Silent Money Read online

  ‘Well, there is a way to keep him busy. And make some more money while we’re at it.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Get into the loan shark business. Loads of people are feeling the pinch with the current level of unemployment. We give somebody a hundred, two hundred to see them through until their next giro and they pay us a quarter of what they owe us every week until they pay off the loan. We get a couple of smurfs to do the collecting, and we use Big Jockie as back-up if they need any persuasion to make the payment.’

  Michael shook his head. ‘I’m not getting into that business, Ron. I don’t trade in human misery. You should come along to a Second Chance meeting and see how desperate some of these people are. I want to use my money to ease people’s suffering, not make it worse.’

  Ron burst into spontaneous laughter. ‘Who the hell do you think you are, Jess Yates? That bird you’re hanging around with is making you soft in the head. Second Chance is our smurf recruitment agency, in case you’ve forgotten. I’ve been thinking that all this Avalon Foundation stuff was completely over the top, drawing too much attention to us, but I’ve never said anything. You’re not telling me it’s for real, are you?’

  ‘Of course it is. There’s nothing wrong with making your money one way, and living your life another. Yes, I started off using Second Chance, but that changed when I saw the good it could do. I could have done with a second chance when I was younger. Now I’m giving people opportunities I never had.’

  ‘I don’t get it, Michael. I don’t know about you, but I’m in this to make money. And Big Jockie sitting around with time on his hands is an accident waiting to happen. If you don’t want to use him for what he’s good at, at least let me. Otherwise, we might find he’s no longer around when we need him.’

  ‘No. I’m not having you use him to beat up people who’ve got themselves into problems. I couldn’t live with myself.’

  Ron sighed. ‘Okay, let’s look at it from your point of view. You want to keep Big Jockie, but there will be nothing for him to do when we get rid of the smurfs. You want him to hang around on the off-chance that he might come in handy if some aggro comes our way? That’s not … what would you say? … that’s not maximising a business resource. If you don’t keep Big Jockie busy, he’ll go elsewhere. He’s a psycho, for fuck’s sake. He likes his work. He’s not going to sit at home playing Scrabble until you decide you need him.’

  ‘Then use him for something else. Just not this.’ Michael sensed he was losing the argument.

  ‘Like what? Contract killing, armed robbery? Do they make more sense in this cloud-cuckoo land you’re telling me about? Big Jockie beats people up for a living. You tell me how we can use that skill in a way that makes you feel you’re helping a noble cause.’

  Michael stared at the floor for a few seconds.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You win. Set up your loan-sharking, I want nothing to do with it. But I want you to stick to some basic rules. Nobody connected with Second Chance gets lent money, only the druggies, alkies, gamblers; people who only have themselves to blame. No single mothers trying to make ends meet, no steelworkers who’ve been thrown on the dole. Make your dirty money, but at least have some principles doing it.’

  ‘That’ll be me. A principled moneylender. Code of ethics and everything.’

  Michael knew he was being ridiculed. ‘Okay. But this is only so we can keep Big Jockie. If it wasn’t for that, I’d say no. You tell Big Jockie. You sort it out with him. I don’t want to be involved.’

  They parted, Michael fuming that for once Ron had got the better of him. Ron running his own operation, strictly controlled and with Michael neither being involved nor benefitting, was the least bad solution to the Big Jockie problem. But it didn’t make Michael feel any better.

  chapter sixteen

  ‘I’m leaving you, Michael.’

  Charlotte trembled as she spoke.

  ‘You’ve been lying to me from day one about what you do. I’ve come for my things, then I never want to see you again.’

  She was standing on his doorstep having turned up unannounced, shivering in the rain.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Michael said. ‘Is this still your worries about the company I keep? It’s not what I expect from you, Charlotte. Let’s talk this over as adults.’

  ‘No, Michael. I tried to make myself believe you. Now I see what a fool I’ve been. I’ve found out what that gorilla does for you. You lend money, don’t you? To people who can’t afford to pay it back. Don’t deny it. One of the guys at Second Chance, Alex, someone who’s trying hard to give up the drink and make a go of his life – he got beaten up because he borrowed money he couldn’t afford to pay back. Got beaten up by someone who sounds a lot like that thug in your office. You’ve got Ron recruiting gullible fools to do God knows what, and you’ve got a sadistic animal doing your dirty work when you trade on people’s misery. And to think I loved you. Michael. You’ve broken my heart.’

  ‘Charlotte, I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Michael protested.

  It sickened him that he knew every word was true. Ron had agreed too readily to the moral boundaries he had imposed on the loan-sharking operation. He had agreed as you would to humour a child, and then had blithely ignored his instructions. He would deal with Ron later. Charlotte was his priority right now.

  Charlotte had prepared herself for his denial.

  ‘Michael, please don’t take me for a fool. I know it must be these two hoodlums who work for you. Every detail of the description matches them perfectly. I could never work out why you cared so much about charity; it doesn’t seem like you at all. Now I know. You want to exploit people. It’s sick. You’re sick. And I want nothing more to do with you.’

  ‘Charlotte, if I promise to be honest with you, will you promise to hear me out?’

  She shook her head vehemently. ‘No, Michael. I told myself you’d try to talk me out of leaving. I’m not going to listen. I’ve brought a suitcase for my things, and I want you to leave me to pack up and go. If you don’t, I’m calling the police.’

  ‘Please, Charlotte. Give me two minutes to explain. If you still feel the same, I can’t stop you from going. But two minutes. I promise after that you’ll know the truth. Don’t throw away everything we’ve built together. I’m not just talking about us; I’m talking about all the people we’ve helped. Surely you owe it to them to hear me out?’

  The wind gusted, bringing with it a burst of heavier rain. It mixed with the tears running down her face.

  ‘Look, you’ll catch your death standing there. Come in and let’s talk.’

  Charlotte stepped into the hallway, looking around with an expression of genuine fear, as if some assailant were about to burst out of the shadows. She swallowed hard.

  ‘Okay, two minutes. I’m listening.’

  ‘Some of my customers are more than just unscrupulous businessmen trying to cut their tax bills. I can’t prove it, but I’m convinced some of them are out-and-out criminals. I have Big Jockie around as a sort of bodyguard-come-enforcer, to be on the safe side. Probably being silly, but it makes me feel safe. And you’re right, Ron’s from a world where he knows where to find these sorts of customers and can talk to them in their language. I never meet them, I do the numbers and provide the advice. I remember Ron asking about Second Chance and I told him all about it, but it didn’t occur to me he had an ulterior motive.’

  He could see hesitation in her eyes.

  ‘So yes, I might have a few clients who operate on the wrong side of the law. But so would a bank, or indeed many other businesses. That doesn’t make me a criminal. And I swear I knew nothing about Jockie McPherson beating up Second Chance people. If I find out that’s true, I’ll get rid of both of them.’

  ‘No, Michael, that doesn’t stack up. Nobody working for you would do anything without you knowing. And legi
timate businessmen don’t need bodyguards. I’m not buying it.’

  ‘Look, think about this logically for a moment. Let’s assume that I am capable of doing the things you’re accusing me of. Why on earth would I? I don’t need the money. You’d be bound to find out if it involved Second Chance. I love you, Charlotte, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Why would I risk all that to beat people up to collect their weekly giros?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because you’re evil? Because you enjoy it?’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t work it out. But I’m not stupid. You work with thugs. You make a lot of money. These thugs are beating up poor defenceless, vulnerable people. You can’t make me believe you are innocent in all this. I’m here for my things, and then I’m getting you out of my life.’

  Michael sunk in a chair, filled with genuine despair.

  ‘And then what?’ he said. ‘Are you going to the police? There’s not a shred of evidence I’m involved, but the slightest whiff of a scandal will bring down the foundation, destroy everything we’ve worked on together. Is that what you want?’

  Charlotte backed away from him, wide-eyed with fear.

  ‘Don’t threaten me, Michael. I’ll scream, I promise I will, if you take one step towards me.’

  Michael shook his head and stayed in the chair.

  ‘I’m not making any threats,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s the phone if you want to make a call. Come back with someone to look after you as you pack, if that’s what you’d like. Or go upstairs and get your things now. It’s up to you.’

  ‘I promised myself not to let you sway me. I don’t know what’s really going on. But I do know I can’t trust you anymore.’

  ‘That’s your choice. But promise me this. Walk out on me, if you want to, but keep your suspicions to yourself. And give me a chance to deal with this Second Chance problem. I promise you I don’t know anything about it, but I suspect you might be right. If you are, I’ll put a stop to it right away. If you find out it’s still going on, that means I’m lying to you. If it stops, it means I’m telling you the truth. Then all this stays our secret. We don’t want either of us linked to any scandal.’

  ‘I don’t know what game you’re playing, Michael. You’re involved in something bad. I don’t know what.’ She paused for twenty, maybe thirty seconds. ‘But I’ll agree to give you a chance to clear things up. Not because I believe you, but because it might help the poor unfortunates you’re exploiting. But if I hear one more story about someone getting into trouble because they’ve taken out a loan from those thug friends of yours, I’m calling the police straight away. So, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. For the moment. This can be our dirty little secret. Now can I go?’

  After Charlotte collected her stuff and left, Michael called Ron over to the house.

  ‘It’s betrayal, Ron, pure and simple,’ he said. ‘Against my better judgement, I agreed you could operate a loan-sharking operation, with one proviso, and one proviso only. Stay clear of Second Chance. And you reneged on the deal. It’s cost me my relationship with Charlotte, and could have brought down the whole operation if she’d gone to the police. There’s no forgiving you for this.’

  Ron was unrepentant. ‘You need to get real, Michael. Yeah, I went along with all your moral-boundary, Nietzsche-spouting bullshit, but that was just to avoid argument. Yeah, I said I’d leave Second Chance alone, and shit, I might even have meant it when I said it. But things move on. Some pals of the smurfs needed some dosh, and I was happy to oblige. It’s fuck-all to do with you.’

  ‘It’s everything to do with me. This is my operation and, forgetting my scruples for the moment, it was a bad business decision. You’ve risked everything, because you couldn’t resist a fast buck.’

  ‘Now that’s where I agree with you, pal. This Charlotte bird sounds like trouble. If you’ve finished shagging her, we might have to figure out how we keep her quiet for good.’

  Michael drew in a series of slow, steady breaths.

  ‘Listen, Ron. You might be blasé about ignoring me over Second Chance, but if you harm so much as a hair on Charlotte’s head, then everything between us is over. I mean it. The operation closes down, I don’t care how much it costs me, and I’ll never forgive you. I’ll deal with Charlotte. She’ll get over this; we’ll get back together. Until then, let me deal with her.’

  Ron had the sense to back off. ‘Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have taken a shit in our own backyard. I’ll lay of the Second Chance punters; you take care of Charlotte your way. And we can shake hands and put this behind us. No hard feelings?’

  Michael shook hands and attempted a smile of reconciliation. As he looked Ron in the eye, he promised himself that one day there would be retribution for this. He might need Ron now, but that wouldn’t always be the case. The minute he became expendable, his time was up.

  In the days ahead, he tried to convince himself that there might be some positives from Charlotte leaving him. Having someone so close had always been a risk. He cleaned out his reserves to pay off her loan, and when she said she wasn’t going to work for the Avalon Foundation when she graduated, he didn’t protest too much. For the moment, the foundation’s days were over.

  The end of his relationship with Charlotte marked a significant change in Michael’s lifestyle. He wasn’t going to make the mistake of getting close to someone again. He got his own VIP booth at Tiffany’s, called up some of the acquaintances Charlotte had introduced him to. He made himself the centre of the Glasgow club scene, and an invite to join his inner circle was a privilege offered to only a select few.

  And there were women. At the heart of disco culture was sex: no-strings-attached, casual, hedonistic sex. He had his routine tuned to perfection. Send someone over and ask whoever caught his eye if they’d like to join him for a drink. The offer of free champagne invariably resulted in success. Everyone was out for a good time, everyone wanted to look good, and everybody grooved like there was no tomorrow. It was a world where nothing was expected of you after a night of the most intense intimacies.

  Once his cash had built up again, Michael started a spending frenzy, to further put the pain of his rejection behind him. His taste in fine art was growing more expensive all the time, and he would travel to London to find the galleries that sold the quality of paintings he was looking for. The purchase that gave him the greatest pleasure was a version of the René Magritte painting, a print of which he had acquired at Woolworths years earlier, the one with the businessmen with apples covering their faces. He loved that he could now afford it, and he loved its symbolism. It perfectly captured who he now was, and his lifestyle. As he gave it pride of place in the living room of his new suburban mansion, he reflected on how far he had come in just a few years.

  The conversation he had with the gallery owner who sold him the Magritte sparked off another idea for expansion. He was increasing the amount of money going through his existing companies as quickly as he dared, but it still wasn’t enough to keep up with the growth of the money coming in from clients. The gallery owner had asked him if he was paying by cheque or cash.

  ‘Cash?’ said Michael. ‘Surely not for that amount.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ the gallery owner replied. ‘For some of my customers, their taste in fine art happily converges with their need to unload large amounts of cash which they seem to have for some reason. It’s not my job to ask where the money comes from. Let’s say I’ve had a few nervous walks to the bank to deposit some of the funds I’ve received in the past. Live and let live, I say.’

  So, the idea for the Avalon Art Gallery was born, perfect for dealing with any big one-off cash deposits his criminal clients wanted to make. It would be the most top-end art gallery in Scotland, which would mean he’d only need to sell a few paintings for it to look legitimate. The only issue was to find someone compliant and more clued-up about art than the folk Ron had found to run the other Aval
on businesses, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

  High-priced works of art, a library filled with rare first editions, a house bristling with the latest technology – everything about Michael oozed success. Success could buy him everything. Everything, that was, except for Charlotte.

  chapter seventeen

  Michael stared at the monthly report from DS Grant that had turned up in the mail.

  ‘Report’ was probably too grandiose a word. A single A4 page, typed up in a heavy-handed style with so much Tipp-Ex it resembled a contour map of the Alps, no doubt on a typewriter Grant had hidden away in his home. At least this was a full page. The first couple of months had been only a few lines: news of crimes where the police had been finding it difficult to trace the proceeds when they’d apprehended the perpetrator. But no one had made the link that they were all connected. Michael was paying a lot and getting very little back, but he took that as a good sign that his attempt to remain invisible was working.

  The news in the report about Jake Strachan was different. He was a medium-sized client who specialised in robbing post offices. Steady income, nothing too flashy. But now he was planning a bank robbery and had brought in some accomplices, one of whom was a police informer. Grant had tipped Michael off because Strachan had been taken in for questioning and all the post office proceeds had mysteriously disappeared. Grant had guessed he was an Avalon client, and guessed right. Now he was alerting Michael that Jake would be walking into a trap when he tried to pull the bank job – giving him an opportunity to save his skin.

  Michael decided on a different plan. There was a meeting with Ron and Jenkins the next day to run through client status and money movements, and Michael used it to check how robust the barriers were surrounding Strachan’s money. When he mentioned the name, Ron was immediately on the alert.