I was only halfway through my first glass of Australian fizz (as good a reason as any for awarding the Olympics to Sydney) when Clive appeared at my elbow with a strange man and a sickly grin. Kate, he greeted me. What a lovely surprise.
I was on my guard straight away. Clive and I have never been buddies, probably because I cant bring myself to be anything more than professionally polite to social climbers. So when the Edmund Hillary of the Cheshire set accosted me so joyously, I knew at once we were in the realms of hidden agendas. I smiled politely, shook his hand, counted my fingers and said, Nice to see you too, Clive.
Kate, can I introduce my brother-in-law, Andrew Broderick? Andrew, this is Kate Brannigan, whos a partner in Manchesters best security company. Kate, Andrews the MD and CEO of ALF. I must have looked blank, for Clive added hurriedly, You know, Kate. Accredited Leo Finance. Leo Motor Companys credit arm.
Thanks, Tonto, I said.
Clive looked baffled, but Andrew Broderick laughed. If Im the loan arranger, you must be Tonto. Old joke, he explained. Clive still didnt get it. Broderick and I shook hands and weighed each other up. He wasnt a lot taller than my five feet and three inches, but Andrew Broderick looked like a man whod learned how to fight his battles in a rugby scrum rather than a boardroom. It was just as well he could afford to have his suits hand-stitched to measure; hed never have found that chest measurement off the peg. His nose had been broken more than once and his ears were as close to being a pair as Danny De Vito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But his shrewd grey eyes missed nothing. I felt his ten-second assessment of me had probably covered all the salient points.
We started off innocuously enough, discussing the Games. Then, casually enough, he asked what I drove in the course of business. I found myself telling him all about Bills new Saab convertible, the workhorse Little Rascal van we use for surveillance, and the nearly fatal accident that had robbed me of the Nova. I was mildly surprised. I dont normally talk to strangers.
No Leos? he asked with a quirky smile.
No Leos, I agreed. But Im open to persuasion.
Broderick took my elbow, smiled dismissively at Clive and gently steered me into a quiet corner behind the buffet. I have a problem, he said. It needs a specialist, and Im told that your organization could fit my spec. Interested?
Call me a slut, but when it comes to business, Im always open to offers. Im interested, I said. Will it keep, or do you want to thrash it out now?
It turned out that patience wasnt Andrew Brodericks long suit. Within five minutes, we were in the lounge of the Ramada, with drinks on their way. How much do you know about car financing? he asked.
They always end up costing more than you think, I said ruefully.
That much, eh? he said. OK. Let me explain. My company, ALF, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Leo Motor Company. Our job is to provide loans for people who want to buy Leo cars and havent got enough cash. But Leo dealerships arent obliged to channel all their customers through us, so we have to find ways to make ourselves sexy to the dealerships. One of the ways we do this is to offer them soft loans.
I nodded, with him so far. And these low-interest loans are for what, exactly?
Dealerships have to pay up front when they take delivery of a car from Leo. ALF gives them a soft loan to cover the wholesale cost of the car for ninety days. After that, the interest rate rises weekly. When the car is sold, the soft loan is supposed to be paid off. Thats in the contract.
But if a dealership arranges loans for the Leos it sells via a different finance company, neither ALF nor Leo is aware that the cars been sold. The dealer can smack the money in a high-interest account for the remains of the ninety days and earn himself a tidy sum in interest before the loan has to be paid off. The drinks arrived, as if on cue, giving me a few moments to digest what hed said.
I tipped the bottle of grapefruit juice into my vodka, and swirled the ice cubes round in the glass to mix the drink. And you obviously hate this because youre cutting your own margins to supply the low-interest loans, but youre getting no benefit in return.
Broderick nodded, taking a hefty swallow of his spritzer. Leo arent crazy about it either because it skews their market share figures, particularly in high turnover months like August, he added.
So where do I come in? I asked.
Ive come up with an alternative distribution system, he said simply. Now, all I know about the car business is what Ive learned from my dad, an assembly line foreman with Rover in Oxford. But even that little is enough for me to realize that what Andrew Broderick had just said was on a par with the Prime Minister announcing he was going to abolish the Civil Service.
I swallowed hard. We dont do bodyguard jobs, I said.
He laughed, which was the first time Id doubted his sanity. Its so simple, he said. Instead of having to fill their showrooms with cars theyre then under pressure to sell asap, dealers would carry only one sample of the model. The customer would specify colour, engine size, petrol or diesel, optional extras, etc. The order would then be faxed to one of several regional holding centres where the specific model would be assembled from Leos stock.
Dont tell me, let me guess. Leo are fighting it tooth and nail because it involves them in initial expenditure of more than threepence hapenny, I said resignedly.
And thats where you come in, Ms Brannigan. I want to prove to Leo that my system would be of ultimate financial benefit to both of us. Now, if I can prove that at least one of our bigger chains of dealerships is committing this particular fraud, then I can maybe start to get it through Leos corporate skulls that a helluva lot of cash that should be in our business is being siphoned off. And then maybe, just maybe, theyll accept that a revamped distribution service is worth every penny.
Which is how Richard and I came to be playing happy newly-weds round the car showrooms of England. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Three weeks into the job, it still seemed like a good idea. Which only goes to show how wrong even I can be.
Chapter 2
The following afternoon, I was in my office, putting the finishing touches to a routine report on a fraudulent personal accident claim Id been investigating on behalf of a local insurance company. As I reached the end, I glanced at my watch. Twenty-five to three. Surprise, surprise, Richard was late. I saved the file to disc, then switched off my computer. I took the disc through to the outer office, where Shelley Carmichael was filling in a stationery supplies order form. If good office management got you on to the Honours List, Shelley would be up there with a life peerage. Its a toss-up who I treat with more respect Shelley or the local pubs Rottweiler.
She glanced up as I came through. Late again, is he? she asked. I nodded. Want me to give him an alarm call?
I dont think hes in, I said. He mumbled something this morning about going to a bistro in Oldham where they do live rockabilly at lunch time. It sounded so improbable it has to be true. Did you check if todays draft has come through?
Shelley nodded. Silly question, really. Its at the King Street branch, she said.
Ill pop out and get it now, I said. If Boy Wonder shows up, tell him to wait for me. None of that Ill just pop out to the Corner House for ten minutes to have a look at their new exhibition routine.
I gave the lift a miss and ran downstairs. It helps me maintain the illusion of fitness. As I walked briskly up Oxford Street, I felt at peace with the world. It was a bright, sunny day, though the temperature was as low as youd expect the week before the spring bank holiday. Its a myth about it always raining in Manchester we only make it up to irritate all those patronizing bastards in the South with their hose-pipe bans. I could hear the comic Thomas the Tank Engine hooting of the trams in the distance. The traffic was less clogged than usual, and some of my fellow pedestrians actually had smiles on their faces. More importantly, the ALF job had gone without a hitch, and with a bit of luck, this would be the last bankers draft Id have to collect. It had been a pretty straightforward routine, once Bill and I had decided to bring Richard in to increase the credibility of the car buying operation. It must be the first time in his life hes ever been accused of enhancing the credibility of anything. Our major target had been a garage chain with fifteen branches throughout the North. Richard and I had hit eight of them, from Stafford to York, plus four independents that Andrew also suspected of being on the fiddle.
There was nothing complicated about it. Richard and I simply rolled up to the car dealers, pretending to be a married couple, and bought a car on the spot from the range in the showroom. Broderick had called in a few favours with his buddies in the credit rating agencies that lenders used to check on their victims creditworthiness. So, when the car sales people got the finance companies to check the names and addresses Richard gave them, they discovered he had an excellent credit rating, a sheaf of credit cards and no outstanding debt except his mortgage. The granting of the loan was then a formality. The only hard bit was getting Richard to remember what his hooky names and addresses were.
The next day, wed go to the bank and pick up the bankers draft that Broderick had arranged for us. Then it was on to the showroom, where Richard signed the rest of the paperwork so we could take the car home. Some time in the following couple of days, a little man from ALF arrived and took it away, presumably to be resold as an ex-demonstration model. Interestingly, Andrew Broderick had been right on the button. Not one of the dealers wed bought cars from had offered us finance through ALF. The chain had pushed all our purchases through Richmond Credit Finance, while the independents had used a variety of lenders. Now, with a dozen cast-iron cases on the stocks, all Broderick had to do was sit back and wait till the dealers finally got round to admitting theyd flogged some metal. Then it would be gumshields time in the car showrooms.
While I was queueing at the bank, the schizophrenic weather had had a personality change. A wind had sprung up from nowhere, throwing needle-sharp rain into my face as I headed back towards the office. Luckily, I was wearing low-heeled ankle boots with my twill jodhpur-cut leggings, so I could jog back without risking serious injury either to any of my major joints or to my dignity. That was my first mistake of the day. Theres nothing Richard likes better than a dishevelled Brannigan. Not because its a turn-on; no, simply because it lets him indulge in a rare bit of one-upmanship.