A Little Bit on the Side (13 page)

‘£31,000 for nine acres of rough pasture and scrub and a house that my dad told me was built for little more than five hundred in the thirties! I thought old man Parsons had got more sense than to be telling him to ask that sort of money.’

But Parsons, one of the local estate agents, had got his finger pretty well on the pulse of the market and was doing very nicely in consequence. Within a few months their derision had turned to anger and some envy when they learned (Hilda Genner again) that Golightly had not only got his asking price, but had two buyers interested and leapfrogging, selling eventually to the one with ready money.

By now, deep in his reflections and nearing the end of his fourth glass of festive Madeira, Jack sat alone in a room in darkness apart from the flickering light of the burning logs. Kate had gone to bed to leave him brooding over his disaffection with his job in particular and the mutability of life in general. He was in that sort of mood.

He rehearsed it all again. Avoidance rife and nothing done. Lots of talk, but bugger all action. How was it Ted Sutton categorised the politicians: like a herd of cattle, full of wind and shit? Investigation frustrated by lack of powers and shortage of staff. Businessmen and the self-employed playing fast and loose with a system that leaked like a sieve. Pay what you like when you like, no one really gives a damn. Everyone on the make and looking out for number one. Sod it, he thought, I might just as well take Stevens’ bait, get my cut and be damned with it. He finished his drink, went to bed, and slept like a child quite untroubled by conscience.

On his first day back in the office after the New Year break Jack, his intentions unchanged, sipped an early coffee and pondered on the legend of the taxman’s incorruptibility. There was, he knew, a proven correlation between levels of offending and likelihood of detection. Was it really a case of absolute moral rectitude, he wondered, or simply the fact that anyone making a realistic appraisal of the chances of getting away with it would inevitably conclude that he was on a hiding to nothing. The tax system had been up and running for far too long. There were just too many checks, counter-checks and audits.

The Inspector might bear the opprobrium of the public for working out what they had to pay, but however much tax his toil produced, his hands were never soiled by the product of his labours. No chance for any cash to stick to his hands en route to the Exchequer: collection was dealt with by an entirely separate department.

Not that the taxman’s moral rectitude was such as to inhibit many of them when it came to taking three year’s taining at the expense of the public at large, and then, with a little experience under their belt, buggering off to the richer pastures of the city houses, industrial companies or the many tax consultancies that helped the rich screw the Exchequer. A form of moral constipation or turpitude that never bothered their consciences, thought Jack. Why should mine be troubled?

Over the years Jack had acquired a reputation for determination, thoroughness, and a methodical approach to his work illuminated occasionally by those flashes of inspiration or strokes of luck that none could do without. It was now his intention to bring precisely those attributes to bear on the little private venture that he was planning. From his recent reading he was also deeply into the circus world of Le Carre’s espionage fiction with its burrowers, ferrets and pavement artists, and was determined that in this his first operation his tradecraft would be immaculate.

If the perfect opportunity ever existed for a taxman to help himself to a little personal reward with almost negligible risk, Jack was utterly convinced that he had it before him. All that was called for was the suppression and destruction of a few documents, which at the end of the day would leave a simple vacancy: two gaps in the invoice sequence and box files with nothing to indicate to what or to whom they related. There would be no complexity, nothing on file, no paper trail to speak of. He balanced it up carefully, saw every prospect of success, was untroubled by moral scruples, and found to his surprise that despite a certain apprehension, he was quite looking forward to the challenge as a different form of intellectual exercise from his usual work, with the bonus of a substantial reward at the end of the line if he played his hand well.

From his overnight examination of the Campion file Jack had already gleaned a considerable amount of background information. The business was operated by a Vincent Martindale in partnership with his wife, although the accounts threw precious little light on the precise nature of the firm’s activities. Martindale himself was forty-five years of age, married with three adult children. The holder of a substantial investment portfolio, he had also been a Lloyd’s name for some ten years and seemed to have done rather well out of it. His wife was herself in enjoyment of a considerable income from a trust settlement. Together they made a very well-breached couple.

Now, taking his Campion folder from the locked drawer of his desk and assembling all his papers before him, he took stock of the position. No need to cover them up or hide what he was doing if interrupted. The material on his desk was the bread and butter of the investigator’s work. If, by chance, any of his colleagues dropped in for a chat they wouldn’t give it a second glance.

His starting point was the slim batch of thirteen fraudulent invoices totalling £14,744 supplied by Stevens to Campion Holdings and Investments over a period of four years. He had in addition documents from the Stevens’ box files which described each holiday jaunt in detail, plus a thin folder of correspondence between Stevens and his clients and their accountants. All useful stuff as far as it went, but Jack wanted to know a lot more than this about Martindale and his background before he saw Stevens again. He was under no illusion about the step he was proposing to take. There was too much at stake, his career, pension, and possibly worse, for him to neglect any aspect that might be of use to him when he met Stevens, or later.

The following week, saying nothing to Kate, he took a day of his annual leave, and drove some forty miles south to the city of Ashburton where Campion Holdings and Investments conducted its business operations. Turning first to the enquiry desk and reference room of the central library he busied himself for a couple of hours with telephone, commercial and trade directories, and copies of the two local papers for the past year or so. Then, buying himself current copies of the papers, he settled down to a pint and a pie in one of the old pubs in the market area. He browsed through the papers as he ate, and felt lucky to find that the more substantial of the two devoted almost a half-page to the monthly report from the local MP Sir Marcus Martindale, Commercial Secretary to the Treasury in the previous administration, and as Jack had already been able to establish, father to Vincent Andrew.

Moving on from the pub Jack went first to the general office of the paper carrying the report he had just been reading, and then to office of the Constituency Association for the father. At both he lied his way to a little more background information about the Martindales Senior and Junior, before walking through to the commercial centre of town where the operations of Campion Holdings and Investments were conducted from an impressive suite of rooms in one of the latest high-rise office buildings. Learning precious little from what he saw there about the nature of the business operations, he returned to his car and drove the short distance to the part of town where Martindale lived.

Parking his car some way off, he took a leisurely stroll past the Martindale residence: a handsome, pillar-fronted, four-storey establishment in prime position at the heart of a square of fine, eighteenth century terraced houses. Top-of-the-range, immaculately maintained, and hinting discreetly of wealth and prestige, it was just what Jack had begun to expect as a result of his researches.

Satisfied that he was better prepared to meet Stevens again, he set off for home with a few photocopies made at the library, plus several pages of notes based on his researches there and his other discreet enquiries. He felt that he now had a much better understanding of the life, times and background of the local worthy who, as Jack was utterly convinced, was trying via Stevens to bribe him.

The family’s wealth, which was clearly substantial, appeared to have been built up by the father mainly through a career in the city, before he expanded his interests in later life to include politics. Vincent, equally as successful as his father at making money, or perhaps more so, also had his own political agenda. Currently Leader of the Council in Ashburton he was, Jack had learned, confidently expected to proceed to the Commons at the next General Election, when his father intended to retire and bequeath to him a virtually unassailable majority.

Of the nuts and bolts of Martindale’s business operations and the precise nature of the financial and advisory services rendered, Jack learned little from his researches. It was, however, clear from a couple of laudatory articles in the local press extolling the merits of the firm as a fine example of local enterprise and entrepreneurial skill, that it had expanded and prospered since its inception some fourteen years earlier.

Of Martindale personally it was possible from the press photographs and articles to get a good idea of his political views, his standing in the community, and the fact that like his father he probably had friends and connections in high places. From his tax file it was clear that for the years Jack was looking at he would have been liable to tax at or about 75%.

Returning again to the thirteen invoices, it didn’t take Jack much calculating to work out that Martindale’s £14,744 holiday expenditure had in fact cost him only £3,686, leaving the Exchequer, that is everyone else honest or unfortunate enough to have to pay his full whack, to stump up the balance.

Jack had long ago ceased to be surprised at this sort of unbridled greed. He now took it for granted that everyone did it who could get away with it, and even felt a grudging respect for the novelty of the arrangement he now had before him, and the sheer bloody chutzpah of Martindale in taking the illicit favours that Stevens extended and milking them for all they were worth. As the documents showed, Martindale was not a man to stint himself when others were meeting the cost.

In December 1969 on the first of his state-funded holiday jaunts he and his wife treated themselves to a fifteen day cruise on the Canberra costing over £1000. The following year brought a week at the Hotel des Balances in Lucerne and another in a suite at the Danieli in Venice (lagoon view naturally) that concluded with a final statement of account from the hotel that was a revelation to Jack as to the style in which the really rich indulged themselves when money was no problem. A year later came a cruise on the QE2 followed by a week in Frenchman’s Cove.

It was plunder on a rapacious and imperial scale, topped up with short breaks to London or the continent for the couple, and summer and winter holidays for the children. Such was the extent of their activities that each of the thirteen fraudulent invoices represented the summation of two or three little indulgences over the previous four or five months, leaving Jack even more intrigued as to the precise nature of Martindale’s business, and wondering who on earth looked after it when he was away.

In was in the last of the four years, however, that Martindale excelled himself with a Mediterranean Charter Rental of L’Esperance, a yacht with a crew of seven and accommodation for ten passengers, at a cost of just over £4,500. This not only took Jack’s breath away, but left him with a problem. What the hell was Martindale doing with a charter yacht, a crew of seven and accommodation for ten?

Unwilling to draw attention to his activities by discussing the matter with his colleagues, as he might otherwise have done, Jack took the papers home to do as he often did and chew things over with Kate. He handed everything to her, including those relating to the charter, and without making any reference to his personal objectives, gave her a brief outline of the case and the nature of his problem.

Kate looked through the papers, offered the comment that Martindale behaved like a pig at the trough, and then turned back to a flimsy carbon copy of a list headed simply, ‘Guests.’

‘What’s this?’ she asked.

‘Well I’m assuming it’s a list of the ship’s passengers prepared for the benefit of the skipper. You’ll see at the top the names of my man and his wife. The second name is M Martindale with wife, and although the title’s missing I assume that’s Sir Marcus MP, former Commercial Secretary to the Treasury and my man’s father.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘Well I don’t know who the other people are, nor can I work out quite what’s going on. I just don’t see Martindale treating a load of strangers to a week’s Mediterranean cruising out of his own pocket, even at a 75% discount. The rich don’t get where they are by handing out charity like that to all and sundry.’

‘Well can’t you just ask?’

Jack shook his head, ‘Not appropriate at the moment.’

Kate worked her way through the assorted invoices and papers one more time, and then returned to the list of guests.

‘Have you ever considered the possibility that Martindale’s killing two birds with one stone here, and that what you’ve got is a sort of double fiddle.’

‘Sorry don’t follow you.’

‘Well if he’s not treating them do you think that apart from his parents he’s getting some sort of payment from the others: acting in a sense as an agent. For friends and family perhaps: a cut-price cruise in the Med. They’d probably jump at the chance.’

‘I say, you have got a dirty mind. Not only getting the charter at a discount, but making a bloody profit out of it you mean. But Christ he’s rolling in it. Surely he can’t be that greedy?’

‘Well it’s just a suggestion.’

Despite his feeling that Kate might have come up with the answer to his problem, Jack couldn’t as yet see just what it was about Martindale’s tax-dodging activities that would lead him to risk bribing and suborning an officer of the Crown. The amounts were relatively large, but otherwise there was nothing special about the fraud. There had to be some other factor operating, so before Jack met Stevens again he embarked on yet another thorough trawl through the papers. He had absolutely no intention of leaving anything to chance.