"Hmm…an interesting story, Mr. Delsey," I said.
"Yes it is," he replied. "And since I have spoken to you openly and candidly, Mr. O'Donoghue, perhaps you would be so kind as to return me the favor."
"I have no objection to that, Mr. Delsey. I know nothing at all about your interesting story, whatever the veracity of it may turn out to be. And in case you haven't already snuffled around some more in my personal affairs, let me tell you that I am a business consultant. Based in Germany. A legal resident there. I work anywhere in Europe. I am currently working for two U.K. clients, United Fasteners in South Audley Street and Obrix Consultancy Partners just off the Strand. Both are holding companies. And before you decide to start messing around checking my bank accounts, let me tell you that I have received payments from both clients and I continue to do so. I am providing them with my services in return."
"No comments from Mr. Parker about being an alien?"
"No. You couldn't possibly imagine I would have any interest in working for a lunatic claiming to be an alien. Or could you?"
"Not really. Point taken. And what kind of payment or payments have you been receiving from Jeremy Parker. Or, alternatively, from his holding company?"
"That is none of your business, Mr. Delsey. But let me tell you two things. Firstly, the payments I have received are in line with the services provided, and relate to work performed both last year and this year, as the invoices show. As regards the Obrix company, I do not invoice them on a monthly basis and there are consequently amounts still outstanding for this year's work. In other words, I will be receiving further payments. Secondly, if you possess the authority to do so, please check my German tax returns for as far back as you want. All of my income has always been declared and I pay the resulting taxation in full. On time. Every time. And that includes making the quarterly advance payments. O.K.?"
"That is O.K., Mr. O'Donoghue. There is no need to be annoyed. We have no reason to wish to check up on your financial affairs, nor do we have any intention of doing so."
Not for the moment, they didn't. It would no doubt be a troublesome cross-border request which would need to be appropriately justified. It would involve bureaucracy, it would involve work. But he and his boss could of course change their minds on the subject whenever they felt like it.
"Do you," he continued, "have anything at all that might assist me? Have you seen or heard anything unusual? Any peculiarities concerning Mr. Parker himself or his group of companies?"
"No," I said, using my thoughtful tone of voice, the one which denotes considered truthfulness, integrity as pure as the driven snow. Or undriven snow, come to that. "Quite honestly, nothing at all, nothing whatever."
"Well," he said, gazing at me meaningfully, "I am sure you understand our interest in this affair. Something is not right, as I am sure you agree. In our experience, when large amounts of money start to float around for no apparently rational purpose, there is more often than not some kind of criminal activity involved."
"I can understand your interest," I replied, giving him a meaningful look of my own, "but not your interest in me. Your so-called affair is decidedly unusual, but the whole thing may turn out to be an illusion, there may be nothing to it. That is to say, there may be a good explanation for it, different to the one the young lady has provided you with. Or there may indeed be some hidden criminal machinations underway, which I agree would need to be prevented. But none of this has anything to do with me. I am a normal person, I am working in a normal manner, and as far as my experience on this assignment goes, Jeremy Parker is also a perfectly normal person and a perfectly normal businessman. Even if, as you tell me, he has a history of mental illness in his past."
"I see. Well…in case you do come across something, here is my card. I would be grateful if you would contact me if you notice anything strange, out of the ordinary, anything you think might be of assistance to us."
"Now just a moment, Mr. Delsey, just a moment. It just so happens that I am being followed. By you. And I do not wish to be followed. Not by you and not by anyone else. In fact, I do not want to be followed ever again until I kick the bucket. By anybody, unless it's an erotic female, and with all due respect you do not fall into that category. I want this following me to be stopped. Now. And if not, you had better believe me when I say that you and any of your gumshoe colleagues, including your gumshoe boss, will regret it. Not in a way that could put me into prison of course. But don't underestimate me. I am perfectly capable of negatively affecting the personal lives of people like you who, as it happens, have taken a conscious decision to negatively affect mine."
A bluff of course. There are things you can do, starting off in a small way like registering an annual subscription to a pornographic magazine in the name of a happily married man, or you can move on to child pornography. And you can arrange for far worse things than that, far worse. But I am not the type, I can't do things like that, no way. And even for those unprincipled and nauseating types who can, it involves a lot of work—or a lot of money paying somebody else to do it for you.
"I can understand your aggressiveness," he said, "although I do not understand the need for you to express it so unpleasantly. We will do a deal."
"A deal?"
"Yes. We will stop following you. I don't mind telling you that we would probably stop anyway. In return, however, I would be grateful if you would call me if anything irregular comes to your attention. Please take note that we shall, nevertheless, continue to observe Mr. Parker and his activities until the matter has been cleared up one way or the other. As I am sure you agree, this is something which needs to be continued. And it would also be beneficial, Mr. O'Donoghue, if you did not find it necessary to mention this conversation to him. Or to anyone else for that matter."
"O.K.," I said, "it's a deal."
And we shook hands. He even paid for the coffee, which made me feel bad, his salary couldn't be that much. Still, he had a job with plenty of security, a fair compensation in these times of economic disaster, national debt mountains swelling like unstoppable tumors, nothing to do with the pin-striped representatives of the people of course; somebody else had been doing the spending and borrowing. And in any case, maybe he was just going to include the coffee on his next expense claim.
Off he went back toward Piccadilly, taking his moroseness, his pock-marked face and his ignorantly knotted neckwear with him, poor guy.
I didn't feel like chess any more. It was still sunny but it was early evening and it was becoming cool. So I bought an IHT, found a steakhouse and had a sirloin—well done, burnt to death as usual—and French fries. I read about the wars and the bombs and the atrocities and the tennis and the start of the cricket season. Cricket, just by the way, is a game—according to Lord Mancroft—which the British, not being a spiritual people, had to invent in order to have some concept of eternity.
I walked back to the hotel. A new girl was at the desk. Not bad looking, quite elegant with her brown hair done up in a bun at the back; automatic thoughts of course about pulling it loose and proceeding on to other things. Such thoughts are automatic, they are not within our control, nor do I wish them to be. I gave her the friendly smile and the slightly, but only slightly, penetrating look and received a decent smile back.
There were quite a few people in the bar including a couple of possible females chatting to each other. But I wasn't interested in finding out about them. Céline was very much on my mind. I went up to my room and checked my messages. Nothing. And so I got into bed and read a couple of stories from my current book, a timeless collection of Stanley Ellin's amazing short stories, and fell into the hands of Somnus, the god of sleep; avoiding, on this occasion, those of his son Morpheus, the god of dreams.
DAY 14
It was cloudy this morning but not raining. I performed the s, s, and s routine and sat down on the bed to call Jeremy on his alien phone. Pressed the green button.
"Good morning, Peter." He sounded as if he were
in a reasonable mood.
"Good morning, Jeremy. How are you this morning?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," he said. "And yourself?"
"Not so bad, thanks. I spoke to the guy who has been following me."
"Yes?"
"Yes. His name is Delsey. And he admitted it, he didn't try to evade it. He is a police officer of some sort. He said I was being followed because of you and certain of your non-business activities."
"Interesting, but not a surprise. Something like this was always a possibility. I assume it was the young lady to whom I paid the €100,000 who reported me?"
"Correct. It could have been one of the others, but you are right, it was her."
"Unlikely to have been one of the others, I would say. They would have had the same thoughts as you had, Peter."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean that they would have worked out that I could deny it, that I could prove my identity, that I could prove I was a successful and legal business man, and so on. Unlike the young lady, they wouldn't have been able to show a payment to support their story, circumstantial though that would be in any case. Hence my assumption that it was the young lady."
"Well, and so it was."
"Presumably this Mr. Delsey questioned you? May I ask what position you took?"
"I told him that you and I had a perfectly normal business relationship. I told him I had received payments from your company but that these related to consultancy services provided to your company through the end of last year. And I denied everything else."
"Fine. That's good to hear, Peter. You clearly intend to go ahead and earn your money," he chuckled. "And of course the benefit for me is that I don't have to start searching for a new interview candidate. Will they be continuing to keep you under supervision?"
"No. At least, that is what he said. Of course, he might have lied. They could do it more professionally, use different people and so on, and I probably wouldn't be aware of it. You, on the other hand, will definitely continue to be watched. Logical, if you think about it. You represent a big query in their minds. Fraud, mental illness, something even worse, they just don't know. But obviously, they have good reason to suspect something is afoot."
“Naturally, yes…but not a problem. I don't see how they can possibly arrest me. They might eventually wish to haul me in for questioning but they have no facts to go on, other than a statement from a young lady and a perplexed denial from myself. And yes, she demanded a large advance payment, which indeed was made. And then she broke our verbal contract, never appeared again. Our lawyers have already commenced preparations to pursue recovery of the sum involved via such legal procedures as are applicable in these cases."
Jeremy paused for a moment and then added, "And of course, if absolutely necessary, I could utilize what you refer to as my computer-hacking skills and have them apologize profusely and release me. As often as I would need to."
"What," I said, "if they were to cut off your funds and your access to your companies' funds until they get to the bottom of the matter?"
"Oh, I don't think they could do that based on the meager facts available to them. And even if they could, I could apply the computer-hacking to that as well. Alternatively, I could use the other human identity I have created for myself, fully documented of course, and use the funds that are already in that identity's name."
He may be mad, I thought to myself, but he has everything worked out, all the potential eventualities. And, mad or not, there can be no denying that ability of his to influence other people's minds. Advanced hypnosis skills. Maybe.
"We're safe on the phone side, Peter," he continued, "but I think we should meet without their knowledge in future. Somewhere else, a different place. Just to avoid any irritating inconveniences to you and, indeed, to myself. We agreed to meet tomorrow. Would 2 p.m. suit you?”
"No problem."
"Good. I'll book a meeting room at the Ritz Hotel for the afternoon. In my name, Parker. Better to leave Obrix out of this. Just ask for me. I will ensure they are expecting you."
"And if they try to follow me without my knowing?"
"Just use some tricks that would shake them off if they happen to be doing it. Climb into a cab to somewhere. Change cabs and go somewhere else. Take a third cab. Whatever. And in any case, perhaps I am exaggerating the consequences if they find out that we're meeting. You told them we had a business relationship. An ongoing one. So what could be more normal? It changes nothing. See you then."
"See you then. Goodbye, Jeremy."
I was feeling more relaxed. My chances of earning the €400,000 were still good. A few more interviews, that's all. And I had no qualms about it. Jeremy was definitely a very sick man but by paying me the money, he would not be harmed and nor would anybody else. His group of companies would merely have a few hundred thousand less available for dividends, reserves, investments or whatever.
I checked my laptop again for messages. Nothing. I checked my phone for messages. Nothing. Either something has happened to her, or I'm not going to hear from her again. This time, life’s tidal undercurrents were taking me back to somewhere I didn't want to go.
I didn't feel like breakfast, this morning’s mood eradicated hunger. On top of that I was running a bit late for the first meeting at Clark's. I went down to the car, lit up a cigarette—yes, they are good for nursing despondency as well—and drove off to Slough. Made it in time.
Today's supplier meetings were all different. The first one was a very satisfying one, more than satisfying. I was midway through my initial blurb when the guy in charge interrupted me and said, "How much?" I gave him the lie about the analysis and ended up with the 10.2% and he didn't blink an eyelid, just said, "We can accept that. We wish to cooperate to the full." I kept my mouth closed although it metaphorically gaped, widely in fact. And then we chatted away for a while about nothing at all and then they left.
"Joe," I said, "we've been overpaying them."
"No, I don't think so, Peter," he said with a smile. "I think they were merely hypnotized by your prodigious charm." Ha, so Joe has some irony in him too.
The second meeting involved us talking to a lady sales director, a tough one. She wouldn't go beyond 5%. I told Joe to heavily reduce our ordering, similar procedure as for yesterday's goons.
The next meeting was after lunch and dragged itself on into prolonged discussions, each side lying its head off about just about everything. But in the end we ended up with the 8%. These are big percentages, I think Joe was slowly beginning to realize just how much the previous lack of negotiating activity had been costing the company. But it's obvious. Suppliers are not stupid. When they see some of their customers faithfully accepting all and any proposed price increases year after year without a murmur, they are going to be taking the biggest margins they can get.
The last meeting of the day was also a long one. It didn't finish until 6 o'clock. They only wanted to assist with 2%. But this was a bad supplier and Joe was able to wade in with details of quality problems, exaggerating the losses incurred by Clark's as a result, including occasions when some of our finished product had had to be junked as a result. This scared them up to 5%. And then Joe recited some late deliveries he had documented, and exaggerated the production delays caused as a result. But their only reaction to this was to promise to look into the issues and resolve them. So then Joe showed them some of their invoices charging Clark's for quantities ordered and he also showed them the related delivery notes which revealed that lower quantities had been delivered. Which had also resulted in production problems. And then he handed them a list of Clark's credit note claims in this connection, highlighting the ones which had not yet been settled.
They were rattled, no doubt about it. But I don't think they had been authorized to increase the offer they had already made. And so I told them to go away and think about it and let us know the result of their deliberations by next week at the latest. I pointed out that we had been extremely cooperative in
the face of all these difficulties, and that now we were asking them for some cooperation in return. For added measure I told them that we would also like some volume rebates. After all, the rebates wouldn't arise unless we purchased predetermined amounts, and that wouldn't hurt their sales volumes at all.
"Well, Joe," I said after they had gone, "we had to get tough on that one."
"Yes," he said. "I noticed your distinct lack of charm this time. But judging by the facial contortions toward the end, I would be happy to bet they'll be back with a 8% offer; perhaps even the 10% we are asking."
"Right enough. But I would guess you are going to have to change suppliers in this case anyway. Even allowing for our exaggerations, the problems they are causing are not acceptable to us. See what happens.”
“Will do,” said Joe. “Hopefully we are finished and you want to go home now?”
“No and yes. There are two overall projects we should start implementing as soon as possible, and it won’t take long to run through them."
"Not long?" An ironic smile.
"Not long," I said, slinging him a smile back. "We need to set up a system whereby your department receives purchased material defect reports on at least a weekly basis. The same goes for delivery issues. And a monthly report detailing incorrect invoices received. And your department becomes responsible for doing something about it all. Regularly. Continuous improvement. We are the customer, we tell our suppliers how things are going to be if they want to continue selling to us. And the second thing we need to do is set up a planned alternative supplier review. Price is not the only factor in determining from whom we buy, and sometimes not even the most important one. But we do need to know where we stand at all times, and price comparisons with alternative suppliers should be part of our regular procedures."
The 2084 Precept Page 24