Unsafe Deposit

by J. E. Kellenberger

  It was here that his young daughter first showed interest in the world of entertainment. Living in the suburbs of Los Angeles and with a regular wage coming in her father could afford to indulge her love of movies and showbiz with drama and dancing lessons. Along with other six- and seven-year-olds from the same drama classes she was picked for her first job in movies as an extra in a film about a stray dog. Other parts as an extra followed until eventually a member of the film company remarked that her accent was not wholly American; it had a slight cockney twang and this was deemed as very appealing and commercial by the film studio. Bit parts came her way as she matured into her early teens until she was chosen for a feature part in a movie about a dancer, playing the role of the dancer in her youth. This proved to be her big break and by the time she was twenty she was being courted by the film company for starring roles. In her middle-twenties she married her impresario manager, an individual who had become immensely wealthy with the popularity of movies throughout the western world. He had the script for a film in which she would star as a Congresswoman coming from one of the wealthy New England families. In a certain scene it required an exceptional piece of jewellery to be worn and he cast round for a fitting piece. When the Ruby Reds came up for sale at an auction in Paris his telephone bid of half a million dollars was accepted and the Ruby Reds made their debut to the public at large in the box office hit Ruby Nights. The checkered history of the necklace and earrings took on a mystical quality over the next two decades with the actress wearing them at Oscar ceremonies and White House functions. As their intrinsic value grew in the public’s mind so did the costs of keeping them secure. Eventually the actress was forced to keep them in a safe deposit from which she withdrew them only when they were to be worn.

  When her beloved husband, older by some twenty years, died, the actress retired from showbiz while still in her acting prime. She sold up in Hollywood and moved to the quieter surrounds of Oregon where she became a recluse. The Ruby Reds languished for many years in the bank’s vaults and were never seen again in public until her early demise just short of her half-century birthday following bowel cancer surgery. With no offspring and no direct heirs the instructions expressed in her will for the Ruby Reds to be donated to a museum in New York were not contested. In a codicil to the will there was a stipulation that the Ruby Reds should be on display for a minimum of at least six weeks per year in a London museum.

  A daring robbery took place at the London museum over a weekend during the period when Edward Heath’s Conservative government was tested by the unions as to who ran the country. Synchronised union strikes resulted in a severely reduced electricity supply throughout the country and factories and offices were reduced to working a three-day week. Private households were given scheduled two-hour slots of supply alternating with two hours of candlelight. Two enterprising thieves took account of the cuts to the normal electricity supply to the museum, leaving the institute with only backup supplies from a hired generator for alarms and strategic lighting. The raid was successful and the robbery, believed to have taken place in the early hours of one Sunday morning, was not discovered until mid-morning by which time the thieves were well away with The Ruby Reds despite a bizarre accident during their getaway. They had gained entry from the roof of the building and were planning to exit from the same place but while running up a flight of steps two at a time the right foot of one of the thieves landed obliquely across a tread, causing a twisted ankle. In tremendous pain from torn ligaments he had sunk to the ground and removed the balaclava masking his face in order to look carefully at his ankle. His accomplice had done the same as they assessed the situation. Escape across the roof was no longer possible and they had to take a chance with one of the ground-floor exits. The accomplice searched for a staff door and on finding one helped his partner to hobble along a passage to it but a battery-operated motion detector, one of a new genre of devices, sensed their presence near the door and triggered a camera positioned in the corner of the high ceiling which flashed. They had forgotten to replace their balaclavas. They had opened the door with a gemmy and the wired-in alarm system had failed to go off because of the cut in the electricity supply. They had waited in the shelter of a building two or three streets away until dawn, caught the first taxi they could hail and been taken to an underground station. From there the thief with the damaged ankle had made his slow and painful way home while his partner had followed their plan and caught the train to Gatwick airport and given The Ruby Reds, hidden in a cigarette pack, to his mother-in-law, who was booked on one of the new low-cost airline flights to Marbella. In her apartment in a four-storey block with sea views she removed the Ruby Reds from the packet and sewed them into the hem of a curtain.

  At this point the philosophy of the criminal fraternity looking after its own came unstuck. Instead of sticking together to help the thieves overcome the forces of light they recognised the possibility of individual financial gain. The police soon had the photograph, albeit of dubious quality, displayed on the television news and other so-called criminal mates shopped the robbers’ names and addresses anonymously to the authorities. Arrested and cautioned the thieves were not about to divulge the location of the Ruby Reds and neither was the larger criminal population. From behind bars they knew that the two thieves would need to sell their wares in order to buy creature comforts for their stay in jail at Her Majesty’s pleasure and they would be in no position to drive a hard bargain, a rock-bottom price would be offered and would have to be accepted. Prosecuted and sentenced on the evidence of a photograph to nine years each, they appreciated their position and word was sent out to the mother-in-law to hand over the gems to a courier no questions asked in return for a cushy job in the prison and the luxury of a fellow prisoner acting as bodyguard.

  There followed an extraordinary path of repeated selling and buying always at a slightly higher price and with slightly different components yielding creamed-off profit to everyone involved. Along the way the necklace rubies were removed from their settings and the gold bar linking them to the gold neck chain was melted down and sold for cash. At another point the two separate parts of the chain were linked together to form a simple but exquisite necklace which was also fenced for cash and still later the earring stones were removed from the settings and replaced by cheap zircons and found their way into circulation via a jeweller’s shop.

  By the time Ron got a sniff of the rubies they had become part of a bigger collection of stolen gemstones. Along the line someone had added in diamonds and sapphires and emeralds procured from other burglaries thus taking the heat off the Ruby Reds. It was a smart move distracting and diverting the attention of the prospective buyer so that the rubies would be regarded as individual stones and valued accordingly, thereby opening up the market of potential buyers. Ron’s contact had shown him photographic evidence of one of the large diamonds and one of the earring rubies. Prices were mentioned for the sale of the collection, which his contact had said could not be split. At the time Arthur was flush with cash from a bonus paid to him by a Middle Eastern military attaché for the introduction to a Member of Parliament sitting on a select committee for arms sales. Arthur had attended the same prep school and had assiduously worked at retaining the link with his erstwhile fellow pupil. Ron’s mention of the possible purchase at one of their normal fortnightly discussions aroused interest. It was not their typical sphere of activity but one-off chances were not to be sniffed at as they could prove very lucrative and they decided to set up a meeting with the seller in the workshop of a jeweller well known for accepting cash rewards for authenticating and valuing gemstones and keeping his mouth shut. The stones were all found to be genuine and each was valued in its own right.

  It wasn’t a premonition that led Arthur to suspect that the by-now infamous Ruby Reds could form part of the collection but the mention of six rubies in the set had sparked his imagination and he had asked Ron to tell the seller that the terms of the
possible purchase had to include the loan of one of the rubies for a three-hour period. In this time Arthur would determine if the ruby was part of the Ruby Reds by showing it to one of his acquaintances in the fine arts world with expert knowledge of antique jewellery. Known to be corrupt, Arthur would offer him the same arrangement as with the jeweller. Do the job you’re asked to do, take the cash and zip the mouth. Their meeting at a coffee shop in Paternoster Square by St. Paul’s Cathedral confirmed Arthur’s belief and the purchase was agreed. A period of hibernation would now be required in which the Ruby Reds would be allowed to fade from the headlines and re-emerge two decades or so later to be sold for their true value to some reclusive billionaire.

  Chapter Six

  Happenings

  2010

  Rolf’s wife and youngest daughter had left his bedside and travelled home. The intensive care nurse had urged them to get some rest. They had spent a long, stressful time at his bedside and she had told them in unambiguous words that they needed to look after themselves otherwise they too would fall ill and be in no position to support their husband and father should he recover. At home it was another restless evening and night of worry and uncertainty with the prospect of a new day dawning, bringing the same anxieties as each of the previous days since his stroke. Falling eventually into a fitful doze Rolf’s wife was woken in the early morning at five o’clock by the shrill sound of the telephone. Despite normal sleep she was instantly awake, fearful of the news the call might herald.

  ‘Mrs Berghoff?’ enquired the subdued voice.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied rapidly. ‘I’m Mrs Berghoff.’

  ‘I’m ringing from the intensive care unit. I’m ward sister Audrey Brown,’ said the still-subdued voice but with a measure of calm and authority. ‘I’m very sorry to tell you that your husband Rolf died at just after two-thirty this morning. He didn’t regain consciousness and there was no change in his condition between the time of his death and when you and your daughter left in the morning yesterday.’

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ shouted Rolf’s instantaneously hysterical wife. ‘I’m coming straightaway,’ before lapsing into a continuous howl of grief.

  ‘It’s OK Mrs Berghoff, you just let it all come out. I’m still here. I can wait. Just take it in your own time.’

  When the sobbing subsided somewhat the calm voice of the ward sister advised her not to come straightaway but to wait and compose herself and travel to the hospital after the rush-hour traffic with her daughters. There was nothing she could do to help Rolf now and it would be much more sensible to collect herself and marshal her resources. There was a long pause before the bereaved wife answered.

  ‘OK, I understand, I will come with my daughters later this morning,’ said his wife with great emotion, each word emitted independently as if not part of the same sentence. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Travel safely Mrs Berghoff,’ said the ward sister before ending the call. She had been trained to do this task by a bereavement counsellor. It never got any easier. She didn’t like doing it but she was the ward sister and couldn’t expect her staff to do things that she wasn’t prepared to do. She sighed deeply. She had other patients to tend, some of them alive by a thread but still alive. She couldn’t waste any more of her emotions on the dead.

  By the time Sylvia and two of her daughters arrived at ten o’clock that morning Rolf had been unhooked from the various drips and catheters and monitoring equipment which the family had found so upsetting. He had been arranged neatly in the hospital bed, which had been wheeled down a short corridor into a private room. He looked at peace when the family entered which made reconciliation to his demise a little easier. There was comfort to be had too from the short blessing given by the hospital chaplain as the three women huddled around Rolf’s bed. After he’d left they stayed a few minutes more each to say her personal farewell before the corpse was taken down into the basement morgue. Goodbyes and thank yous were said to the hospital staff before the threesome emerged into the morning air and the reality of their situation became all too stark. The practicalities of death would not wait long for grieving relatives however much they might have wished. There was the paperwork, the funeral arrangements, the newspaper obituary, the wake and the business implications, all of which would require attention with an unemotional mind. Rolf had been a prominent man in the county and certain standards would be expected. They would also have to wait for Rolf’s sister Andreé to arrive with John and Daniel. Daniel had stayed overnight with his parents so that they could comfort one another as they travelled together to the hospital but unexpected road works had delayed them seeing Rolf still in the hospital bed and instead their final parting would now have to take place in the bleak, austere laying-out room with a body quickly losing its character and personality. In the hospital bed it was the body of a person, in the laying-out room it was just another corpse. Andreé, with her inability to see fine detail, was saved the distress of realising this fact and, for her, the only difference since she last saw her brother alive two days ago was the body’s temperature. It was becoming chillingly cold.

  The announcement in the obituary section of the following day’s broadsheet covered a double column informing the reader of Rolf Berghoff’s relatively humble start in life as the only son of a near-penniless immigrant escaping political persecution in his own country and his development into a family man and CEO of a medium-sized public limited company. According to sources his illness had been brief and he had died peacefully in hospital. He was sixty and his death was unexpected as he had appeared to be in robust health. Details were then given of where and when the funeral would be held and the request from the family to respect their wish for no flowers or wreaths but that donations to a local hospice would be welcomed. Arthur Meares spotted the obituary and noted the place, date and time of the service. The business section of Ruth’s financial daily gave a short résumé of Rolf’s rise through WareWork from trainee to CEO before digging its teeth into the company’s financial viability and speculating about his successor. Anyone on WareWork’s main board would have realised that news of Andreé’s grab for power at their first meeting subsequent to Rolf’s stroke had not leaked out to the newspaper’s informants. This was satisfactory for those non-family members who wished to keep their powder dry.

  The news of Rolf’s death soon percolated through to the Gadd family. As with Rolf’s close family practicalities were thrust to the fore for the Gadds too. In particular the shareholding in WareWork that was still registered in the name of Alan Derek Gadd. When the Gadds had set up their rival business and, later, when Alan left the board in apparent disgrace the WareWork shares had been their financial lifeline should the new business fail to take off or prove barely profitable. Alan had clung onto them tenaciously, knowing that their value would be the only recompense he could make to his younger son Adam who had given up his safe and well-paid job in a software house in aid of the family cause. At forty-four Adam was no longer young and in an IT industry where sharp and free-thinking teenage minds seemed to be valued by employers more than technically adroit programmers who made things work there was no guarantee that Adam would be able to get another job at a similar level and salary should he need to. The value of the shares, if sold, would fund Adam in another venture. At the time their new business was set up there had been much discussion between the four Gadds as to whether the family house should be re-mortgaged to provide initial funds for the new firm or whether it would be better to sell the WareWork shares. Adam had argued that they were setting out to damage WareWork by undercutting their core products and as a consequence the share price would tumble but his elder brother Simon had argued in favour of retaining the shares as they would still bring in a steady annual dividend and this would form most of the new company’s working capital. The house, Simon pointed out, might go up in value but brought in no cash unless it was sold and it was Simon’s clear, legal way of think
ing that had won the day.

  Over the last months and years WareWork, in the shape of Rolf, Andreé and Daniel, had fought back and the share price was now at its healthiest level since the Gadds set up AseaWear Ltd. Both firms were progressing in a tough marketplace and for the Gadds the value of the shares now lay in something far less tangible than money, a seat on the board of directors. A holding of seven percent of fully paid-up shares would secure such a position and their holding was more than that. At a hastily called family conference they talked over their options. Alan was now in his eightieth year and had become a type II diabetic although his doctor had told him that a little more exercise coupled with some weight loss and a diet with less salted chips would soon take care of that. But his appetite for work had greatly diminished over the last few years. Where the stress of commerce had once been stimulating it was now tiring and, if truth be told, which he was doing so now, all he really wanted to do was to retire to his tool shed. And as for revenge, Rolf was now dead and the passing of a few years had quelled his desire to wreak further unhappiness on anyone. It was Simon, whose participation in Asea had been the least due to his job in the tax office and the fact that he had endless obligations with a young and growing family, who stated incisively that the shares should be passed to Adam. If they were passed on at least seven years prior to Alan’s death, Simon said that no inheritance tax would arise. He felt his brother had borne the brunt of the anxieties associated with a start-up business, put his own future on the line, proved his business acumen and richly deserved ownership of the shareholding. Moreover, Simon thought that Adam would take his place on the WareWork board without gloating over the full circle that events had taken and that he would prove to be an asset to them. So it was with his brother’s and his parents’ best wishes that an application was made to transfer the shareholding into the name of Adam Neville Gadd.