Cashback

by Duncan James

  ***

  Across Montreux, on the edge of the old town, a similar conversation had been taking place in the modern office of Monsieur Renoir.

  Having personally authorised the opening of M. Hood's account, in rather unusual circumstances, he had to admit, M. Renoir had naturally taken it upon himself to confirm that the deposit had been made as planned. Of course, it had.

  So he had been surprised when an account manager had asked if he could 'have a word' about the new account. His colleague had reassured M. Renoir that everything appeared to be in order, that the money had been deposited as promised, and that the subsequent withdrawal, which M. Hood had anticipated, had also taken place. The problem appeared to be, if indeed it was a problem at all, that it had so far proved impossible to determine where the deposit had come from, or how the withdrawal had taken place and where it had gone.

  Like M. Gilbert across town, M. Renoir was terrified of getting caught up in any money laundering deals, and that was the immediate fear that went through his mind. He quickly reassured himself, however, that M. Hood and his charming assistant were the last people on earth who would ever participate in any shady deals. There must be some other, simple explanation, which would soon be discovered.

  Since the transfers had both been made electronically, it was quite possible that there was some fault or other with the Internet system. Wherever the deposit had come from, it had been paid in pounds sterling, so that should indicate a UK bank, probably one of the larger ones bearing in mind the sum involved. His accounts clerk undertook to make that his first line of enquiry although, as M. Renoir admitted, he was not so concerned about the source of the cash, as he was about the fact that the withdrawal had apparently been made without any trace being left as to how it had been transferred or where it had been transferred. That was plainly impossible, according to what he knew about the bank's security systems. So the second thing the accounts clerk was charged to do was to brief, thoroughly, their head of security. Finally, he demanded that every care was to be taken not to alert M. Hood to their temporary difficulty. His was a valuable new account, which promised to be very lucrative to the bank, and he insisted that nothing should be done that would put the anticipated future business at risk.

  The account manager left to begin his further investigations, and M. Renoir sat back in his leather swivel chair, perplexed. Altogether very odd, he thought.