The Benchminder

by Stan Mason

Carlisle spluttered his apologies as the elements of his heroism were quickly deflated.

  ‘You hit him over the head with the painting,’ continued Rigby slowly. ‘What was the name of it?’

  ‘I think it was painted by someone called Corot. Have you heard of him.

  The Head of Functional Control fell into a bout of coughing. ‘Corot,’ he croaked, in a squeaky voice.

  ‘Yes, that‘s the one.’

  ‘Who was the painting lodged for in the branch safe?’

  ‘It‘s the subject of a legal dispute between one of our customers and some art gallery in the United States.’

  Rigby drummed his fingers on his desk thoughtfully as his mind raced like a motor. ‘Carlisle, that painting was very valuable. Have you any idea what it was worth?’

  The sound of pages being turned could he heard on the line as the Assistant Manager sought the answer. ‘I‘m looking through the security book now,’ he said stiltingly as he searched the entries. ‘Ah... yes... hm!’

  ‘Well? What does it say in the security book?’

  ‘A professional valuation was made last March and the nominal value was half a million pounds.’

  There was silence as both men cogitated the situation. ‘Are you any good at arithmetic, Carlisle? Only the difference between the amount of money you took from the safe and the value of the paintings is almost half a million pounds. You saved ten thousand for half a million! Your initiative not only countermanded orders but it cost the bank half a million pounds! Do you know whether the painting was insured?’

  ‘Definitely. I know that for certain.’ came the reply.

  ‘But not against violent destruction to thwart a bank robbery! You took unwarranted action without the authority of the bank and disobeyed orders. The insurance company will look to you personally to pay for the painting. You did what you did of your own free will and accord. You‘ll be in hock with them for the rest of your life.’

  ‘But I couldn‘t... ’ he tailed off almost in tears. It had been the crowning moment of his life to render the bank robber immobile. Now it had all crumbled away to dust!

  ‘Had you complied with my orders, the man would have left the branch with the money and walked straight into the arms of the police. Just my luck to find a man who wants to be a hero! Had you done it in a moment of panic, I would have understood. But you did it premeditatedly. You‘d better come to Head Office tomorrow to make a full statement. I really don‘t know what the Assistant Chief Executive‘s going to say to all this.’

  Dammit, Mt. Rigby!’ exploded Carlisle, angrily and without warning. ‘I‘ve taken a lot of stick from you today! An awful lot of stick! You haven’t given me the slightest credit for anything. Not a thing! I stayed in this branch all day in great danger. But that doesn’t count for anything with you. You people at Head Office make me sick! And I say that with due respect, sir. The trouble is that you’ve lost touch with the grass roots. We;; out here in the branch it’s different.’

  Rigby listened to the outburst calmly. He admired the man for his spirit and recognised the tirade as being honest. But he wasn’t going to let the Assistant Manager get away with it. ‘If you talk to me like that again, Carlisle, I’ll have your guts for garters and put you on report!,’ he roared down the line. ‘If I was in your shoes I’d wait for the axe to fall... from a great height. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ came the quiet voice of the poor subdued man.

  ‘Right. Now let me say what I really feel. As a liaison in the branch between me and the bank robber... especially under pressure facing imminent death, your actions were exemplary. I’m going to arrange for you to be honoured by the Assistant Chief Executive at a dinner at Head Office and the story will be recorded in the Group Newspaper. You’ll be a hero after all. ‘

  ‘Do you think I’ll have to pay for that painting?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. You’ll get away with it in the end. So treat yourself to some champagne tonight, Carlisle. You deserve it!’ He replaced the receiver and closed his eyes with relief at the final outcome hardly believing his lucky stars. A painting being driven over the head of a bank robber. Even Corot would have been proud! There was no loss of life and the man had been caught by the police.’

  ’You were pretty hard on him until the end,’ criticised Betty Brewer, trying to amend, what was in her opinion, an act of injustice.

  ‘I daren’t even think of what might have happened had it all gone wrong,’ retorted her boss. ‘He’ll always obey orders in the future. Of that there’s no double.’

  ‘You should practice what you preach then,’ she accused with a tinge of anger. ‘You rarely stick to the rules in any shape or form, and you know it!’

  ‘That’s my forte, Miss Brewer,’ he told her calmly. ‘A person can do the most outrageous things... the secret is to get away with them. I’l receive the accolades at Croydon branch even though there was no risk to me. Carlisle risked his life and he was in for the high jump for not obeying orders. There’s a moral in there somewhere.’

  He excused himself and left the office to visit the executive washroom., sensing an overwhelming desire to seek his own privacy. Once again, he stood facing the mirror with his hands on each side of the wash basin. Then the tears welled-up in his eyes and slowly rolled down his cheeks in a constant stream. He tried hard to stem the flow but found that his efforts only caused the tears to run faster. His mind had been strained to such a high degree that it reacted to reduce the level. After a while, he stood quite still, sobbing like a young boy, swallowing regularly as this throad filled with the overflow of lachrymal fluids seeking for an outlet elsewhere.

  ‘Oh God!’ he thought miserably as the knot of muscles tightened in his stomach.

  It was another five minutes before the tide began to turn and his chest stopped heaving. The compulsion to weep was over. Nature had restored the balance in it own way. He turned on the tap to wash his hands. How marvellous it was to wash away all the stresses and inhibitions down the drain in a single action with a few pints of water. He was indeed a lucky man! A few moments later, he was joined by a colleague who entered the room and moved to the next wash-basin.

  ‘What’s the trouble, Rigby?’ asked the man. ‘Your face is as white as a sheet and your eyes are red raw.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’he lied blatantly. ‘I managed to get a piece of grit in my eye.’

  ‘In this day and age,’ responded the other man, ‘nothing surprises me any more.’

  The man disappeared into one of the cubicles leaving Rigby to stare at himself in the mirror. He peered through the haze looking awful but there was little that he could do about it exept to wait until some of the redness disappeared from around his eyes. He stood there a while longer until he heard his colleague flush the toilet and made a rapid exit to avoid meeting the man again.

  ‘You’ve returned just in time,’ his secretary told him as he entered the office. ‘Your solicitor is on line one.’

  Rigby felt too tired to start discussing his private life again but decided to answer the call against his better judgement. ‘Yes, Ken,’ he muttered in a bored tone. ‘I thought it was all over between us.’

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve been overtaken by events,’ returned the solicitor in a sombre voice. ‘You didn’t contact Diane, did you?’

  ‘What’s she threatening me with now?’

  Bamburg made a clicking noise with his teeth at the other end of the line. ‘Prepare yourself for a shock,’ he said assuming a very dull tone. ‘She was found in her bath with her wrists slashed half an hour ago.’

  The line went silent as Rigby lost his voice. ‘Slashed her wrists,’ he said eventually. ‘She was always so level-headed!’

  ‘If the water hadn’t overflowed into the flat below, she would have died. She’s been taken to Victoria Infirm
ary to undergo a blood transfusion. They just caught her in time.’

  ‘Things couldn’t have been that bad that she had to try to take her life. There’s something fishy here. Don’t you feel that something’s odd?’

  ‘I warned you earlier she was unstable. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m not doing anything.’

  ‘She’s still your wife. You still have a responsibility. You’re married to her.’

  The banker felt his blood-pressure starting to rise again. ‘If the woman is so hell-bent to take her own life, you can’t hold me responsible!’

  ‘Don’t you see. You’re the reason!’

  ‘You hit the nail on the head when you said earlier that you were a solicitor and not a psychiatrist. You’re thinking I’m a hard bastard. Well we’re just two strangers now. Nothing more. She tried to commit suicide. Let her succeed with something in life that makes her happy. Lord knows she doesn’t understand what else to do with herself.’

  ‘You know, I never did like you, John. Not at school and even less when we met socially. You’ve confirmed my judgement fully.’

  ‘Friend or foe,’ snapped the banker. ‘You can consider yourself dismissed from acting for me. I’ll handle it myself in the future. It peeves me you pay so much attention to a woman who’s not your client. What’s your motive in all this?’

  ‘You were both friends of min. I thought that was clear.’

  ‘Oh yes! What’s your little game?’

  There was a loud click as the solicitor hung up at his end of the line and the banker stared at the instrument with a frown on his face. ‘And don’t expect me to pay your bill either,’ he muttered to himself before turning to his secretary. ‘Get me Mr. Shepherd of Moores & Fishlock, will you, Betty?’

  ‘Your wife’s solicitor!’

  ‘There’s something strange about all this and I want to get to the bottom of it.’ He went through a series of isometric exercises at his desk while waiting for her to obtain the number, grunting and groaning at the effort. ‘Mr. Shepherd, ‘ he began after being put through. My name’s Rigby. You’re handling the case of my wife, Diane. I understand she attempted to commit suicide today.’

  There was a stunned silence at the other end of the line before the solicitor made up his mind to speak with him. ‘Good Heavens! Diane Rigby... suicide!’

  ‘Then you didn’t know about it!’

  ‘Not at all,’ replied the solicitor quietly. ‘I would have telephoned your solicitor right away had I heard the news.’

  Rigby replaced the receiver into its cradle and turned to gaze into the inquisitive eyes of his secretary. ‘What would you say, Betty, about a professional man who lied to you about your case, withheld information you should know about, and pressed you to do something about another person far beyond the scope of his business?’

  ‘I’d avoid him like the plague,’ she replied earnestly.

  ‘Then never ask your solicitor who’s a friend of yours to handle your case. You see, my solicitor’s been visiting my wife as a friend... giving her advice... as well as comforting her... and at the same time he’s handling the case for me against her. How about that?’ He went to the window and stared out. ‘The strange thing is that he didn’t have to lie.’

  Before Betty Brewer could offer him the benefit of a layperson’s opinion, a telephone rang on her desk. ‘There’;s a number of reporters and a television crew downstairs waiting to interview you about the attempted robbery,’ she informed him, impressed by the fact that he might appear on television that evening in the news.

  ‘Why me? I didn’t do anything to resolve the problem!’

  ‘You kept the police at bay,’ stated Ben Howard idly. ‘That’s worth a few brownie points!’

  ‘I can claim credit for that,’ he uttered with a slight smile touching his lips, ‘but I can’t take credit for anything else.’

  ‘Those reporters will see it in a different light,’ continued Howard. ‘You know what they’re like. They’ll print anything that suits their readers.’

  ‘However you look at it both of you,’ he returned, staring at his secretary and the other man, ‘you’re both just as much heroes in this matter. I can say that with hand on heart. I don’t know what Church will say when he finds out that the robber was caught by a Corot paining. That we trapped the robber with an old master!’

  ‘Trapped him with the frame,’corrected his secretary.

  ‘Event he thought of it hurts. What do I say if they ask me its value?’

  ‘Surely monetary value’s unimportant when it comes to saving lives as well as the honour of the bank,,’ cut in Ben Howard.

  The phrase you used is very interesting... the honour of the bank! Carlisle was saying the same thing to me. I never thought of it that way before. To me, the bank was here long before I came along and it’ll be here long after I’ve gone. Honour was never a factor. I mean the bank’s big enough to take care of itself. Strong enough to suffer the strain of robberies, strikes, computer frauds and economic recessions. People on the other hand, are emotive, sensitive, and very vulnerable. So what do we do about the reporters and teevee crew?’

  Betty Brewer smiled sagely. ‘You’ll think of something.’

  ‘What did I do? I set up a telephone enquiry desk with Ben. Continued a dialogue with Chief Inspector Church and with Dennis the menace. Made contact with his lunatic sister, Phyllis... and Edgar the white rabbit. God... it’s Alice in Wonderland when you think back!’

  ‘The bomb!’ commented Betty Brewer, directing his thoughts.

  ‘Ah, yes... the bomb. Who was right and who was wrong between Church and myself. No doubt we shall find out shortly. I know,’ he said, awakening to a new idea. ‘Let’s put the media on to Public Relations. They deal with the media.’

  ‘I think it’s too late for that,’ stated his secretary. ‘They say you dealt with the matter. It’s your responsibility!’

  ‘Well they’ve had it because I’m going to the Croydon tea party.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Ben Howard jovially.

  ‘The explosion of the bomb. Either that or it’ll be the non-event of the year and I’ll have egg all over my face.’

  For the next five minutes, Rigby attempted to tackle the problem of Sam Elliott without success. He didn’t expect to find an answer when it came to someone as obscure and elusive as his mischievous colleague. Nonetheless, he refused to be daunted in his efforts to determine how the other executive would set up an information system with representatives in competitor banks. The lines of contact were firmly established, there was no doubt about that. An old campaigner like Chesterton wouldn’t be worried about an information leak unless he was certain it related to top-level policy and that the data was being passed on regularly. The source had to be located quickly and stopped to avoid damage to the future plans of the bank. Pullman was the most likely culprit. The man had so many weaknesses that if they came to light he was doomed. But Rigby knew that Elliott was the man, albeit the proof was non-existent at present. How was he doing it? How could he get information in depth whenever it was required? He had access to Corporate Planning but the data there was often limited. Only the very top executives would know about the corporate concept of servicing the major companies with Account Executives. That hadn’t even come off the stocks. Rigby thought for a little while longer and then it came.

  He lit another cigarette and sat back comfortably in his executive chair. It was the best that he had felt all day, relaxing as he watched the smoke spiral upwards. He had to see Sam Elliott, recognising that the man might refuse to come immediately. He didn’t have long to wait. The office door opened shortly and Elliott stalked in full of confidence. ‘I just got a call to say you wanted to see me urgently,’ he laughed, although the steely look in his eyes indicated that despite the humour his razor-s
harp mind was ticking over like a computer.

  ‘Will you leave us alone, Betty? What I have to say to Mr. Elliott is personal and private.’

  ‘Come off it, Rigby,’ scoffed the other executive. ‘I’m not sure that the rules of the bank allow two men the intimate privacy of being left in a room alone together. Or isn’t it against the law any more? He laughed loudly at his own joke but no one else was amused.

  Betty Brewer hesitated at first at the strange request. In all the years she had been with him, he had never asked her to do this before.

  The same goes for you, Ben,’ he told the young banker who followed Betty Brewer out of the office and closed the door firmly behind him. ‘Right, Sam,’ he continued informally after they had gone. ‘Take a seat. You may need it!’

  ‘What is this? Some kind of third degree?’ laughed Elliott, although he was beginning to feel a little uneasy. ‘What kind of stunt are you trying to pull?’

  Rigby ignored his questions and looked straight into the other man’s eyes as though intending to hypnotise him. ‘Which would you like first. The good news or the bad news?’

  There was a slight pause. ‘Try me with the good news!’

  ‘The good news. Well your tip-off this morning concerning computer frauds has already caused a furore that will probably go down as one of the greatest robberies of all time. My appreciation to you for which I will get all the credit. By sheer accident, I uncovered a hornet’s nest. Cornelius Strangeway and two of his colleagues in Computer Division have disappeared... having transferred a great deal of money from the bank by means of the computer. However, there’s an end to it there.’

  ‘You mean they panicked when you blew the whistle and made a run for it?’

  ‘That’s an accurate description of what happened.’ Rigby toyed with his words as he watched the other man squirm.

  ‘Then you owe me one,’ claimed Elliott, his tone indicating that it was in the form of a demand. ‘How about recommending me for Head of Functional Control when your three months expires?’

  ‘True... I owe you one. But hold on a moment, you haven’t heard it all yet.’