Acts & Monuments Read online

  “Anyway,” Barry continued, “a little old lady has her purse taken out of her shopping bag with her bank card and PIN inside. The thieves come into the shop and use the cash machine to take £250 out of her account.”

  “I bet they did!” said Alun, chuckling slightly and shaking his head.

  “So, the old lady goes to the police and reports the crime. She tells them the shop’s got CCTV footage of the people taking her cash, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find them.”

  “I know what’s coming next.”

  “Really? Because, according to the shopkeeper, who had kept the CCTV footage and everything, apparently they said—”

  “That they weren’t going to investigate the crime, and she should just give the crime number to her bank and get her money back off them!”

  “Yes! That’s exactly what they said.”

  “Not worth it, apparently,” said Alun, with heavy sarcasm.

  “But they took 250 quid out of her account – it was all caught on CCTV!”

  “The CCTV’s a red herring. If there’s no proof of violence, 250 quid would be below the prosecution threshold. It doesn’t matter that they’ve seen them withdrawing the cash on CCTV. If they haven’t got CCTV footage of them mugging the old lady, the CPS won’t authorise a prosecution.”

  “So you can just steal £250 and the police won’t even investigate?”

  “As long as you don’t break in anywhere, or use or threaten violence, you can nick a lot more than that and get away with it. What’s the point of the police investigating if the CPS won’t prosecute at the end of it?”

  Barry was both shocked and yet also relieved. He’d been worried about the possibility of being caught, but it now appeared that, even if the police traced Monument’s money to Chris Malford’s account and found there was a few thousand pounds missing, they wouldn’t bother to investigate.

  “So, stealing money isn’t important anymore? It’s all about whether you use violence?”

  “I’m not saying it’s right; I’m just telling you how it is,” said Alun. “Politicians keep going on about how violent crime’s dropping, as though we’re all becoming more honest because of them. What they don’t tell you is that white-collar crime – fraud and the like – is going through the roof! Why would you bother to run the risk of serving time for holding up a post office for maybe a few hundred quid, when you can go online and steal tens – even hundreds – of thousands of pounds and not even face the possibility of being investigated?”

  “Really?” Barry couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “So most of this white-collar crime isn’t even investigated?”

  “Not anymore. Of course, it was different when I came on to the force, but they’ve rationalised and centralised everything now. Complete waste of time, if you ask me. Just confuses the public and means that, by the time anybody actually gets round to making a decision on whether to investigate or not, it’s not worth it – so they hardly ever bother. I’m not condoning it; I’m just telling it as it is. It’s all about priorities now.”

  “So, if the little old lady isn’t a priority, what is?” Barry asked. “Corporate fraud?”

  “I should coco.”

  “But I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t they want to investigate corporate fraud? I mean, I can see they might not be interested in 250 quid, but corporate fraud is for thousands. And there’ll be audit trails and everything.”

  “Well, firstly, the company may not even bother to report it to the police. They’ll be too embarrassed that they’ve been conned, and they’ll probably get told by their solicitor that it won’t get investigated anyway. But let’s say they do report it. Well, now you’ve got all this internet fraud and these foreign scams, they don’t let the local coppers on to it straight away. You can’t even report it to your local police force.”

  “Really?”

  “Really! You have to report it to something called Action Fraud – or Inaction Fraud, as I call ’em!” Alun laughed at his own wit.

  Barry joined in with a polite chuckle and poured Alun another glass of horribly sweet German wine to try to encourage him to continue.

  “Half the time Action Fraud will just say straight out, ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do’. The fact is, there’s hardly any resources put into fraud. There are literally thousands of these cases reported every week – over 20,000 a month – and they just haven’t got the manpower to pick up on every case. If there’s multiple reports of the same thing, then you’re more likely to get something done. But if it’s a one-off incident – and I’m just being honest with you Barry, you know me – the reality is it’s almost certainly going to be ignored.”

  Barry’s old certainties about crime and its reputed inability to pay were starting to fall away.

  “But they must decide to do something about some of the cases, surely?”

  “Oh yes. They pass them on to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.”

  “And they investigate them?”

  “Oh good grief, no. They package the cases up – whatever the hell that means, I never found out – and then weeks later decide whether to pass them on for investigation.”

  “Whether to pass them on?”

  “That’s the point. When I was still on the force, they only passed on about five or six thousand a month.”

  “But didn’t you just say there were about 20,000 frauds reported every month?”

  “Exactly. And even if they do finally pass a case on to an investigative agency, like the local police force, it’s them who have to decide whether to carry out an investigation.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “Absolutely. They might decide to investigate, but, then again, they might decide that they don’t have the capacity to accept the case. In which case they’ll just send it back to the NFIB.”

  “And they’ll investigate it then?”

  “You’re joking, aren’t you? They might take some action to prevent a repeat of that specific crime going forward, but they won’t try to solve the crime that’s already happened. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

  Indeed it was.

  “So how do they decide which cases to investigate? I mean they must make a decision on something more than whether they’ve got capacity, surely?”

  “Oh yes. They look at the degree of harm. Like I said, even if they solve a case, the CPS won’t sanction a prosecution unless it’s in the public interest. So there’s got to be a significant degree of harm. If a business goes bankrupt because of a fraud, then they’ll see that as a high degree of harm. But if it’s a couple of grand nicked off some massive multinational, then they won’t.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Well, there’s got to be what we call ‘a viable line of enquiry’. The police will want to know that there’s a reasonable chance of them solving the case before they start investigating it. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  “Ridiculous,” Barry agreed.

  “Oh, and then there’s the biggie.”

  “The biggie?”

  “Offender overseas. If it looks like the fraudster’s abroad, the police here won’t want to bother – particularly if it’s a non-EU country. It all gets too complicated and expensive, and half the time the police forces in those places are as crooked as the criminals.”

  Barry felt he may have overdone it on the cheap German wine. He could sense that Alun was building up to one of his explosive rants about foreigners.

  “I’ll tell you something, Barry. If I was going to commit a fraud, I’d make sure I had a bank account open in Bongo-Bongo Land ’cause the moment the money leaves Blighty, the police here don’t want to know.”

  Barry subtly moved the wine bottle out of Alun’s reach.

  “So tell me, Alun, just as a matter of interest, out of those 20,000 cases a month, how many actually
end up with someone being convicted?”

  “Honestly? About 800 or so.”

  “Eight hundred! Is that all? That’s only about four per cent. That can’t be right, surely?”

  “I’m afraid it is. Why do you think so many people are chancing their arm? It’s because they know they’ve got a ninety-six per cent chance of getting away with it – and they’re virtually guaranteed to get away with it if they can get the money abroad. But even if they can’t – from the fraud being detected, to it being reported to Action Fraud; them passing it on to the NFIB; them sitting on it for a bit, then packaging it up and sending it out to the local force; then the local force deciding whether they can investigate it or not – how long do you think all that takes?”

  “I don’t know – five or six weeks?”

  Alun let out a hearty guffaw. “Oh Barry! I envy your naïveté! Try five or six months – if you’re lucky.”

  “Five or six months? You’re kidding me!”

  “’Fraid not. And, by that time, any remote chance you might have had of tracing someone has probably gone. The evidence has disappeared. Under the blessed Data Protection Act, for instance, you can only keep CCTV footage for twenty-eight days without due cause, so even if the person has walked up to a cashpoint or into a bank branch and withdrawn all their ill-gotten gains in cash right in front of a prosecution-standard camera, by the time the police get round to investigating it, the footage will have been wiped.”

  At which point their starters arrived.

  Alun carried on talking – about his latest gardening project and their son’s recent promotion at work – but Barry wasn’t really listening. He was trying to process what Alun had just told him and work out its consequences for him.

  Barry had – up until that point, at least – always sought to stay within the law. But, actually, what Alun had suggested was that it didn’t really matter. No one cared. Not even the police. And even if they suspected that he’d broken the law, they probably wouldn’t bother to investigate. It was all, according to Alun, just too much bother.

  All of which begged the question: why? Why did he need to bother trying to be good? Monument certainly didn’t seem to bother about doing the right thing. The days when people like Neville ruled the roost were long gone. Today, all Andrew and his kind were worried about was profitability, business growth and the long-term financial viability of their associations. In short – money.

  Money had become the Esperanto of moral debate; the universal, shared-language that everyone could use to decide what was right. Because you couldn’t argue with money – it was a brutal arbiter in debates about who was doing the right thing. In the absence of a shared moral code, money was the last remaining thing everyone could agree on. If you had more of it, then you must be doing something right; if you had less, then it was a sign you were doing something wrong. And Barry currently had a bit more, whilst Monument would shortly discover that they had a bit less. In Barry’s new-found moral universe (albeit one that was powered by Cobra Beer), that seemed fitting, even just. And, even if it wasn’t, it didn’t matter because he almost certainly wasn’t going to get caught. Probably.

  So not even Alun’s long monologue about all that was wrong in the modern-day police force could dampen Barry’s spirits. It had been, he decided, a good day.

  As they got up to leave at the end of their meal Barry shook Alun’s hand and wished him well. He then noticed Sue leaning over. She pecked Barry on the cheek, but, before he could pull away, Sue grabbed his wrist and whispered in his ear, “Look after her, Barry. She needs you at the moment.”

  It struck Barry as an odd thing to say. He had always tried to look after his wife, but the fact was that she had never shown a huge amount of interest in being looked after. He wanted to point out to Sue that he had been trying to have a conversation with his wife for over a week, but, as far as he could tell, ‘conversation with my husband’ ranked somewhere below ‘cat videos on social media’ and ‘balti chicken bhuna’ in her list of priorities. Quite why Sue felt that his wife needed him at that particular moment was a mystery. And it wasn’t one that Sue seemed inclined to shed any light on as the two couples walked back up the road toward their respective homes.

  Twenty-Five

  The next day, Barry stopped at a petrol station on his way into work and withdrew another £250 from a cash machine on the forecourt. He was aware that both he and his car registration details would be picked up by the CCTV cameras, but, after his conversation with Alun the previous night, he knew it didn’t matter. Yet Barry couldn’t quite shake the belief that was woven into him that it did; that it must. The boy at the till, the professional woman filling up the car opposite, the dog-walker sauntering past – Barry felt defenceless against the accusations that seemed to lurk behind their stares. They could not see – they could not possibly have seen – what he had done, but it felt as though they could see the secret that was nestled in the deepest recess of his heart.

  Nevertheless, he put £400 into an envelope with a card apologising to Lauren for the delay and assuring her that there would be a further £200 with her every month from now on, without fail. Then he headed on toward Monument’s offices.

  Upon arriving, he decided to visit the finance team. He wanted to be absolutely sure that there were no suspicions or concerns being raised.

  “Saleema, good morning.”

  “Good morning, Barry. And how are you this beautiful day?”

  It was a dull and overcast day in early November – not the kind of day habitually described as beautiful, and certainly not by people from countries where the sun typically shone for more than two weeks a year. Barry was intrigued.

  “You seem very bright this morning. Are you celebrating?”

  “Yes!” said Saleema with even more enthusiasm than was her custom. “Yes, I am.”

  “So what’s the occasion?”

  “Well, really I am not supposed to tell people yet, but as it’s you, I will,” said Saleema in a conspiratorial whisper. “They’ve approved my voluntary redundancy application!”

  Barry could feel his anger burning through his face. After all her mistakes, how could Saleema walk out of the door with a pay-off when Langley seemed determined to deny Barry the selfsame thing after twenty-two years of exemplary service? But the rejection of his own voluntary redundancy application was hardly Saleema’s fault. Under the circumstances, therefore, Barry felt the best thing was simply to pretend to be happy for her.

  “Oh, that’s great news. Do you know what you’re going to do?”

  “Oh yes,” said Saleema, excitedly. “Me and my husband are going back to Peshawar to look after my father. He’s been very ill. I’m going to use the redundancy payment to pay his hospital bills and then we’ll stay on so I can be near him.”

  “That sounds exciting. It’ll be nice to spend some time with the family – if you can afford not to work for a bit.”

  “My husband’s done all the sums and we think we can afford it. He retired last year, so we’ve got his pension. And his mother died a little while ago, so he needs to go over there anyway to sort out her estate. Once the funds from that are released, we’ll be fine. It’s such a relief to know I can be with my father. It’s such an answer to prayer.”

  Barry didn’t quite know what to say to that. Saleema was a woman of simple faith. She had no doubt prayed that her application would be successful, and it had been. In her mind, it was inconceivable that the two things were unrelated. It was equally indisputable that Barry hadn’t prayed about his application and it had been unsuccessful. If Saleema had known this, then there would be only one conclusion that she could possibly have drawn. And, Barry had to concede, she might be right. But it did seem unlikely. This wasn’t because he lacked faith in the power of the Almighty (although he did). It was because he lacked faith in the willingness of Monument to respond to His promptings. An
drew, Ruth and Langley did not strike Barry as the kind of people who would allow themselves to be moved by the Almighty to undertake any action that was not in the financial interests of the association.

  Saleema was still talking, but, as she clearly had nothing to say about the invoice from The SHYPP, Barry concluded that it was safe to withdraw. He waited for a pause in her exposition of flight times to Pakistan, then headed back down to his desk. No one was watching him – he knew that now.

  But, somehow, it still felt like everyone was.

  *

  Over the next fortnight, Barry tried to relax. He continued to withdraw the maximum of £250 every day from Chris Malford’s bank account. He spread his withdrawals around as many cashpoints as possible, just so there was no obvious geographical link to him in the unlikely event that the soon-to-be-missing money was ever investigated by the police. But, each day, as he went unchallenged, he noticed himself finding the process of withdrawal slightly easier. The looks of those around him seemed less accusing, his heart less unprotected. Slowly, he found himself able to shut the door of his conscience to people’s invading stares, and, when he had done so, he made sure to padlock it shut.

  He knew he had to pay for Lauren’s maintenance for the next three years, so each day he took £200 of his withdrawal and put it in an envelope marked with the appropriate month and year. The remaining £50 Barry set aside for his ‘Art Fund’.

  The question began to surface in Barry’s mind, of course, as to whether he might be able to withdraw more of the money. Initially, this was merely a theoretical challenge that he set himself – he was not, after all, a common criminal – but it suddenly became more than that when the consultation on the proposal to withdraw his company car was formally begun (although, if it were possible to indicate the presence of inverted commas around the words ‘consultation’ and ‘proposal’ merely by the tone of one’s voice, then Langley somehow managed to do it).

  Barry was called to a meeting with Langley and Angela. Officially, the purpose was to outline the company’s proposals and listen to any counterproposals from Barry. Unofficially, Barry sensed immediately that the purpose was to tell him what would be happening once they’d observed the legal niceties.