Unsafe Deposit

by J. E. Kellenberger

  ‘I’ve been thinking about this for some time,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we both retire? We’ve worked so hard for so long and so often under stress. It was great when we were young but I’m beginning to wilt under the heat now. Why don’t we go together? We’re old enough to have sufficient funds in our pension pots to fund a decent lifestyle but we’re young enough to start something fresh.’

  ‘What?’ mumbled Andreé.

  ‘Become a volunteer, help clean the local canal banks, become regular pub quizzers, write a history of WareWork, go into politics, go and chat with the lonely, there are so many opportunities out there there’s bound to be something to suit us. We must move on my love, we can’t cling to the past. Clear the path for Daniel. It’s the right thing to do. It won’t be easy for either of us but we have one another for support.’

  ‘I know,’ murmured Andreé, ‘I know.’

  Their news was greeted by Daniel with a sense of relief. He had felt uncomfortable sitting at the head of the boardroom table with his mother in a secondary position. The roles had reversed. Where once he consulted her, it was now for Andreé to obtain his approval. Her timely departure would make working life much more straightforward. Lately she had been uncharacteristically difficult outside of work too. His father was also showing the strain. A few days later an announcement was printed in the financial press that the sister of the recently deceased CEO of WareWork was stepping down. She would be pursuing speaking engagements and fundraising activities for a charity associated with the partially sighted. With her husband, who had also recently retired from a company directorship, she would be starting her retirement with a six-week tour of New Zealand.

  Marian Bowden also let out a sigh of relief when she heard the news. She knew how tenacious women could be and she had anticipated friction working with the newly demoted Andreé if she persisted with her current uncooperative attitude. Marian was very satisfied with her new position of deputy CEO and didn’t want another woman constantly snapping at her heels trying to belittle her authority or reminding other board members of her family link. Perhaps she also recognised in herself the control freak she knew Andreé to be. Two control freaks on any board or in any household was a recipe for disaster. Yes, the pieces were fitting nicely into place in her working life. She loved her job, she worked hard, was well remunerated and her latest initiative for cost savings in the publishing of company accounts had been well received by the other board members. What she needed now was a social life; in particular, a partner. When she thought about it clinically there were two obvious candidates, Daniel and Adam. Both were single. Neither had been married as far as she was aware. Neither had talked about a current girlfriend. Both were nice if a little uninspiring, Daniel a little younger, Adam a little older. Neither would sweep a girl off her feet but she had been down that road before and it had led to a very unhappy dead end. An easygoing passive partner with the prospect of marriage was just the ticket and she would set her sights on one or the other after testing the ground. She would contrive a “casual” meeting or two outside work and go from there.

  ***

  Sir Bernard Day was the head of a huge empire. The parent company of which he had been chairman for more than a decade owned subsidiaries exclusively in the financial and property sectors. They dealt in billions, holding assets of pension funds and private investors and commercial properties in the big cities of Western Europe. BiCapital Properties UK was one of their wholly owned subsidiaries. Its entire portfolio of land and buildings was in London and Edinburgh and their inner suburbs. The office block on Ludgate Hill was part of the portfolio. Doug searched deeper, peeling away the onion-like leaves of digital paperwork appearing on his computer monitor until he reached the leases. The leasee was Arthur Meares and he had held the lease for almost thirty years. Under its terms he was allowed to sublet and, delving further, the names and addresses of his tenants became known to Doug but he found no evidence of Ron, as in RLL Marketing. An online biopic of Sir Bernard gave very little detail of his early life other than to state that he had graduated in History of Art at university with a second-class degree. Whether he came from old money or the nouveau riche or had made it entirely on his own was not disclosed but at some time around “Big Bang” in the mid-eighties, according to his résumé, his name started appearing on the board of directors of several financial firms dealing in unit and investment trusts. From there it was a steady progression to the summit that he now enjoyed. Along the way he had become a trustee of two charities and taken on a non-exec directorship of a London museum. It was for his work in trying to make art accessible for the disabled, in terms of both viewing it and creating it, that he was awarded the highest gong.

  Doug’s nose twitched. There was something out of kilter. Common sense told him that there had to be a link between Day and Meares. The Ludgate Hill building was situated in the very heart of the City of London and was close up and personal to an icon of the London tourist scene. The lease, Doug knew, would cost a small fortune and he very much doubted that any private individual could pay the market rate over a three-decade period. Also, according to Meares Import Export company tax returns the declared profits over a number of years could in no way subsidise the rent. He fished for more details but none of a helpful nature was forthcoming. Finally he tapped into the university alumni web pages of Day’s student years and found the link. They had both attended the same university, completed the same course and were students in the same three years. What this signified he did not know but Doug was of the opinion that the result would be something underhand. He would ask Paul to ferret even deeper. Paul would have contacts.

  ***

  Daniel had burnt some midnight oil doing calculations. He concentrated first on determining the scale between the handkerchief data and the formal buildings drawings. This turned out to be 1:7. With this straightforward part of the conundrum achieved he turned his attention to the banknote serial numbers to find the coordinates. He played with the digits for hours, at first singly, then in pairs and triples and finally in every way he could think of but all to no avail. Nothing reasonable resulted and, more to the point, he realised, nothing logical. He was missing something. His uncle’s riddle was devious but thus far, at each stage, there had been a definite answer, one that smacked you in the face as being obvious. He looked again at the banknotes. What was he missing? And then he found something. Written very faintly after “watchword” on one note was a small plus sign. On the other there was an arithmetic minus, an explanation perhaps of why two separate notes were supplied to the decipherer. Maybe this was where the number sixteen fitted in: you added it perhaps to a certain number for the x axis and subtracted it from that same number for the y axis. Daniel rubbed his hand across his chin, the sharp stubble reminding him of the lateness of the hour. But he still hadn’t found the key, there was something else. P is for prize, he kept reminding himself. He studied a banknote again. The steeples of an ornate church in the Roman baroque style were depicted on one side and on the other the face of Francesco Borromini stared back at him, a portrait of the seventeenth-century architect who was born in the Swiss canton of Ticino. Then it struck Daniel. P could also be for portrait. His birth and death dates were printed underneath his name. He had committed suicide when he was sixty-eight. Daniel subtracted sixteen from that number and found a likely number for the x axis. When he added sixteen to the same number he had an equally probable one for the y axis. He placed a transparent acetate sheet over the handkerchief and drew over the lines he could see on the handkerchief below including the position of the red French knot. Next, he placed the acetate over a piece of graph paper on which he had already marked the intersect point of the two coordinates carefully aligning the small dot with the graph’s zero point for each axes. The intersect lay outside the buildings near the visitor car parking area. With mounting excitement Daniel scaled up the information to fit with the buildings drawings and when
he did so he felt sure that he had finally found the exact location of the prize.

  Daniel pondered the mechanics of retrieval. He couldn’t ring Didier de Meuron and casually tell him that he was sending someone to dig something out from beneath the granite stone! The item or items couldn’t be recovered when the factory was closed or at night because of the security cameras and outdoor lighting and Tommy was adamant that Daniel himself should play no active role in the escapade. There just weren’t many options but in time he settled on a plan.

  ‘Daffodils,’ said Tommy when Daniel rang him with his plan, ‘in particular the dwarf type. I think a variety is called “Tom Thumbs”. They are fun little things standing about twelve inches tall and look so bright and cheerful when they flower in early March. Rolf and I sold them on the market stalls years ago. We sold them by the brown-paper-bag-full before all the garden centres muscled in and took over.’

  ‘OK, daffodils it is,’ said Daniel from the other end of the line. ‘I shall tell Didier to give you a tour of the factory and offices and answer any questions you ask in your capacity as a director of WareWork. I shall also tell him that you were Rolf’s best friend and that you would like to plant a few of Rolf’s favourite bulbs around the granite stone in memory of him. The staff will all be pleased I promise you as they held him in high regard. Over the years as general manager he did a lot to modernise it and look after the staff. All you will have to do is to find an excuse to do the job on your own without Didier trying to help! Don’t forget to take a trowel or small fork and, of course, a few bags of bulbs.’

  There was unusually light traffic around the Paris Boulevard Périhérique ring road as they made their way to Yverdon. Jane had jumped at the chance to join Tommy when he had suggested that she accompany him on his business trip. Life at home was difficult to say the least and matters would soon come to another head. Jane would just tell Arthur that she was off to a spa for a few days’ rest and if he didn’t believe her then too bad. She had to get away. They stopped overnight in a quiet town with a three-star hotel in the foothills of the Jura mountain range. They didn’t linger over their dinner in the hotel’s brasserie. They spent the night in one another’s arms re-affirming their love. Jane told Tommy about the scene with her daughter. She ran a finger lightly over the healing wound on her forehead. ‘It could have been worse,’ she said, ‘I’m healing.’ He kissed the scar and told her that she should move in with him as soon as they returned home. He was now in a financial position to look after her in the way he wished and he hoped she would divorce Arthur and marry him. That was his fervent wish, he re-stated. It was hers too.

  Tommy had been undecided about what to wear for the factory visit. On the one hand he was a director of the company and wished to make a good impression but on the other he had some bulbs to plant. He’d never needed formal clothes before for his work or, indeed, required them in his normal lifestyle but he had bought himself a dark grey pure wool suit from a high street retailer for his first WareWork board meeting. Rolf had tended to dress more formally than informally and he would follow suit! So it was in this new suit with crisp white shirt and dark blue tie that he left Jane at the overnight hotel and drove to the factory for his ten o’clock appointment. Punctuality was expected and the five minutes he had spare after he’d parked his car in the small area for visitors just by the granite stone he’d used to assess the task in hand. The meeting’s first hour was spent on a detailed tour of the shop floor with Didier acting as his able and enthusiastic guide, keen to ensure that Tommy had a good grasp of the production line flow. After greeting many of the staff they retired to Didier’s cramped office for a question and answer session before Tommy felt he could broach the nitty-gritty of his trip.

  ‘As you are aware,’ Tommy said, ‘I am also here to plant a small remembrance to Rolf.’

  ‘We were very sad to learn of his premature death as he was very much liked,’ replied Didier, ‘and a few flowers in spring will be a nice memory of him for the staff. We would have prepared the ground in advance for the planting but Daniel said to leave it entirely to you. I hope you won’t dirty your smart suit!’

  ‘No, I have come prepared,’ replied Tommy, who went on to explain to him that he didn’t wish to take up any more of Didier’s time or interrupt the work of any of the staff but by the time he had planted the bulbs it would be the lunch break and he hoped that the staff would come out and gather around the granite stone so that he could photograph the scene. A framed picture on the wall in reception would be another small piece of history to add to the annals of the factory’s life.

  Thankful that he had been left alone, Tommy took out the few implements from his car. He removed his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and laid down the mat he had brought especially to keep his trousers clean. With his back to the upstairs office window so as to hide as much as possible of what he was doing in the unlikely occurrence of someone looking out, he cleared away the flint chippings from around the stone’s base. He felt that anything buried would be directly under the stone. It was a large, cone-shaped, rust-coloured block of granite with black and white flecks. It stood more than a metre tall. One aspect had been carved and polished down to a flat face on which the company’s name and logo had been chiselled. It looked heavy and the only way he could expose the ground beneath was to tilt it. He supported the stone on two stout wooden props, the ends of which he had had bevelled at forty-five degrees so that they would sit squarely against both the ground and the obelisk thus holding it steady and freeing up both his hands to use the hand fork to loosen the compacted soil. With the trowel he shifted the dirt out of the hole. In due course he spotted a corner of wrinkled plastic poking up through the soil before his trowel actually made contact. A few more earth-loosening twists with the hand fork and he was able to tease out the plastic bag from its former burial place. Speed was of the essence and Tommy thrust the dirty polythene bag into the small plastic receptacle that he had brought along for the purpose. He quickly filled in the hole he had made below the base and manœuvred the stone back into its correct position. There were dirty marks on both rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. He could do nothing about that now. He started on the planting, removing three inches of soil from patches around the front and sides of the stone and placed the small bulbs at irregular intervals on the earth as if they had been broadcast. It was a quick job to cover them with the previously dug-out earth and replace the chippings. Bright yellow against a dark grey background would look stunning he thought. He put his tools away in the car and behind the cover of the open boot lid he took a moment to examine his find. The dirty, wrinkled and crumpled plastic had hardened over time and split immediately when he tried to open it. A small object in an oily cloth fell into his hand. Under the well-wrapped rag was a soft spectacle pouch which had been folded over in half and tied down with a shoe lace. Held under the bow in a tiny transparent plastic sac to protect it from the oily rag was a sliver of paper on which were written four words, “pass down male line”. Tommy pulled the loose end of the bow and the spectacle case sprang back to its full size. He pushed apart the jaws of the case’s opening and a round object about two and a half inches in diameter slipped down into his palm. He gazed at it and gasped. Then he swore. He was dazed by the object’s beauty. He pushed it back into the spectacle case together with the note and put it in the glove compartment.

  In their short lunch break the staff gathered outside in an orderly fashion around the granite stone. The photograph taken by Tommy with Didier in the centre exactly behind it and with smiling faces to his right and to his left made an excellent composition. He downloaded the image immediately to Didier’s computer with the promise that it would be printed and professionally framed and hanging in the reception area’s history display within forty-eight hours.

  ***

  Like Nellie the Elephant in the children’s nursery rhyme Jane packed her bags and said goodbye to her life wit
h Arthur. When she returned from ferrying him to the station she quickly put a predetermined selection of clothes into two suitcases. With her passport, driving licence and debit and credit cards in her handbag and her laptop under her arm she felt she needed nothing more. She was leaving Winchester forever. She propped up the letter she had written to Arthur against the kettle on the kitchen worktop. She would text him later in the day saying she couldn’t pick him up and to take a taxi home instead. He would want a cup of tea on arrival and would soon see the letter. She would ring Angela that evening, ensuring that she timed the call before Arthur got home.

  Dear Arthur,

  We have been married for many years and during that time I can truthfully say that you have been a good husband and father. You have always looked after and provided well for Angela and myself. For my part I have always cared for you and I still do.

  I felt very much at a loose end when Angela married and left home. As you know I took up voluntary work to fill the void. I’ve now met somebody with whom I’ve fallen in love and I wish to spend the rest of my life with him. I would like a divorce. I’m sorry for the hurt this will cause you. I never intended to fall in love, it just happened. I have telephoned Angela to give her this news.

  I’ve taken the personal possessions that I need. Perhaps later you will allow me to remove the remainder. You can contact me on my mobile but it will be switched off for the next forty-eight hours to give you time to reflect.