Chapter 10

I handed in my notice the next day.

"In some ways I'm disappointed in you," snuffled Mike, my boss. "You've been a good, steady worker and I had hoped you might make something of yourself. However, I've noticed a change in you recently which I'm not sure I approve of."

As the 'making something of myself' involved waiting ten or so years until he retired and inheriting his job, I was hardly overwhelmed at the compliment. He wanted me to work the full four weeks and take my accumulated holiday leave in pay so we argued a bit before he accepted I would leave in three weeks.

I was amused by the reactions to my news. Some, mostly the younger men, professed admiration at my brave move and wished they could do what I had done, particularly when it got out that I didn't have another job lined up. I had some childish fun giving everybody a different story of my long-term plans; scuba diver, ghillie, bus driver, martial arts expert, and so on. The younger and more impressionable the enquirer, the more exotic and outlandish the occupation. The second group was confined to the older men with families and mortgages. Several of them took me aside and tried to persuade me that I was making a foolish move which I would regret in time. I smiled politely and thanked them for their concern. The third, and probably the largest group, just thought I was a fool. They would probably have held that opinion whether I stayed or left so it didn't much matter either way.

The rest of my time there passed in a bit of a blur. To say I wasn't focussed would be an understatement. I went through the motions with the minimum of effort. After all, if things went according to plan I could well end up affording to buy the whole company in a few years time.

The only item of note occurred a couple of days before I left. I decided to achieve my one ambition and persuaded Charles to use his influence on Miss Bitch. He was surprisingly reluctant, saying that she was not the right sort but went along with it at my insistence. Knowing that the Senior Manager was out of the office, I stepped into the outer sanctum, ostensibly to say my farewells. It only took five minutes before I had her bent over her desk with her skirt up over her waist her knickers down at her knees and her tits hanging out of the starched blouse and was banging away at her from the rear. Charles had been right: she was a most disappointing fuck. Still, I had the satisfaction of leaving with the image of her scrabbling about for some tissues with my cum trickling down the inside of her thigh.

There was the inevitable collection and presentation. I was known as being a bit of a bookworm so I genuinely appreciated the gift of book tokens. Mike, never very good as the centre of attention, stumbled his way through the leaving speech embarrassing everybody including himself. I felt a bit sorry for him as I had been a fairly anonymous employee and was leaving for no obvious good reason. I kept my remarks short, quoting Bilbo Baggins about not knowing half of them half as well as I should like and liking less than half of them half as well as they deserved. A few, mostly my closer acquaintances, saw the reference and smiled while the rest were as puzzled as Bilbo's guests had been. Then it was off to the pub for the inevitable excessive drinking that seem to be an inevitable feature of leaving dos. I told Charles to keep me slightly tipsy no matter how much I had to drink. There were the usual protestations of undying friendship and drunken pleas to keep in touch. More than one took me aside and tried to find out exactly what I intended. With each I planted the idea that I might well go abroad for a while so that my disappearance wouldn't be questioned. Eventually most drifted away and I was left with the small group that I could almost class as friends. Again I hinted that I might travel for a while. The requests to keep in touch were more sincere and I promised I would look then up if I was ever back in the vicinity. We all knew it wouldn't happen and, within six months I would be remembered only by a few as an idle enquiry over coffee. Finally it was all over and I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I left the pub. One phase of my life was over and a new one was beginning.

Outside work, life was hectic. The first weekend, Tonia and I had gone shopping for antiques. We didn't buy anything in the first two places; I just let Charles find out what he needed to know. When he was satisfied, we made our first purchase; a rather nice clock that Charles 'persuaded' the owner to part with at little more than he paid for it. Tonia ran interference, showing a little more leg than was decent and letting the man stare down the front of her blouse while she flirted outrageously. I almost felt sorry for the poor man. He was sweating heavily when we left.

"That was fun," she said.

"You're turning into an exhibitionist," I chided, "and a sadist. He nearly came in his pants when you patted his cheek."

"Nonsense. It was just a bit of harmless fun. I'm sure his wife will be very grateful tonight."

"For a lady accountant, you're incorrigible."

"So, shall we sell this clock? It seems a shame, though, I rather like it."

"I'll get Charles to make you one."

"It won't be the same," she sighed.

I had never been hooked on the mystique of antiques. "Whyever not? It'll look just the same as this one. No-one will be able to tell the difference."

"I'll know, though."

"Well, we'll sell Charles's one and you can keep the original if it means that much to you."

"Would you do that for me? That's sweet." And in the middle of the street she kissed me soundly.

Out of sight I had Charles reproduce the clock. We took the duplicate to another shop where we 'persuaded' the dealer to part with considerably more money than he would have normally. In fact, given his way, he would have offered us somewhat less than we had paid for it, having taken us for a couple of rich ignoramuses. We gave him his money back, though, by acquiring a rather good occasional table.

As we had not wanted to risk the original owner finding his clock on sale in the shop next door, we had driven to the other side of town. Now we were faced with the prospect of returning to sell the table.

"This is a lot of work for not much return," I grumbled over lunch.

"I don't know. We've managed to slide several hundreds of Charles's pounds into circulation and, when we sell the table, we'll have made profit of several hundred more. Not bad for the first day. And, besides, it's fun," Tonia replied.

"Saints preserve me from women and shopping," I said, raising my eyes to heaven.

"What's wrong with shopping?"

"Nothing at all, so long as I don't have to do it."

"Pooh, you're no fun to be with."

"It's not meant to be fun; it's business. At this rate it'll take months to get enough to break into the property market. We need a different approach."

"We'd get on better if we bought lots of things at once. Then we wouldn't need to keep traipsing all over town."

"But it could be dangerous trying to sell them just down the road, so to speak. For all I know there's an antique dealer's union and they all get together every week to compare notes."

"Does Charles know?"

Charles did indeed know or, at least, he had picked up the feeling that the antiques world was fairly small and tight knit.

"How about we bought a load of stuff here and sold it somewhere else. Would that work?"

"It might. It would certainly be more efficient. And we could buy a load more there and sell it here."

"Then we could repeat the process but this time in a different town."

"Bu that would mean that, every other week we would be back here. That would arouse suspicion for sure."

"We'd have to go on a round trip." She sighed. "You know, this isn't turning out to be as simple as I'd envisaged."

"I agree. It's so frustrating. I can make as much money as I like but I can't do anything with it without arousing the eyes of the law, not to mention the tax people and probably the VAT man, too."

The prospect of traipsing round the country in a van every weekend for a few thousand pounds filled us with gloomy silence and, by unspoken consent we abandoned the antiques shuttle and went home or, at least, to my flat which seemed to have become our unofficial home. We were sitting despondently in the living room, staring blankly at the football results, an empty wine bottle on the coffee table when Lola came in several hours later.

"Hi, guys." She seemed even bubblier than usual which only made us more depressed. "What's cooking?"

"Not a lot."

"You two don't seem full of the joys."

"We're not."

"Never fear, Lola's here — and I've found the answer to our problems. We're going on holiday."

"If that's meant to be a joke, it's in particularly bad taste."

"It's not a joke. The answer to our problems is to go on holiday."

"Be serious, Lola. This antiques lark isn't going to work and we need to think of something different."

"I have," she couldn't keep the grin off her face. "I told you, we're going on holiday and we're going to be rich."

I sighed. "Okay, I'll play along. Why are we going on holiday and how are we going to be rich.

"It's the going on holiday that will make us rich."

"Lola, if you don't stop pissing around and tell us, I'm going to tie you up and beat it out of you," Tonia said angrily. "We've had a shitty day and we're not in the mood for silly games."

"Sorry. Suppose you tell me all about your bad day then I'll tell you my idea?"

We told her about our experience as antique dealers and why we thought the idea wouldn't work.

"I see the problem," she said when we had finished. "And you're right, it wouldn't work." Then her excitement bubbled over again. "But I have the answer."

"Okay, give."

"Like you I've been concerned that we can make as much cash as we want but can't get it into the system where it'll do any good. I was going round and round and getting nowhere until two unconnected things happened. The first was that my boss sent round an e-mail about a course we are all to go on to do with the new money laundering regulations." She looked angry. "Did you know that if anybody — banker, lawyer, estate agent, shop assistant — anybody, is involved in any sort of financial transaction and the source of the deal turns out to be a criminal, then the banker, or whoever, can go to gaol for not reporting their suspicions. Suspicions, mind you; no proof; no evidence; suspicions. What's more ignorance isn't accepted as a plea. So a drug dealer walks into a shop and buys a packet of cigarettes with money from a drug deal and they can put the shop assistant in gaol for not reporting that he was 'suspicious'. What is this country coming to, I ask you?"

She stopped to take a breath then noticed our expressions of astonishment. "Sorry," she said sheepishly. "It just gets me all wound up. I went into the legal profession because I believed that our laws were there to protect people and I wanted to help. Oh, the laws are there to protect people, all right, but not you or I; not the man or woman in the street. That's the last person they protect." She sounded bitter.

I gathered her in my arms and held her tightly. Tonia joined us and we sat silently, letting our love flow.

"Sorry about that," Lola said eventually, her usual cheerful self fully restored. "Where was I?"

"Other than on your high horse?" I teased. "You were talking about money laundering."

"Oh, yes. That was the first thing. The second thing was a colleague who was going on holiday to Spain. In best legal tradition, he'd been so caught up in work that he'd forgotten to get any Euros. We teased him, of course, then somebody asked why he was bothering. Why didn't he just get cash from his credit card. That's when the penny dropped and I saw how to play this."

She looked at us proudly obviously expecting a round of applause or, at least, some hearty congratulations. What she got was two blank stares.

"But it's obvious. Don't you see?"

"No."

"We need to get lots of cash into the system so we need somewhere where cash is common. People on holiday spend lots of cash. Holiday resorts are awash with the stuff so no-one's going to think twice about three rich tourists waving wads of money around. For the very same reason, banks in holiday resorts aren't going to think twice about people depositing cash — it goes on all the time. So a holiday resort is the ideal place to deposit money without anybody noticing."

"I get it," Tonia said, beginning to smile. "Lots of small transactions so it doesn't raise any alarm bells. I like it." She stopped and frowned. "But tourists normally take money out. Won't it look a bit odd if we're put it in?"

"We won't be putting it in ourselves. Charles can persuade friendly natives to help us."

"I'm warming to the idea," I said, feeling more confident myself. Lola's idea did seem as if it might work. And it would be a damned sight easier than buying and selling antiques, that was for sure.

"So far so good," Lola continued. "We've now got a way of getting the money in. The next question is; into where?"

"Why, our bank account, I suppose," I said doubtfully. I knew it wasn't the right answer.

"Oh, oh. I see the problem," Tonia said, nodding. "If our account suddenly swells by several tens of thousand of pounds, alarm bells will ring somewhere. Let me think a minute. We need lots of accounts — all over the place. We pay a small amount into each — say a thousand pounds. As soon as the money's in, we transfer it out and close the accounts. Hmm, no that's not good enough. We transfer the money from the first accounts to different accounts in other countries, maybe up to ten thousand in each. Then we transfer it again to somewhere else and so on. Finally it ends up in a corporate account in Switzerland or Nassau — definitely not one of the drug countries. Perhaps we could even use the Bundesbank. Then all we need to do is draw on these accounts through our official account here when we need capital. Actually we won't need to do that at all. We'll do everything by credit, using the foreign accounts as collateral." She paused for a moment then snapped her fingers. "Even better; we'll set up dummy companies in the various countries and use corporate financing. Much more difficult to trace and easier to manage. We'll even incorporate the Thompson Partnership as an off-shore company. Lola, girl, you're a genius. We'll put our heads together later and draw up a plan."