coming into the office.
I thought it a particularly insensitive comment considering what had happened to Herb only five days previously.
I looked again at all the junk mail.
If a promised return appeared to be too good to be true, then it invariably was just that-too good to be true.
I thought back to my conversation with Jolyon Roberts at Cheltenham the previous day. Had the promised return on the Bulgarian property development project been too good to be true? Not as far as I could remember. It had not been the level of return that had been the concern, rather the distance away and the potential difficulty in acquiring accurate and up-to-date information on the progress of the project. In fact, just the problem that Mr. Roberts believed to be the issue.
I started to type “Roberts” into the company client index but thought better of it. The office mainframe computer kept a visible record of all files accessed, so any of us could see who had been looking at each file. It wasn’t particularly designed to spy on us or to prevent us accessing files, indeed it made it easy to keep a record of files visited. I could expect my files to be accessed by Patrick on a fairly random but regular basis, and the company files as a whole were regularly scrutinized by Jessica Winter, our Compliance Officer.
Whenever any of us opened a file it clearly showed in the top right-hand corner of the computer screen a list of the five people in the firm who had accessed the file most recently, together with the date and time of their access.
As one of the IFAs, I had authority to look at any of the company files, but I might have had difficulty explaining to Gregory why I had accessed those of one of his clients without his knowledge, especially a client as important as the Roberts Family Trust, and especially now.
I told myself that I should go straight to Gregory and Patrick, and probably to Jessica as well, and tell them about my conversation with Jolyon Roberts and get the matter looked at by them. But did I really want to go and accuse Gregory of misleading one of his clients, and on today of all days?
Then I would truly need that bulletproof vest.
Unlike in the United States where the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, employs a prescriptive rule-based regime, the United Kingdom authorities had moved to a principles-based regulatory system. The onus was now on me to act in a manner that upheld the highest principles of honesty, openness and integrity, and to prove it.
It was difficult to decide which system was the better. Experience had shown that neither was fraud-proof. Indeed, the SEC had investigated Bernie Madoff several times without unearthing the biggest individual fraud in American history. Talk about the asylum being run by the lunatics, Madoff served three times as chairman of the NASDAQ stock market. And that was many years after he had started his fraud, and even after the first failed SEC investigation into his company’s activities.
And he’d just had to be called Madoff, hadn’t he? He’d “made off” with sixty-five billion dollars-yes, billion. And all because he’d been able fraudulently to circumvent the fixed U.S. regulatory rules. Whereas in the UK, it was not just the letter of the law I had to follow but also its spirit.
But was I, in fact, following the spirit of principles-based regulation not to mention immediately to my superiors, and to the Compliance Officer, that a client of the firm was questioning the judgment of one of the senior partners?
Probably not.
And I would mention it to them, I thought, just as soon as Gregory had calmed down a bit. In the meantime, I would do a bit of discreet investigating just as Jolyon Roberts had asked.
First I tried “Bulgarian development projects” in the Google search engine, but this turned up some fifty-five million hits, the first two pages of which appeared to have nothing to do with the development project I was looking for. Next I tried “Balscott Bulgarian development project,” and this turned up just two hits, but neither of them had any connection whatsoever with a low-energy lightbulb factory on either side of the Danube.
Next I tried “Europa,” the official European Union website, but that was more difficult to navigate through than the continent itself.
It was all a bit of a dead end without accessing the firm’s Roberts Family Trust computer file to see with whom and where the contact had been made in Bulgaria or with the EU. And I daren’t do that.
I decided instead that I’d try to have a quiet look through the paper records we kept at the office. Shares and bonds may have increasingly been bought and sold online but the digital deals were still all backed up with physical paperwork, and we were required to keep the papers for a minimum of five years. The office was consequently stacked high with boxes of transaction reports and somewhere amongst them would be the Roberts Family Trust paperwork for their five-million-pound investment in the Balscott Lighting Factory.
I sat back in the chair and thought about Claudia. I tried her mobile again, but, as before, it went straight to voice mail without ringing. I wished now that I had told her about the article in the
“Darling,” I said. “Could you please give me a call when you get this? Love you. Byeee.” I hung up.
I looked at the clock on Herb’s desk. It was only a quarter to eleven. I had been here for nearly three hours, but it seemed like much longer.
I wondered what Claudia could be doing at a quarter to eleven in the morning, and with whom, that required her to have her phone switched off.
I sighed. Perhaps I didn’t want to know.
In my role as Herb’s executor, I used the account number and sort code on his statement to send an e-mail to his bank informing them that Mr. Kovak was deceased, and would they please send me details of all his accounts, and especially the balances.
Somewhat surprisingly I received a reply almost immediately thanking me for the sad news and advising me that they would need various pieces of original documentation before they could release the information I had asked for, including the death certificate, a copy of the will and an order of probate.
And how long would it take to get that lot?
I heard Sherri go along the corridor to the bathroom.
At least my troubles with Billy Searle were minor compared to hers.
I took the front cover sheet off the
The basket had some things in it already, and, I thought, as I’ve looked everywhere else, why not there?
I poured the contents of the basket out onto the desk.
Amongst the opened envelopes, the empty Starbucks coffee cups and the screwed-up tissues were lots of little pieces of paper about an inch square. I put the cups, envelopes and tissues back in the basket, leaving a pile of the paper squares on the desk. It was fairly obvious that they were the torn-up remains of a larger piece, so I set about trying to put them back together. It was a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle, but without the picture on the box to guide me.
I fairly quickly established that the pieces had not been from one larger piece but three. I slowly built up the originals in front of me. They were each about six inches by four, printed forms with words written on them in pen, similar forms but each with different writing. I stuck the bits together with Scotch tape.
“What are you doing?” Sherri asked from the doorway.
She made me jump.
“Nothing much,” I said, swiveling the desk chair around to face her. “How are you feeling?”
“Dreadful,” she said, coming into the room and flopping down into the deep armchair. “I can’t believe it.”
I thought she was about to cry again. I wasn’t sure whether the dark shadows beneath her eyes were due to tiredness or her tearsmudged mascara.
“I’ll get you some more tea,” I said, standing up.
“Lovely,” she said with a forced smile. “Thank you.”
I went through to the kitchen and boiled the kettle. I also made myself another coffee and took both cups back to the living room.
