Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 6. Whole No. 766, June 2005

Schmidt entered through another door. He looked younger than I expected, dark, with tinted glasses. “How can I help?”

I gave him the spiel, stressing that Uncle James had repeatedly spoken about his special account with the bank. After his death there had been a delay of some years before we — the executors — found his notes with the account details. “His filing system was nonexistent,” I said. “We came across the note in a book of handwritten recipes. We almost threw it out. As a cook, he was a dead loss.”

“May I see?”

“I didn’t bring the recipe book,” I said. “I copied the figures.”

“And do you have other evidence with you?”

I removed everything from the briefcase and passed it across.

Schmidt spent some minutes studying the documents. “It seems to be in order,” he said. “Would you mind if I showed the papers to a colleague? We have to verify anything as major as this.”

“I understand.”

When he left the room I found I’d crossed my legs after all. I took deep breaths.

The wait tested me to the limit. Just in case there was a hidden camera, I tried to give an impression of calm, but pulses were beating all over my body.

When Schmidt returned, there was a cheque in his hand. “This is what you were waiting for, Mr. Smith, a cheque for a million and just over two hundred thousand pounds. The account accrued some interest. All I require is your signature on the receipt.”

Resisting the urge to embrace the man, I scribbled a signature.

“Your documents.” He handed them across. “And now I’ll show you out.” He opened the door.

Slipping the cheque into an inner pocket, I stuffed the rest of the paperwork into the briefcase and went through that door walking on air.

Some people were in the corridor outside. I wouldn’t have given them a second glance had not one of them said, “Mr. Michael Hawkins.”

My own name? I froze.

“I’m DI Cavanagh, of the Serious Fraud Squad.”

I didn’t hear the rest. I believe I fainted.

Three months into my sentence, I was transferred to an open prison in Norfolk. There, in the library one afternoon, I met Arthur, and we talked a little. He seemed more my sort than some of the prisoners. As you do, I asked him what he was in for.

“Obtaining money by deception.”

“Snap,” I said.

“Only I was caught with the cheque in my pocket,” he said.

“Me, too. I was caught in a Swiss bank, of all places.”

“How odd,” he said. “So was I.”

It didn’t take long to discover we had both been talked into the same scam by Willy Plumridge.

“What a bastard!” I said. “And he’s still at liberty.”

“Waiting to find another mug to tease some money out of the bank,” Arthur said. “I bet I wasn’t the first.”

“Well, he got rich by doing it himself, I gather,” I said.

“True, but with less risk. In the early days of this racket, he traced the families and advised them. They made the approach to the bank, and it worked. They paid him well for the information. Later, he was left with the account numbers he couldn’t link to a family, so he thought up this idea of finding people to pose as executors. Maybe it worked a few times, but banks aren’t stupid.”

“So I discovered. What I can’t understand is why they haven’t pulled him in. He’s Mr. Big. You and I are small fry.”

“They won’t touch him,” Arthur said.

“Why?”

“He’s the man who jumped for England.”

That again. “Give me a break!” I said. “How does that make a difference?”

“Don’t you know?” Arthur said. He glanced to right and left to make sure no one could overhear him. “One of those account numbers he got from his father belonged to someone pretty important. A former prime minister, in fact.”

“No! Which one?”

“I never found out, except they’re dead. Supposed to have been a model of honesty when in fact they were salting away millions in bribes. Willy got onto the family and offered to liberate the money without anyone finding out. The next generation had some heavy expenses to meet, so they hired him. The bank, of course, was utterly discreet and totally duped. Willy pulled it off and was handed the cheque. Then I don’t know if his concentration went, or he was lightheaded with his success, but he slipped on the stairs at Bank tube station, fell to the bottom, and suffered severe bruising and concussion. He was rushed to hospital and no one knew who he was.”

“Except that he was carrying the cheque?”

“Right. And various documents linking him to the family. The police called them. They panicked and said they knew nothing about Willy. He had to be an impostor and all the documents must be faked. After a night in the cells, he was charged with obtaining money by deception and brought before the magistrate at Bow Street. They put him on bail, pending further investigation. Only it never came to trial.”

“Why?”

“The secret service intervened to avert the scandal. If it had ever got to court it would have destroyed a prime minister’s reputation. They decided the best way to deal with it was for Willy to jump bail and go into hiding. No attempt was made to find him and the matter was dropped. The family cashed the cheque, Willy got his commission, and the good name of a great prime minister was saved from disgrace. That’s why you and I are locked in here and Willy Plumridge is sitting in the Nag’s Head enjoying his vodka and tonic. He did the decent thing and jumped for England.”

Copyright © 2005 by Peter Lovesey.

Annie Reed lives in northern Nevada with her husband and daughter. Her short story “The Beginning” was published in Strange New Worlds VI (Pocket/June 2003). She is a graduate of the 2002 Oregon Coast Short Story Workshop, taught by writers Kristine Kathryn Rusch (herself an EQMM contributor) and Gardner Dozois. She is also a recipient of a Nevada literary arts fellowship.

Me and Bobby, we started a fire yesterday in that empty house on Colfax, the one with the ugly puke-green Realty Masters For Sale sign in the front yard. We got in through the patio door, real easy-like. The guys working on the inside, fixing up the place, they don’t always lock up when they leave. I guess they think no-body notices, but I do. Even I know better than to leave a house open like that. Just asking for trouble.

We were outside the AM-PM on Fourth and Garnett, hanging out in the shade, when I came up with the idea. Me and Bobby, we went to AM-PM for drinks like we always do. I had a Mountain Dew with lots of ice. I like lots of ice in the summer, crunch it between my teeth like candy. Bobby was sucking down AM-Pm’s lame-ass version of a sour-berry Slurpee. He stuck out his tongue every now and then just to gross me out, like a blue tongue is all that gross. I’ve seen grosser.

I’d slipped a lighter in my jeans pocket when the AM-PM cashier wasn’t looking. The lighter was clear orange plastic, the kind where you can see the fluid inside sloshing all around. I almost forgot about it until I did that little jump-skip thing I do over cracks in the sidewalk and I felt the lighter poking hard against my hip.

“Wanna see something cool?” I asked.

I took the lighter out of my pocket and showed it to Bobby, and all of a sudden, just like that, I had the idea.

Kinda funny when I think about it, how ideas come to me. I didn’t really want the lighter, hadn’t planned on swiping it. It was just so easy to take.

It’s part of the game, to see what I can get away with. People look at me and expect me to be nice. Bobby says it’s my face, the way I can make it look all sweet and innocent. I think he’s jealous because he can’t. People look at Bobby and just expect him to do something bad.