He was surprisingly strong and fit for someone whose only workout was the walk to and from the restaurant on the corner.
“Leave me alone,” I shouted at him. But he took no notice.
“Gregory. Stop it!” Patrick’s deep voice reverberated around the reception area.
Gregory stopped pulling and let go of my sleeve.
“I will not have this man in these offices,” Gregory said. “He has brought the firm of Lyall and Black into disrepute.”
Patrick looked at the reception desk, and at Mrs. McDowd and Mrs. Johnson, who were sitting behind it.
“Let us discuss this in your office,” Patrick said calmly. “Nicholas, will you please wait here.”
“Outside the door,” Gregory said, pointing towards the lifts and not moving an inch towards his office.
I stood there, looking back and forth between them. Everyone in the firm knew of Gregory’s temper, it was legendary, but I had rarely seen it laid bare and so raw, and at such close quarters.
“I will go out for a coffee,” I said. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
“Best to go home,” Patrick said. “I’ll call you later.”
Gregory turned towards Patrick. “I told you that we should never have taken him on in the first place.”
“In your office, please, Gregory!” Patrick said, almost shouting. He had a pretty good temper in him too, although it was usually slow to rise.
I waited while Gregory reluctantly moved off down the corridor with Patrick. I would have adored being a fly on the wall during their discussion.
“You had better go,” said Mrs. McDowd firmly. “I don’t want you upsetting Mr. Gregory anymore. His heart can’t take it.”
I looked at her. Mrs. McDowd, who saw it as her business to know everything about everyone in the firm. She probably knew Gregory’s blood pressure, and his heart surgeon.
“Tell me, Mrs. McDowd, do you think Herb gambled much?”
“You mean on the stock market?” she asked.
“On the horses.”
“Oh no,” she said. “Mr. Herb didn’t like betting on the horses. Too risky, he said. So much better to bet on a certainty, that’s what he always told me.”
Death was a certainty.
Benjamin Franklin had said so-death, and taxes.
I did go home, but not immediately.
Before I left Hendon I had looked up the locations of MoneyHome agents near to Lombard Street. I was amazed at how many there were, at least thirty within a one-mile radius of my office, the nearest being just around the corner in King William Street.
“This didn’t come from here,” said the lady sitting behind the glass partition. “It hasn’t got our stamp on it.”
I had somehow expected the MoneyHome agency to be like a bank, or a money exchange, but this one was right at the back of a convenience store.
“Can you tell me where it did come from?” I asked the lady.
“Don’t you know?” she asked.
“No,” I said with declining patience. “I wouldn’t have asked if I knew.”
She looked at me through the glass, then down at the payment slip. I had brought with me one of those I had found in Herb’s desk rather than the torn-up squares, which were still at Herb’s flat anyway.
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t recognize the stamp. But I know it’s not ours.”
“Can you tell who sent the money?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“What do you need to produce in the way of identification to collect money from a MoneyHome transfer?”
“The recipient’s name and the MTCN.”
“What’s that?”
“There,” she said, pointing at the payment slip. “It’s the Money Transfer Control Number.”
“And that’s all you need to collect the money,” I said. “No passport or driver’s license?”
“Not unless it’s been specially requested by the sender,” she said. “Sometimes there’s a question I have to ask, and then you’d have to give the right answer. It’s a bit like spies and such.” She smiled.
“So in fact,” I said, “you have no way of knowing who has sent the money or who has collected it?”
“The recipient’s name is on the slip.”
The recipient’s name on the slip I had shown her was Butch Cassidy. The names on the others I had were Billy Kid, Wyatt Earp, Jessie James and Bill Cody.
“That isn’t his real name,” I said.
“No,” she said, looking. “I suppose not. But it’s their money. As long as they’ve paid us our fee, it’s not our business who they really are.”
“Does the amount make any difference?” I asked.
“MoneyHome’s head office doesn’t allow us to accept transfers of more than the equivalent of ten thousand U.S. dollars, as that breaks the money-laundering rules. Other than that, the amount doesn’t matter, although we here have a payout limit of four thousand pounds without prior notice. You know, so we can get in the cash.”
“Are your transfers always in cash?” I asked.
“Yeah, of course,” she said. “That’s what we do. Cash transfers. Lots of the immigrant workers round here send cash home to their wives. Poles mostly. And we do a special deal on transfers to Poland, up to a thousand pounds for just twenty quid.”
Overall, it wasn’t very helpful. Herb had clearly set up a system that would be difficult, if not impossible, to unravel. From what I could tell from the lists and the MoneyHome payment slips, it was clear that he’d received large sums of cash from multiple sources, money he must have then used to pay the monthly balances on the twenty-two credit cards.
Herb had collected eighteen thousand dollars’ worth of pounds only the previous week, five thousand of it just the day before his death. Some of that cash must still be hidden somewhere.
My problem was that, while I had the statements showing the ninety-four thousand pounds outstanding, and, as his executor and beneficiary I was liable for the debt, I hadn’t yet found the stash of readies to pay it.
Claudia wasn’t at home when I arrived back at three-thirty. I tried her mobile, but it went straight to voice mail.
I wandered around the house, wondering what had gone wrong with our relationship.
I didn’t really understand it. The sex that morning had been as good as ever, but Claudia had been uncharacteristically quiet during and afterwards, as if her mind had been elsewhere.
I asked myself what I really wanted. Did I want to continue or was it time to draw a line and move on? Did I love her enough? How much would I miss her if she left?
Claudia and I had been together now for almost six years. I was twenty-nine, and she was three years my junior. Apart from my real concern about her weird paintings, I found the setup comfortable and fulfilling. And I was happy as things were.
Was that the problem? Did Claudia want something more from our relationship than I did? Did she perhaps now want that ring on her finger? Or maybe she had changed her view about children? But, then, surely she would have told me. I would have been delighted.
So, I concluded, it had to be me that was the problem. Claudia must have tired of me, and perhaps there was someone else already lined up to take my place. It was the only conclusion that made any sense.
I tried her mobile again, but, as before, it went straight to voice mail.
The house suddenly felt very empty, and I realized that I was lonely without Claudia here. I wandered around, looking at familiar things as if it were the first time I had seen them.
I went up to Claudia’s studio and looked at the painting she was working on, and also at two or three others leaned against the wall, waiting for the paint to dry and harden.
As always, they were dark and, to my eye, somewhat disturbed. One of them was full of bizarre flying monsters
