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

by Chris Dolley

  The Banca Zaragoza.

  We found a space a few houses down and parked, gathered up our letters, dictionary and faxes, told Nan we wouldn’t be long and hurried inside.

  As we approached I ran through several scenarios – what would happen if he didn’t understand French? Should we race to the nearest town and buy an English-Spanish dictionary? What if they didn’t have one? Buy a French-Spanish one and hook it up in tandem with our English-French?

  I pushed the swing door open and walked inside. It was a small bank, no grills or bulletproof glass – just a counter and a waiting area. And only one man on duty – a short, dark-haired man in a white shirt.

  We approached the counter with mounting trepidation. Would he understand one word we said?

  I handed over the photocopy of the bank account details and asked in French if the account was here.

  “Oui,” he said excitedly.

  I handed him our passports and our very detailed letter of explanation which he read with a growing number of nods and exclamations. He knew it, he told us. Head Office, huh! They told him it was okay, but he knew.

  “All the time, I knew it!” he repeated.

  This was looking very hopeful. Something must have happened to make him remember the account so vividly.

  He produced a folder, placed it on the counter and started flipping through the pages, muttering to himself.

  And then he smiled. He’d found what he was looking for. He unclipped two pages from his folder and placed them on the counter in front of us. They were photocopies of passports. One was mine, one was Shelagh’s.

  But with different faces.

  Neither were easy to recognise – the photocopies were poor, they were more silhouettes than pictures – but there was something familiar about them. Especially Shelagh’s. I couldn’t quite fathom it ... then...

  There are few things that test the bonds of family greater than seeing your sister’s picture on your wife’s passport.

  One is finding your brother-in-law’s on your own.

  The Day of the Gendarmes

  There are no words to adequately describe the shock of seeing those two passport photocopies. My threshold of disbelief had been battered and stretched considerably over the previous ten days, but this was something else.

  I don’t know what I’d expected to find. I suppose I’d expected to find a passport and it would have had a picture on it. Logically the picture of the small, slight, fluent French speaker who I’d assumed had set up the account.

  But my brother-in-law? Who was neither small, slight, fair nor fluent in French.

  And had a beard.

  I pointed to the police description of the man at the hotel and asked if this was similar to the man who had opened the account.

  “The same.” he agreed.

  I looked again at John’s picture. I suppose it was more of a black blob than a picture but then this was a photocopy. Surely, having seen the original, no one could mistake him for the small, slight, fair-haired man who’d opened the account?

  Except no one had seen the original. The account had been opened with the photocopy!

  I was beyond amazement. Someone had opened an account in my name with a photocopy of a passport? Someone had just crossed the border from France into Spain but instead of producing their passport took out a photocopy they’d prepared earlier? Sorry, I’ve left the passport in the car, here’s a bad photocopy I carry around just in case?

  And what a bad photocopy it was. Probably a photocopy of a long line of photocopies. It looked like he’d pasted my brother-in-law’s picture over mine and copied it until the picture was unrecognisable.

  Except to a close relative.

  In my head, I could hear all the experts back in London talking smugly about the anti money-laundering conventions and how impossible it was nowadays to open a bank account without proper identification.

  Obviously not if you have access to a photocopier!

  The bank manager must have noticed our shock and ushered us into his office at the back, sitting us down and asking if we wanted him to call the police.

  Definitely.

  I looked again at the passports while he phoned. Why would anyone use Jan and John’s pictures on our passports? I trusted them implicitly. There was no way they would be involved.

  So how had their pictures come to be on our passports?

  They had bought their house through David Jarvis. Which meant both he and Peter Kennedy would have a copy of their passports as well as ours. But so would our bank – we both banked at the same branch. And applied through the same Sous-Préfecture and Préfecture for our cartes de séjour.

  Only the Mayor of Cassagne could be eliminated. He was the only one who hadn’t copied both sets of passports.

  I heard the manager say, “oh,” rather loudly and replace the receiver.

  “Une problème,” he started, apologetically. I yearned for the days when all we ever heard was pas de problème.

  “C’est la Fête des Gendarmes,” he continued.

  He didn’t need to say any more. I’d lost the capacity to be surprised. It was Gendarmes Day. Of course! The police were on holiday. Silly us, why hadn’t we realised?

  And the gendarmes?

  On their way to the restaurant.

  Where else.

  Did I need further proof? It wasn’t Moriarty I was up against, it was Dr. Evil. Who else could it be? This whole affair had farce stamped right through it. There was probably a secret lair on a nearby mountain top filled with robot Pergoninis and photocopier machines!

  Of all the days to visit Les, I had to choose the one day – October 2nd – when the entire police force bunk off to the restaurant!

  And what the hell was a Gendarmes Day?

  Was there a Fête des Voleurs? Did all the thieves congregate at a restaurant for a day of celebration and spontaneous pick-pocketing?

  The manager volunteered to take the matter up with police the next day. I suggested he didn’t phone too early.

  I was still wrapped in disbelief when Shelagh pointed out the difference in the two passports. Hers was a Visitor’s passport.

  And she’d grown two inches.

  I checked my passport again. Only the picture was different. All the details – name, date of birth, place of birth – were correct.

  But not Shelagh’s.

  It was a composite of three passports.

  Shelagh’s name, Jan’s picture and someone else’s address, height and year of birth.

  Was this a breakthrough?

  The address was given as 44B East Street, Bexley, London SW4 6ET. Nowhere we’d ever lived. Or ever been near.

  And someone had taken three years off Shelagh’s age and added two inches to her height. Was this an attempt to manufacture a new identity?

  The more I looked at the passport, the more false it appeared. Unlike the modern full passport the Visitor’s passport was handwritten – but this was written in two hands. In fact, looking closely you could make out sections where the old words had been snowpaked out and the new words didn’t quite fill the space. The address had been changed. As had the day and month of birth.

  Which meant the year was correct. And the height.

  But why use this Visitor’s passport when everyone who had a copy of my passport also had a copy of Shelagh’s?

  I’d have to get in touch with Ian Morris at the Embassy again. Which, I could imagine, would just about make his day.

  But the passports were not alone in the bank’s files. Just when we were recovering from one shock, the manager handed us another.

  A Bankers’ Power of Attorney from me to Shelagh; three pages of French and Spanish transferring the account into Shelagh’s hands. It was dated 30th May and witnessed by a notaire, one Christian Arnaud of Boulogne sur Save.

  And it was stamped. An official notarial stamp. Not G. Pergonini MD, but the real McCoy.

  It took a while to read and digest. Was this an attempt to sw
itch the account, not so much into a joint account, as Mutual Friendly had been told, but into an account for a woman to use? And was that the reason for Shelagh’s composite passport? To change Shelagh’s age and height, to pave the way for the arrival of a woman?

  In which case, why not use her picture as well?

  Or would that have been too risky?

  The crime was certain to be discovered eventually, they couldn’t afford to use their own pictures … so they use someone else’s. Someone with links to the victim, someone with opportunity.

  Jan and John.

  They’d set them up to take the blame!

  The manager joined in the speculation. I think we’d brightened his day. His name was Miguel and from what we could understand he’d been suspicious from the start. He’d allowed the account to be opened and a small sum deposited – about £50 – but insisted the full passport would be needed to withdraw any money.

  He’d passed on his concerns to head office but when they received the power of attorney with the notarial stamp and an attestation by a French notaire that passports had been seen and signatures witnessed – they told him he was being overly suspicious. As long as a valid British passport was eventually produced, the account was to be processed as any other.

  But no one had ever returned.

  This was a great weight off our minds. So we were not in debt?

  “Non.”

  And we had £50. And I had a valid British passport. Could we?

  “Non.”

  The account had just been frozen.

  I still wonder what happened to that money. We certainly never saw any of it. Whose was it? The bank’s or the person who illegally deposited it?

  But there were more important matters to discuss. Would he be able to recognise the man if he saw him again?

  He would.

  And if we brought him a photograph?

  He’d be able to identify the man.

  This was brilliant. Who needed the gendarmes? We were doing fine without them.

  We chatted some more; I wanted to know if my impersonator had left any other forwarding addresses or fax numbers – something we could use to track him down.

  He didn’t think so. There was an envelope, but he didn’t think it had a sender’s address on it. He fished it out of his file. The power of attorney had been inside in it. He handed it over.

  It had a printed logo: C & S DOLLEY, Horses of Quality, Seville – Toulouse.

  What!

  Miguel explained that that was what the man said he did – bought and sold horses. He was opening the account because he was on his way to buy some Andalucian horses. He’d be transferring a large amount into the account to finance the deal.

  I was amazed. We had our own personalised envelopes. We bought and sold horses. Was there no end to what we did?

  And was the horse motif relevant? Did that imply that someone knew us well enough to know we had a horse? Certainly David Jarvis did. I told him. He knew we were looking for a property with enough land for a horse.

  Which presumably meant that Peter Kennedy would know as well?

  We asked if Miguel could let us have photocopies of the passports and the power of attorney – which he agreed – and could he write his name, address and telephone number on our pad in case the gendarmes wanted to interview him.

  It was with a real sense of achievement that we left the Banca Zaragoza. We’d frozen the account and we had several new leads; a notaire who may or may not exist, an address in London, a British Visitors Passport number and, most important of all – a witness.

  All we had to do now was obtain pictures of David Jarvis and Peter Kennedy…

  And find Nan.

  Who’d disappeared.

  Supermarkets, Faxes and the Irish Connection

  As usual I could not believe it. I don’t know why. Looking back, I should have expected something similar. The car, either devoid of elderly relatives or towed away by a gang of marauding Visigoths. After all, it was Gendarmes Day.

  We looked at each other. And then back at the empty car. We’d asked her to stay put. We’d told her we wouldn’t be long. If she was so determined to look around Les why hadn’t she said something?

  We looked up and down the street, scanning doorways into the distance. Perhaps she’d just nipped out to stretch her legs?

  Nothing.

  Perhaps she’d left a note?

  She hadn’t.

  We knew she couldn’t have been kidnapped – we weren’t that lucky.

  Our deliberations were interrupted by a commotion from a building a few doors away.

  It was the Gendarmerie.

  For one awful moment I thought we’d found Nan. I could envisage several burly Spanish policemen dragging Nan out of the station en route for the border and a forced deportation.

  Luckily, I was wrong. There were no cries of ’Hands off Gibraltar!’ or ’It’s the border for you, chummy!’

  Instead, we’d stumbled upon the beginning of a procession.

  We watched as fifty – or was it nearer eighty? – immaculately dressed gendarmes – some in green, some in black, all of them armed – marched out of the station and into the centre of the road.

  It looked as though every gendarme who had ever visited Les, had a friend called Les, or knew someone who’d once driven down its High Street, was out there marching.

  And heading for the nearest restaurant.

  We wondered what was happening at the other end of town. Was there a gang of masked felons waiting outside for the signal to come marching in and sack the place? Was Les about to disappear under a wave of blue and white hooped jumpers?

  And where, amidst all this chaos, was Nan?

  “She’s done it again, hasn’t she?” said Shelagh.

  “What?”

  “This! She’s only been here five minutes and she’s emptied the police station!”

  I think Shelagh was going a tad over-the-top concerning her mother’s impact upon world events. There was only one person residing at the hub of world misfortune and Shelagh was talking to him. Who else would choose Gendarmes Day to visit Spain? If anyone topped Fate’s hit list, it was I.

  We followed the marching feet of law and order towards the centre of town. After all, where else would Nan be? Tourist shops held the same attraction for Nan that magnets reserved for the more impressionable iron filings.

  And Les was a tourist resort.

  A typical small Pyrenean resort – plenty of restaurants, hotels and gift shops. And wine. Loads of it. Like many of the resorts near the French border it took advantage of the price differential between French and Spanish wine. Huge wooden vats filled every food shop. A few shelves of provisions and then barrel after barrel of Tinto 10%, Tinto 12%, Tinto 14%, Moscatel, Porto and Misa. This was take-away country – bring your own container and choose your barrel – with the price dependent on alcoholic strength rather than name or vintage. And it was all incredibly cheap.

  I find it a comforting thought that as thousands of Brits queue for their cheap booze at supermarkets near Calais, the French are doing likewise at the Spanish border.

  I wondered where the Spanish went? Andorra?

  Which begged the question – where did the Andorrans go?

  Or were they too drunk to care?

  We scanned the cheap wine shops, walked amongst the bric-a-brac displays, the gift shops, the cafe tables. We peered down the narrow alleys between supermarket shelves.

  Until we found her. Staring at a label on a bottle of sherry, trying to work out how many pesetas there were in a litre.

  “What does this say?” she said as soon as she noticed our arrival, “I can’t quite make it out.”

  I spent the next ten minutes working through the shelves, converting pesetas to pounds, litres to pints, pounds to francs and then back again. And tapping my foot. I wanted to get back home as soon as possible. I had people to phone, information to impart, addresses to check out.

  But N
an had a more pressing problem. Should she buy the litre of the cheap medium Sherry or go with the more expensive brand she recognised?

  “What do you think, Shelagh?” she asked.

  I could tell exactly what Shelagh thought and it had nothing to do with the comparative merits of fortified wine. Both bottles were quickly grabbed and with the words, “consider it a present,” marched to the check out.

  From there we almost made it to the French border.

  Almost … but not quite.

  Nan had the scent.

  “Ooh, look at that! Is that the cheap supermarket you told me about?”

  Unfortunately, it was. We spent another forty minutes pushing trolleys and calculating prices. I didn’t think one small person could buy so much sherry. And after the sherry came the brandy and aren’t those liqueur bottles nice and ooh, what’s that over there?

  I didn’t think I’d ever see France again.

  oOo

  With Mrs Hudson safely ensconced counting sherry bottles in her room, 221b Baker Street could return to normal. I had an address to check.

  And an old London A-Z.

  There was no East Street in Bexley. At least not in 1980. I suppose there was always the chance that there was now – but hardly likely. Local councils didn’t go in for East Streets these days; new roads were more likely to be Mandela Avenue or McCartney Plaza.

  And the postcode didn’t match the address – Bexley was nowhere near SW4. I wondered if it was worth trying to locate the address that did match the postcode but thought, on balance, it probably wasn’t. Looking closely, the postcode looked like it had been altered as well – though ’London’ and ’SW’ looked unchanged. Which would tie up with the issuing post office being Putney, London SW15. Certainly the stamp looked unaltered.

  I felt that I’d progressed the address as far as I could. It was time to ring Andy.

  I think he was impressed. I’d given him something concrete to check out – an address and a passport number. And the use of the notaire might give us another lead. And what about the Bankers’ Power of Attorney? Didn’t that imply a female accomplice – the account being changed so that she could withdraw the money?