‘Soz,’ he said.
‘What?’ I was being deliberately awkward. His form of apology made him sound like a surly teenager, so I was determined to treat him like one.
‘I’m sorry,’ he told me, ‘but those two little cun…’
‘Deserved it?’ I interrupted him, ‘of course they did. They were vermin. A small part of me enjoyed kicking that little bastard in the face but I know that it achieved nothing and so should you. There’s hundreds like him and his mate in this city Joe, hundreds. Now do you want to become a one-man vigilante group, trawling the streets of Newcastle, looking for wankers like them and administering punishment beatings for the rest of your days or do you want to work for me instead?’
For a moment I thought he was going to argue with me but then he seemed to think better of it. ‘I know you are right,’ he told me, ‘I do, honestly. It’s just,’ he groaned then, like he was reliving the moment when they cut us up, ‘I can’t bring myself to take shite from scummy little fuckers like them.’
‘No one says you have to Joe but beating them up on the side of the road, in front of three dozen passing cars, is just taking the piss. The police have to do something about that, no matter who you are and we are supposed to be keeping a low profile.’
‘I know, I know,’ he held his hands up, ‘I’m sorry. I am. It won’t happen again.’
‘It had better not.’ I told him.
‘Can you fix it?’
‘I’ll do my best, but you’ll have to go to court and you might have to plead guilty to something.’
‘What?’
‘There are too many witnesses for it to be called self-defence. You put that lad in the hospital and who’s ever going to believe they attacked you. Look at yourself man,’ I sighed, ‘no, you’re guilty and you are going to plead and apologise to the court. We’ll get the lawyers to come up with a convincing bit of bullshit about why you snapped that day and how you were provoked by them. That’s as good as it gets.’
‘But I’ve been inside,’ he reminded me. He was worried that might get him another custodial sentence.
‘That was years ago. I’ve already talked to Susan Fitch. You went inside but you’ve reformed your life since then. You’ve been an honest, upstanding member of society, who has worked in the entertainment industry as a night club manager ever since. You put your troubled past behind you.’
Susan Fitch was our solicitor. She had been looking after members of the firm for nearly twenty years now and the police hated her for it.
‘What if they don’t buy it?’ he asked me, ‘what if they send me down?’
‘Then you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself,’ I told him, and he looked like he wanted to hit me this time, ‘I’ll do my best. I can’t promise anything more than that.’
‘You’ll be right Joe,’ Palmer chipped in, ‘no sweat.’
‘Pull over here,’ I told him because I had just spotted the familiar, balding, paunchy figure of Henry Baxter emerging from his apartment block. He was edging cautiously towards the kerb, like a blind man approaching a pedestrian crossing. Our accountant had been with us for more than two years now but he still treated Newcastle like it was chock full of muggers and murderers, who could leap out on him without warning at any time. We pulled over. He spotted us and climbed into the back seat next to me.
‘Good morning gentlemen,’ he said, his jowly face contorted into a yawn.
‘Sorry, am I keeping you up?’ I asked.
‘Not at all dear boy, as ever I am hanging on your every word. I’m just a little pooped, that’s all,’ and he yawned again, ‘a late night,’ and he smiled enigmatically, ‘with a friend.’ Then he elaborated, ‘It was Vaughan Williams at the Sage.’
‘Good was he?’ asked Kinane.
‘What?’ Baxter didn’t do anything to hide the incredulity in his voice. Kinane just assumed he hadn’t heard the question.
‘Vaughan thingy; was he any good?’
‘You’re not serious Joe? The man’s been dead for half a century.’
‘Eh?’ it was Kinane’s turn to act confused, ‘well I don’t know who he is, do I? I was only asking.’
At this point Baxter should have shut up, but he carried on digging and I let him.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of him, that’s tantamount to an impossibility. He was the greatest English composer of the twentieth century…’
‘Listen Baxter,’ interrupted Kinane. ‘I don’t have the time to listen to some poncin’arsed, classical shite like that. I like proper, non-wanky stuff; Dire Straits and Sting and a bit of Fleetwood Mac,’ before adding, ‘something you can tap your fingers against the steering wheel to when you’re driving, like normal people.’
‘Alright lads,’ Palmer said, ‘don’t get your knickers in a twist. We picked Baxter up for a reason and it wasn’t to talk about concerts.’
‘It’s done,’ Baxter told us curtly.
‘What is?’ I asked him.
‘That which you asked me to do.’ He had clearly gone into one of his sulks. ‘A cast-iron, fool-proof and entirely legal… ish… cash transfer that has enabled us to place a very significant amount of money beyond the grasping arms of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Revenue, ergo the tax man, into an offshore account at a highly-accommodating little bank in the Cayman Islands.’
The Caymans was invented for people like us. The place is the fifth largest financial centre in the world after New York, London, Tokyo and Zurich, holding assets of eighteen trillion dollars on deposit. Why? Here’s a clue; in the capital, George Town, there are eighteen thousand corporations registered in one building alone. They don’t even try to look legitimate. And who is responsible for ensuring the Cayman Islands plays fair and doesn’t launder money? Well, the place is still an overseas territory of the UK.
‘You’ve done it then?’ I asked Baxter disbelievingly.
‘Yes,’ he told me smugly, as he awaited my congratulations.
‘No hitches?’ I asked.
‘None.’
‘The entire five million?’
‘The whole bloody lot.’
‘Well done,’ I told him. This was good news and I felt in need of some, ‘Palmer, turn the car around and head for the Quayside.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘For lunch,’ I told them, ‘at Café 21.’
6
I never tire of Café 21, even with Baxter as a lunch companion. Maybe it’s because I don’t own the place, so I can relax there.
Baxter was characteristically verbose throughout our meal but he’d earned the right to be pleased with himself and regale us with tales of his life before joining our firm. He liked to tell the story of his difficult childhood; how he struggled to fit in as a boarder at his famous, old public school. The way Baxter told it, he was a precociously gifted child, a sensitive soul who was bullied relentlessly because of this obvious potential for greatness. From there it was an upward trajectory that took in Cambridge, then the City, where his genius for numbers was ruthlessly harnessed until he was deemed surplus to requirements and ‘cast adrift’ as he put it. He was actually arrested for embezzling millions of pounds of client money, in a fraud so Byzantine in its complexity it was only discovered at all because of the credit crunch. The old, long-established broking house he worked for was running out of cash. They had to resort to digging into their reserves to fund them through the crisis, which was when they realised there was a large black hole. Henry Baxter got six years and did three.
I’d read about the case in the papers but it was Amrein who really put me onto him, when Baxter was about to emerge from prison. The complex nature of Baxter’s fraudulent transactions, coupled with the extraordinary web of companies he managed to set up to launder his ill-gotten gains, making them virtually tax free, made him just the kind of man I was looking for. I needed someone who could move money around and Baxter could do it with not a little élan. Palmer called Baxter a math-magician, a phrase our accou
ntant loathed, which is why Palmer kept on saying it to his face.
I doubt Baxter would have signed up with us at all if it wasn’t for the ARA. The Assets Recovery Agency took him apart and clawed back virtually everything he had stolen. He couldn’t have been more bitter about that.
‘So you know all about this smoke and mirrors, city-boy, swank-wank stuff then, do you Baxter?’ asked Kinane.
‘If you mean, can I explain the difference between a collateralised debt obligation and a credit default swap then yes, I can,’ he smiled, ‘whether you will be able to grasp that difference is another matter.’
I interrupted before things got more heated. ‘Perhaps, Baxter, your time would be better employed explaining to the boys exactly how you lifted five million of our ill-gotten pounds out of the country, cleaned it, laundered it and only paid three per cent tax.’
‘Three per cent?’ asked a baffled Palmer.
‘It’s very simple dear boy,’ explained Baxter, ‘I merely adapted a model already favoured by some of the super-rich in our country,’ and he waited till he was sure he had our full attention before continuing, ‘I set up a partnership trust and registered it in Jersey. The partners in the trust, who just happen to be us, meaning subsidiary companies we own that operate under a variety of names, all contribute sizeable sums of money, totalling five million pounds, which amounts to the combined profits of our legitimate businesses, with a very sizeable chunk of illegitimate takings thrown in.’
‘You mean the drug money,’ said Kinane.
‘We then take that five million and invest it into our partnership trust, which buys a dividend from an offshore company we already control. That dividend actually costs fifty million pounds because it is worth fifty million… only it isn’t, because it is entirely fictitious. That’s the bit of the scheme I adapted.’
‘Come again?’ asked Palmer.
‘You spent five million pounds on something with no profit?’ asked Kinane, who had already lost the thread completely.
‘It isn’t real,’ confirmed Baxter, ‘nor is the forty-five million pound loan we took out to buy that fake dividend.’
‘So it’s a fake loan, with fake interest and fake repayments to purchase an imaginary dividend.’ I explained.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Palmer, ‘if it’s all fake then what do we get out of it?’
‘Tax relief,’ I told him.
‘Is that all?’ asked Kinane.
‘Is that all?’ snorted Baxter, ‘we have just laundered five million pounds into an offshore account and it cost us just one hundred and fifty thousand pounds tax, plus transaction fees, meaning we keep four million, eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which is now nestling in a bank account in the Cayman Islands.’
‘If we’d paid Corporation Tax at twenty-four per cent, it would have cost us one-point-two mill.’
‘So Baxter just saved us over a million quid?’ asked Palmer.
I raised my champagne glass to Baxter, ‘hence lunch at 21.’
‘So how does that work then? Why would they let us get away with it?’ added my head of security.
‘Because we are claiming tax relief on the cost of buying the dividend,’ said Baxter, ‘exploiting a loop hole on the benefits from that dividend,’ he explained, as if it was obvious.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Kinane.
‘And there was I assuming you would,’ Baxter’s tone was dripping with sarcasm, ‘but this is my area Joe. Yours is breaking arms.’
‘And I’ll break yours if you talk to me like that again.’
‘Simmer down lads. This should be a day of celebration,’ I reminded them, ‘it doesn’t get much better than this. Baxter did a good thing for the business.’
‘Why don’t they clamp down on these tax dodges?’ asked Palmer, ‘you’re a clever man Baxter but you can’t be the only one who’s spotted this one.’
‘I’m sure I’m not but loopholes are like mole hills,’ explained Baxter, ‘you stamp on one and there’ll be another one on your lawn in the morning,’ he took a reflective sip of his wine, ‘besides no government really has the appetite to tread on the rich these days. Look how many millionaires are in the cabinet. They tend to hang out with other millionaires.’
‘Wait a minute though, who are we paying the fees to?’ asked Palmer.
‘To the company that oversees the tax avoidance scheme,’ I explained, ‘it’s their cut for sorting out the deal.’
‘But the deal is fake,’ said Palmer.
‘Then it was easy money, wasn’t it?’
Palmer and Kinane looked at me like I’d gone a bit nuts and was talking to an imaginary friend, so I put them out of their misery, ‘the two hundred thousand pounds in fees gets divided between the four main board directors of Barrack Road Investments, which means fifty grand each for Henry Baxter, David Blake, Nick Palmer and Joe Kinane. I mean to say, with a tax avoidance scheme of that complexity and cunning, I’d say they’ve earned it, wouldn’t you?’
There was silence for a moment and then Palmer chuckled and it turned into a laugh, ‘back of the net,’ he said.
I didn’t feel guilty about the money we’d shoved away. There were a lot of people on my payroll and I had to stump up the cash for them week in, week out. There were also the ‘drops’ to various fixers, problem-solvers and intelligence-gatherers, not least Amrein and his highly shady and very expensive organisation, who effectively legitimised us in the criminal world. Amrein’s outfit gave us permission to control the city and, in theory at least, ensured no one else could take it away from us. All of this was a form of tax and I didn’t want to be shelling out millions more for the government to waste it on Enterprise Zones or the Big Society. Magicians use distraction, misdirection and sleight of hand to make people look the other way while they get away with their trick. We are just like magicians, only on a much larger scale.
Some of our legitimate businesses still paid tax of course. It was great cover and we are not entirely hard hearted. Besides, we weren’t the worst offenders. The biggest money launderers are the banks. Standard Chartered, a noble old British bank, was forced to pay a fine of $340 million to the US government because it laundered two hundred and fifty billion dollars of dirty Iranian money through its marbled corridors. That pales compared to the $1.9 billion dollars HSBC was fined for laundering drug money for criminal cartels. I don’t see Britain’s biggest bank mentioning that on any of their uplifting TV commercials.
Big corporations have been moving profits abroad for years. In their world it’s simply clever accounting. The billionaire retailer Philip Green avoided a £285 million pound tax bill by making himself an offshore resident of Monaco, then putting his company in his wife’s name. The government came after him straight away but only to seek his advice. The Prime Minister got him to conduct a review of government spending. You honestly couldn’t make that shit up.
We talked all afternoon, until Baxter inadvertently stumbled on a thorny topic. It was strange that among the millions we’d laundered it was a few grand that caused the falling out.
‘Three per cent tax?’ Palmer said, as if he still couldn’t get his head around it, ‘normal people pay way more than that.’
‘And there’ll be plenty left over for a sizeable donation to the Conservative party,’ Baxter told him.
‘A donation?’ Kinane was incredulous, ‘to the fucking Tories? Are you having a laugh?’
‘If we drop fifty grand into Tory coffers they’ll leave us alone,’ explained Baxter, ‘they’ll be too embarrassed to catch us, if they’ve got to admit they took money from us. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy; they only take money from legitimate businessmen therefore, in taking our money, we must be legitimate businessmen.’
‘But we’re not legitimate, we’re bent and everybody knows it. SOCA will warn them off us,’ said Palmer.
SOCA or the Serious Organised Crime Agency was tasked with bringing down drug smugglers, money launderers, armed, violent
criminals and people traffickers. We’d never trafficked human beings but we ticked every other box on their wish list and always had to assume they were keeping an eye on us.
‘SOCA would warn them about taking money from Gallowgate Holdings, but they know nothing about Barrack Road Investments.’ I informed him, ‘and our real names aren’t on the founding papers.’
‘But are there not rules about political parties taking money from offshore companies?’ Palmer asked.
‘Barrack Road Investments has a UK-based sister company, for want of a better phrase, with a discreet, private little office in London from which we can donate to whoever we please. In reality it’s little more than a PO box.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Kinane’s mood had soured, ‘giving money to the Tories? Might as well give it to the IRA or the Taliban.’
‘Oh don’t be ridiculous Joe!’ mocked Baxter.
‘Why not?’ Kinane protested, ‘they’ve both done less damage to the north-east than the fucking Tory party,’ and he folded his arms defiantly.
‘Let’s talk about it later, eh?’ I suggested. ‘Nothing’s been decided.’ I had been hoping for a calm and pleasant day for once, but this wasn’t going to be it. What should have been a celebratory lunch ended on a tense note.
7
That night I went looking for Vince. He was an unassuming lad who kept his head down and his hands clean but could be relied upon to manage a handful of our bars and clubs in the Bigg Market and the Quayside. This time of night he would normally be down at Privado, our low-rate lap-dancing bar. We didn’t spend any money on fancy trimmings here. All we needed was a couple of poles and a glitter ball, then we turned the lights down low and we were in business. The lasses here made their money persuading the punters to shell out for a private dance. They would pay to see them topless and give more to get them fully nude but it would all be over in the time it took to play two tracks. Then another lass would come over to fleece them out of more cash. I’ve seen drunk guys walk out of there hundreds of pounds down, with absolutely nothing to show for it but the hazy drunken memory of a bit of naked flesh.
The Dead Page 4