Undercover Read Free Page B

capitalistic fashion, and he got Jesus’s business award. And that’s how Justin was. He used the surplus funds to buy stock from a wholesaler – not Leo’s wholesaler, obviously – and then sold to his own special, very private list, offering them the top-grade substance he or an associate had been holding as custodians of quality, so establishing and developing a fine reputation for magnificent charlie and other products. What I meant by a firm within the firm. He looked as if he was working for us, and he
was
, partly, but also he’s working for himself, taking care of a secret, select clientele, middle-class mostly, still OK for money, despite the recession. He could do the chat all right with that kind of punter. Justin had an education. Mortar board, gown, a rolled-up bit of paper signifying a degree – I’ve seen the photograph. Totally genuine, I’d bet on it. Archaeology, mathematics, King Richard the third – he can talk about any of them without sounding at all like a bullshitter. Some of these professors and thinkers of that sort would say to him the trade should be made legal, and he’d have the sense to get on their side and reply, “True,” but really he’d fucking hate it, of course, because there’d be no need for people like Justin if trading was out in the open. No need for people like Leo, either, of course.
    ‘But the way Justin was going on would taint the firm’s image – that’s Leo’s firm’s image – by pushing poor gear to ordinary users. Some of the stuff was at kids’ rave level. Plus, to up his takings more he was overclaiming bribe money paid to your Drug Squad friends and friendesses. OK, that’s commonplace, I know. Almost routine. There’s no receipts for backhanders, so naturally people are ambitious and imaginative about what they’d like reimbursed from the company’s coffer, please. Managements recognize this and are willing to do a bit of blind-eyeing. But with Scray, the difference between actual and claimed was enormous. Just one of a crateful of swindles. It had to be stopped.’
    D.H.: ‘All this had been established against him as fact?’
    A: ‘It had been established enough for management to decide he had to go.’
    D.H.: ‘You said he’d been warned.’
    A: ‘He’d lie low for a while, then drift back to it. A kind of pride. He considered himself worth the extra. He considered himself brilliant to have set up his own private, loaded list. He considered himself a star salesman-pusher. A kind of arrogance. A type of greed. Yes, yes, greed is commonplace, too, I’ll admit. As someone said, the economy is juiced by it. But Scray’s was brazen, contemptuous, selfish greed.’
    D.H.: ‘And your selfish lad was already at the top of the main firm?’
    A: ‘The only firm, as far as we saw it. And, of course, it had a bossman.’
    D.H.: ‘Leo Percival Young?’
    A: ‘With Martin Abidan at number two, a trifle nervy now and then, but generally sweetly subservient, capable and obedient, not a bit selfish, in charge of this operation. A team guy, often referred to as “Empathy Mart” – no sarcasm. Someone like Scray challenged that kind of happy, ordered, effective set-up. He looked like future chaos, didn’t he? So, get rid.’
    D.H.: ‘But it didn’t work?’
    A: ‘No, it didn’t.’
    D.H.: ‘He’s still around.’
    A: ‘Obviously.’
    D..: ‘Our witness says three of you leave the car and walk together up Monthermer Street in a “purposeful” way. That correct?’
    A: ‘Three leave the car and go up Monthermer Street, yes. I suppose you could say “purposeful”. Yes, we had a purpose. We were on a hunt, weren’t we?’

FIVE
    AFTER
    I les looked in to Harpur’s office and interrupted his reading. The