hundred metres hurdles, his shoulders rising and falling as he fought to drag air into his lungs. When he did his voice had a cracked, bluesy tone, a bit like Tom Waits. “Detective…Chief Inspector…Moynihan,” he eventually gasped as he turned in my direction. “Metropolitan Police…Regional Crime Squad.” His arm slowly raised until it pointed straight at me, his fingertip an inch from my nose. I stared along the length of it, straight into his piggy eyes as he hissed: “And if it’s the last thing…I ever do…I’m going to have…your fucking head on a plate.”
Chapter Two
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a man wishes to maintain a long and happy marriage he should refrain, as often as is possible, from arriving home from work early.
He was having a sod of a week. It wasn’t just a sod, it was a complete meadow of sods of a week. Like the one before it and all the ones before that since the government brought in the new legislation. He was Northern Area manager — “Uh!” he snorted at the thought of it — of Trans Global Finance, and he’d spent all week on the road, chasing clients when he should have been chasing sales staff.
TGF, as the company was known, was formed by the few directors of a Far Eastern bank who were still free to walk the streets undisguised after the bank crashed and left thousands, some say millions, of their customers penniless. As most of them were of Oriental extraction the collapse caused academic concern in the financial pages of the heavier papers but aroused no desire among the greater public to help out. The CEO and mastermind behind the bank received a derisory jail sentence but fled abroad while awaiting his appeal hearing, and two of his co- conspirators vanished without a trace. Not to be deterred by this small hiccup, and seeking a new venture in which to invest their ill-gotten millions, the remaining European directors created Trans Global Finance.
Thanks to aggressive sales techniques and a range of financial products that regularly invoked the comment “too good to be true,” which was an accurate description, TGF blossomed like a garden centre on Good Friday. Salesmen — sales executives — made money to match their mobile phone numbers, and spent it as quickly as they earned it, because, they were told, the good life was theirs for the taking and success breeds success. Nobody loves a loser. To them that have, it shall be given. If you’ve got it, flaunt it.
Then came the pensions scandal, and they were in the thick of it. Thousands of working people with perfectly good company pension schemes were exhorted to change to TGF, with promises of higher, index-linked pensions when they retired. Promises that nobody, particularly a company that paid its directors and sales people like TGF did, could keep.
The government, in an uncharacteristic fit of guilt because it had led the exhortations to change, ordered the financial houses — and there were several of them — to pay heavy compensation. TGF was nearly crippled, but not quite. They pulled in their horns, downscaled, rationalised and regrouped. It was going to be a long slog, but for those who stayed the rewards could be immense. The days of Rolexes and Porsches, if not Ferraris, would be back.
But not just yet. It’s the manager’s prerogative to see the most promising clients. The riffraff are sent to talk to the ones that the tele-sales girls churn out: the ones who reluctantly agree to let a financial consultant call at their homes — without obligation — because the girl on the phone has a come-to-bed voice and there’s always the chance she will visit you herself. The manager calls during office hours on the small and medium-sized companies who are thinking of expanding and might be interested in a variety of packages that are on offer. And on the lottery winners whose only previous experience of investment has been via the little shop on the high street with the sporting prints on the blacked-out windows.
But even these were wise, nowadays. Three hundred and twenty miles of driving and four appointments had left him with two I’ll think about its, one I’ll have to ask my brother in law, who works for Barclays, and one Are you that lot who went bankrupt? The Sunday Times says you are. Cruel experience, fashioned in the crucible of double- glazing selling, had taught him that all of these were just variations of a straight forward No way, Jose.
“Closing,” he said to himself. That’s what it was all about. Closing a deal. Backing the punter into a corner by asking him what he liked about the product, what he was looking for, and then giving it to him in such a way that he couldn’t retract. Once he’d been the master. He’d sold double- glazing to people who lived in council flats and to people who lived in caravans. He’d sold double-glazing to people who already had double-glazing.
“Do you prefer the aluminium or the UPVC, Sir?”
“Oh, the UPVC, don’t we, Elsie?”
“That’s right, Joe. Easy to clean, eh?”
“Precisely my sentiments, Elsie. Life’s too short for cleaning window frames. And you won’t say no to the free patio door, will you?”
And they didn’t. And they signed the bottom of the complicated form that was hastily explained to them and slid across the table, pen laid invitingly across it. And when the windows and the “free” patio door were fitted they thought they were wonderful, because double-glazing in a climate like Britain’s is essential. And they never knew that they could have bought the same deal for a third of the price if they had shopped around, because they were lazy, and inexperienced, and kind, and he’d been such a nice man. And they didn’t discover until it was too late that the ten-year guarantee was worthless, because it was the company’s policy to go bankrupt every five years.
The Prince of Closing, someone had christened him at a conference, and he was regularly asked to lecture on the subject. But times change, and punters were becoming streetwise to the language of the salesman. Say one wrong word, a single misrepresentation, and they’d have you on some consumer programme, explaining that it was a simple oversight not to mention that the quoted interest rate was monthly, not annual. A change of tactics was required; the books needed re-writing. He burped and tasted bile. He’d grabbed a ham sandwich for lunch, gulped down with two pints of Tetley’s — beer, not tea — and his stomach and bladder were protesting. The big roundabout was approaching. Left for Heckley and home, right for the next appointment, another twenty miles away. He glanced at the clock: nearly half past three. The sixth form college would be letting out soon and he hadn’t seen her for three weeks. He turned left, reaching for the phone to cancel the appointment, and slowed to a crawl.
Schoolchildren were walking towards him, some purposefully, some in desultory groups; and others, the smaller ones, fooling around. The girls wore blue skirts and white blouses, the boys grey slacks, with a few of them carrying blazers. She’d be going in the opposite direction. He drove past the end of the street that led to the school and hoped he hadn’t missed her.
There she was. Her skirt was grey and short, a gesture of defiance against a school regime ill-equipped to deal with young women like her, and her blouse hung outside it. She was tall, about five eight, he guessed, and stacked like whoever made her enjoyed his work. Black tights held legs that would never have to do the chasing, and her skirt curled under her bum so that the afternoon sun’s shadows delineated its curves. He imagined his hands resting on those hips, holding her close, before sliding upwards on to the arch of her waist and her cool, young skin.
He squirmed in the driving seat, making himself more comfortable, and cast a sideways glance at her as he drove by. The expression on her puffy face was miserable or sultry, depending on your standpoint. As he watched her hand came up to her mouth and she took a puff of a cigarette, rocking her head back in pleasure as she drew upon it, her breasts rising as she inhaled. He swallowed and reluctantly looked back at the road. In ten years, perhaps less, she’d be over the hill, he thought, but right now she was perfect. Just perfect.
A hundred yards beyond her there was a small shopping precinct. He swung into it and jumped out of the car. As she reached the precinct he was coming from the newsagent’s shop, peeling the cellophane off a packet of Benson and Hedges. He walked out on to the pavement on a collision course.
“’Scuse me, love,” he said to her. “I seem to have lost my matches. Could you give me a light, please?”
“Mmm, ’course I can,” she replied, raising her stunted cig to the fresh one between his lips. Glowing tip met tobacco and transferred its fire as he inhaled, his eyes on her. Her lashes were short and brown, and there were whiteheads at the sides of her nose. She was wearing cheap perfume, lots of it, and he wondered what a classroom full of that would do to a man.
“Thanks,” he sighed, smoke streaming from his nose and mouth. “I was ready for that.”
“No problem,” she replied with a smile. She looked radiant when she smiled.
He turned, as if to leave, then said: “Sorry, love, can I give you one?” and held the packet towards her.
