“Richard Wolsey Keen speaking.”

“Ah, hello Richard, this is Michael from Security. We have a bit of a problem. Can I come down and see you?”

“Look, Michael, I was just about to leave. Can we do this tomorrow?”

“No, I’m afraid it can’t wait,” said Michael Grazeley, Director of Security, leaving no room for discussion.

***

Shortly after six thirty Richard Wolsey Keen sat facing his tormentors from security. He was still wearing his overcoat and he was still sweating. Michael Grazeley spoke. There was respect in his tone of voice, and Richard relaxed, but only a little.

“The thing is, sir, you exceeded the daily floor limit of a million pounds today. That’s a good thing, really, because if it had been a million or less the system wouldn’t have flagged up this potential problem.”

Richard listened and frowned as if puzzled. “Whist your purchase is for a million pounds, you paid to express clearance of the payment and a fee of four thousand pounds was charged by the clearing system. It was the fee that pushed the purchase over the floor limit.”

“Well, really! Surely you haven’t made me wait here just because I expended a few thousand pounds that the client will pay anyway?” Richard tried to sound angry.

“No. That isn’t the real problem. Nicky here tried to clear the warning by raising an exception notice, which you could have signed in your own time, and all would have been well. But the system wouldn’t accept the exception notice because your purchase was for land in the Seychelles, but the bank account you paid the money into was in Switzerland and belongs to an art gallery.”

Richard had no idea who owned the account that ‘Sam’ had nominated for his million pound payoff. He had automatically assumed that it would be Sam’s own account. The banker needed time to think. He tried a bluff.

“Michael, you know what things are like here. They change by the minute. About five minutes after I typed the request and sent it, I had a call to say that the land was off the market and so I diverted the investment into fine art for the client. I managed to pick up a marginal sale, and so Mrs Patterson pays one million and four thousand pounds, plus our fees, and she gets artwork worth approximately one point one million. We all win.”

“Richard, we are not questioning your judgement. I am sure you will make the bank and the client money. No, the problem is the artwork itself. It appears that you arranged to pick it up in person.”

Richard was now in deep water but he had to propagate the lie. “Yes, I wanted to deliver it personally.”

“Well, that’s the problem. Nicky checked your swipe card. You haven’t left the office since mid-afternoon.”

“That’s right.” Richard wondered which direction this was going, and whether he was clever enough to stay ahead of the security chief.

“When Nicky rang the gallery to confirm they had received our transfer, the owner told him you had already picked up the painting. The description the owner of the gallery gave of his Richard Wolsey Keen does not fit you. It appears that our artwork has been stolen. We need to call the police.”

Richard said nothing. The colour drained from his face. The security director squeezed his shoulder gently.

“Don’t you worry, Richard, we will get to the bottom of this. We’ll get your artwork back.”

The security team left, and Richard dropped his head into his hands. It was all over. Tomorrow the whole story would come out. He was ruined.

The phone rang. He answered it.

“Hello, Richard. This is Callum Rogerson of UK Newspaper Group. We were wondering whether you had any comment on tomorrow’s front page.”

Richard knew all too well that UKNG owned two scurrilous tabloids as well as their broadsheet papers and radio interests.

“How would I know? I haven’t seen it, and even if I had I wouldn’t give you the time of day.” He slammed the phone down. How much longer would the debacle at Northern & National Bank make front page news? When he checked he saw that new mail had arrived in his inbox from Callum Rogerson. He wanted to ignore it, but he knew he couldn’t.

Richard clicked on a PDF file attachment called ‘Front Page’ and a piece of software called Adobe Reader opened on his desktop. Slowly a facsimile of the newspaper front page built before his eyes. The headline was bad enough:

“The Fabulous Banker Boys!”

Below the headline was a telephoto shot of the young Arabic boy touching Richard’s tie. The photo was taken from such an angle that the boy’s face was obscured, but such was the young man’s short build that he looked even younger from behind. The soft, puppy dog expression on Richard’s face made the photo even more damning.

The text of the article had been carefully worded.

“....assignment on Clapham Common at a place known to be a regular haunt of older men looking for younger partners.” “Dinner at the intimate Carannas Restaurant where the clientele is almost exclusively male...”

The reference to further photographs inside chilled the banker to the core.

Richard realised that more damage would be caused by what was not said than what had actually been written. Readers already enraged at his big payoff wouldn’t hold back; they would fill in the blanks with their own sordid story. Couldn’t people see that he was treating these poor boys, not exploiting them?

The banker did not know how he could hope to face his wife or children again, especially his teenage son, when they had no idea that he had a predilection for attractive young men. His friends and colleagues would not understand, either. They would be shocked, possibly disgusted, and he foresaw only social exclusion and humiliation.

Richard took off his overcoat and jacket. His shirt was stained red at the back but he didn’t care about that any more. He opened his desk drawer extracted a half full bottle of whisky and a smaller bottle.

Within a short time, the banker was lying down on the sofa in his darkened office. The whisky bottle in his hand was almost empty, and tears streamed down his face.

Chapter 3 5

Vastrick Security Offices, No 1 Poultry, London. Tuesday 8am.

We had spent much of yesterday afternoon with the City Police, and so I was surprised to get a call from DS Fellowes on the stroke of eight the following morning. The young policeman wanted to meet with us urgently, and would be bringing along an ex colleague. He was reluctant to say what this was all about on the phone, and so we invited him around.

Dee and I were gradually becoming more intimate as the days passed. I was hoping that this was a continuing trend, although I did occasionally have doubts when I remembered that sick people sometimes fell in love with their nurses. I wondered if the Florence Nightingale syndrome extended to bodyguards.

We sat in the operations room, each at our own console, working through the evidence until our visitors arrived. We gathered in the conference room and the Detective Sergeant introduced us to a former police inspector who now worked in private security.

“Josh Hammond, Dee Conrad, this is Michael Grazeley of the London Mercantile Investment Bank.” We shook hands and sat down. “I’m going to let Michael explain, and then we can decide what we need to do.”

We sat back as Michael Grazeley explained that at nine o’clock last night he had been called back to the office because Mr Richard Wolsey Keen was discovered lying dead in his office, with an empty whisky bottle and an empty bottle of pills. A note apologising to his wife and rambling on relatively incoherently lay on the printer in his office. It was an apparent suicide.

The police, in cooperation with Michael and his assistant, sought answers as to why the banker might have taken his own life. Their first thoughts centred on the loss of a painting which he had bought for a client, but that was before they looked at his phone and computer.