Chapter 19

Sunday 25 November Heathrow Airport.

How John hated Heathrow Airport! Normally the crowds were unbearable, but at five in the morning life was relatively quiet and the arrival process brief. He had expected the intense security at Johannesburg airport, compared with which his arrival at Heathrow Passport control had indeed been trouble free.

He had become used to high temperatures, and had left South Africa in early Summer which was considerably warmer than so-called high summer in Britain. Now he had arrived in early Winter, and the plane had landed in pouring rain and in the dark after an eleven hour flight from Johannesburg. Thankfully John had travelled Upper Class and had a night’s sleep, though he felt far from rested.

He picked up his baggage with little delay and walked through customs unmolested. From there a taxi ride to the company flat saw him eating a breakfast of muesli and scrambled egg on toast with wonderful tea by eight, and feeling warmed as the central heating made its presence felt.

The rain continued to fall heavily. He blessed Maurice, or, he suspected Paula more likely, for organising the flat for him and providing a full fridge to welcome him home after nearly four months away, thus saving him getting drenched searching for supplies in local shops on a Sunday.

He settled into an armchair and as he revelled in the comfort of the heated flat, relieved the ordeal was over. His thoughts ran over the previous four months.

Had his work been a success? What had been gained? He had uncovered a clever fraud and caught the two fraudsters who had been defrauding FHD for five years while exploiting a Philippine company almost to bankruptcy.

The fraudsters were both senior executives in FHD, Fredericks and Curran, Fredericks being responsible for liaison and tendering with the far eastern companies with whom FHD dealt, while Curran was accounts executive.

Further, Fredericks and Curran were responsible to Steven Matterson, who had the overall brief for trade with Pacific Rim companies among others. He was effectively second in command to Sir Maurice.

As a result, for the first time in FHD’s history as far as he knew, two senior executives, Fredericks and Curran, had been sacked for criminal fraud and had been arrested, along with a number of others.

Further, Steven Matterson had resigned and was also being investigated. That event had rocked the company and John knew it had called into question Sir Maurice Callaghan’s position as CEO. The share price had fallen dramatically for a short time before climbing again as traders stopped panicking.

There followed measures to rescue the Philippine company that Fredericks had been bleeding, which took another two months, involving bringing in advisors from London.

While this was in progress, John was able to begin the task of looking for suitable companies in South Africa which FHD could develop as suppliers. As executive officer, he needed to return from time to time to monitor progress and authorise decisions in the Philippines.

What still intrigued John was how the pair had succeeded for so long unchecked. Though they were senior executives they were still responsible to Steven Matterson who was effectively the vice CEO of the company. Did he never personally contact the companies FHD dealt with? From the enquiries he made while there, the answer was no.

It struck John that Sir Maurice Callaghan had ensured that no one, not even Matterson had been privy to John’s investigation. Did Sir Maurice have suspicions about his second in command? John realised that no one in the company, apart from Paula, Maurice’s secretary, knew about his task. His trip had ostensibly been about quality and why the quality had fallen off so dramatically, so why the secrecy? Perhaps now the matter was concluded, Sir Maurice might confide in John. He grinned: some hopes!

John reflected that It had been a mixture of greed and arrogance that had caught Fredericks and Curran. If they had been content with a minimal markup, say half a percent, the tame Philippine company would have been able to make reliable units and the fraud may well have gone undetected for years more. The fraudsters would still have raked in sizeable sums, still into millions, but they wanted more.

Outside the flat, the rain continued to patter on the window, so he made himself some coffee and settled down to review the rest of the assignment, to reconnoitre sites in South Africa as another source of electronic bespoke items. By contrast that was simple. He smiled.

He shivered as he recalled the gruelling journeys between Manilla and South Africa. They seldom took less than fifteen hours and the jet lag was formidable. He rapidly came to hate the long, long plane journeys and the inevitable jet-lag. He seemed to be jet-lagged most of the time, and he never got used to it. Now, he was still jet-lagged, but felt comfortable and felt at home in the company flat.

His final trip to Manilla was in October for his final assessment, which he performed on the Board’s behalf.

He then finished his business in South Africa, signing up a small but growing company to FHD, who would finance its further expansion. Then he had been more than ready to come home.

All in all, he thought, it had been a successful mission, but not one he would want to repeat. He had already implied pretty strongly in his final report that the serious flaw in management structure and oversight that allowed Fredericks and Curran to defraud the company for so long, needed deep forensic investigation and urgent remedial action.

He looked forward to seeing Sir Maurice. Then his thoughts moved on to returning home to the North, and immediately Carol came to mind. She had been ‘coming to mind’ regularly the whole time he had been away, and had been repeatedly and firmly banished as unattainable every time. He looked forward to seeing Tracy, and wondered how she had fared over the months.

Looking back on his time away, he now regretted cutting off all communication while in the field so to speak. Initially it was a necessary condition of success in investigating FHD’s suspicions, and keeping Fredericks and Curran in the dark about his investigation until the hammer could fall.

However, once the arrests had been made, there was no further need for secrecy, but he maintained silence the whole time. He knew his excuse was that it allowed him to concentrate more fully on his work, but he also knew it was really weariness and jet-lag that resulted in his inertia. Now he wondered what had been happening while he had been away.

Of course, immediately he wondered whether Carol had by now become engaged to her lover, or even married. Then he wondered whether Tracy had found someone to shack up with: he knew she would not stay lonely for long!

He toyed with the idea of ringing Tom, or perhaps Tracy, but felt a lethargy creep over him: he suspected he would not like what they told him about Carol and so he put it off. He was tired and wrung out having worked all daylight hours for nearly four months without any appreciable break. He would see Maurice tomorrow and beg an extended break for a long holiday.

If he felt better tomorrow, he thought, he might phone – or not. He sighed and felt a sense of loss, of what he did not know. Anticlimax after all the intensity perhaps.

He settled into an armchair and fell asleep until midday, and awoke to find that the rain had stopped but the day was still cold, grey and damp. He had fancied a walk round central London, but the weather was not welcoming, so he got out his laptop, connected the ethernet cable and spent some time surfing and catching up on emails. Then he got up his final report and re-read it, suspecting there would be a post-mortem with Sir Maurice the next day.

Early on Monday morning, in fact at 7.30am, and quite dark still, John came to conscious thought, realised his bladder was most uncomfortable and then that the phone in the flat was ringing. He switched on the light and crawled out of bed.

“Yes?” he groaned.

“Good morning John,” came Paula’s cheerful voice. “Been catching up on the booze?”

“Paula, what are you doing in the office at this ungodly hour?”

“Flexitime, dear heart,” she chuckled. “Seriously though, you sound rough.”

“Four months of stress caught up with me,” he said, “to say nothing of jet-lag. I’ve just woken up, and I’m, shall we say, uncomfortable and needing relief?”

“Oh, sorry John, Maurice will see you at ten, OK?”

“Paula!” His reproof came as a strangled cry.

“Sorry, sorry, you’ve been away so long I’ve fallen into bad ways. He will see you at ten if that’s all right with you?“ She giggled and then gave an exaggerated sigh of exasperation.

“Much better,” he laughed, “and yes, I think I can stagger there by then.”

“Off you go then, relief will soon be yours.” She giggled again and disconnected. He wondered how she could be so unremittingly cheerful.

Fortunately the rain had stopped by the time he was ready to walk the mile or so to the offices, though the sky remained overcast and dark grey, and though that day was milder he still felt it cold after the early summer warmth of South Africa. He arrived in Sir Maurice’s office ten minutes early.

“Good morning, John, welcome back,” Paula smiled then looked worried. “John! You look terrible! Tanned but terrible! You need a rest. Tell him! Go straight in, there’s no one with him.”

“Thanks Paula,” he said, knocked at the door and entered.

“Welcome back,” said Sir Maurice, extending a hand.

“Thanks,” said John, shaking it. “I have to say I’m glad it’s over.”

“There’s a board meeting on Thursday,” said Sir Maurice. “One of the agenda items: your final report. You didn’t mince your words, did you? You are ‘required’ to attend.”

“I would have thought, after the various go aheads I was given, they already knew what it would say. They agreed your action on my interim missives, and they did give the go ahead for supporting that company while we established the payments we originally thought we were sending to them.”

“True, but I think the meeting is to formalise everything and to look ahead. And John, they really want to show their appreciation for your brilliance in discovering the fraud.”

“Again, I would have thought you’ve already made some decisions about future action to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again, or anywhere else. I can’t think how those two guys got away with it for so long. Five years! And before that, the way Fredericks manipulated the tenders. There’s a gaping hole in our surveillance system somewhere.”