed. He couldn’t put his finger on anything else that could mean somebody had been searching through his things.
Walter Bristow was showing no sign that he was on to him. This morning they’d arrived at the front door at almost the same moment, and Bristow had held it open for him and wished him good morning. He’d remarked that it was a lovely morning and they’d come upstairs together. Leo had noticed no change in the boss’s manner.
Leo was suspicious, yes, but it might just be his nerves; coming here to face Bristow every day was enough to rattle anybody. To be on the safe side, he’d keep his wits about him and his suitcases half packed at his lodgings, so that if his suspicions proved correct, he could disappear at a moment’s notice. He must be very careful to leave nothing behind that might provide a clue to his real identity or whereabouts. In the meantime, he’d hang on here and take every penny he could while the going was good.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AS THE DAYS PASSED, Chloe felt that her relationship with Uncle Walter was changing. Until now, he’d been the powerful adult giving her employment and advising her on how to cope with her problems. Suddenly the power balance had swung the other way, and he seemed to be seeking help from her. She knew he was worried about the money his business was losing and he thought her understanding of figures better than his own.
‘I left all that to Tom Cleary,’ he admitted. ‘He set up the accounting system for me and everything worked well while he was here. But now . . .’
Chloe gave her uncle’s accounts a great deal of thought.
He’d got into the habit of coming to his office door and asking her to take dictation. She’d pick up her shorthand pad and pencil and go in, and though he might have the odd letter to dictate, what he really wanted was to talk over the accounts problem in privacy.
‘We’ve checked through almost everything,’ he sighed. ‘And it looks correct. The books are being carefully kept.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Chloe said. ‘Are you being billed for supplies that aren’t coming in? Mr Clitheroe isn’t putting fictitious workers on the payroll, but he could just as easily be sending in false bills.’
‘Could somebody outside the company be doing that?’
‘I suppose they could, but Mr Clitheroe is making out the cheques to pay them, so he’d have to be in the know, wouldn’t he?’
After some thought Walter said, ‘Yes, it’s his responsibility to make sure the bills he pays are genuine. I know Tom used to check them.’
‘If false bills are hiding what’s being taken out of the company’s bank account, it must almost certainly be Clitheroe who is responsible.’
Walter sighed and stretched back in his chair. ‘We buy from many different companies. Some deliver weekly, some monthly, some only occasionally. It isn’t going to be easy, but there must be some way we can check them.’
‘We could go through the accounts and add up the number of companies that we order from, and we need to check the delivery notes against the cheques paid out.’
He jerked upright again. ‘That’s it, Chloe, you’ve got it. That would be proof, wouldn’t it?’
‘It would. If there’s no discrepancy, then Mr Clitheroe is honest.’
Walter was frowning. ‘I don’t think our profits could go down so quickly unless it was fraud. What happens to those delivery notes?’
‘They’re checked against the materials delivered to the production department and then they go to Mr Clitheroe to validate the bills he receives. He puts them in the files.’
‘What files?’
‘He keeps a file for every company. When he sends out a cheque, he writes a covering letter and the copy of that is put in the file too.’
Walter was staring at her in concentration.
‘I’ve typed the letters for him,’ she said, ‘that’s how I know. He gives us the files when we take his dictation.’
‘You mean we’d have to look in every file?’
‘Yes, and even then . . . If he’s writing a fraudulent cheque for a fictitious company, would he make a file for it?’
‘I’ve got to do something.’ Walter looked desperate. ‘I think I’ll work on tonight after Clitheroe leaves and see if I can pick up something from his files. No, I’ll go home and have something to eat and then come back.’
‘Collect me, Uncle, and I’ll come with you.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course. As you say, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this, and if there’s two of us working on it, it’ll only take half the time.’
Chloe got her children ready for bed, and when Uncle Walter tooted his horn outside, she left Aunt Goldie to read them a story. The Liverpool night was warm and full of bright lights. The streets were still thronged as the car purred through to the industrial area of Bootle.
Once inside the building, the night seemed dark and silent. Walter opened up and they put on all the lights in Francis Clitheroe’s office. Chloe was able to find her way round his filing system now, and went straight to the right cabinet.
‘All the files of the companies from whom we buy our supplies are here. That’s bad news, as we can’t both stand here to check them.’
‘Good grief, do we have to go through all those? Why does he file like that?’
‘It’s probably the best way,’ Chloe said. ‘Questions about deliveries and payment are easily answered; he just needs to take out the file of the company involved. Our problem is, we don’t know what name to look for.’
‘Or names. There’s probably more than one.’
‘Right, let’s get started. I’ll take out all the files in this top drawer and you can sit at the desk to look through them.’ She started doing that. ‘Then I can check the second drawer by standing here.’
You want me to open every file and look for a delivery note?’
‘Yes, and if there isn’t one, that company is suspect, especially if it’s putting in regular bills.’
‘It’s not going to take all that long after all,’ Walter said more cheerfully. ‘Here’s the delivery note in this one and it’s bright orange. They’ll be easy to see.’
‘Some will and some won’t,’ Chloe pointed out. ‘Delivery notes can be any colour and any size too. The company making the delivery decides on that.’
‘Oh dear.’ Walter’s fingers were clumsy, while Chloe’s riffled through file after file. Walter breathed heavily as he worked, but suddenly he said excitedly, ‘Here’s a file without a delivery
note.’
‘Which company is it?’
‘Cheshire Crushing Mills. The copy letter is here, dated eighth August, enclosed a cheque.’
Chloe was searching through the desk drawers for the chequebook stubs. ‘Yes, a cheque for four hundred and ten pounds was made out to Cheshire Crushing Mills on the eighth.’
‘That matches up with the bill.’
‘Let me look in the cash book. Yes, that’s recorded here just as it should be. Are we barking up the wrong tree?’
‘Hang on, Chloe. Here’s another copy letter sending a cheque in settlement of their bill for flaked maize. And here’s another.’
‘And no delivery notes?’
‘No. Four bills here, four copy letters saying cheques enclosed. But no delivery notes.’
‘This could be how it’s done.’ Chloe felt a shiver of excitement as she craned over the desk to look.
‘Could they have been mislaid?’ Walter sounded defeated. ‘Lots of things are. It might not mean anything.’
‘One could get mislaid, but not four. Have you heard of this company?’
‘Yes . . .’ He paused. ‘Well, now I think about it, I’m not sure. We’ve dealt with one called the South Yorkshire Crushing Mills for years.’
Chloe was staring in frustration at the paperwork for Cheshire Crushing Mills. She straightened up. ‘Let me find the file for the South Yorkshire Mills.’
She opened it on the desk and placed the bills and the letterheaded notepaper side by side.
‘They’re almost identical. The documents for the Cheshire Crushing Mills could be a copy. What d’you think?’
‘Yes . . .’
‘And look,’ Chloe pointed out victoriously, ‘our business dealings with Cheshire Crushing Mills only started at the end of April, after Clitheroe started work here.’
For a moment, they stared at each other. ‘This could be the one,’ Walter said slowly.
‘Let’s check it through . . .’
Ten minutes later he said, ‘You’re right! We’ve never had any deliveries from them.’