Ms Win-Kham looked sympathetically into Hua Lin’s bloodshot and watering eyes.
“I can help you. But from now on only you and I know about this. It has to be our secret.”
Hua Lin looked back at her, a little more shocked than he had already been.
“How? How can you help? Do you have fifteen million to lend the bank? That’s worth more than ten years of your salary.”
“Come now, Hua Lin. Of course I don’t have access to that kind of money. But you do. You are the general manager of the Maklai Provincial Bank, after all.”
“What? No! I don’t have money like that. My salary is barely double what yours is.”
Win-Kham smiled at him like she was indulging a small and innocent child.
“Well of course you don’t. But your customers do. How many of them really check the calculations of the interest in their account, understand or even question the various bank charges? Numbers on one ledger can go down or up, depending on who is filling them in, and, more importantly, who is authorising them. The expected number for the cash in the safe will automatically change at the same time.”
Hua Lin looked blankly back at her for more explanation. Ms Win-Kham stood up and walked around to his side of the desk. Sitting against the edge of the desk she took his hand.
“We can make the books balance again, but it won’t be easy, and it will take time. I can show you what to do and you can authorise it. What you have to understand is now that I’m helping you, we have to work together. We are no longer just colleagues. We are our own team. You and I will share a huge secret that no one else knows, and that means that from here on we have to look after each other.”
Hua Lin looked back at her. The gratitude he felt was almost overwhelming. All he knew was that this amazing woman was going to save him from himself. Not for one moment did he suspect he was being played.
Ms Win-Kham produced a number of pages from the folder containing her original cooked documents.
“We need to make a few changes for the bank’s costs as well as the accounts of some of the key customers. I suggest we should start with all these new guards you hired. You should officially give them their notice and document that they will finish up at the end of the year, which is about six months away. Meanwhile, we stop them working at the end of the week, and use their future salaries to help start to reduce the missing total.”
Hua Lin looked up at her like a helpless puppy. How on earth had things come to this?
“That’s all very well, Ms Win-Kham. But it’s just a start. It’s a drop in the ocean. It’s never going to make up for all that missing money.”
“Please, call me Win. Now, as you say, it’s just a start. One drop of rain you barely notice, but start adding more and more drops and soon there’s enough for quite a storm. Let’s go through some of the other ways to make up the shortfall. The most obvious is how we calculate monthly interest on some of the bigger accounts. Nobody ever goes back and checks the rates properly. They just accept that we are looking after them. A few very minor reductions on some of the less business-orientated accounts and the gains can be significant.”
Hua Lin looked in awe at Ms Win-Kham. She was amazing.
Ms Win-Kham looked back at Mr Hua Lin. He was now complicit in the fraud, which meant that she owned him. He was hers, she had got her very own provincial bank manager. This was the turning point she’d been wanting for for so long. The hard part was done. It would take a while, but once she’d finished putting the accounting straight she would start organising the marriage plans. Of course the marriage would have to take place in Khoyleng where his family was, not in dreary old Maklai. It would be a good opportunity for him to move back to the capital at the same time. Hopefully they would move on a permanent basis.
45. Confession
It was mid-morning when a flustered Mrs Yeo-bo arrived in the office of Mr Tann. Normally, the countenance of Mrs Yeo-bo remained strictly expressionless and without emotion of any kind. This morning was different. She closed the door and turned to face Mr Tann with an expression of agony and panic. Mr Tann looked back at her and gradually developed his own expression of panic, which was reinforced by a sudden feeling of emptiness in the pit of his stomach. It was a bit like being hungry, but without having the need to eat anything. He knew she was good at her job, but how could she have already worked out that he had taken the money from the safe room? He had only done it yesterday evening, towards the end of the working day. At least she had come to him first. That gave him a chance to put things right. After all, he still had all of the money that he’d taken. He could easily claim it was an accident, or perhaps say that he was testing the systems. That was it – it was a test, and she had passed. Mr Tann felt slightly more at ease as he invited her to sit in the chair at the front of his desk.
“Now, Mrs Yeo-bo. You look upset. How can I help you?”
Mrs Yeo-bo looked hard at Mr Tann. Her lower lip quivered, her face turned red, water swelled in her eyes. She then let out a small yelp, buried her head in her hand and sobbed loudly.
Mr Tann looked at her, horrified, his expression like that of a goat in mid-castration. This was more emotional interaction than he’d ever had with a woman, despite thirty-five years of marriage. If this was the cringeable situation that robbing a bank brought you, then it was definitely not for him. The worst-case scenario he’d imagined was five years in the provincial jail. A quivering woman wailing before him in his office was beyond his worst nightmares.
Mr Tann looked anxiously at the door. He desperately hoped that nobody outside in the corridor could hear any this. What if someone came in to see what was going on, and found him alone with a female cashier in his room – being ‘emotional’. Mr Tann quickly walked over to the door and slid the bolt across. This was no time for unnecessary interruptions.
“Mrs Yeo-bo. Whatever is the matter with you? This is most unusual. This is not the kind of outburst I would expect from a respectable member of the staff like yourself.”
Mr Tann produced a silk handkerchief from his jacket pocket and passed it to her. She gratefully took it and blew her nose into it with considerable force and volume before handing it back. Mr Tann dropped it straight into the bin behind his desk and began looking for something to wipe his own hand with. Eventually he grabbed a few sheets of blank deposit forms and scrunched them up into a ball, rubbing his hands on them as he did so. He then sat back at his desk and waited for Mrs Yeo-bo to get her emotions under control. Supplying a handkerchief had been the only reasonable solution he could come up with, but it seemed to have had little effect.
Eventually Mrs Yeo-bo looked up from her hands, her eyes were red and blurry.
“Mr Tann, they’ve checked the cash three times this morning. Three times! He’s had Ms Win-Kham counting all the money. Three times she’s checked now. Oh, what have I done?!”
The word ‘done’ tailed off into a further screech, which itself tailed off into more sobbing. Mr Tann once more decided to just sit and wait things out until the latest bout of unsolicited emotion had run its course. Eventually the uncomfortable disturbance quietened to a slightly more reserved series of sniffles. After the initial shock of the woman’s arrival, a more thoughtful Mr Tann took a different tack on the conversation:
“What is it that you think you have done, Mrs Yeo-bo?”
Mrs Yeo-bo took a moment to try to compose herself.
“I’ve been taking money from the bank. I’ve been doing it for years. As a cashier, I’ve been able to change the books to cover it up. And now they’ve found out!”
Mrs Yeo-bo was about to leap into another fit of hysteria when Mr Tann reached forward and took her hand. He rather surprised himself in this, but he couldn’t face a third round of unfettered emotion.
“Perhaps you need to calm down, Mrs Yeo-bo. We’ve known each other a very long time. Let’s go through the problem slowly and see if there is a way we can sort this out.”
Mr Tann couldn’
t believe his luck. His tired and haggard slouch brought on by years of dogged service and a night of designing safe room plans with his annoyingly smug brother-in-law was immediately replaced by a youthful and jaunty countenance. He was the one that had stolen the money the day before and now someone else was admitting to long-term theft from the bank.
Mrs Yeo-bo had chosen a remarkably well-timed day for her confession to Mr Tann. A few months ago, a situation like this would have brought out the moral authoritarian in Mr Tann. He would have demanded an enquiry and marched her down to the police station himself. Recently though, he’d started to see things as a little bit less black and white.
Mrs Yeo-bo nodded in a pleading sort of way.
“I’ll pay it back, I just need some time. I shouldn’t have done it, but I needed the extra to put our girl through school. My salary wasn’t enough, and Mr Yeo-bo would drink and gamble away any money he’d got from the factory. Not that he ever had much. He’s a useless man really. It was my parents that were determined we should marry. Anyway, he went off with another woman and has not been back in the last two years. Not that it makes much difference to the bills, but it was that much harder to pay my daughter’s school fees. I will pay it back, I promise. Just please give me a second chance.”
Mr Tann pondered for a while over the options. If Hua Lin was demanding the cash counts, three of them in one morning, then he must have found a problem with the ledgers or the cash. This still looked bad for Mr Tann, despite his colleague’s confession. They might add up what she was confessing to and realise they were still short.
“You can stay in here in my office until you feel a bit better, Mrs Yeo-bo. Then maybe you should go home on sick leave for the day. Actually, maybe take the rest of the week, just to be sure. I’ll see what I can find out from Mr Hua Lin and let you know what is concerning him.”
Mrs Yeo-bo sniffled loudly.
“And also, Mrs Yeo-bo. Don’t think that this is necessarily an end to the matter. There may be consequences. Please don’t leave town, and when things are clearer I will follow up on this issue.”
With that, Mr Tann invited Mrs Yeo-bo to depart from his room. He felt fairly terrible about his closing remarks but he couldn’t have Mrs Yeo-bo thinking he had something to hide as well. He couldn’t be seen to be too keen to tidy up her indiscretions.
46. Investigation
It was shortly before midday that Mr Tann knocked confidently on the door of Mr Hua Lin and let himself into the manager’s office. He had kept the door of his own office ajar so that he could monitor the comings and goings of Mr Hua Lin’s engagements. The original appointment with his boss had been for eleven, but Mr Tann could see that the events of the morning outside of his room had taken over any predetermined scheduling that might exist. It had been about fifteen minutes since Ms Win-Kham had finally left Hua Lin’s office, and he decided the time was ripe to do some investigating of his own. It was like the meeting of two men who had swapped their bodies in a bizarre science experiment. Mr Tann arrived brimming with confidence and with a positive spring in his step, whilst Mr Hua Lin slouched over his desk with the air of a defeated man who was about to crumble before him.
“Good morning, Mr Hua Lin! I wonder if now is a good time to discuss those security measures for the safe room. I’ve had some designs prepared. Perhaps you would be good enough to take a look and see if you approve of what I’ve had drawn up?”
With that, Mr Tann unrolled his document and spread it on the table in front of Hua Lin. This had two effects. Firstly, Hua Lin seemed to completely lose what little colour had remained in his face, brought on by the realisation that Mr Tann’s recent focus on a lack of safe room security compounded the difficult situation he was in, and that was strongly linked to poor safe room security. The second effect was that Mr Tann could cast his well-seasoned financial eye over the other documents that were spread haphazardly across the table. It did indeed look as though Mr Hua Lin was retracing transactions and reviewing the ledger records for the past few years in considerable detail. It was an exercise which was clearly causing him a huge amount of stress.
“What do you think then, Mr Hua Lin?”
Mr Tann continued with his jaunty approach and pretended not to see the disaster that he had clearly interrupted.
“The idea is that we get a new safe, around four times the current capacity, and install it in that corner over there. That way we can bring it in through the front double doors, knock through part of the wall there, bolt it down and then rebuild the wall. There would be a new security door here with a password keypad, and then the old safe would be brought behind the counters and used to manage the day to day money for the cashiers.”
Mr Tann felt quite smug with himself. Not only had he actually taken command of the safe room assignment, but clearly the whole thing was making Hua Lin extremely uncomfortable.
“Well it sounds very good, Mr Tann. Perhaps you can get the project started and liaise with head office on what you need.”
Mr Tann noticed that Hua Lin had said all of that without either looking up from the ledgers that were absorbing his attention, or even glancing at the plans.
“Very good, Mr Hua Lin. I take it that I have your approval then. I’ll start this afternoon. If I may say, you seem rather preoccupied with something. Is there anything at all I can help you with?”
Hua Lin looked up at Mr Tann with his gaunt eyes.”
“No, nothing in particular. I’m just making a thorough check of the books. I’ve decided I should do this every month. It’s good to be diligent about these things.”
“Very good, Mr Hua Lin. It seems to be a very wise precaution.”
With that Mr Tann gathered up his safe room design and let himself out of the office.
***
Back behind the sanctity of his own desk, Mr Tann was able to analyse the situation. The facts were these: firstly he had stolen a small amount of money, and seemed to have got away with it. Secondly, Mrs Yeo-bo had confessed, but only to him, that she’d been skimming a few notes on a regular basis to pay for her kid’s schooling. Thirdly, Ms Win-Kham and Mr Hua Lin had been in cahoots all morning investigating the books. The last fact was the one that didn’t quite fit. If Ms Win-Kham had spotted that the money was missing from the previous night, then Hua Lin didn’t need to spend hours of research to work out that one problem. If they’d found out about Mrs Yeo-bo’s fraudulent activity, then it would also be quickly apparent who was at fault. Mrs Yeo-bo would have been hauled into the manager’s office where Hua Lin would have demanded an explanation. It would not be something that demanded a lot of cloak and dagger escapades and collusion with Ms Win-Kham. In fact, it would be something that would be brought to Mr Tann’s attention and managed through the proper channels. An ongoing problem stretching back over a couple of years would certainly not be something for Mr Hua Lin to worry about. It wasn’t done on his watch, and indeed it was following his recent arrival that the problem had been found. His reputation was quite safe, if not bolstered by this discovery. Meanwhile, he had the demeanour and pallor of someone on the brink of a nervous breakdown. It didn’t add up at all.
Mr Tann might have been getting a bit older and a bit slower, but he was not stupid. There was clearly far more to the goings on at the bank that day than he immediately knew. It was clear to him that the problems in the bank were far bigger than he was currently party to, that Hua Lin was somehow more culpable than he realised, and that Ms Win-Kham was playing it for all she was worth.
Mr Tann had been subjected to a very strange dream the previous night. He’d not got much sleep in between the need to make a safe room design with his brother-in-law and the time needed to lie awake worrying about it. However, for the small period when he had drifted off, the oddest series of visions had come to him and had stuck with him long after he awoke. As he cast his mind back to the memory, it was as if there had been a deep forest, and in the depths of the undergrowth a spirit resembling Old Papa Han
had emerged from behind a large tree. Or maybe he was the tree. It was difficult to tell with dreams, they were always so difficult to remember with proper clarity. What he could recall was how smug that tree spirit had somehow managed to look, certainly far more smug than a tree can usually conjure up. He wasn’t sure how he knew that the tree was Papa Han, or even that it was smug, but it seemed to be telling him that everything was going to be okay.
47. The Post-Heist Shift
Kheng had been very much on alert during his first post-heist shift. The day after the heist was, after all, the time when he and his band of thieves were most likely to get rumbled. Especially if it turned out that the bank had the systems in place to spot that they were missing a few sacks of cash.
By the time he arrived for the afternoon shift, Kheng was relieved to see that all was still well. Superficially at least. Customers continued to come and go. There was no undue presence of swarms of police or army personnel to cart him away to some grim detention centre. Nobody from management had called the guards into the manager’s office to ask whether they had suspected the presence of intruders during the night. However, despite the comfortable sense of predictable routine, it still didn’t quite seem like a completely normal day.
The first anomaly had been explained to him by Meebor shortly after he arrived for his shift. Meebor told him that, at around ten o’clock that morning, he had witnessed the unexpected departure of Mrs Yeo-bo the cashier. He’d said good morning as she approached the gates to leave the compound, but there was no pleasantry or acknowledgment in reply. Meebor reckoned that she looked about ten years older than when he had seen her earlier in the week. She always appeared a bit older than she really was as she dressed so formally, and always had her hair in a tight bun that was so symmetrical it looked almost unreal. However, Meebor had observed that the Mrs Yeo-bo that was departing this morning had a few hairs straggling to the side of the once immaculate coiffure. The tucking in of her blouse was missing its usual military precision, her usual perfectly made up facade now looked lined and tired, the once emotionless eyes were now a window flung open to reveal a tormented soul. Kheng was almost on the brink of being shocked by this news. Such a day-to-day contrast of character was rare amongst the bank’s administrative employees.
The Feiquon Heist Page 18
