The Man with No Face

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Because the money has gone into the pockets of the directors rather than into the company assets.’ Pulleyne nodded. ‘Yes, that has happened. But if you play the game you survive and you can make enough honest pennies in this game without being dishonest. As in most, if not all businesses. The problem is that small new companies don’t survive being hit with a massive claim in the region of three million.’

  ‘But you did. Clearly so.’

  ‘Just. Just. Just. Just. Skin-of-the-teeth number. We had a directors’ meeting which started at lunchtime and went on till midnight. We looked at the claim, we looked at the fire-service reports and we couldn’t find a way through, all exits seemed blocked. It was a legitimate claim. Then we had to decide whether to meet the claim or fold and let the claimants have what assets we possessed as compensation. That was a sore point. In the end we decided to meet the claim, even though we hadn’t the assets.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The directors raised money, remortgaged their houses, sold possessions. We remortgaged this building we’re in and somehow we covered the one-million-pound shortfall which we had to contend with. And we wrote a cheque for three million pounds. We continued to trade, but another claim, no matter how modest, just couldn’t have been met if it had come in within six months. Talk about trusting to luck. But that’s the way of it in this game, it’s all down to reputation. We offer insurance to commercial ventures, we don’t offer domestic policies, which is probably why you’ve never seen us advertised.’

  ‘I haven’t, I confess.’ King shifted in his seat.

  ‘We advertise in trade journals but that’s about all. Well, to cut a long story short, we made our reputation by deciding to pay out rather than fold. People just flooded to our door with proposals for their business premises, their stock, their equipment, their fishing fleets, their aeroplanes…we built up our assets and we’re now able to start paying the directors back the money they loaned the company. But at the time it was heart stopping.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘It’s British insurance, Mr King. The reputation of this insurance industry was made after the San Francisco earthquake in nineteen-oh-six.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Oh, it’s quite true. The American insurance industry was fledgling at the time and the buildings of San Fran were insured with British companies and after the city was flattened it wasn’t expected that the insurers could pay out on such a huge scale. But they were wrong. Men in suits travelled from London and across the continent carrying claim forms with them, assessed said claims and paid out accordingly and San Fran was reborn using British money. Not a few people lost all their assets and went bankrupt, but that’s the price you pay for being an underwriter or a name, as they are known. It takes at least a million pounds cash to buy into a syndicate which underwrites the loss of such things as oil rigs, in return you take a share of the insurance premium and your one million can become five million in as many years.’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Well you take a risk I personally wouldn’t take and I’m an insurance man, I love this game, I really do, but the drawback of being a name is that if a legitimate claim is made against your syndicate, then you are liable for what amounts to an upmarket warrant sale, you lose not just your million pounds but all your assets, and I mean all, your house and contents therein, your capital, your valuables, you’re left with the shirt on your back and are given directions to the nearest Salvation Army Hostel.’

  ‘Blimey.’

  ‘And you sign a contract accepting that risk. The reason being, to maintain the good name of British insurance. So a few names went under in nineteen-on-six, but because legitimate claims for the earthquake were met in full, and because the Titanic claim was settled in full and a few other similar claims were also settled in full, then throughout this century yens, dollars, francs, Deutschmarks, kronas, you name it, have flooded into the UK in their millions, and I mean millions. They are our so-called “invisible exports” and we don’t want to lose business like that.’

  ‘But you’re not in that league, are you?’

  ‘No, but we felt we had an obligation to uphold the good name of the British insurance industry and so we paid out, we put up our homes and sold sundry possessions and met the claim in full. And like our larger cousins in preceding years, the consequence of paying out has been that, as I have said, we have been rewarded with a continuous flood of proposals. Another eighteen months without a major claim and our assets will be very healthy and all the directors will have been repaid in full. Which is why I am surprised and excited by your interest in the Bath Street claim. Can I infer from that that it wasn’t a legitimate claim after all?’

  ‘No.’ King smiled as he shook his head.

  ‘I can’t?’ Pulleyne looked crestfallen. ‘I had hoped that we might be able to claw some of that money back. It would be a pleasant compensation for the trauma it put us through.’

  ‘Sorry, but you can’t infer anything from my interest. Not just yet.’

  Pulleyne smiled. ‘How can I help you, Mr King?’

  ‘By telling me all, everything about the claim, the identities of the people involved and any dark, lurking nagging suspicion you may have. At this stage we can toss all suspicions into the air and catch them as they come down and examine them until they no longer interest us. This isn’t a court of law.’

  Pulleyne pushed a file across his desk top towards King. ‘Well, this is the file, you can access it but you can’t take it from the office, not without a warrant anyway. I’ll go and organize coffee for us.’

  ‘Just milk for me, please.’ King reached for the file.

  ‘Oh, I’ll get a pot and a tray of stuff.’ He stood. ‘It seems like we’ll be on this all afternoon.’

  It had been some years since circumstances had taken Malcolm Montgomerie to Garthamlock. He had not looked forward to returning to the scheme but when he got there he found it transformed. It was still Garthamlock. The streets were still the same, the same pattern, the same names. The houses were still Glasgow scheme housing, two, three, four apartments off a common stair, four storeys high, eight in a block. But gone were the neglected, overgrown gardens, to be replaced by neatly tended gardens, surrounded by wrought-iron fences which replaced the privet hedges of old and which had served only to conceal vandals and attract refuse. Gone were the roadways of old, replaced by roadways with speed-suppressing chicanes, sleeping policemen, existing through-roads had been closed off and designated ‘play streets’ for children—‘emergency vehicles only’ read the signs. The dull fawn colour of the old Garthamlock blocks had been replaced by lighter-coloured facing and bright-coloured pebble dash. There was, Montgomerie found, a sense of optimism about the scheme, a sense of emotional uplift. The Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal Project could chalk up Garthamlock as a success, so Montgomerie felt as he turned his car off Tillycairn Road and into Craigneil Street. He did not, though, care for the satellite dishes which seemed to sprout from the outside walls of the houses like a vertical field of mushrooms. But that, he conceded, was the nature of Glasgow, nay Scottish housing schemes at the cusp of the century, at the millennium; the people in the schemes are the ones with the time to watch twenty-four-hour television, choice of forty-eight channels. The scheme may well have been beautified, but the job market has still shrunk. It was Montgomerie’s assertion that the folk who live in the well-set and prestigious West End or in the more comfortable areas of the South Side, areas built and laid out by the late Victorians, care not for satellite dishes bolted to the side of their houses; finding them vulgar, finding they ruin the line of the building, but mostly because they advertise the occupants of the house as in possession of an unhealthy amount of free time. Middle-class homes do not wish to give out such signals. So Malcolm Montgomerie reasoned. He halted outside 233, Craigneil Street, entered the close, finding that the street security door had been carelessly left ajar, and climbed the stair until he came to the house
of Saffa.

  He rang the doorbell, which, to his relief, made only a conventional ‘ding-dong’ sound, echoing in the hallway. Montgomerie, try as he might, could only muster grimacing distaste for doorbells which played ‘Flower of Scotland’ or ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Inside the house a large dog barked, a man’s voice yelled, ‘Quiet!’ and then at the front door, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Police,’ said Montgomerie, as low as he could, but loud enough to carry through the door.

  Again from inside the house he heard the man who had shouted at the dog groan, and then say to someone else, ‘Put the dog in the kitchen.’ There was some movement in the house, a bustle, footfall on carpet, a shadow on the other side of the frosted glass and the door of the house of Saffa was flung wide. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Montgomerie smiled reassuringly. ‘There’s no trouble.’

  ‘No trouble?’

  ‘Nope.’ He continued to smile. ‘I wouldn’t be here by myself if there was. Would I?’

  ‘I was thinking you guys are a long way behind me…I haven’t had the polis at my door for a good five years.’

  ‘More!’ yelled an indignant female voice from deep within the flat. A waft of air freshener seemed to follow the voice, arriving belatedly behind the man at the threshold.

  ‘We’re looking for information about a mate of yours. An ex-mate, really.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot of ex-mates. Since I turned the corner and went straight I’m not too popular around here. I wouldn’t grass anybody up but they don’t know that. I know things but I’m not running with the wolves any more. Makes me unpopular.’

  ‘No…this is a very ex-mate. Ronald Grenn, by name.’

  ‘Ronnie…aye…oh…I read about him in the Record. You’d better come in.’

  Montgomerie entered the flat. It was clean, well decorated, smelling of air freshener. The dog barked from inside the kitchen.

  ‘Sharrup!’ Saffa banged on the kitchen door with the palm of a meaty hand. The dog stopped barking but began to growl.

  ‘What is it?’ Montgomerie turned into the living room.

  ‘Staffordshire pit bull.’ Saffa followed Montgomerie into the room. ‘We need him. The ex-mates I mentioned, they come to our door sometimes when they’ve had a wee bevvy, and it’s not too safe for me to walk out in the scheme, not without my wee pal in there. We’ve been promised rehousing but the factors offered us Easterhouse or Drumchapel…I’m known there too…Sadie’s from the ‘Milk’…that’d be safer for us so we’re waiting for an OK flat in Castlemilk. Five years now and we’re still waiting, aye, Sadie? Five years.’

  ‘Five years, so it is.’ Sadie Saffa eyed Montgomerie coldly, suspiciously. She struck Montgomerie as still retaining hostility towards the police which her husband seemed to have lost. Kit Saffa twisted on muscular limbs and sank into an armchair. He indicated a vacant chair and Montgomerie lowered himself into it, reading the room as he did so. It spoke to him of self-respect. Furniture of a striped pattern on chrome-plated frames crowded round a fireplace and matched fawn-and-black curtains of broad diagonal stripes, both of which clashed loudly with a bright-blue carpet, so bright that it caused a dull ache in Montgomerie’s eyes. A goldfish swam in a bowl of clean water which sat atop the television set. Montgomerie reflected that goldfish were not common pets in the East End. They just weren’t. Kit Saffa sat leaning forwards, elbows on knees. He had bright ginger hair, piercing blue eyes, a neatly trimmed ginger beard. He had solid muscular legs which seemed to Montgomerie to be bursting out of his faded denim jeans, his feet were encased in scuffed Nike trainers. He was barrel-chested, grey hairs protruded at the neck of his denim shirt and his arms were muscular and heavily tattooed with messy self-inflicted emotionally immature tattoos, gang slogans, girls’ names. He was perhaps five feet tall. He smiled at Montgomerie. Mrs Saffa, by contrast, was tall and thin, she wore black with black spectacles and black leather sandals. Had she been younger, she could have found acceptance in the youthful ‘Gothic’ movement, but grey hair betrayed her age. In further contrast to her husband, she glared at Montgomerie, as if her husband had once suffered grave injustice at the hands of the police when running with the wolves, and while he could forgive the incident, she could not and never would. Montgomerie had found that that was often the way of it, a victim of injustice makes a better adjustment, reaches a state of forgiveness much more readily than his or her close relative who may have witnessed the injustice but did not actually suffer it themselves.

  ‘So’—Montgomerie gave up trying to melt Mrs Saffa’s ice-cold glare and turned to the more accommodating facial expression of Kit Saffa—‘Ronnie Grenn.’

  ‘Aye, wee Ronnie, aye.’ Saffa smiled.

  ‘What can you tell me about him?’

  ‘Probably not a lot. He and I used to run together in the old days, y’know…do daft wee things, get banged up together…but really stupid wee things, you know…we sort of drifted apart about eight years ago.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Aye, then as not four years ago he was banged up for the Bath Street job.’ Saffa shook his head. ‘Let me tell you something, Mr Montgomerie, whoever did that, it wasn’t wee Ronald Grenn. He had neither the nous nor the bottle.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘More than reckon. Remember, I knew Ronnie, I knew him from way, way back…we were getting into bother with the police when we were at school and went before the Children’s Panel. There is a few years age difference between us, but we were both part of the same gang in those days. Both got supervision orders, my social worker was a lassie straight from college. I remember a mixture of enthusiasm and nervousness but she was all right, she cared and her heart was in the right place. Ronnie’s social worker was an old guy with a grey beard and a wee baldie head. I remember him. He seemed, looking back, to be trying to care but just hadn’t got it to give any more. A burnt-out case. You meet them in social work and teaching.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘So I’m told, and so I’m meeting them myself.’

  ‘You’ve a social worker for some reason? Probation Order in force? We’ve no record

  ‘No. I want to be one.’

  ‘Good luck to you. Confess it’s not a job I’d fancy.’

  ‘See, well, I’ve turned the corner, like I said, and I was looking for a job and it was a probation officer in my last nick…he says to me, you’re not a bad lad…I was a man in my thirties by then…he thought I’d changed my tune…he said, look why not put all this to some use…stay out of trouble…use your time to study, do some work with a charity or a voluntary agency to show willing and get experience that you can talk about at a job interview and when your convictions are spent you could get a job as a youth worker maybe…So that’s what I’m doing…I’m in the middle of a social studies course at Paisley College. S’a fair trek from here and back by public transport but I’m sticking it…I’ve got two years before my last conviction can be considered spent…then I want to do a course in youth work so I can reach some of these kids and straighten them out before they get too far down the wrong road. I can talk their language and I can reach them. I want to do it. I’ve got a purpose in life now. There’s just no future in doing what I was doing. You end up with nothing…even if I get something like a half-meaningful job I’ll still be finding it difficult to get insurance and that. Just look at Ronnie. Shot in the head, it said in the Record.’

  ‘Less than forty-eight hours after coming out of the pokey. We wonder…I mean, this is just speculation…let me bounce it off you. You knew Ronnie, you’re an intelligent guy…we think he went up the West End to meet someone as if to collect something. His mother could only name you as his friend…she didn’t know of any other. Would you know who he was meeting?’

  Kit Saffa remained silent but he was clearly mollified by Montgomerie’s compliment.

  ‘Yes? No?’ Montgomerie pressed. ‘Perhaps it’s that you don’t want to tell me?’

  Saffa remained still, th
ough he gave Montgomerie the clear impression of having a card up his sleeve.

  ‘You see’—Montgomerie leaned forwards—‘you and I know that Ronnie couldn’t have pulled the Bath Street jewellery robbery. Got past burglar alarms, opened a strongbox, took gems worth many pennies when he had no contacts who could reset them. I mean, he could break into a lock-up and steal tools, he’d know someone who’d reset tools for him. But gems, that’s short league, he’s not in the short league…and to set fire to the building after he allegedly robbed it to cover his tracks…so he’s done for wilful fire-raising on top of major theft…but he’s happy to put up his hands and get seven years.’

  ‘Lenient sentence.’

  ‘Very. He was lucky.’

  ‘Or the judge just didn’t believe him either.’

  ‘So you really don’t believe he did it?’

  ‘Never did, Mr Montgomerie. I never did. He hadn’t the skill, he hadn’t the ability, he hadn’t the bottle. He was an impetuous wee ned. Theft by finding was more Ronald Grenn, ask him to plan anything and you may as well be asking him to design the next generation of computers complete with artificial intelligence. He hadn’t got it upstairs and even if he had, he hadn’t got the bottle to carry it out.’

  ‘So why did he put his hand up to it?’

  ‘The oldest reason in the world, Mr Montgomerie.’

  ‘Dosh?’

  ‘Got it in one. Doh-ray-me. Has to be.’

  ‘But you don’t know?’

  ‘See, Ronnie wanted to go straight but, and this is the big but, he had fallen into the old lag’s way of thinking, one big job to see me out then I’ll go straight. Never works like that. There’s never one big job to give you enough dosh to retire on…you decide to go straight, realizing you’ll be scratching pennies for the rest of your life. People go crookin’ because there’s the promise of a successful job just round the corner and that keeps you going. If you’re not crookin’ there’s the promise of poverty until you’re in the clay. See, that’s what makes it difficult for guys like me and Ronnie to turn the corner, it’s not just the peer pressure that keeps you in the wolf pack. Sorry about the jargon by the way, “peer pressure”.’