Thursday 3 July 2014

Effect and Cause



Professor Theodopolos Troodos-Ophiolite looked at his students over the top of his glasses. He wore half glasses, the top half was missing, thereby telling the world that he still had good long distance vision in spite of his advancing age. He was one of those people who took pride in thinking they looked younger than their calendar years. Few knew that he wore contact lenses to deal with his age-related presbyopia. It was also darkly rumoured that his sometime visible silver roots owed their existence to a man dye.
                His students belonged to the third year cohort who were grimly sticking with geology, in spite of the ridicule from their colleagues who were sitting back with many less lecture and tutor contact hours a year, reading Cider with Rosy or Under Milk Wood in the student union bar, with little care as to the rigour of the subject, just picking through the bones of other people’s creative work and writing vapidly critical essays.
                Theo was today talking of the recent, over the last ninety five years, discovery that the Earth’s magnetic field was declining in strength. The magnetic poles were also moving across the surface of the Earth, but that had been noted and explained as the effect of Coriolis forces in the planet’s molten core. It had been known since the sixties that a reduction in strength meant that the magnetic field was heading for a one of its periodic changes in direction, hence the well know expression that, ‘The South will be North and the North, South.’
                ‘It is expected that the ‘flip’ will happen this year, in the summer, while  you students are lazing your time away and your Professor will be busy marking your progress so far while working on next years’ lectures and using any spare time to look into this strange event. One effect that we have already worked out is that further effects will cause causes instead of the usual scheme of things where causes cause effects. We will just have to get used to the idea that the law of cause and effects will have been stood on its head.’
                ‘Can you give us a practical example of this, Professor?’ asked a thin, pimply student, Michael Fish, who was known for achieving remarkably high marks.
                ‘Yes, Mr Fish, I can and I will. Assume we have a windy day. What will have caused the wind?’
                ‘The differential air pressure in the atmosphere resulting in a gradient so air will flow from areas of high pressure to those of lower pressure.’
                ‘Yes, well done, Mr Fish. But now it will be different. The result is the wind but the cause will be, amongst other things, wind turbines and waves. You will see that cause and effect will now have to said and written as ‘Effect and Cause’ as the effect now comes before the cause. You will note, of course that the second law of thermodynamics has not been violated.
                ‘But, where will the energy come from to turn the windmills,’ protested Michael.
                ‘It will come, of course from the Grid which is fed from power stations…-‘
                ‘…but doesn’t the power go back into the generators?’ Asked Ludmilla Karaoke.
                ‘No, you are confusing entropy with enthalpy, Miss Karaoke. Energy is not reversed, it is just that cause and effect are exchanged. Let me give you a simple example. If you are willing, I will show you what I mean. If you will kindly assist me, Mr Fish by standing out here at the front.’
Michael reluctantly walked down to the front of the lecture theatre and stood facing Theo.
                ‘Now, my intention is to slap you in the face, with your permission, of course, Mr Fish’ There was a collective gasp from the audience, it was unheard of for a member of staff to strike a student and was a sacking offence.
                ‘Well, ok, if it will help our understanding.’ Said Michael reluctantly.
                ‘I think we will all agree that the intention has been stated, I will now slap Mr Fish’s cheek, agreed?’ Asked the Prof. The students all nodded in agreement.
                ‘Now you will see a red mark slowly appearing on his left cheek. Please note that it is appearing before and without the slap. I will now slap him to complete the action. We now have cause and effect, but not in the usual order. The effect came before and caused the cause. Does everybody understand this? It is important to get a grasp of this before we move on to the next stage’
Michael was now very angry at being humiliated in front of his colleagues and swore to himself that he would exact some sort of revenge on his arrogant professor.
                ‘What would have happened if you announced your intention to slap him, the red mark appeared and then you changed your mind and did not slap him?’ Enquired Alfred.
                ‘Good question, Mr Wegener. Now we have to bring in the principle of quantum infundibulumarity and involve that pesky cat of Herr Schrödinger again, but that is a story for another day. It is something you can think about over the two days before my next lecture.

*

Captain Luc leaned on the guardrail of the port bridge wing and watched Professor ‘Theo’ as he looked out to the horizon from the TMA winch with a thousand yard stare of an experienced mariner. No one knew that Theo could not wear his contacts at sea, because of the salt in the air, so his distance vision was limited to the seagull soaring above the stern of the Jacques Picard, looking hopefully for scraps discarded from the galley. Theo was still playing the role of a young, early promoted, brilliant professor. Luc was bored, they had been following the same course for three days now and the sea was unusually calm, for the North Atlantic. This was possibly because of the theory that the Prof was investigating. Luc enjoyed the drama of a good storm.
 The ‘Picard was heading due East at six knots to avoid too much strain on the Extra Special Flexible Steel Wire Rope ( ESFSWR ) that was trawling the Towed Magnetic Array ( TMA ) close to, and parallel with, the sea bed more than two kilometres below the ship. The resulting signal was sent up the signal cable to the Electronic Magnetic Assembly ( EMA )in the control room where it displayed and recorded the strength and direction of the Earth’s magnetic signature imprinted in the rocks on the sea bed. They were now 10 kilometres East of the mid ocean ridge where new molten rock was being forced up from the depths of the Earth. It was quickly cooled by the sea water thus recording the direction of the magnetic field at the time.
The magnetic signal from the newer rocks could be seen as far weaker than the older rocks further away from the spreading zone. This confirmed what Theo had theorised in his lab, the Earth’s magnetic field was due to flip suddenly soon, possibly this summer if the trend line was to be believed. The problem now was how to improve the accuracy of that prediction because he knew that all hell would break lose when that happened. Ships and aircraft would get lost, ICBMs would suddenly be targeted on friendly sites and cities, hikers the world over would get lost – if they believed their compasses - and, possibly worst of all, geocaching enthusiasts would find that the coordinates on their hi-spec GPS receivers would no longer take them to hidden treasures.

*

Theo was back in his favourite lecture hall, 7b, leaning against this favourite podium and looking up at his less than favourite geology students – some of whom he regarded as being as thick as the ultra mafic rocks they studied.
‘Would you care to summarise where we had got to earlier in the week Miss Karaoke?’
‘You had just announced your intention to slap Michael’s face and a red mark appeared. You were then going to explain what would happen if you changed your mind and so didn’t supply the effect to cause the cause, as it were,’ said Linda.
 ‘Thank you Miss Karaoke. Yes, it gets difficult doesn’t it, maybe we need to invent some new words to cope with this confusion but I am confident we can do the job today with the ones we have and leave the invention of neologisms until another day.
You will remember Herr Schrödinger’s cat that languished in the box in a weird unclassified state so that it was neither dead nor alive until the opening of the box ‘forced’ it to choose to live or die – in other words the opening of the box collapsed the wave function. We now have a similar situation, Mr Fish’s face is in a state of proto slapping. It shows the red mark that would be caused by a slap but it does not hurt or show permanent damage until the effect, ie the slap, is carried out. I won’t carry on to prove this demonstration because, as you know, the striking of students by staff is not allowed by this university. I do, however have another, perhaps more striking demonstration for you – and I believe it is not against the rules of this institution.
‘I have here a hand gun which is loaded with one bullet. I will shoot myself in the head. The proto bullet hole will appear, but as long as I do not have the intention to carry out the threat, I will suffer no harm.’
 The mark of a bullet hole slowly appeared at the Prof’s right temple but he did not appear to be harmed at all; he carried on with his lecture with no hesitation and did not seem to be in any pain even though the stigmata on the side of his head would normally be enough to bring about a swift death.
   ‘I trust that is enough of a demonstration to convince you that we are now in a new paradigm’, said Theo as blood dripped slowly onto his collar. ‘I will now turn to the concept of infundibulumarity that I mentioned earlier and explain how …’
   The professor stopped talking and slid slowly to the floor – dead.
Michael smirked silently to himself, his idea that the intention to carry out the action didn’t have to be by the person carrying out the effect had been proven to be true. He was also aware that an undiscussed intention did not carry any fingerprints or DNA that could prove his guilt.

The coroner ruled at the inquest that the Professor’s unfortunate demise was a clear case of suicide.

Customer Service


The knife descended slowly, guided by a patient and skilled hand. It was very sharp, with just enough of a serration to make it glide easily through the meat, like a freshly stropped razor through a two day growth of stubble. It touched the surface and then started the cut. It sliced slowly down through the muscle tissue, and, as it sawed around the bone, the blood oozed out of the wound and mixed with the other fluids.
 There was a triumphant grin on the face of the diner as the cube of meat was successfully separated from the sirloin steak on his plate. He speared it with the fork in his left hand, wiped it in the puddle of peppered gravy and lifted it slowly to his mouth. He chewed indulgently to savour the just-cooked, rare flavour – exactly to his liking. There were vegetables on his plate, if you class mushrooms, small and thinly sliced with a heap of fried onion rings, as vegetables. It was Friday and therefore steak was on the menu. It was usually a 10 ounce sirloin, fresh that day from the butcher, carefully selected and cut to his own specification, which the butcher now knew. He was a regular customer for steak on a Friday.
He was a tidy man. He had a menu for the week, each day had its own evening meal. He lived on his own; who would put up with his idiosyncrasies? He enjoyed his food during the week but always looked forward to a steak on a Friday. It was the highlight of his week – unless he ruined it by overcooking, of course. That was liable to spoil his enjoyment of the complete weekend.
He took his empty plate to the sink in the small kitchen, just off the living room in his small flat, meticulously washed the plate, knife and fork and the other cooking utensils. He then rinsed them to get rid of the washing up detergent. He stacked them on the draining board for ten minutes to drain before drying them with a freshly washed cloth and then carefully put away each item in its allotted place. He then dried the draining board with the tea towel and placed it in the washing machine, ready for the weekly wash on Sunday. He rather enjoyed his OCD, it made him good at his job - both of them in fact
Opening up and switching on his lap top, he deleted his e mails, cancelled the old account he had used for the last week and set up his new, pre-arranged account to see if he had any ‘off the books’ work for the weekend. He had one potential contract so he deleted everything, cancelled his new e mail account and shut down the lap top. He knew that spending longer than was necessary on a live account was to risk exposure. He would telephone his agent later from a public telephone, one he had not used before.

*

William was born on a farm in Wales. His Mother was Rhianon; his Father, Gerwhyn. The family name was William so young William was always known as Bill Bill. It wasn’t that funny and it annoyed William immensely so his peers carried on with the joke and it stuck.
It was run as a hill farm, sheep was the only crop apart from a few vegetable sold to the neighbours when the kitchen garden was producing a summer glut. It was on the Cambrian Mountains, near Plynlymon, the source of the Severn.
He did well at maths at school. This was lucky because the farm was not big enough to support him as well as his parents and sister so he had to find a job to bring in some money. He didn’t like being poor, even less being dependent on the hill farming subsidy from the EU so he was determined to find a well-paying job and then work out a way of making a lot of money. He didn’t enjoy working - especially what people called honest work which, as far as William could see, just meant it was hard, sweaty, dirty and didn’t pay much. It didn’t really have much to recommend it as far as William was concerned. There had to be an easier way to make some money, he was determined never to be poor once he grew up. As he was good at maths, he really worked hard at it, always coming top of his class in the numerous tests and exams at the local school which was in the Bethesda Chapel, in the village near the head of the valley. He thought maths might be his ticket out of farming and out of the valley to his rich future.
He was a lonely boy, he only had one real friend, Tegwyn Evans from the next valley. He spent most of his free time either working on his Dad’s farm or studying maths. Tegwyn had a similar distaste for hard work and found sheep farming to be irksome and wanted something easier that brought in more money so he and William were natural allies all the way through school. They schemed about the future but separated at the age of fifteen when they both left school and went their separate ways.
William got his first job in an insurance company in Swansea while Tegwyn found a position as an IT trainee with a company in Birmingham. They inhabited different worlds so never met. William was successful at the insurance company and quickly worked his way through the accounts office and then into the actuarial department where he soon became head actuary by dint of his detailed work with data, his capacity for hard work and his accuracy which had a way of working through to and improving the company’s profits.

*

William had had a hard week. As you would expect of such a fastidious, fussy and neat man, he enjoyed being an actuary. One step up the boredom ladder from an accountant if the urban legends were to be believed, but this wasn’t William’s view of it at all. He enjoyed his job and didn’t find the work boring. He liked inventing spreadsheets, populating them with figures for the ages of death of thousands of people and then interrogating them with ‘what if?’ questions to see what effects various issues had on the age at death.
What age would you expect a man to die if he smoked 33 cigarettes a day, drank a bottle of red wine every day, exercised for 5 hours a week, played no sport and worked as an accountant? Yes, Henry fully expected to die at the age of 63. Some people would find this work tedious and a little morbid, but he loved it. It felt like he had the power of life and death over the people in his spreadsheets while, in fact, all he controlled was the size of the premium they would pay for the life insurance they purchased from his employer and so how much it would make. This assumed, of course that William’s predictions were correct. They had been so far.
William was convinced that all this data had a value to him but he hadn’t found how, yet.  Then he had the glimmer of an idea. He would steal identities and then carry out something else as a different person, he was not sure what yet, but it would probably be illegal, and profitable.
                The spreadsheets gave him access to those people who he predicted would die young. When a young person died who was also a customer of William’s company, he would sometimes find a reason for refusing the pay-out to the grieving relatives – often an exclusion clause in the cleverly written, but unread, small print. He used the company’s letter head to write to the family refusing the pay-out, but then continue to pay the premium so that the company would think that person was still alive. William would then assume that dead person’s identity and use his documents to appear to carry on a normal financial life. He would hire a car under that person’s name and use a forged credit card to pay for fuel and generally assume their identity when necessary to carry out his other, weekend nefarious work.

*

                It was Friday evening. George walked from his flat to a lock-up garage he had rented the previous week in the name of a young man who had just died. William had assumed his name and hired an anonymous - looking car which he had stored for a week in the garage. He had made himself known to the neighbouring garage owners as George Hammit, the name of his deceased customer. He got in and drove off. He drove carefully, within the speed limit, he didn’t want to get pulled over or photographed – the less records there were of him the better. After 32 miles, he stopped at a service area and found a working telephone. He punched in the familiar number. It was answered after four rings by the familiar, ‘yes?’
                ‘273’ responded George, with the code of the day.
                ‘Sunday afternoon. 2 o’clock. Bridge, car accident. Photo. 583 592. £70,000’
‘No problem but price is £100,000, please confirm,’ said George. He hung up, memorised the short instructions and put the OS ref into his sat nav. to see that the site for the planned accident was Stannochy Bridge, just outside Brechin on the B1934. He knew the area well. It was a nice easy job to occupy the weekend – if the customer agreed the price.
                He didn’t know why the target was wanted dead by someone, he wasn’t interested. His job was to make sure it happened and then to be sure he collected his fee. He trusted his agent, they had worked together for more than five years. His fee would be added to the growing pile in his several accounts in Freeport, Grand Bahama – he used different names for each one of course. The total was over £2 million by now, enough to fund his planned retirement in his villa on Andros Island that he had bought some fifteen years before.  This was planned to be his last contract, in spite of his agent’s pleas to continue. George did not want to take his pitcher too often to the well, like Rachel, and end up with a broken pitcher, or even head perhaps.
He liked banks that liked to say ‘yes’ and even better, didn’t like to ask questions. He never spent his fee money, he was careful to live frugally, within his means as a salaried actuary. It was just a job to him but sometimes he woke in the middle of the night and could see all his victims lined up, just looking at him until he woke up in a sweat. He thought he was getting too old for this job. He was getting forgetful and liable to make mistakes. That could be fatal for someone in a trade such as his.
                William was a hit man or, as he preferred to think of himself, a self-employed removal specialist. He moved people from this world to the next, a sort of twin world Pickfords. This was, of course, in complete contrast to his day job and he was the last person anyone would think of being a contract killer. He had none of the underworld characteristics that the general public associated with a hit man, with his precise, somewhat prissy persona and OCD. It wasn’t the sort of job that you replied to an advert in the local paper sent in your CV and then took the job if the interview was successful.
                It had all started with a telephone call one Sunday afternoon.
                ‘Hello.’
                ‘Ring me back in 15 minutes on this number from a public phone, use coins not a credit card and mention no names.’ The line went dead so William replaced the handset and then thought about it, intrigued. He tugged on his jacket and walked down the road to Tesco where he knew there was a public phone. He rang the number. A voice said ‘If I tell you that my dog was called Shep, do you know who this is?’
                ‘Yes,’ said William.
                ‘OK then. Can you meet me this afternoon, in Queen’s park, on the bench by the duck pond?’
                ‘Yes,’
                ‘Four o’clock OK?’
                ‘Yes, but what-‘
‘-I’ll explain everything then.’
William put the phone down and thought a moment. Should he go or not? He walked back to his flat, deep in thought. By the time he got back he knew that he had to go and find out what all this was about. He couldn’t bear the thought of never knowing if he had missed an opportunity, shrouded in mystery as it was.

*

At the agreed time, he approached the appointed bench and at down, joining the figure on the other end of the bench. There was no one else in sight so he thought it was safe to use names.’
                ‘Hello,‘ he said, ‘I haven’t seen or heard from you for more than ten years.’
                ‘Hello, William, you’re looking well. Yes, it must be about ten years and after today, we will never see each other again.’
                ‘What’s all this about then, why all the secrecy?’ asked William.
                ‘Well, I’ve set up a sort of agency and I wondered if you would like to make a lot of money quite quickly? I am sure that job you have is steady and secure but it is never going to make you rich is it?
                ‘Have you been snooping on me?’ asked William.
                ‘Oh yes, I’ve spent a year and a lot of money having you really well checked out. I know, for example that you have set up quite a few false identities for yourself but you haven’t exploited them yet.’
                ‘Oh, now I understand, you want to blackmail me. Is that it? How much do you want?’
                ‘No, no, far from it. I want to help you to make full use of those identities and also make you a very rich man.’
                ‘How?’ asked William.
                ‘I have a lot of contacts so if someone wants someone killed, they eventually come to me and I arrange it. That is why all the secrecy is necessary. We work through cut-outs and never meet each other. All the contact is by telephone, in code on temporary pay- as- you go mobiles and short term e mail addresses.’ He said. ‘Before I go any further, are you interested? If you’re not, we will both forget this meeting ever took place.
                ‘I like the sound of making a lot of money quickly, so go on, what would I have to do?’
                ‘I will send you an e mail from a temporary account to your temporary agreed account and then you will telephone me from a telephone you have never used before and quote the current code number. I will then give you the details of the job and the price. You can then accept or reject the job. If you accept and complete the job successfully, I will then pay your fee into any bank account you specify.’
                ‘What happens if we don’t get any customers?’ asked William.
                ‘That’s where it gets very clever. As I say, I have a lot of contacts so we make up stories and rumours to get two people at each other’s throats until it gets so bad that one guy then goes with a planted suggestion from one of my contacts to take out a contract on the other guy. Then we follow the usual procedure. Please bear in mind that most of the people we kill, society would judge as being better off dead anyway. Not really very nice people, so we are doing society a service – they just don’t know about it. We usually make the deaths look like accidents unless it is to make an example of someone but, of course, that costs extra.’
                ‘I have a question,’ said William.’
                ‘I bet it is “how much do you charge?”’, grinned the agent.
                ‘You’ve got it in one,’ said William
                ‘My fee structure varies with how much work I have do. It will be between 10% and 35%. There is no VAT payable of course…’
                ‘OK, I have heard enough, I’ll give you my answer before next Sunday.’
                ‘Give me call on this number, remember the rules; just give me the code number then yes or no. If it is no, you will never hear from me again. If it is yes, you will never see me again but I will try and get you your first job soon. Good to see you again William.’
                ‘You too.’
They shook hands and left in opposite directions.
William rang the number and accepted the job after two days thinking about it.

*

The radio was perched on top of the rows of pigeon holes, tuned to ‘Farming Today’ with Charlotte Smith. Pat was fascinated by the story about livestock breeding at the Devon County Show. He considered himself something of an expert in all things agricultural even though his garden at the back of his house in Shobrooke was less than a quarter of an acre. Most of his information was garnered from Radio 4 every morning at 6.30.  His practical agricultural experience was limited to growing vegetables.
                Pat O’Brian was in the sorting office at the back of the Post Office in Crediton, sorting out his post deliveries for the day. He had the Crediton number 5 round. Pat had been doing this round for nearly twenty five years so knew all that was going on there and called each of his customers by name and always had time for a chat. He wasn’t the fastest postman in the West but the round suited him, he enjoyed a chat with his customers, who seemed to like him.
                He was very surprised, therefore to see a letter addressed to John Evans at 12 Landscore Gardens. He knew that John had died from lung cancer about five years ago. He would still deliver it but take time to have a comforting chat with John’s Dad, Eric. He didn’t want to take the chance of his mother seeing it first. It might be too upsetting for her. He took care to place the letter on its own so that he wouldn’t miss it out on his round.

*

George had his Friday dinner, steak of course, a couple of hours sleep and then set off in his hired car for the long, overnight drive to Stannochy Bridge. He always was scrupulous in carrying out a recce and researching his target. He found that the bridge was fairly high and crossed the South Esk River. It was built in the 19th century of Devonian Scone sandstone – probably from the nearby quarry. It was also a listed building so hadn’t been kept in very good repair
                He parked the car in the disused quarry, out of sight of passers-by, and walked to the bridge. He carried a rucksack and tucked his trousers in his red socks so that he looked like a hiker. He sized up the bridge and saw that it would be fairly easy to create an ‘accident’ for a driver travelling towards Brechin from the South. A swerve to the left, just before the bridge would be enough to ensure that the car would crash through the badly maintained parapet on the narrowing road and end up in the river. All it needed was for the driver to see an obstacle on the right hand side of the road and then to swerve to avoid it. George knew just the thing to give the impression of an obstacle, he had managed a similar scenario before.

*

Pat rang the bell at 12 Landscore Gardens. Mrs Evans opened the door. Pat was a little taken aback but soon recovered, ‘err, I’ve got a letter that has to signed for by your husband,’ lied Pat. ‘Is Eric in?’
                ‘Just a minute Pat, I’ll get him for you, he’s in the garden.’ She disappeared into the house. After a moment, Eric appeared.
                ‘Can I have a quiet word with you, Eric? I didn’t want to upset your missus, I know she is a little fragile as far as John is concerned. There is a letter here addressed to him so I thought you should see it first in case it is something upsetting.’
                ‘Thanks Pat, that’s very thoughtful of you, I’ll open it out here to see what it is.’
It was from Stephen Moore, Customer Service Manager at the insurance company where George worked.
                ‘I’m not a great fan of theirs,’ grumbled Eric, ‘after them turning down our claim about John, it made things harder than necessary in my view. Now he has the nerve to send us a letter and put John’s name on it instead of mine. Anyway, let’s see what he has to say.’
                ‘That’s why I thought it a little strange and so I made sure you would read it first, before Mrs Evans.’

“Dear Mr Evans
As part of our commitment to improving our customer service, we are writing to our long standing customers to offer a 10% reduction in premium on your Life Insurance.
                We would ask that you contact us to confirm that you are happy to take up this offer and please do not hesitate to ask if there is any way we can be of help to you..
                                Yours sincerely
                                Stephen Moore
Customer Service Manager.

‘But, but we didn’t get anything at all when John died and we cancelled the Direct Debit for the insurance five years ago. They said there was something in the small print that would stop us claiming. We were in such a state at the time that we didn’t query it and just made the best if it. After all, money wouldn’t bring John back to us, would it, Pat?’
                ‘Well no, I suppose not but it is money that is due to you and John would have wanted you to have it. Look upon it as a present from him.’
Eric turned away, with tears in his eyes. ‘Thanks Pat, I’ll talk it over with the missus and we’ll decide what to do. I suppose a letter to Mr Moore wouldn’t be out of place would it?’
                ‘I’ll leave it with you then. Will I see you on Saturday for the carp competition at Shobrook Lake?’ asked Pat
                ‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ said Eric. ‘I’ll see you there, it’s your turn to supply the beer.’
                ‘Yes, I hadn’t forgotten and I see you haven’t either,’ said Pat, angrily, as he winked at his old friend.

*

George drove to Aberdeen airport, where he returned the hire car and got back in his own car for the 2 hour drive to Edinburgh Airport where he parked it in the far corner of the long term car park.
                He sorted out his identity before leaving his car. He chose one of his personas from the twenty or so he had in stock. He was now Malcolm Green, complete with passport and driving licence. He took the flight-approved carry on case from the boot, loaded with clothes to make it feel the right weight and wheeled it off to the departures area of the terminal. He then walked along to the café where he enjoyed a coffee while he waited for the incoming Easy Air flight from Bristol to arrive. When he saw the stream of arriving passenger, he merged with them, pulling his trolley bag along behind him. The Hurtz man behind the car hire desk saw him coming from arrivals and prepared to sort out a car for him.
                ‘Hello, my name is Green, Malcolm Green. I phoned you yesterday about hiring a small car for a couple of days?’
                ‘Yes Mr Green, I have an Escort for you, waiting out on our car park, fuelled up and ready to go.’
                ‘Great,’ said Malcolm. He completed the formalities, accepted the keys and walked out to the car park where he put the bag in the boot and set off.
                He drove home, only stopping in Dundee at an internet café, to print out the photo of his latest target from his current e mail account and checked that his customer had increased the price in accordance with George’s demands. 20% of the increase went to his agent, of course, so George knew he would negotiate well. It is worth a few minutes of arguing to get anything up to £20,000 – tax free.
                He did some research, timed his target’s movements on Sunday and checked the type of car. He would be driving a Skoda Yeti, License number XZ13 6FG. He would reach Stannochy Bridge, driving North at about 9pm – nicely dark and after most of the day’s traffic. The ideal time to carry out a contract.
                He then drove back to his Scottish lock up garage where he busied himself with some plywood, a jigsaw and some white paint and rope, before driving the escort into his garage and securely locking it for the night before walking around the corner to his B & B, ready for the job tomorrow.

*

Colin Read put his head around the door of Stephen Moore’s office and said, ‘you wanted a word. Steve?’
                ‘Yes, come on in Colin, pour yourself a coffee and sit down. Now let me tell you a story. As you know, I started in this job about a year ago and it has been going very well. I have really enjoyed my time here. This was until I started our loyalty programme. This was the idea that life insurance is a long term business and if you play fair with your long standing customers, you will reap the benefits and perhaps pass you on to their children, so you get the next generation of customers.
                I looked into our data base for all those people who had been with us for more than five years and wrote them a letter, offering them a 10% discount on their premiums. Most people wrote back saying they were happy with our service and they would be delighted to accept the discount. Then the unhappy letters started coming back. I received thirty six in total saying that they had expected to be recipients of a policy that paid out when one of their relations had died but that the company refused to pay on the grounds of some detail in the small print.
 I checked back through the policies and found that, according to our records, they were still in force, the insured person was in good health and the premiums were still being paid. This set alarm bells ringing, hence this conversation with you, Colin. Here is a copy of one such letter from Mr and Mrs Evans of Crediton in Devon. We obviously have a communication problem within the company and also seem to be getting a bad name through no fault of ours.’
                ‘I’ve been here as a fraud investigator for fifteen years, Steve, and this is a new one on me. Normally I investigate claims for deaths on policies that have recently been taken out, not someone trying to keep a policy going. The only reason I can think of is to use the dead person’s identity for some criminal purpose. Shall I look into this?’
                ‘Yes, definitely. Why not start with these customers in Crediton and try to find out what is going on?’
                ‘OK, Steve. I’ll have a sniff around and dig up some information.’

*

Malcolm was ready to go by 7 o’clock. He walked round to his garage, loaded the car with the plywood figure – the paint had dried overnight – and set off in the car. He had a moustache stuck on with spirit gum. He was wearing a tweed jacket with a flat cap and he had smeared mud over the car number plates so it would be difficult to identify him. He drove to Stannochy Bridge and parked the car in the same quarry as the day before, behind a stand of ash trees. It was February so it was already dark. He walked the short distance to the bridge and set up the wooden figure just behind the right hand parapet.
The time was 8-30. He waited. He saw a Yeti nearing the bridge. He ducked down behind the parapet. He waited. He pulled sharply on the rope. The driver of the Yeti saw a sheep suddenly appear in his headlights. He swerved to the left to try to avoid the animal. The car smashed through the ancient parapet and careered down the steep slope into the river where it turned over and then stayed still, jammed against a rock by the fast – flowing, peaty water.
                Malcolm collected the wooden sheep and ran down to watch the drowning car. After ten minutes there was no sign of life so he walked over to his car in the quarry, loaded the sheep into the boot and started back the way he had come, towards Edinburgh airport.
                He stopped in a layby after fifty miles and rammed his moustache, cap and tweed jacket into a black plastic sack and pushed it to the bottom of the litter bin. He took the sheep into the wood behind the layby and left it behind a tree.
                He then drove on to the airport, parked the car in the Hurtz car park and dropped the keys into the box after checking the car over for any signs that he had left behind. He pulled his wheeled carry-on over to the long term car park and retrieved his own car for the long drive South.
                He was glad to get back to his flat after a busy, but profitable, weekend.

*

There was a meeting planned in the board room for 1030. Steve was there, with Colin. The Financial and Managing Directors were there to be briefed on the security lapse and the possibility of the company’s good name being dragged through the mud.
                ‘Would you start the briefing please Colin, then we’ll ask questions to fill in the gaps as we go along. Is that OK with you two?’ asked the MD.
                ‘No problem.’ said Steve, as the FD nodded and opened his notebook.
                ‘I visited Mr and Mrs Evans and asked them all about the death of their son, John. They were very open and forthcoming although they were very puzzled as to what had happened. I told them that the company would now pay their claim in full with a 20% bonus as long as they didn’t talk about it to anyone, as the investigation was still ongoing. They are a very honest couple and didn’t want to accept the bonus until I asked them to accept that it was a gift from the company in partial recompense for all the pain they had gone through over the last five years.
                I then talked to the bank who paid the monthly direct debit for the premium. They would not disclose the account holder without a court order but I found out who it was by other means. I don’t think you should know how I did that but it is a Peter Clarke who lives in the Bahamas. I tried to trace him but the trail only led to a ‘brass plate’ bank in Nassau so the trail ended there.
 I then searched the internet for any mention of ‘John Evans’ in the last five years in Crediton, this company and then the UK. There were many John Evans in the UK but it was interesting to see that a John Evans had hired a car from Edinburgh Airport five years ago. I took a trip up there and got a copy of his documents from the guy on the desk. His address was in Dundee. I looked up the address and found that a George McCaig lived there. I then contacted the DVLC in Swansea and got a photo of this guy and, believe it or not, I recognised him. He is our chief actuary, Henry Williams.
I then started digging into the other cases, all 36 of them and found that he has been carrying out the same scam with them. I don’t know why he wants all these identities but I am sure he is up to no good with them.
He has two weeks holiday booked in a month’s time and also has a flight booked to Miami. I can’t find out where he is going after that but I suspect it is the Bahamas – I will find that out in the next couple of days.’         
‘Extraordinary! Who would have thought it of Henry, he is such a boring fellow. I think you have done an excellent job, Colin. Now, what do we think should be done about it?’ Asked the MD.
‘I think we should immediately make payments to the 35 other beneficiaries with a 20% bonus in return for silence. Just the same as the Evans,’ offered the FD. ‘We should then turn the details over to the police to investigate. I think it is too serious to keep it in-house, he obviously has some scam going on with all these identities. Suppose he has killed someone?’ They all laughed at the thought of meek and mild Henry killing anyone.
‘OK, are we all agreed on that? Right, I think you should stop investigating Colin in case Henry gets wind of it. This should stay here in this room and I will deal with the police directly. We must see justice done while protecting the good name of the company.’

*

Inspector Jenkins and Sergeant Smith stood by the departure gate at Heathrow. The flight to Miami had just started boarding. They were waiting for the tip-off from the gate staff when Robert presented his ticket and boarding card, just in case they didn’t recognise him.
Harry Roberts strode up, quite unsuspecting. The Inspector took him by the arm and said the usual words, ‘I am arresting you, Henry Williams, in connection with fraud. You do not have to….’
Harry said nothing as Sergeant Smith clipped on the handcuffs in front of the disbelieving other passengers.

*

Harry had packed just enough clothes to look as if he was going on holiday, not leaving the country for good. His flat was left to give the same impression. Even his lap top was left behind but when the police got a warrant to search the place and confiscate his computer, they found nothing. Harry had taken the precaution of replacing his hard drive with a new one and deleted the data on the old one with a hammer. It was the only type of deletion he really trusted. He rang his agent to tell him of the successful conclusion to the job and wished Tegwyn a final ‘Good-bye.’
When the interview started, the police had no real evidence of fraud, just that William / George / Henry  / had stopped the pay-outs to 36 customers and had taken over the responsibility of the direct debits. They tried to get out of Henry the reason he had done this but he kept schtum. His lawyer summed up by saying, ‘you have no information that my client committed fraud. In fact he saved the company many large pay-outs and continued to pay the direct debits. It seems to me that Henry saved the company several million pounds and cost them nothing. I think he is free to go, unless you have evidence that shows my client has committed any offence? The only offence that I can see he committed was to be too diligent in his job, he didn’t like paying out the capital.’
‘Err, well, I suppose so,’ said the inspector.
‘In that case, I expect the police to reimburse my client for the cost of the flights that he missed because of the arrest,’ said Peter Mason. ‘Goodbye.’

*

William sat back in his seat in the first class cabin of the Airbus A380 and ruminated on the events of the last five years. He had a total of over $3 million in various bank accounts and he would spend the rest of his life on Andros Island, in his villa, surrounded by clear blue seas, gently lapping on long sandy beaches. Just the occasional 10 minute flight to Nassau when he wanted a change or a visit to one of his banks.
He regretted the 36 lives that had enabled all of this but he thought he could live with the occasional nightmare, after all, no one had ever complained about the customer service he provided. It was better than herding sheep after all.
‘Not bad for an actuary,’ he thought as he sipped his complementary glass of chilled Sancerre, after a lunch of sirloin steak.
‘It’s not even Friday,’ he silently gloated to himself