“If you don’t give me a straight answer, young lady, you’re going to find it’s later than you think.”
“The owner of the haulage company is in a real bind,” Spence informed Andy as her voice took on a more matter-of-fact, down-to-business tone. “His insurance underwriters are threatening to cancel their policies with him in the next few days if he doesn’t provide them with proof that his company and its employees are not responsible for the loss of several shipments. Without insurance to cover both his drivers and the cargos they haul, a company like his can’t operate.”
“Sounds like a police matter to me,” Andy grunted. “Why isn’t he going to them?”
“It’s complicated,” Spence replied. “According to Charles Mills, the company’s owner, several containers his company was contracted to pick up at the port of Antwerp have simply disappeared after they’ve been offloaded and claimed by drivers who, according to the port authority, were his, something he denies.”
“I’m still not seeing what we can do.”
“Well, you could start by stopping in Morpeth after you’ve finished fending off the savage hordes you and all your little friends are facing and have a chat with Mills.”
As much as he hated it when Spence or Tommy made fun of his hobby, Andy never allowed them to see it. “Fine, fine,” he muttered. “Call him and tell him I’ll stop by midmorning on Monday. Then send me a phone number and an address.”
“Already done,” Spence chirped brightly.
“Is there anything else before I hang up?”
“Yes, there is. You be careful,” Spence advised mockingly. “While those weekend Picts you’re always running into might look like oversized Smurfs, I’ve read they can be quite mean when you piss them off.”
“Say good-bye, Spence.”
“Good-bye, Spence.”
After clicking off his mobile, Andy tossed it back onto the small table next to his cot and rolled over, determined to put Century Consultants and Charles Mills’ problem out of mind, at least for what was left of the weekend. They, and all the problems brought on by the advent of the twenty-first century, would still be there come Monday. They always were despite his best efforts to escape both by donning the panoply of a first-century Roman legionnaire and losing himself in the routine of ancient camp life.
Northumberland Haulage was a modest, family run business that catered to the needs of other small businesses throughout North East England. “My grand-da started the company after the Second World War with his brother Clyde,” Charles Mills explained to Andy as he was leading him into an office cluttered with boxes, filing cabinets, and stacks of overstuffed manila folders covering just about every flat surface in the room. “That’s them and the first lorry they owned,” he informed Andy while pointing over his shoulder at a framed black-and-white photo hanging behind Mills’ desk. “It was a surplus Bedford QLD like the one grand-da drove during the war.
“They started with that one truck and a philosophy that no load was too small or distance too great,” he went on as Andy settled into the only seat next to Mills’ desk that didn’t have something stacked on it. “That kind of thinking is ideal for us up here. Many of the small businesses throughout Northumberland don’t import or export enough product to fill an entire shipping container. That’s why we’re so popular. We specialize in less-than-truckload shipping. We pick up a container that comes in from overseas at the port and haul it to our warehouse. There it’s unloaded, inventoried, and stored while the owners of the goods are notified that their portion of the shipment is here. Some prefer to come and pick it up themselves, others hire us to bring it to them using the smaller trucks and vans in our fleet.”
Though he had not asked Mills to go into detail about his company, Andy was glad the man was doing so. Mills’ detailed tutorial in the ins and outs of the shipping business gave Andy a clear idea of what his company did and how it operated. It was absolutely critical that he and his team understood what they were looking at and how all the pieces of a business they were working with fit together when the time came to sort through the computer-related problems Northumberland Haulage was experiencing, problems Mills had yet to delve into.
“Companies or merchants up here who import items from Asia or the Americas that are too bulky or expensive to ship by other means go through a brokerage firm in the country of origin that packs a container with shipments headed to the same general region until it’s filled,” Mills explained as tea was being served by a woman he introduced as his niece as well as the company’s secretary and receptionist. “The brokers then contract with a shipping company there, see to it the container is loaded on a ship, and forward the information and documentation to the receiving port and the haulage company that has been hired to pick up the container at the port. Well, in the case of this latest row, we had to trust the brokerage firm in Singapore we always do business with when we need to. My guess is that’s where our problems are coming from. You see, the foreign brokerage firm is the one who’s responsible for seeing that only those items that are listed on the shipping documents are packed into the containers we’ve been hired to pick up at our end. Our drivers don’t go through the containers, most of which are packed in tighter than a teenage girl in a summer ball dress.
“I take it someone in Singapore is adding a few extra items somewhere along the way,” Andy surmised before taking a sip of tea.
Mills shrugged. “That’s my guess. Starting three months ago, none of the containers originating from there that we were hired to pick up in Antwerp ever made it out of the port, at least not behind one of my trucks. Somehow the people who run that port managed to lose the container after it was offloaded and before the driver I sent to pick it up arrived there. It wasn’t until a truck being driven by my wife’s cousin, who’s also one of my most reliable drivers, ran headlong into a truck made to look like one of mine going into the port as he was leaving it that I realized what was really going on.”
Unsure where this was going, and eager to be on his way, Andy set his cup aside and clasped his hands together as he eased back in his seat. “This seems like a simple police matter to me.”
In response, Mills snorted as he rolled his eyes. “A police matter, yes. Simple, no. You see, the Antwerp port authority has washed its hands of the matter. They claim they’re innocent of mishandling the containers that have gone missing. They keep telling the authorities they have all the documentation they need to prove their innocence, which they handed over to the Belgium police. The Belgium police, finding no fault with the port authority based on the docs they were given, have opened an investigation into my company’s operations, one our own police is cooperating with. Well,” Mills explained as he threw his hands up, “as you can imagine, the underwriters who insure us are now refusing to do so until the matter is cleared up. And without the ability to insure our operations, no one in his right mind will hire us, which leaves us dead in the water.”
“So, what can Century Consultants do to help you?”
“My solicitor, who also happens to be the only son-in-law of mine who’s switched on, suggested we have someone who’s working for us look into the matter. Since so much of the coordination is done via the Internet, and the shipping and customs documents as well as the certificates used by drivers are computer generated, he thinks a company like yours is the very one we need to help us run this to ground.”
Before answering, Andy drew in a deep breath. He hated dealing with foreigners, especially anyone who was somehow connected to the European Union, people who had taken bureaucratic inefficiency to a whole new level. “I do hope you know this isn’t going to be easy.”