French Fried: one man's move to France with too many animals and an identity thief

by Chris Dolley

  Shit! Cancellation fees. Was that why Mutual Friendly were being cagey about how much money was left?

  I ran through to the study and rifled through my desk drawers. How much would they deduct? Ten per cent? Twenty? Insurance companies were renowned for fixing high penalties for early withdrawal.

  Papers flew through my hands. Where was that booklet? I was sure it was in this drawer?

  I found it, flicked through to the policy details at the back and...

  Eight per cent. There was a full encashment penalty of eight per cent for all policies cancelled in the first year. Our life savings, whose value had dropped by seventeen per cent since this morning, had just dropped another eight. God knows what other penalty clauses there’d be. There was nothing else for it – the cats would have to go out to work.

  I think that shifted me into despair. We’d been doing so well, I’d watched the stock markets advance, I’d written a program to monitor all our unit trusts.

  Which brought me swiftly into denial. It couldn’t be happening. It hadn’t happened.

  I then, somehow, shifted into detection. I’m not sure if it’s a recognised stage of being robbed, but I found it. I was going to solve the case, track down the criminals and hand them over to Shelagh, who was mired in the third stage of being robbed – the desire for vengeance and the speedy return of drawing and quartering.

  I cranked up my little grey cells. What do I look for first? Motive? That was simple – greed. Our investment bond was a tempting target for any latent thief. But opportunity? Who had known of the bond’s existence? A handful of people – Shelagh, myself, staff at Mutual Friendly and Eastleigh and Howard. That was all. It’s not the sort of topic that crops up in casual conversation – where did you say your money was invested? And the account number?

  It had to be an inside job. I could see it all. Someone at the Dublin office going through the computer files, looking for people like us. People depositing money before moving abroad, people who might not contact anyone for years. People whose only contact with their money was by letter.

  It was perfect. The policy details would be on file, the address, copies of signatures. All you’d need do was select a few to make it worth the risk without attracting interest. Open a series of false bank accounts in Spain, change the address for correspondence and cash in the policy. Perfect.

  I think sleep finally caught up with me then, my little grey cells whacked from behind by a growing tiredness that lasted until breakfast the next day.

  But a great detective cannot be stilled for long. I was sorting through my correspondence files after breakfast, when I came across a letter from Mutual Friendly, dated 9th June. And it was addressed to our real home – not to any hotel in Boulogne sur Save.

  I remembered it now. It asked for the return of the originals of the bond as new regulations required all existing bonds to be re-issued. Amended originals would be sent to us in due course. There was a second page for us to sign and send back with the documents.

  I stared at the letter. Two months after I’d supposedly cancelled the bond, here was a letter from Mutual Friendly talking about sending me a new set of policy details.

  If I sent them the originals.

  Which we didn’t have. Eastleigh and Howard held them. So I’d rung Mutual Friendly and told them. Which meant I’d talked to someone at Mutual Friendly in June about a bond that hadn’t existed since April.

  And I’d talked to the person who’d signed the letter – Elaine Varley.

  Or someone calling herself that.

  And I’d referred to the letter. I’m sure I had. And she said something like, “oh yes, Eastleigh and Howard, I know them well. I’ll get in touch with them.”

  Had she got in touch with them?

  And if she had, and they’d refused to release the documents, why hadn’t she got back in touch with me?

  The more I looked at the letter, the less I liked it. I checked it against the other letters I’d received from Mutual Friendly – the logo was different. But did that mean anything? Companies change logos like other people change socks.

  I checked the address. They were the same, as was the telephone number. And I remembered talking to Mutual Friendly’s switchboard. And asking for Elaine Varley by name. Which meant she had to work there.

  Or had an accomplice on the switchboard?

  oOo

  Was I becoming paranoid? The letter might be genuine. I’d worked for large companies – I knew how easy it was for one part of an organisation to work in isolation from others. The change of address and cancellation of the bond might never have reached the section dealing with the implementation of new regulations.

  But if the letter was a forgery...

  What better way to make us hand over the originals of the bond?

  And if I’d had them, I certainly would have returned them. I had no inkling, no reason to doubt the letter.

  Would that have been the end of our money? Were we that close to losing everything? Only saved by the fact that our financial advisers had kept the original documents?

  I struggled manfully with letter composition until midday, most attempts diving straight into the waste bin. I was trying to strike a balance between righteous anger and a cry for help. A kind of ’Give us our money ... please’ stretched over two pages.

  And I wanted to enclose the letter from Elaine Varley and highlight the implications. I was convinced it was important.

  We decided to delay faxing the letter until Monday. If this was an inside job we didn’t want our letter sitting on a fax machine all weekend for anyone to see. We knew a shop in St. Gaudens we could use. We’d drive in, fax the letter and then phone Dublin when we got back to ensure it arrived intact and undoctored.

  In the meantime, we’d better inform the gendarmes.

  oOo

  Which was something I was not looking forward to. I was half expecting to see my face staring out from the wall of wanted posters: driving without a vignette and a false ’Get out of Jail free’ card – bounty 10,000 francs.

  A fear that never materialised.

  Largely because we didn’t get that far, the police station being closed.

  Well, it was lunchtime.

  We looked at each other in disbelief. Can police stations close? Does crime stop between twelve and two?

  I wouldn’t be surprised. Life in the campagne does seem to slip into suspended animation between the déjeuner hours. I could well imagine families of masked felons laying aside their bags of swag while they dipped into their midday cassoulet.

  We drove home, refined our script, and returned.

  The gendarmes didn’t want to know.

  I could not believe it – perhaps I was stuck in denial – we had a crime to report, a script, an address to check out.

  But our French wasn’t good enough.

  They said they couldn’t understand what we were saying. Perhaps our pronunciation was off. Perhaps we were too excited. But we had the words written down! An attempt has been made to defraud us of our money, someone impersonated me, stayed at the Hôtel du Midi in Boulogne sur Save. Perhaps they’re still there. What was simpler than that?

  We’d spent ages on those few sentences, simplifying and honing.

  All for nothing apparently.

  Could we come back with someone who spoke French?

  I felt like a child being asked to fetch a grown-up.

  We made one more grab at our prepared script. Perhaps if we just concentrated on the hotel? Forget the fraud bit, we’d leave that to the Irish police.

  It didn’t work. Isn’t there someone in your village you can bring, they asked?

  oOo

  Which is when we thought of Jean-Pierre. He was the only candidate we could think of. Chantal was on holiday, none of the football team spoke English and none of our English friends spoke French any better than we did. There was only Jean-Pierre left.

  We’d been introduced to him at the Tuco Fête. He was a n
eighbour of an English couple we’d met, and he spoke English ... after a fashion. He’d learnt it from the BBC during the war when he’d been a radio operator with the resistance.

  Would he help us?

  He was brilliant. We descended upon him and his wife on a Saturday afternoon, unannounced and babbling. And he took us in, plied us with aperitif and converted our rough script into a bright shining work of art. Apparently our words were too cold – too Anglo-Saxon – French was a language for poets. He’d show us how to write a proper police statement.

  For one awful moment I thought he was going to make it rhyme. But he didn’t. He just made it flow. Converting our simple facts into a statement gendarmes would queue to listen to. For all I know, Gallicizing, ’I was proceeding along the High Street in a north-easterly direction,’ into ’the call of the north-east drew my feet through shop-strewn thoroughfares.’

  But what did that matter? If it meant the gendarmes would take us seriously, he could add music.

  An hour later he was still composing. We’d moved through into his office and he was typing our statement into his PC and setting up print formats for his laser printer. The man was a perfectionist.

  I was only looking for a French-speaking adult I could point to while shouting at the gendarmes, “he speaks French, now go to the hotel!”

  But you cannot complain in the face of such dedication.

  Unless you’re a gendarme.

  I don’t think they were impressed with the sweeping prose. Or the imaginative use of print fonts.

  I think they were too busy searching for the bit about my father’s birthday.

  We stood in the foyer of the gendarmerie, watching as first one, then two gendarmes picked up the statement, read it, nodded, shook their heads, muttered, and leapt into animated conversation with Jean-Pierre.

  Shelagh and I were lost. Words evaporated around us like Scotch mist.

  There’s something about watching a conversation you can’t follow that highlights cultural differences. You have to fall back on non-verbal clues – body language, attitude, volume.

  If this had been three English people talking, I’d have classified it as a heated argument. All flashing eyes, raised tones and vigorous hand movements. I’d have given evens for Jean-Pierre spending the night in the cells.

  But this was France. Probably no more than a group of poets discussing the perfidy of the criminal classes.

  Which was not what we came for.

  I tried to steer the conversation back to the hotel. Could someone please check the fax number? Did it belong to the hotel and, if not, who’s was it? It might be the perp’s personal number.

  The station sergeant looked at my piece of paper, thought for a while, and then pronounced that the fax number indeed belonged to the Hôtel du Midi.

  I was amazed. He couldn’t have taken more than five seconds. Did he really have all the local fax numbers filed away in his head? Or just those with criminal associations? Was the Hôtel du Midi a hotbed of local crime?

  I was so impressed I asked him how he knew it was the hotel’s fax number.

  “It says so here,” he replied and pointed to my piece of paper. Hôtel du Midi, fax number 72 34 60 94.

  Brilliant. This was a very trusting policeman. I tried to explain to him that this was my note, I’d written it, I’d copied it down over the phone. It wasn’t a sworn affidavit from France Telecom!

  Wasn’t there a police central computer where you could enter a fax number and get the subscriber’s name and address?

  I was never to find out. The more excited I got, the less sense I made. My brain was stuffed full of all the relevant English words but all their French equivalents had joined Missing Persons. I was close to bursting.

  And Jean-Pierre’s knowledge of English was not as extensive as we’d first thought.

  I think he employed a similar method of translation to mine – though subtly shifted – listening for a word he recognised then filling in the rest from various BBC wartime broadcasts.

  I have a feeling he suggested the gendarmes visit Boulogne, round up all the Germans and impose a dusk to dawn curfew. I wasn’t sure, but at least it would have been something positive.

  But police work these days is more concerned with form-filling … and about the victim’s details rather than the unsub’s fax number.

  Back came the usual questions. Who was I, what was my address, when was my father’s birthday? I could have screamed. There was only one address that was important and that was the hotel in Boulogne sur Save!

  As I stood, propped up against the station sergeant’s desk, reeling off family birthdays, I could see exactly how the private detective was born. I was feeling decidedly Holmesian myself. I knew what needed to be done but I couldn’t find anyone prepared to do it. It was frustrating in the extreme.

  From what I could understand from Jean-Pierre, the gendarmes would visit the hotel – sometime in the week when they had the time – but couldn’t do any more as it wasn’t a French crime. It was an Irish crime. An inside job at Mutual Friendly in Dublin. And they’d wait for the Irish police to contact them.

  We came away from the gendarmerie feeling exhausted, all nervous energy drained. There was a hotel less than half an hour away. The road outside the gendarmerie led straight to Boulogne sur Save, they wouldn’t even have to take a left turn. But no north-westerly call would draw one single step through shop-strewn thoroughfares until the middle of next week.

  Aaaarrrgghh!

  Pergonini MD

  Monday arrived with a flurry of activity. There were people to phone, people to fax, news to disseminate. We grabbed a very quick breakfast and rushed into St Gaudens with our much-honed letter to Mutual Friendly.

  And the two suspicious pages from Elaine Varley.

  It cost us £20 to fax eight pages. I was astonished and quickly added that to the money we were owed.

  Someone would pay.

  Back home, we waited ... and waited.

  Surely Dublin would have received the fax by now? We’d asked them to ring us as soon as it arrived.

  Approaching midday I could wait no longer. I picked up the phone and asked to speak to Trevor Graham, the Administrative Director.

  He wasn’t available. He was in an important meeting.

  About my letter, hopefully.

  I left a message and rang off. I’d have to wait until after dinner.

  Two seconds after I put the phone down, it rang.

  I stared at the receiver. Was this suspicious? I phone Dublin and someone rings me back immediately?

  “Hello,” I said warily.

  “Mr Dolley? My name’s Andy Chatfield, I work for Special Services. Trevor Graham asked me to call.”

  “Special Services?” I know I’d asked for the police to be involved but I didn’t think I’d be talking to MI5.

  “Yes, Mutual Friendly International Special Services.”

  MFI Special Services? It didn’t have quite the same ring as MI5.

  “I’ve read your letter and I’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s convenient?”

  By all means. I was still intrigued as to how he managed to phone so quickly after I’d rung Dublin. Was he there at the time, but wanted to phone back to make sure I was who I said I was?

  Or was I becoming paranoid?

  “Have you been to the doctor recently?”

  This was not a question I’d been expecting.

  Was it in code?

  Should I fetch Jean-Pierre and ask if he still had his code book? Were there two British airmen hiding in our outhouse?

  “Er ... no?” I replied, waiting, breath well and truly baited for the next question.

  “Do you know any doctors in Aurignac?”

  “No.”

  “Does your wife know any doctors ... socially perhaps?”

  I placed my hand over the receiver and turned to Shelagh who was standing alongside.

  “He wants to know if you know any doctor
s ... socially.”

  “Who?”

  I was beginning to wonder that myself. Why this fascination with doctors? And was he really who he said he was?

  “No, she doesn’t,” I replied, thinking that about wrapped it up on the doctor front.

  “Neither of you have any friends who are doctors or know anyone who’d sign MD after their name?”

  I could not believe this.

  “Why do you ask?”

  He didn’t want to say. Apparently it was early in the investigation and it was important that answers were uncoloured by context.

  But he did provide me with one very important fact. The letter from Elaine Varley was a fake. The letterhead was not genuine and it wasn’t Elaine’s signature.

  I phoned Simon almost straight away. I wanted to verify this Andy Chatfield. And MFI Special Services. Should I expect a phone call from B&Q?

  Apparently not. MFI was the parent organisation of various Mutual Friendly companies in the UK and Europe. And there was such a person as Andy Chatfield who did work for Special Services who were indeed carrying out their own internal investigation.

  But what on earth caused his obsession with doctors? Was he a hypochondriac? I wanted my context well and truly coloured

  “Ah, I think I might know why he asked that,” said Simon.

  At last. I couldn’t think of one sensible suggestion.

  “I’ve got the letter here. Let me see ... Yes. Your signatures were witnessed by a Dr. Pergonini of Aurignac.”

  What? This was getting more and more bizarre. First, there was the hotel fifteen miles away at Boulogne sur Save. Now, there’s a doctor involved. At Aurignac ... five miles away.

  I asked for the name again. I could check the phone directory. It wouldn’t be difficult to see if he existed.

  Simon read out the full name. It was stamped on the letter. The signature was illegible but the stamp said: G.PERGONINI M.D Sur Rendez-Vous 31420 AURIGNAC.

  There was no address, 31420 was the post code for Aurignac, so that was no help. And there was no telephone number. Odd for a doctor’s stamp.