For Richer, For Poorer

by Kerry Wilkinson

  ‘What time did you close yesterday?’

  ‘Three in the afternoon.’

  ‘When did you get in this morning?’

  ‘A bit after eight – I was running late.’

  That left a long window where anyone could have put it through the door. Even though there was CCTV on the outside of the pub, there would be hundreds of people to sift through – and that was assuming whoever had dropped it hadn’t simply crossed the road, away from the camera, and headed off in the other direction.

  ‘Was there anything else?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘No – just that. I was wary about opening the envelope. Because the word “sex” is over our doorway, you get immature kids at night putting used condoms through the letterbox. One Saturday I opened up and . . . well, you probably don’t want to know what someone had pushed through. Anyway, I brought the envelope upstairs and gave it a bit of a sniff. It seemed okay, so I opened it up.’

  ‘Did you touch the money?’

  ‘Yes . . . I didn’t know what it was at first. I thought perhaps it was a joke, or fake money. Sorry . . .’

  Jessica waved a hand dismissively. The fact Maria’s fingerprints were all over it didn’t matter that much – she doubted the person who’d left it would have been careless anyway.

  Maria apologised again before continuing: ‘As soon as I realised what it was, I knew I should call the police.’ She squirmed slightly, taking a sip of her tea and tugging at her jumper.

  ‘It’s okay, I would have thought about keeping it too,’ Jessica said. ‘You did the right thing.’

  The young woman smiled slightly, embarrassed at having her mind read but glad the fact she’d done the right thing had been acknowledged. ‘I didn’t know who to call – 999 is for an emergency and this isn’t really urgent but what do you call for a non-emergency? I had to Google it. You really don’t make it easy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Anyway, I suppose I’m wondering if we’re allowed to spend it – not me, the clinic. We do get donations but it was so much money that I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘What do you do here?’

  ‘We’re a free drop-in centre, mainly for women but a few lads come along sometimes. We offer advice about sexual issues – most of the stuff you get in schools is next to useless, plus parents don’t want to talk about it.’ She pointed towards a row of doors on the other side of the room. ‘Those are all privacy rooms where people can wait and keep their anonymity. Some of the kids we have in are only young teenagers but they don’t know who else to talk to. We’re able to give out condoms and we have a nurse who can give the morning-after pill. A lot of young people don’t really know what the diseases are – they hear “STI” or “STD” and switch off.’

  ‘Where does your funding come from?’

  ‘We get a bit from the council and a small grant from the university. We did have some money from the NHS but that was cut completely a year ago. They said they couldn’t give us any more because they were already paying for a sexual health clinic over at the hospital. It’s awkward, though, because a lot of the young people want to talk to others who are roughly their age. They don’t want to chat about sensitive things to a bloke old enough to be their dad or granddad, or a woman twice their age – even if they are professionals. A lot of the girls don’t even have a problem; they just don’t know how things work. Then their boyfriends have been watching porn on the Internet and want to get up to all sorts but they don’t know if it’s dangerous. A fair few of us volunteer and some of the student nurses help out when they aren’t busy. We were on the brink of getting one of the supermarkets to sponsor us – but a local church group organised a protest. After that, we couldn’t find a company that wanted to sponsor a clinic giving away the morning-after pill, so we’re reliant on donations. When I first saw that money, I thought it was a mystery donor – it’d keep us going for a few weeks – but there was no note and then I began to get worried.’

  She paused, glancing at the clear bags Jessica had put the envelope and cash in, already knowing the answer but asking anyway: ‘So is it ours?’

  ‘If it was in isolation then perhaps – but you’re the third place that’s called in this morning. There are probably more by now.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s just a rich person who wants to give their fortune to others who need it without leaving their name?’

  Jessica shrugged. ‘Maybe. There have been a few burglaries recently where cash was taken. We’ll have to take this away and look at it.’

  Maria finished her tea and peered at Jessica, looking disappointed. ‘If you were going to go to the trouble of stealing money, why would you then give it away?’

  Jessica glanced towards the pile of notes. ‘I really don’t know.’

  8

  By the time Jessica arrived back at her car and phoned the station, there had been five more calls from charities asking what they should do with the money that had been pushed through their letterbox. Officers had been sent out to pick up the packages with an estimate of around twelve thousand pounds having been given away overnight. She was about to hang up when Pat put her on hold with a gruff ‘Hang on a minute’.

  Jessica sat in the front seat, tapping her foot on the accelerator pedal, annoyed. Pat was someone she didn’t want to get on the wrong side of, mainly because he knew something about everyone and had more to gossip about than a group of mothers standing next to the school gates. The problem was that he knew it – meaning conversations were frequently curt.

  When the line cut back in, he sounded out of breath, as if he’d lifted his arm, or bent over. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Grosvenor Street.’

  ‘You should probably head to MediaCity.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s probably best if you see for yourself.’

  Jessica leant out of her car window to talk into the speaker. ‘You called me!’ she argued. ‘All you need to do is raise the barrier so I can do what you wanted me here to do.’

  The bored-sounding male voice echoed out of the tinny speaker. ‘It’s more than my job’s worth, love. If you want to park up, you can walk over. It’s that big glass building in front of you.’

  ‘There are three big glass buildings in front of me.’

  ‘It’s the one on the end.’

  Knowing there was little point in arguing with the type of private security Nazis who worked at places like this, Jessica did as she was told. She parked in a nearby space, wrapping a jacket around herself and then walking across the concrete-slabbed plaza as a bitter wind bristled off the canal.

  MediaCity was where all sorts of television, radio and Internet companies were based, with thousands of people bumbling around awkwardly, skinny lattes thrust in front of them and ID tags dangling around their necks.

  The BBC’s trio of buildings soared over the water, dwarfing everything in its shadow. In the final glass building, there were half-a-dozen suited security officers waiting for Jessica, whispering into walkie-talkies and generally looking shifty. A woman ushered Jessica through a set of spinning glass doors, complained about the lifts, and then escorted her up to the third floor.

  In a corner, three people wearing headphones were huddled around a table. As soon as they saw Jessica approaching, they jumped as if they’d been caught doing something they shouldn’t.

  They parted as the security guard eased her way into the centre, Jessica at her side. ‘These are three of the production crew for the breakfast television programme,’ she said.

  A girl introduced herself as Pauline and then spent five minutes needlessly telling Jessica what she did. It seemed to involve a lot of showing people around, making tea and opening mail: all skills that Jessica thought were very much underappreciated and that if Pauline was ever looking for a pay-cut and far worse employment opportunities, then she could always come and work for her.

  Pauline said that she had started opening the mail the show received that morning when she’d stumbled across
the letter currently sitting in a clear polythene bag on the desk next to her. At first, she’d put it to one side, unsure what it meant. Then production assistant number two – Tim – had come along, got his grubby fingerprints all over the letter and envelope, before calling over production assistant three – Claire – to ask what she thought.

  Jessica took a closer look at the letter – a plain white A4 sheet of paper with seven words printed in block capital letters in the centre:

  ‘ROB THE RICH, GIVE TO THE POOR’

  Pauline continued the story: ‘. . . we’d heard about those local burglaries and then Claire said that her sister works at a women’s refuge in the city. They had eight hundred quid put through their door overnight, so we wondered if the two were linked.’

  The font was something plain, the ink black, and although Jessica knew they had a geek somewhere who’d be able to tell them the make of printer and paper, she doubted it would come back as anything other than something so generic that there would be thousands in existence.

  ‘How many other people touched this before you thought to call us?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Six? Perhaps seven? All of our line managers spend three hours in a meeting every morning, so it’s just us. We didn’t know what to do at first.’

  Great. How many BBC staff members does it take to open an envelope? Seven – and thirty-odd managers to sit in a meeting debating when would be the optimal time to have a separate meeting to discuss the best envelope-opening techniques. It was just like working for the police.

  Jessica offered vague-sounding congratulations for managing to find the phone and dial the police’s number and then headed back to her car. She wondered if she would have a better day if she left the letter and took the two grand from the clinic straight to the airport and picked somewhere warm to fly to.

  Back at the station and there were now two dozen cases of charities or community projects that had been ‘donated’ money overnight. Unsurprisingly none of them had any sort of recording facilities near the door to catch their mysterious benefactor. The lunchtime news had reported the letter and been out to interview some of the people who had received money. Even though she was supposed to be looking into the burglaries, it was difficult for Jessica not to sympathise. Clearly people under pressure were pointing towards the community projects on which they were working and the children they were helping, explaining how an extra thousand pounds could do a lot of good. When the report cut to one of the large houses that had been robbed with police cars at the front, it didn’t take much imagination to know that viewers at home would be wondering who needed the money more.

  Jessica was well aware there could be other projects or charities that had kept the money and not bothered calling. In all, seventeen thousand pounds had been given away. Assuming the money was coming from the people who had burgled the houses, they had got rid of around half the money reported stolen.

  Doing something she always hated herself for, Jessica visited a news website and began reading the comments underneath the article.

  DazBoy1987 (84 ): ‘This robbers doin evryone a favor. Robin hood had the rite idea – time 4 a revulsion.’

  DykeAndProud (2 ): ‘Though I can’t condone the types of robberies described, I can’t help but feel that the rich have brought this on themselves. It’s simply not fair that the top 1% of society have so much of the wealth. These charities are crying out for help and I think they should be allowed to keep the money.’

  BlueBoy691 (194 ): ‘Socialist scum. String them all up and let’s bring back public hanging.’

  SatansGimp (287 ): ‘Wot r the police doin in all ov this? Wot do our taxes pay 4?’

  Geoff1 (No rating): ‘Where do I get the free money? LOL’

  Jessica closed the browser window, feeling far worse about everything – especially the public education system. The fact three families had had guns stuck in their faces should at least deserve some sympathy before even thinking about the fact they’d been robbed.

  She was about to check in with Archie and the rest of the constables working on the case when the request came through for her to visit DCI Topper’s office.

  By the time she got to the top floor, Topper was irately changing jackets from something formal and black into a slightly more relaxed grey one. He beckoned Jessica in and started speaking before she’d closed the door. ‘Bloody council things – it doesn’t matter where you work, there’s always some stupid civic thing you have to go to. You shake hands, nod politely and then stand around for two hours wondering what you’re doing there. No wonder the country’s gone to the dogs – we spend all our time fannying around gasbagging to each other.’

  Jessica edged towards the seat opposite him. ‘Sir . . .’

  ‘Don’t sit – this isn’t a social call. Your lad with the broken-down door has put a complaint in.’

  ‘Noel?’

  ‘Something like that. He says we had no reason to raid his house and that if we’d just knocked, he would have let us in.’

  ‘But you could say that about anything – we can’t go knocking politely on the door of a drugs den while they flush it all down the bog.’

  Topper finally finished changing jackets and collapsed into his seat. ‘Don’t tell me – they want to see you at Moston Vale.’

  ‘I have to go to HQ?’

  ‘Professional standards want a word. It’s all part of the new procedures after Pratley’s report. I told them you’d be there for one, so you’d better get your skates on – and make sure you’ve got your story straight; the last thing I want is one of my officers being suspended. The paperwork’s bad enough as it is.’

  Jessica had always had a problem with authority, which made the fact that many people viewed her as someone who had it somewhat ironic. She could pretty much trace it back to the day when her entire primary school class had been kept in through their lunch break because someone had written a rude word on the blackboard and wouldn’t own up. Mr Oates, a scrawny pointy-faced man, had said that if no one would tell him who’d done it, then they would all be punished. He’d made them write ‘I must not harbour criminals’ a hundred times each in their workbooks while he’d sat at the front of the classroom munching his way through a box of Jaffa Cakes, tutting in disapproval every few minutes. Everyone suspected the guilty party was Jamie Lambert, who was responsible for pretty much every piece of bad behaviour in their class, but because no one had seen him do it, and he wouldn’t put his hand up, they were all disciplined.

  Inspector Vincent was the spitting image of Mr Oates, his painfully thin body matched with a too-big head, topped with a crooked angular nose that wouldn’t have been amiss if he’d been flying on a broomstick. She could easily picture him drowning a duck in his spare time, cackling away to himself and then blaming it on local kids.

  Jessica took an instant dislike to him before he’d opened his mouth – and that only increased as he welcomed her into the professional standards office asking if she wanted a union representative with her.

  ‘Should I?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s up to you.’

  ‘Am I in trouble?’

  ‘That depends on what you say.’

  Tit.

  ‘So . . .’ he said, letting the word hang and making eye contact with Jessica, apparently waiting for her to fill the gap. She let him wait. ‘So . . .’ he tried again, ‘I suppose you know why you’re here?’

  ‘Is this the party planning committee? Christmas is a fair way off yet.’

  He smiled thinly. ‘They told me you had quite the sense of humour.’

  ‘Who did?’

  He peered over a set of reading glasses at her, like a doctor about to tell a patient that the cancer was terminal. ‘Tell me about Noel Huntingdon.’

  ‘He owns a house out Stretford way. I can’t remember the address. We’d been getting reports over a series of weeks about people arriving and leaving in the early hours of the morning—’

  ‘Reports from whe
re?’

  ‘Neighbours. They were saying there was music as well, plus people were smoking and chatting in the back yard after dark.’

  ‘Is that unusual?’

  ‘Well, is it the type of thing you do around your house at three in morning?’

  Another humourless smile: ‘Perhaps we should stick to the activities of Mr Huntingdon and yourself?’

  Jessica took a breath. ‘Yes – it’s unusual. From experience, the only type of houses that frequently have people coming and going at those times of the morning are places that are dealing drugs. Even the brothels shut up shop at midnight.’ She raised an eyebrow as if to ask the question but the inspector seemingly didn’t get the implication, so she continued. ‘We’ve had a few successful raids in the past in similar instances – often intelligence-led starting initially with neighbour reports as per here.’

  ‘Was the fact it could be a drugs den the only thing that occurred to you?’

  Jessica nodded towards the paper in his hand. ‘As detailed in the report, it wasn’t entirely me – but no. We’d had a degree of surveillance on the Friday and Saturday evenings—’

  ‘A degree?’

  ‘That’s what it’s like when you actually have to do some work – it’s not all sitting around in offices with your feet up drinking tea. Friday and Saturday nights are busy around the city and a full team couldn’t be spared. We had marked and unmarked vehicles passing by through the evening. Between them, they witnessed half-a-dozen people arriving through until half three in the morning.’

  ‘Was there any . . .’ Vincent clucked his tongue elaborately, making a point of searching for the word, ‘. . . profiling?’

  Jessica hated the term but there was no getting away from it. ‘If that’s how you want to phrase it. The area has a certain reputation and most of the people witnessed entering and exiting were a certain type.’

  ‘What type?’

  ‘Young, I suppose.’

  ‘Just that?’

  ‘It’s hard to explain.’