Tim Heath Thriller Boxset

by Tim Heath

  The press conference was now in full flow. Brendan had introduced himself as the CEO of an English based insurance firm and a Nottingham admirer, which brought only smiles from much of the gathered journalists, who knew a planned opening line when they heard it. He then went through their reasons behind the move to buy the club, not playing too much on the financial gains available but on the local feel to the club, the closeness to its fans and the intense loyalty that it held in the city. He talked through the debts and how the club would now be on a stronger footing, how money would be spent on developing younger players and seeing them become international quality footballers. Nothing was mentioned about the previous manager’s departure the night before, but Brendan was sure that the questions would come; at least that’s what the waiting press would have expected to have asked when they prepared for the meeting.

  The big surprise came with the introduction of Tommy Lawrence, who quickly took his seat at the front next to Brendan. There was a frenzy of activity, and the noise increased immediately, so much so that Brendan had to pause as the shocking news of an unknown manager taking the reins of this club broke, every reporter's head down suddenly frantically scribbling notes onto their jotter pads. Everyone but one guy near the back, and this was when Brendan first noticed Robert in the room. It struck him that there was something odd about him, a lack of surprise or reaction to anything, and then he slowly started to recognise the face he’d studied on that CCTV picture.

  Brendan was frozen to the spot for the moment but started speaking again before handing over to Tommy and sitting down. Looking up again, Brendan could still see Robert staring straight at him. He took a drink of water calmly, glanced at Tommy who was handling himself very well then glanced back, but Robert was gone. Brendan was limited with what he could do being stuck at the front of a room of over two hundred people in a press conference that he had arranged. He made eye contact with one of the security men on the door which they had come in by, catching his attention and making eyes for the back of the room but there was no way he could adequately let him know what he wanted. The guard still disappeared anyway out into the corridor that ran alongside the hall.

  Robert was of course long gone by now, having seen what he came to see as well as catching Brendan’s attention. Outside, he jumped into a waiting taxicab, hundreds of cabs being available as the press conference was yet to finish. As it pulled away and down the street, he noticed a guard coming out the main doors but knew he was clear as he turned a corner at the end of the road.

  Mary Ingham arrived at her office at the Department of Trade and Industry earlier than usual, partly to read over the notes that came back from yesterday and somewhat to be prepared before the press conference was through. If anything was going to hold the takeover up, it was essential to know as soon as possible.

  The meeting had gone on late, far later than they had planned but things often happened like that, and because they only met once a month there was usually too much to discuss anyway. With a fresh day upon her, Mary ploughed through the sheets of background information that somebody thought would be useful to her. She always saw the problem in this, but when someone else was preparing anything relevant to a situation, they tended to include everything so that they covered their backs in case something was omitted that later became a critical piece of information. Juniors had lost their jobs for far less in the past, and so the average background report nowadays ran into the twenty, thirty or in this case forty page bracket.

  As she was already aware, the size of the Gambles Holdings Group was notable, and as owners of HICL, they had as much information of the sister companies as was possible, which was quite a lot. She noted with interest the successful history of Brian Harman, who had founded the company in 1975. She had come across a few of his acquisitions in her early days in the department before he sold the firm for around £150 million just over a decade ago. The Gambles Holdings Group had kept the HICL name to this day, mainly because of its commercial value and reputation. There was a footnote in the report noting that specifics on each firm could be found towards the back of the report. Mary would look through them later but first wanted to see the general overview. Most of it, she knew, was completely irrelevant but occasionally something would come up that would make her look at something more closely. The Gambles Holdings Group had many other links as well, though not all were still part of the group as some had been sold along the way.

  Ample Tech was the next to be noted, listed as a market leader in telecommunications and computer technology. Their growth had been equally impressive as well, having acquired many companies along the way. They now pioneered most of the new technologies on the open market, which explained their record highs on the Stock Market that week.

  Mary skimmed over the next dozen pages which looked at the history of the Gambles Holdings Group in general with its first gambling links, though these were now sold. It also detailed the known connections into Law and Order, Health Care, Politics and even the military, with one of their firms an unknown but significant developer of state of the art weaponry.

  All of this was just generic background information to Mary, which she came across on a regular basis. With these multi-interest corporations, it was hard, even for someone in her position, to precisely know what was above board and what needed looking at.

  Glancing through the financials on HICL that were contained in the last few pages, something caught her eye. She stopped straight away and re-read the information preceding the figures shown. Again she paused.

  Picking up the phone on her desk, she called her support department, though there was no one there yet, as it was still before nine. She, therefore, redialled for a senior colleague of hers, Simon Allen, who had a very analytical way of looking at things and did all the number crunching.

  “Simon, it’s Mary,” she said eagerly but warmly down the handset.

  Simon had been in the previous day’s meeting, a valuable and long-standing employee of the Department of Trade and Industry.

  “Hello, Mary. What have you got?” He knew she wouldn’t have been calling him at that time, the day after a monthly meeting unless she had come across something into which she needed him to take a look.

  “There’s something in the HICL financial make-up that might need a little look into. I’ve just tried calling the support guys but they’re not in yet.”

  “What is it?” he asked her.

  “I need to check it’s not an error first and if not get them to do a full analysis, which I’d also like you to be a part of. But there’s something about the claims record at HICL that doesn’t make sense. The numbers don’t look right for a company of their size. If it’s not an error on our part, then something doesn’t fit, which is where you, of course, come in. Can you pop round to my office after ten, by which time I’ll have my guys looking into their figures?”

  “Sure, Mary, I’ll see you at ten, and I’ll bring the coffee.” She smiled to herself as she put the phone down. Simon couldn’t start any meeting without a strong black coffee in his hand, and it had become a department tradition, one happily entertained by Mary.

  4

  Tommy Lawrence had fielded the questions very well for twenty minutes, the attending journalists even warming to him by the end of it all. This unknown stranger had suddenly become the manager at Nottingham Forest, and the masses of reporters slowly left feeling that they quite liked him. Tommy was very excited and kept an infectious smile on his face for the entire time. For him, it had been a dream come true too. Since getting the call from Brendan yesterday morning, while sitting at his desk reading the paper which reported on all the weekend’s football action, now he found himself as a manager in the English Championship, the second highest tier in English football. He was, of course, a confident person, which had only been reinforced and encouraged by his working for HICL and coming through their Academy. Now he was to perform in another role, though still under Brendan’s watchful eye, with a lot
more flexibility and power of decision, or so he was told.

  Leaving the conference room together, ever the picture of unity, they closed the doors behind them and went to the bar, the Players Lounge, and poured themselves a very generous drink, considering the fact it was still a long time until lunch.

  “Well, that was a buzz,” Tommy boomed out with far too much enthusiasm for that time of the day. Stan Hunter stood with Brendan as they chatted away softly by the bar.

  “Is this place like yours now, Mr Charles?” Tommy said holding his glass in the air as he talked with his hands, referring to the stadium in general.

  “I guess it is Tommy,” Brendan replied calmly. Tommy sat at the bar and poured himself another drink, eating the snacks laid out in front of him, as he thought over the last week.

  The information that the Department of Trade and Industry had on the financials at HICL only added to the growing mystery that now covered the Gamble Holdings Group in general. Their research had been verified and also helped by a further background check with the Department of Information, a report printed by Jessica Ponter herself though she was not aware of its content or significance. Mary Ingham made some notes on the left-hand margin as she speed read through most of the report but was more interested in the claims history of the company, slowing right down as she digested the figures, something that never came too naturally. Up until the takeover more than ten years ago, HICL had an average claims history, compared to the rest of the market at that time. A turnover in the hundreds of millions, all gained from its corporate insurance base, which generated a decent amount of profit as its claims record stood at 50%, which was around what could be expected in any reasonable period. Storms or terrorist attacks hit everyone equally hard. HICL claims amount had risen in line with their policy numbers since the company started in the 1970s. Apart from the odd bad year, such as the claims arising out of the 1987 storms, they were steady. Year on year the company dealt with claims as quickly as possible and as cheaply as they could, but still £150 million a year, up to the takeover, was spent in insurance pay-outs. When the Gamble Holdings Group purchased HICL, an accelerated number of policies were set up, but the claims payout amount stayed the same and actually started dropping. Within five years of the takeover, the insurance payouts were under £100,000 a year, an impossible amount for a company whose premiums now topped the one billion pound mark. And they fell further, never again clearing the six figures in any one year.

  “This is unreal,” Simon said, turning to Mary as they glanced over the figures together. “You’re telling me,” he continued to say, “that a company of this size, with thousands of clients, has a zero per cent claims record effectively.”

  “That would explain their size,” Mary replied weakly.

  “Rubbish! There is no way that these accounts are correct.”

  “I’ve had them checked out, Simon,” Mary said, a little annoyed now that her methods were being questioned.

  “I work with numbers all day long, Mary. Numbers tell a story, and these numbers tell me that something isn’t right.”

  Mary glanced at the sheet again, but figures were not her strongest point, and she was unable to say anything in reply to Simon. She stayed quiet for a moment, finding herself glancing out of the window, the silence catching Simon’s attention for a moment as he glanced up momentarily but quickly continued, still absorbed in the figures.

  “I’m going to do a little digging on these,” he said, pointing to the sheet. “I think I’ll be able to look at individual cases. Also, I want to see what these new cases were and what claims they had.”

  He collected his things together, the two old friends exchanging their farewells and he almost bounded out of the room, a slight excitement in his step, Mary knowing from many years of working with him that he loved the challenge these situations offered him.

  Nigel woke up suddenly and checked the clock. Jumping up out of bed quickly, he opened his curtains and admired the wonderfully landscaped garden that stretched out before him. He opened the French doors and walked out onto his balcony, the air fresh and alive, just as he felt at that moment. He breathed in the fresh, clean air. It was the air of home, the atmosphere of safety and the promised comfort of security. He could smell, from an opened window from the service block attached to his large house, that lunch was being prepared, and again he smiled and enjoyed his success, his wealth, his lifestyle.

  Walking back to his room, the luxurious cream curtains blowing in the cool breeze, he pulled out a suit from his cupboard and laid it on the bed. He then went into his en-suite bathroom and turned on the shower, the water jumping to life and warm straight away. The bathroom was clean, neat and ordered, like everything in his life. The bathroom was tiled all over with a warm natural stone floor, which benefited from its underfloor heating. Nigel left very few items out on the side, as everything had its place. Not that he used a lot of different products anyway, he always stuck to what he knew.

  Once he had showered, drying himself with his lavish towels that were nicely warmed on the colossal towel rail on the bathroom wall, he put on his bathrobe, leaving the suit on the bed, and walked to the dining room where he would eat lunch.

  Everything was set out for him in its place and ready for his arrival. It was how he had ordered it, and his staff knew by now that this was how things would run. No one else was around, as usual, and he ate in peace, enjoying every mouthful, taking his time to taste what he was eating. He smiled to himself again, a slight chuckle coming out as he looked at his food, the room and his life and said to himself:

  “This is good. This is really good!”

  After a little while, he picked up a phone that was on the table and called the front gate.

  “Hello, sir,” came the reply.

  “Can you get the car ready, please? Pick me up at the front door in thirty minutes.” There was an acknowledgement at the other end, and Nigel put the phone back down, finished up what he had on his plate and went back to his room. The plates would be cleared away shortly, everything washed and then returned to its original place ready for his next meal.

  In his room, Nigel put on a Prada suit, tie and jacket. Just wearing it made him feel rich and he allowed himself a smile again at his good fortune. When he was completely ready, he straightened his tie in the mirror, put on a pair of designer sunglasses, even though there was only a little natural sunlight in the room, picked up his briefcase and walked out of the room, locking the door behind him. He secured the lounge door as well and then walked to the front door. Knowing his car would be outside waiting for him, he picked up a well-used but sturdy walking stick that was in a coat stand next to the door. His back bent a little, and his weight put on the stick, he checked his facial appearance in the mirror then opened the door. He started an unsteady walk towards the car, his driver rushing towards him to take his case from him and to help him down the four stone steps. He helped lower him into the car, which always took a little bit of time, and placed the case in the back seat next to him. Returning to the driver’s seat, he pulled away slowly, carefully navigating up the quarter-mile driveway and passing the gatehouse at the front, the gates opened in advance. They turned onto the empty road and disappeared down the street.

  Mary Ingham was sitting in her office as a memo was dropped onto her desk by a colleague, one of her administration guys who said nothing and left. Mary was reading it through when Simon appeared at the door, bringing a large coffee with him. The door was open, which was the way Mary preferred, giving visitors the freedom to enter without knocking.

  “I’ve had a good look into these figures, Mary,” Simon said, placing the coffee on the table before Mary. He pulled a chair around next to hers as he laid the sheets of paper out, side by side, in front of her. She sat back and tried to take in what she was looking at, but knew Simon would explain all. She picked up the coffee.

  “Thanks for this,” she said, raising it to her mouth.

  “Look,” Simon
said eagerly, pressing right on with his agenda, “this sheet here details what the £100,000 paid out in claims refers to.” There was a printed sheet with three columns on it, listing numbers and companies as well as noting when the firm had first insured through HICL.

  “All these companies had been with HICL since before the takeover. This one,” his figure pointing to a firm on the second line that had a fire costing just under £37,000 in 1995, “had premiums before that of £20,000 a year, as it’s a multi-office policy with lots of extras. After that, the premiums were in the high twenties, and they haven’t had any other claims. It’s similar to all the rest. Their complete claims record is made up of companies that pay at least the same back to them in premiums. This is where it gets interesting though,” he stated even more excitedly, his voice slightly rising as he hurried his speech. “This sheet represents the thousands of policies that they have issued since the takeover. And none of these companies, not even one, has had a claim of any real size in the last decade.”

  Mary glanced at the sheet but wasn’t about to argue the point. She tried to think of an intelligent thing to say but knew she was out of her league in this area. Most people were with Simon, and though Mary loved having him within the team, she always felt he was wasted there because surely there were more important things he could go on to do with the skills and abilities he had, things that would really add up to something. But she knew now was not the time to mention such things and taking a moment to think again on the matter, she focused back on what he had just said, searching for some reply.

  “Might it be that they’ve just been lucky?”

  “It did cross my mind also, Mary,” he said tenderly, both of them knowing it hadn’t at all in fact, “even though this would be highly unlikely. Still, that might have been possible until I found this piece of information,” and he paused slightly, which only built on the tension.