“It’s about counterfeit money, Mr. Rogers. Or to be more specific, the laundering of counterfeit money into the banking system. A very serious crime.”
I sat back and watched the expressions chase each other over his face. Bewilderment. Confusion. Then hope, the prisoner finding out that the bars are loose, that the door has been left unlocked. I don’t know what this is about, he was thinking, but maybe, just maybe it’s nothing to do with me and I’m going to get away with whatever it is I am up to.
“I... I don’t know anything about any counterfeit money.”
“Mmm.” I paused for a moment and just stared at him. “Do you not? Isn’t it the case that you disperse a fair amount of money via these premises?”
“Well, it’s not a huge amount, but some — but I—”
“Put a figure on it.”
“Sorry?”
“In a week, how much?”
“Er, I don’t know, I mean, without looking it up, six or seven thousand, it’s not a lot these days, really—”
“Six or seven thousand pounds a week. Fifty weeks a year, say? That’s three hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year. Three years, and there’s over a million in cash passing through here. No, it’s not a lot, Mr. Rogers, but that’s how many counterfeiting operations work, drip-feeds so the banks won’t notice it, using seemingly legitimate businesses to get the bent cash out there.”
“No, but that’s impossible, I mean — the money doesn’t come from me, how could it, it comes in from head office.”
“Does it indeed?” I sat forward in my seat, not hiding my excitement. “And does anyone in particular handle that side of things? In head office I mean.”
“Er, yes, it’s a Mr. Hassan,” Rogers said, “that’s who I deal with. Anwar Hassan.”
“Anwar Hassan.” I said the name slowly, in the way that you do when it is a name that you have said many times before.
“You already know about him?”
I said nothing, but let the silence speak for itself. I could see the spark in Rogers’s eyes, the quick assumption, the prospect of an escape into daylight when only minutes before he had thought himself condemned to darkness.
“Of course you do,” he said. His voice dropped to a level that was part conspiratorial, part overly friendly, wholly nauseating. “Always had my doubts about him. Of course, you know what it’s like these days, can’t say anything, especially with him being, you know.”
“In head office?” I kept my voice completely neutral.
“No, no, I mean with him being, you know, foreign. I mean, he sounds English enough, heard him on the phone you’d never know he wasn’t one of us, but still, it’s a cultural thing, isn’t it, trust, just not the same over there, is it?”
Revolting man, I thought. Time to put you back on the back foot, don’t want you getting too confident.
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Rogers.” My voice was full of contempt. “My wife is Egyptian.”
“Uh—”
“Of course, you probably assumed that being with the police I’d be as free with casual offhand racism as you are, Mr. Rogers.” He spluttered noises that never quite made it into words. “But it’s not like that anymore in the force. And for some of us it never has been. So let’s just move on, and I’ll forget what you just said to me. Understood?”
“Yes, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t. Don’t try and apologize or explain it away because you will only make things worse, and frankly I don’t have the patience. Now, back to Mr. Hassan. He mustn’t get a whiff of the fact that we have him under investigation. If I hear that he has heard anything...”
Rogers virtually fell off his chair in his eagerness to agree with me, to reassure me that Hassan would hear nothing from him, not a word.
“Good. I think I can trust you in this.” Rogers simpered a nervous smile back at me in response. “If the money dispersed through your office is counterfeit, then it would be a vital link in our chain of evidence.”
Rogers looked thoughtful. At least, that’s what I think it was; if I didn’t have the experience of the last few minutes in his company, then I’d have just thought that he was staring vacantly into space. I sat and waited, finishing my coffee.
“I don’t see how it helps him,” he said eventually. “I mean, I can see that it gets the counterfeit money out and into circulation, but where does Hassan—” He caught my look. “Where do the criminals get their money back?”
“Hallmark of a sophisticated counterfeiting laundry job,” I said. “You keep the dispersal separate from the recouping operation. Diversify the dispersal routes and delink the income side of the operation as far as possible, get the proceeds back laundered through the accounting system, wrap it all up in transfers so complex that even the auditors miss them.”
“Of course, of course, yes, I see.”
“Or more likely, and much more simply, someone at head office just brings in a load of counterfeit cash in a sports bag and just swaps it for the legitimate money before it’s couriered out to you all in the branches. Beautifully simple, if the opportunity is there, and no accounting audit will ever show it up. One minute’s work, and clean money turns into dirty money as if by magic, and the clean money goes back to those in charge of the operation.”
Rogers nodded. “Bloody clever.”
“Bloody illegal. Have you any idea what effect counterfeiting has on the national economy? Serious destabilization of fiscal planning, Mr. Rogers. Serious. And that’s why they pay me a decent amount of money to catch up with people—” I looked Rogers straight in the eye. “—who cheat their employers—” He blinked. “—and steal money—” He swallowed. “—fraud, all of it. But most of all, currency counterfeiting. That’s my main interest these days.”
“Yes, I can see why that’s the worst,” he said, desperate to drag the conversation away from the question of those who defraud their employers. “Sensible to concentrate efforts.”
“If I can determine that the money you are dispersing — unknowingly — is counterfeit, then that puts us a huge step forward.”
“Of course, anything we can do to help, anything.”
“You have the money for this week? Here on the premises?”
“What? Yes. It was delivered yesterday. It’ll only start going out tomorrow.”
I smiled, and pulled the pen from my pocket. “Get me one note please, Mr. Rogers. Any one. Pick it at random.” I waved the pen at him. “Let’s find out if you’re going to be able to help us make this vital link in the chain, and get me out of your hair. Any one, Mr. Rogers. Any one.”
He scuttled out of the office. I leaned back and thought about having another biscuit, decided not to. With luck I would be finished here soon, and could start thinking about lunch. Within a minute Rogers came back in, a twenty pound note in his hand. He waved it like a little girl waving her flag at the queen. I stood up, uncapped my pen. “On the desk please.”
He swept some papers aside to make room, laid the note down on the desk. I walked up to it, squatted down and peered at it, stood up and looked down on it, tilted my head from side to side to look at it from every angle. “Good,” I said. “Very good.” I picked it up, holding the tiniest portion of one corner, held it up to the light. “Very, very good.” I put it back down on the table again, readied my pen. Rogers crowded in close to me, and I could smell his sweat under his too-strong aftershave.
“What are we looking for?” he asked. I could feel the heat off him and wished that he would take a step back. I could make him jump if I wanted to, but now was not the time.