Way Beyond A Lie, page 20
Miroslav had read the bottom line on the financial report over and over again. But the story it told did not change.
Cumulative Profit: Five Hundred Million Euros.
He might have screamed and punched the air. Or pulled his shirt over his head and run round the room. Or danced a little jig behind his desk.
But Miroslav did none of these things. He just tapped his finger on the figure a couple of times, smiled, closed the folder and locked it in the top drawer of his desk.
He keyed a number on his phone and left a voicemail. ‘Dani. Let’s go for dinner tonight. Somewhere expensive.’
He thought about that for a second then added: ‘Very expensive.’
Chapter Forty-One
Ross was exasperated. ‘Look. As I’ve already explained, I just need to speak to someone who can tell me what this is all about. Because I know nothing about it. Nothing whatsoever.’
The helpdesk operator was trying to maintain her professionalism but she was struggling on this call. He was like a dog with a bone, and although he had been reasonably pleasant to her so far, she could sense his frustration was building and knew from experience it wouldn’t be long before he snapped at her. ‘As I’ve already explained, sir, I’m sorry, but unless you can answer the security questions, I’m not able to help you over the phone. Personally, I don’t doubt you are who you say you are. But unless you’re able to prove it, I can’t … I’m not permitted, to deal with your enquiry.’
Ross’s tone rose by a few notes. ‘But I can’t answer your damned security questions because I didn’t set them. You’ve asked me my mother’s maiden name, and I’ve told you it’s Mathieson but you say it’s not. Well, it is. I’m not likely to get my own mother’s maiden name wrong, am I?’
‘Of course not, sir. But that is not the name I have on my system.’ She had asked Ross for the name of his first pet and his secondary school too, but ‘Buster’ and ‘Trinity Academy’ didn’t cut the mustard either.
‘In which case, may I speak to your supervisor, please?’
‘Again, sir, I’m sorry but my supervisor will give you the same answers I have. I can only suggest you visit one of our branches and discuss it personally with an adviser. I can make an appointment for you now, if that would help.’
‘Well, it would be the first thing you’ve done that’s been even remotely helpful.’ Ross regretted the comment immediately but there was nothing he could do. It was already out there.
There was silence from the other end but Ross didn’t know she’d muted her headset, muttered the word ‘tosser’, before switching back to speech. Risky, but highly rewarding.
The atmosphere between them was now rather strained but she managed to keep her tone neutral while she arranged the appointment for three o’clock the following Tuesday. When she closed down the call she didn’t ask if there was anything else she could help him with today. She was supposed to, it was part of the script, but she didn’t see any point. She did, however, wish him a pleasant evening but that was just her being mischievous. She ticked the ‘Irate Customer’ box on her screen, updated the record and saved it.
Before she picked up the next call in the queue she glanced at the time.
Only an hour until I’m out of here. Thank fuck for that.
Chapter Forty-Two
Tuesday
‘Please take a seat Mr McKinlay, and how may I help you today?’
Ross was teetering on a knife-edge. He had been all weekend. He was a hair’s breadth away from yelling at someone, and the mortgage adviser with the Lancs and Cumbria Building Society was smack in the middle of the cross hairs.
He slapped the letter and statement on the meeting room table and stabbed it three times with his index finger.
‘You can start by explaining why you’ve sent me this. As you will see, it’s a reminder for the first payment against a second mortgage on my house. It’s due on the fourteenth of March, apparently.’
Tim O’Keefe glanced down at the paperwork, clearly a little baffled by Ross’s opening gambit. The man wore a pink striped shirt that had untucked from his belt as soon as he sat down. The collar gripped his neck as tight as a garrotte and there were perspiration stains under the arms. His florid features were dominated by a bushy greying moustache that seemed to jut out beyond the tip of his nose.
He took a few seconds to scan the documents, flipping the statement over to check the outstanding balance. It said Ross should have paid just over £350 for the first payment on an interest-only mortgage of £180,000.
‘Have you made the payment Mr McKinlay?’
‘No, I haven’t. And furthermore, I have no intention of making it … or any other payment for that matter. No matter how many reminders you send me.’
Tim’s level of bafflement increased by a couple of notches. Customers who’d been sent reminders for overdue payments usually weren’t this bolshie.
But Ross wasn’t being bolshie. It was bluster. Blind panic. Ever since he had opened that envelope, his words, thoughts, emotions, had been elbowing for supremacy like drunken shoppers when the doors opened at a Black Friday sale.
A second mortgage of £180,000? Of course, he knew exactly who was responsible but he was consumed by one question. How had Carla done it? Ross was way past why. He was sick fed up wondering why. Now, it was all about the how. How had she managed to falsify a loan of that magnitude against a property that barely covered it?
He also knew he should have contacted the police. He should have, but he hadn’t. Ross preferred to cling to the faintly ridiculous and misguided notion that the letter was some sort of silly mistake. The mortgage belonged to someone else but an admin error had misdirected the reminder to him. His propensity for self-delusion had never been so acute.
Back in 1990, Ross and Liz eventually bought the student flat in Viewforth, where she lived when they started dating. About a year after he qualified, before they were married, their landlord had died. His only son had absolutely zero inclination to manage the portfolio of flats and small houses his father had accumulated all over town so he sold the whole lot for a song. If the sitting tenants could match the valuation, the deal was done. Theirs was a Victorian, three-bedroomed, top-floor tenement flat. Superficially it was in terrible condition, but behind the crappy woodchip and the layers of flaking gloss paint it retained all its original features including fireplaces, cornices, pitch-pine doors and skirtings. They scraped a deposit together and made the purchase. In those days, mortgages for three or four times earnings were commonplace, and Ross’s salary just about covered it. They let out the other two bedrooms for a few years while they gradually improved the flat. Eventually, they owned a superb property in a desirable part of town, stylishly and sympathetically restored.
Their plan had always been to move to a house somewhere down the coast when Liz sold her business but her death put paid to that. After she died, Ross had no interest in fulfilling that dream and was content to stay put with his memories and Liz’s spirit. Accordingly, when he started dating Carla, he didn’t take her there. They always went to her place. A small, soulless box in a modern block near Saughton Prison, on the west side of town. She told him she was renting until she decided to remain in Edinburgh or move somewhere else. Ross now assumed this too was bogus, all part of the façade.
So when he popped the question, he reluctantly sold the flat and used the proceeds as a down-payment on the new house: a new start. Carla had offered to put in some of her ‘savings’ but Ross, ever the gentleman, and gullible idiot it now transpired, wouldn’t hear of it. He took out an interest-only mortgage to pay the balance, the basement-level interest rates of the time made the mortgage route to purchase a no-brainer. Certainly it would not have been prudent for Ross to dip into his investments. He told Carla about those, of course. There had been no reason not to.
‘I don’t really understand, Mr McKinlay. You’ve taken out a second mortgage on the property, we’ve asked you to make the scheduled payment, and you say you don’t intend to pay. Why not? What is the issue here?’ Tim sat back, his hands flat out on the table, palms facing upwards.
‘The issue is I didn’t apply for this second mortgage. This letter is the first I’ve heard of it.’
Tim O’Keefe had been a mortgage adviser with various lenders for approaching twenty years but this was a new one. But not much fazed him. He was also quite astute. He studied Ross for a few seconds, his head tilted over to one side. ‘Clearly, there’s something going on here. Something I’m obviously in the dark about.’ He pushed the paperwork away to one side. ‘So, why don’t you enlighten me?’
‘It’s a long story.’
Tim glanced at his watch and shrugged. ‘I’m in no hurry.’
While Ross was relating the whole sorry saga, Tim jotted the occasional note and opened a few windows on his PC. He didn’t say much, preferring to leave his customer to speak uninterrupted but his eyebrows jumped up and down from time to time and he made genuinely sympathetic noises at all the key points in the story. And when Ross told him the total amount Carla had taken, he swore, then apologised for being unprofessional.
When Ross finished speaking, Tim looked up. ‘My goodness, that’s quite a tale. But bring your chair round and I’ll show you what I’ve been doing while you’ve been talking.’
Ross moved round, Tim pointed at the screen and explained. ‘This is your mortgage file, and here are all the documents associated with it. I’ve checked a few of them and, well, let’s just say there are some things that don’t add up. But to save us wading through all this on screen, I’ll print them off. Back in a minute.’ Tim clicked a print all button, logged off and left the room.
A few minutes later he was back, carrying several sheets of A3 and A4 paper. Some of them were wedged in his armpit, and a couple swished their way to the floor as he was closing the door. Ross jumped out of his chair to pick them up. ‘Cheers, thanks,’ said Tim, as he tried to tuck his shirt back in.
For the next few minutes Tim explained the documents, some of which Ross had apparently signed. There was a second mortgage application, architect’s drawings of a house extension, planning permission, building warrant, payslips for Ross and Carla, and savings and investment statements. There were letters to and from the building society, Ross, the Council Planning Department and a solicitor. There was even one from Martin, confirming how long Ross had worked in his company. And every single one of them was fake.
But the last item was the most interesting. A letter confirming an online payment for the full amount, £180,000 to a Royal Bank of Scotland account in joint names: Mr and Mrs R McKinlay.
Ross just looked at Tim. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and promptly closed it again.
‘Just a wild guess. You and these documents are total strangers?’
‘We’ve never even been introduced.’
Tim indicated the mortgage application. ‘And although this is your signature, you didn’t actually sign it.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
Now one of the drawings. ‘Your house?’
‘Similar, but no. The front elevation is near enough, but the rear elevation is the wrong way round. And our garage is wider than that so the extension wouldn’t actually fit in the space.’ Ross smiled. ‘Might have been interesting watching them trying to build it, though.’
‘The payslips. Are they accurate?’
‘Maybe if I worked a seven-day week and had a couple of pay rises. But no. Fiction.’
Tim sighed. And it was a belter. He took a few seconds while he shuffled his thoughts around. ‘Okay. Here’s what I’m thinking.’
Tim explained he suspected the whole scam had been perpetrated online and by phone. Ross’s signature was no more than a squiggle so easy to forge with the assistance of Photoshop. The drawings and other formal documents were probably forgeries too, it was likely they had been emailed and were therefore untraceable. Someone, possibly Carla, had visited the office to deliver the signed documents but this was a satellite office that didn’t handle cash so security was light. There was no CCTV.
Assuming Ross’s story checked out with the police, the building society would probably suspend the mortgage account and, for the moment, they wouldn’t ask Ross to make the repayments. But Tim was equally clear, and he didn’t sugar-coat it, that Ross may still be held liable depending on the outcome of their, and the police’s, investigations.
Ross gave Tim Mel’s contact details, accepted a warm handshake and left the office. It had been a good meeting, and now he didn’t feel the same as with his other losses. Somehow, this felt like someone else’s problem and his potential liability seemed to be distant. There was no point in worrying about it too much, for now at least.
When he reached home he phoned Mel. He told her things had kicked off again, and asked if they could meet up.
She said, ‘I’ll pop round in about quarter of an hour. Put the kettle on.’
While he was waiting, Ross calculated the full extent of Carla’s scam on him: his savings, his and Liz’s investments, his credit card, and now the building society. Almost £610,000.
‘Jesus, Carla. Well, whatever you’re spending it on, I hope you’re fucking enjoying it.’
Spring
Chapter Forty-Three
Six Weeks Later
‘Is anyone else’s Outlook playing up?’ Ross stuck his nose over the top of his monitor. Several of his colleagues were tap-tapping at their keyboards and another two were chatting by the emergency exit, clutching cigarettes and lighters in readiness for braving the elements. But heads were shaken and ‘Nopes’ were uttered.
He spun his chair round and looked over at the company’s newest, and youngest, recruit. Nineteen years old, and in his third year at technical college, Wayne was desperate to create a good impression. So he was practically bouncing about in the hope that his polar opposite would actually ask him for help. For some reason Wayne was in awe of Ross, which no one else in the team could comprehend. But there was no point in asking the man himself. Typically, he was utterly oblivious.
But despite his undoubted enthusiasm for the task and trying everything he could think of, Wayne wasn’t able to solve the problem for his idol. The poor lad returned to his desk. Deflated wasn’t even close.
Ross tried his PC again a few minutes later, with the same result. He didn’t actually need Outlook or the internet for the rest of the day so decided to try again in the morning. He didn’t know if that would make a difference.
As things transpired, it didn’t.
Elspeth was at the desk opposite, peering at a spreadsheet. Tuesday wasn’t normally a working day for her but she was banking some extra hours to take some time off later in the month.
‘El, who do I report a faulty PC to?’ said Ross. ‘I can’t connect to the network.’
Without looking up, she passed him a business card for their IT support company. Like most small business owners, Martin outsourced support for functions like IT. Glitches like this were handled by a local helpdesk so Ross made the call.
He explained the fault as best he could, and was relieved when the technician, Dexter, asked him a series of fairly straightforward questions in relatively plain English. Guided by Dexter, for whom patience definitely was a virtue, Ross checked basic system and hardware settings on the PC, and was more than a little chuffed when they discovered a network adaptor was faulty.
‘I’m sorry, Ross, but I’ll have to send out an engineer to replace the card. I’m afraid you’ll have no email or internet access in the meantime.’ Ross said he wasn’t too concerned, especially when Dexter hoped the engineer should be able to attend later that day.
‘Well, Mr Jobs,’ said Elspeth. ‘Have you cracked it?’
He didn’t rise to the bait, mainly because he’d never yet won a battle of wits with Elspeth. She was sharper than a Turkish barber’s razor. ‘It’s a hardware fault, apparently. They’re sending someone called Alex to investigate. He’ll run some diagnostics, I expect.’
‘Diagnostics. Jesus, will you listen to him.’
‘Can I help it if I’m down with the techies?’
‘Oh, fuck off. And sort out some coffees while you’re at it.’
Just gone three, his phone rang. ‘Ross. It’s Gloria. I have Alex from Esprit IT at reception for you.’
‘Thanks, Gloria, I’ll be right down.’
His office was on the second floor but he always used the stairs. For one thing it was quicker than the wheezing single lift that served the building, and he was taking every opportunity to work on his fitness. The tennis season was in full swing and Barry was pushing him hard.
He clicked the button to unlock the door to the reception area, and wandered over to the desk. He glanced around as he crossed the room and wore a confused expression by the time he arrived in front of Gloria. ‘Has he gone to the toilet or something?’
Gloria hailed from Englefield, New Jersey. She’d visited Scotland a few years earlier to take in the Edinburgh Festival, and had never quite made it home again. Her sense of humour was dry sardonic with a side order of heavy sarcasm. She was face-slappingly rude to almost everyone but she was a top-class administrator and would help anyone with anything, at any time. To complete the paradox that was Gloria, she called everyone sweet pea, and possessed a smile that could light up the Arctic in the dead of winter. Everyone in the company just loved her to bits.
‘Sweet pea. I don’t insist on you calling the pavement a sidewalk, and if you prefer rubbish to garbage well that’s just fine by me. But that … that over there,’ Gloria jerked her thumb at an internal door, ‘is a rest room. Capiche?’ She blitzed his eyeballs with a dazzling display of snow-white dentals. ‘We don’t have a toilet. Poor people have toilets.’
Ross was finding Gloria quite unnerving today so he just nodded, several times. She continued. ‘Now, has who gone to the rest room, sweet pea?’
Cumulative Profit: Five Hundred Million Euros.
He might have screamed and punched the air. Or pulled his shirt over his head and run round the room. Or danced a little jig behind his desk.
But Miroslav did none of these things. He just tapped his finger on the figure a couple of times, smiled, closed the folder and locked it in the top drawer of his desk.
He keyed a number on his phone and left a voicemail. ‘Dani. Let’s go for dinner tonight. Somewhere expensive.’
He thought about that for a second then added: ‘Very expensive.’
Chapter Forty-One
Ross was exasperated. ‘Look. As I’ve already explained, I just need to speak to someone who can tell me what this is all about. Because I know nothing about it. Nothing whatsoever.’
The helpdesk operator was trying to maintain her professionalism but she was struggling on this call. He was like a dog with a bone, and although he had been reasonably pleasant to her so far, she could sense his frustration was building and knew from experience it wouldn’t be long before he snapped at her. ‘As I’ve already explained, sir, I’m sorry, but unless you can answer the security questions, I’m not able to help you over the phone. Personally, I don’t doubt you are who you say you are. But unless you’re able to prove it, I can’t … I’m not permitted, to deal with your enquiry.’
Ross’s tone rose by a few notes. ‘But I can’t answer your damned security questions because I didn’t set them. You’ve asked me my mother’s maiden name, and I’ve told you it’s Mathieson but you say it’s not. Well, it is. I’m not likely to get my own mother’s maiden name wrong, am I?’
‘Of course not, sir. But that is not the name I have on my system.’ She had asked Ross for the name of his first pet and his secondary school too, but ‘Buster’ and ‘Trinity Academy’ didn’t cut the mustard either.
‘In which case, may I speak to your supervisor, please?’
‘Again, sir, I’m sorry but my supervisor will give you the same answers I have. I can only suggest you visit one of our branches and discuss it personally with an adviser. I can make an appointment for you now, if that would help.’
‘Well, it would be the first thing you’ve done that’s been even remotely helpful.’ Ross regretted the comment immediately but there was nothing he could do. It was already out there.
There was silence from the other end but Ross didn’t know she’d muted her headset, muttered the word ‘tosser’, before switching back to speech. Risky, but highly rewarding.
The atmosphere between them was now rather strained but she managed to keep her tone neutral while she arranged the appointment for three o’clock the following Tuesday. When she closed down the call she didn’t ask if there was anything else she could help him with today. She was supposed to, it was part of the script, but she didn’t see any point. She did, however, wish him a pleasant evening but that was just her being mischievous. She ticked the ‘Irate Customer’ box on her screen, updated the record and saved it.
Before she picked up the next call in the queue she glanced at the time.
Only an hour until I’m out of here. Thank fuck for that.
Chapter Forty-Two
Tuesday
‘Please take a seat Mr McKinlay, and how may I help you today?’
Ross was teetering on a knife-edge. He had been all weekend. He was a hair’s breadth away from yelling at someone, and the mortgage adviser with the Lancs and Cumbria Building Society was smack in the middle of the cross hairs.
He slapped the letter and statement on the meeting room table and stabbed it three times with his index finger.
‘You can start by explaining why you’ve sent me this. As you will see, it’s a reminder for the first payment against a second mortgage on my house. It’s due on the fourteenth of March, apparently.’
Tim O’Keefe glanced down at the paperwork, clearly a little baffled by Ross’s opening gambit. The man wore a pink striped shirt that had untucked from his belt as soon as he sat down. The collar gripped his neck as tight as a garrotte and there were perspiration stains under the arms. His florid features were dominated by a bushy greying moustache that seemed to jut out beyond the tip of his nose.
He took a few seconds to scan the documents, flipping the statement over to check the outstanding balance. It said Ross should have paid just over £350 for the first payment on an interest-only mortgage of £180,000.
‘Have you made the payment Mr McKinlay?’
‘No, I haven’t. And furthermore, I have no intention of making it … or any other payment for that matter. No matter how many reminders you send me.’
Tim’s level of bafflement increased by a couple of notches. Customers who’d been sent reminders for overdue payments usually weren’t this bolshie.
But Ross wasn’t being bolshie. It was bluster. Blind panic. Ever since he had opened that envelope, his words, thoughts, emotions, had been elbowing for supremacy like drunken shoppers when the doors opened at a Black Friday sale.
A second mortgage of £180,000? Of course, he knew exactly who was responsible but he was consumed by one question. How had Carla done it? Ross was way past why. He was sick fed up wondering why. Now, it was all about the how. How had she managed to falsify a loan of that magnitude against a property that barely covered it?
He also knew he should have contacted the police. He should have, but he hadn’t. Ross preferred to cling to the faintly ridiculous and misguided notion that the letter was some sort of silly mistake. The mortgage belonged to someone else but an admin error had misdirected the reminder to him. His propensity for self-delusion had never been so acute.
Back in 1990, Ross and Liz eventually bought the student flat in Viewforth, where she lived when they started dating. About a year after he qualified, before they were married, their landlord had died. His only son had absolutely zero inclination to manage the portfolio of flats and small houses his father had accumulated all over town so he sold the whole lot for a song. If the sitting tenants could match the valuation, the deal was done. Theirs was a Victorian, three-bedroomed, top-floor tenement flat. Superficially it was in terrible condition, but behind the crappy woodchip and the layers of flaking gloss paint it retained all its original features including fireplaces, cornices, pitch-pine doors and skirtings. They scraped a deposit together and made the purchase. In those days, mortgages for three or four times earnings were commonplace, and Ross’s salary just about covered it. They let out the other two bedrooms for a few years while they gradually improved the flat. Eventually, they owned a superb property in a desirable part of town, stylishly and sympathetically restored.
Their plan had always been to move to a house somewhere down the coast when Liz sold her business but her death put paid to that. After she died, Ross had no interest in fulfilling that dream and was content to stay put with his memories and Liz’s spirit. Accordingly, when he started dating Carla, he didn’t take her there. They always went to her place. A small, soulless box in a modern block near Saughton Prison, on the west side of town. She told him she was renting until she decided to remain in Edinburgh or move somewhere else. Ross now assumed this too was bogus, all part of the façade.
So when he popped the question, he reluctantly sold the flat and used the proceeds as a down-payment on the new house: a new start. Carla had offered to put in some of her ‘savings’ but Ross, ever the gentleman, and gullible idiot it now transpired, wouldn’t hear of it. He took out an interest-only mortgage to pay the balance, the basement-level interest rates of the time made the mortgage route to purchase a no-brainer. Certainly it would not have been prudent for Ross to dip into his investments. He told Carla about those, of course. There had been no reason not to.
‘I don’t really understand, Mr McKinlay. You’ve taken out a second mortgage on the property, we’ve asked you to make the scheduled payment, and you say you don’t intend to pay. Why not? What is the issue here?’ Tim sat back, his hands flat out on the table, palms facing upwards.
‘The issue is I didn’t apply for this second mortgage. This letter is the first I’ve heard of it.’
Tim O’Keefe had been a mortgage adviser with various lenders for approaching twenty years but this was a new one. But not much fazed him. He was also quite astute. He studied Ross for a few seconds, his head tilted over to one side. ‘Clearly, there’s something going on here. Something I’m obviously in the dark about.’ He pushed the paperwork away to one side. ‘So, why don’t you enlighten me?’
‘It’s a long story.’
Tim glanced at his watch and shrugged. ‘I’m in no hurry.’
While Ross was relating the whole sorry saga, Tim jotted the occasional note and opened a few windows on his PC. He didn’t say much, preferring to leave his customer to speak uninterrupted but his eyebrows jumped up and down from time to time and he made genuinely sympathetic noises at all the key points in the story. And when Ross told him the total amount Carla had taken, he swore, then apologised for being unprofessional.
When Ross finished speaking, Tim looked up. ‘My goodness, that’s quite a tale. But bring your chair round and I’ll show you what I’ve been doing while you’ve been talking.’
Ross moved round, Tim pointed at the screen and explained. ‘This is your mortgage file, and here are all the documents associated with it. I’ve checked a few of them and, well, let’s just say there are some things that don’t add up. But to save us wading through all this on screen, I’ll print them off. Back in a minute.’ Tim clicked a print all button, logged off and left the room.
A few minutes later he was back, carrying several sheets of A3 and A4 paper. Some of them were wedged in his armpit, and a couple swished their way to the floor as he was closing the door. Ross jumped out of his chair to pick them up. ‘Cheers, thanks,’ said Tim, as he tried to tuck his shirt back in.
For the next few minutes Tim explained the documents, some of which Ross had apparently signed. There was a second mortgage application, architect’s drawings of a house extension, planning permission, building warrant, payslips for Ross and Carla, and savings and investment statements. There were letters to and from the building society, Ross, the Council Planning Department and a solicitor. There was even one from Martin, confirming how long Ross had worked in his company. And every single one of them was fake.
But the last item was the most interesting. A letter confirming an online payment for the full amount, £180,000 to a Royal Bank of Scotland account in joint names: Mr and Mrs R McKinlay.
Ross just looked at Tim. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and promptly closed it again.
‘Just a wild guess. You and these documents are total strangers?’
‘We’ve never even been introduced.’
Tim indicated the mortgage application. ‘And although this is your signature, you didn’t actually sign it.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
Now one of the drawings. ‘Your house?’
‘Similar, but no. The front elevation is near enough, but the rear elevation is the wrong way round. And our garage is wider than that so the extension wouldn’t actually fit in the space.’ Ross smiled. ‘Might have been interesting watching them trying to build it, though.’
‘The payslips. Are they accurate?’
‘Maybe if I worked a seven-day week and had a couple of pay rises. But no. Fiction.’
Tim sighed. And it was a belter. He took a few seconds while he shuffled his thoughts around. ‘Okay. Here’s what I’m thinking.’
Tim explained he suspected the whole scam had been perpetrated online and by phone. Ross’s signature was no more than a squiggle so easy to forge with the assistance of Photoshop. The drawings and other formal documents were probably forgeries too, it was likely they had been emailed and were therefore untraceable. Someone, possibly Carla, had visited the office to deliver the signed documents but this was a satellite office that didn’t handle cash so security was light. There was no CCTV.
Assuming Ross’s story checked out with the police, the building society would probably suspend the mortgage account and, for the moment, they wouldn’t ask Ross to make the repayments. But Tim was equally clear, and he didn’t sugar-coat it, that Ross may still be held liable depending on the outcome of their, and the police’s, investigations.
Ross gave Tim Mel’s contact details, accepted a warm handshake and left the office. It had been a good meeting, and now he didn’t feel the same as with his other losses. Somehow, this felt like someone else’s problem and his potential liability seemed to be distant. There was no point in worrying about it too much, for now at least.
When he reached home he phoned Mel. He told her things had kicked off again, and asked if they could meet up.
She said, ‘I’ll pop round in about quarter of an hour. Put the kettle on.’
While he was waiting, Ross calculated the full extent of Carla’s scam on him: his savings, his and Liz’s investments, his credit card, and now the building society. Almost £610,000.
‘Jesus, Carla. Well, whatever you’re spending it on, I hope you’re fucking enjoying it.’
Spring
Chapter Forty-Three
Six Weeks Later
‘Is anyone else’s Outlook playing up?’ Ross stuck his nose over the top of his monitor. Several of his colleagues were tap-tapping at their keyboards and another two were chatting by the emergency exit, clutching cigarettes and lighters in readiness for braving the elements. But heads were shaken and ‘Nopes’ were uttered.
He spun his chair round and looked over at the company’s newest, and youngest, recruit. Nineteen years old, and in his third year at technical college, Wayne was desperate to create a good impression. So he was practically bouncing about in the hope that his polar opposite would actually ask him for help. For some reason Wayne was in awe of Ross, which no one else in the team could comprehend. But there was no point in asking the man himself. Typically, he was utterly oblivious.
But despite his undoubted enthusiasm for the task and trying everything he could think of, Wayne wasn’t able to solve the problem for his idol. The poor lad returned to his desk. Deflated wasn’t even close.
Ross tried his PC again a few minutes later, with the same result. He didn’t actually need Outlook or the internet for the rest of the day so decided to try again in the morning. He didn’t know if that would make a difference.
As things transpired, it didn’t.
Elspeth was at the desk opposite, peering at a spreadsheet. Tuesday wasn’t normally a working day for her but she was banking some extra hours to take some time off later in the month.
‘El, who do I report a faulty PC to?’ said Ross. ‘I can’t connect to the network.’
Without looking up, she passed him a business card for their IT support company. Like most small business owners, Martin outsourced support for functions like IT. Glitches like this were handled by a local helpdesk so Ross made the call.
He explained the fault as best he could, and was relieved when the technician, Dexter, asked him a series of fairly straightforward questions in relatively plain English. Guided by Dexter, for whom patience definitely was a virtue, Ross checked basic system and hardware settings on the PC, and was more than a little chuffed when they discovered a network adaptor was faulty.
‘I’m sorry, Ross, but I’ll have to send out an engineer to replace the card. I’m afraid you’ll have no email or internet access in the meantime.’ Ross said he wasn’t too concerned, especially when Dexter hoped the engineer should be able to attend later that day.
‘Well, Mr Jobs,’ said Elspeth. ‘Have you cracked it?’
He didn’t rise to the bait, mainly because he’d never yet won a battle of wits with Elspeth. She was sharper than a Turkish barber’s razor. ‘It’s a hardware fault, apparently. They’re sending someone called Alex to investigate. He’ll run some diagnostics, I expect.’
‘Diagnostics. Jesus, will you listen to him.’
‘Can I help it if I’m down with the techies?’
‘Oh, fuck off. And sort out some coffees while you’re at it.’
Just gone three, his phone rang. ‘Ross. It’s Gloria. I have Alex from Esprit IT at reception for you.’
‘Thanks, Gloria, I’ll be right down.’
His office was on the second floor but he always used the stairs. For one thing it was quicker than the wheezing single lift that served the building, and he was taking every opportunity to work on his fitness. The tennis season was in full swing and Barry was pushing him hard.
He clicked the button to unlock the door to the reception area, and wandered over to the desk. He glanced around as he crossed the room and wore a confused expression by the time he arrived in front of Gloria. ‘Has he gone to the toilet or something?’
Gloria hailed from Englefield, New Jersey. She’d visited Scotland a few years earlier to take in the Edinburgh Festival, and had never quite made it home again. Her sense of humour was dry sardonic with a side order of heavy sarcasm. She was face-slappingly rude to almost everyone but she was a top-class administrator and would help anyone with anything, at any time. To complete the paradox that was Gloria, she called everyone sweet pea, and possessed a smile that could light up the Arctic in the dead of winter. Everyone in the company just loved her to bits.
‘Sweet pea. I don’t insist on you calling the pavement a sidewalk, and if you prefer rubbish to garbage well that’s just fine by me. But that … that over there,’ Gloria jerked her thumb at an internal door, ‘is a rest room. Capiche?’ She blitzed his eyeballs with a dazzling display of snow-white dentals. ‘We don’t have a toilet. Poor people have toilets.’
Ross was finding Gloria quite unnerving today so he just nodded, several times. She continued. ‘Now, has who gone to the rest room, sweet pea?’
