‘Fair enough.’
‘Well, in the first place, please think of a child’s balloon.’
‘A what?’
‘A child’s balloon, just like those out there in the street, all the street entertainers entertaining the trippers. Good for local business, keep the street full of tourists, that’s what I say. But a balloon, new, smooth, limp. Suddenly it gets inflated, then is allowed to deflate, then it’s limp and wrinkled.’
‘Yes?’
‘That, in a nutshell, is Max Williams’s account. You know the source of all the seed money, all venture capital, all start-up loans in the Vale over the last ten years has been one account.’
‘Max Williams’s.’
‘Yes. In one. He let it flood out, haemorrhage isn’t the word. But before it deflated it had to inflate.’
‘He came into money?’
‘Yes. Suddenly and magnificently. From his brother, I believe.’
‘About how much?’
‘Off the top of my head, it was about six.’
‘Six? Thousand, hundred thousand?’
‘Million. Six million pounds.’
The quarter jack on the grandfather clock chimed, allowing time for Yellich to recover his jaw.
‘He came from nowhere.’ Ffoulkes smiled, and Yellich could tell that he was enjoying his obvious surprise. ‘Just a building society account and a pinkish current account with the Midland or the National Westminster. He walked in with a cheque and almost caused the cashier to faint, asked to open an account. We told him we needed time to follow up references, which we did. No bad news came and so we welcomed him with all the warmth which you can buy with six million pounds. This was some ten years ago.’
‘Which is a lot of warmth, especially ten years ago.’
‘Sat here in this room, drinking my last bottle of vintage claret, spent the time doing my best to persuade him to invest it, or at least put it in a deposit account, but he wanted a current account.’
‘Silly man.’
‘That’s kind of you. Confess, Mr Yellich, I had cause to regret the sacrifice of my last bottle of vintage claret. Very rapidly did I form the opinion that I was in the company of a fool. And you know what they say about a fool and his money?’
Yellich nodded. ‘I do that, sir.’
‘Well, no sooner had the balloon inflated than it began to deflate. It was depressing to watch, but it’s his money…I mean, properly invested that six million pounds would have grossed another six million in those ten years, but all the balloon did was to deflate. All Max Williams was interested in was writing cheques. Settled some money on his children, a miserly sum in proportion…about ten thousand each, spent the rest on himself and did so foolishly. He bought a rambling but rotten eighteenth-century mansion in a parkland, looked the part, and a Rolls Royce to go with it. He achieved the image…the day trippers from Leeds and Sheffield and such places would drive past his house set back from the road and doubtless be reassured that the English gentry is alive and well.’
‘Do you know where the money came from, sir?’
‘I can find out for you.’ Ffoulkes turned in his high-backed wooden swivel chair and reached for a cord which hung from the ceiling and which was flush against the wall behind him.
Yellich heard a bell jangle beyond the door of the office. There was a knock on the door. ‘Come.’ Ffoulkes answered.
A young woman entered the room, looking deferential and nervous, she wore summer clothes, but of an earlier era, with heavy but comfortable-looking shoes.
‘Fiona.’ Ffoulkes spoke in a pleasant but fatherly manner.
‘Yes, Mr Ffoulkes?’
‘Can you look up the Williams account, Max Williams. You know the account I mean, he and his lady wife being recently deceased.’
‘Yes, Mr Ffoulkes.’
‘It was opened about ten years ago on receipt of a cheque payable to Mr Williams, drawn on the account of a firm of solicitors. Can you find out who that firm was?’
‘Certainly, sir.’ Fiona turned smartly and left the room.
Ffoulkes and Yellich sat in silence, broken eventually by Ffoulkes, who asked if Yellich was a married man.
‘Yes, sir,’ Yellich beamed. ‘One son.’
‘Good man. How old is he?’
‘Twelve.’
‘Nice age. Getting a bit full of himself, is he? A bit cocksure? Mine all did at that age. I gave out most of my good hidings when they were between nine and twelve, about. As I recall.’
‘Well, he is a bit of a handful, but not so much a management problem. He’s got special needs.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Well, you know, I’m not, Mr Ffoulkes. There’s no denying that we were disappointed when we realized that he wasn’t going to be prime minister one day, but now we feel a sense of privilege…a world previously unknown to us is opening up that we would not have otherwise encountered…and Jeremy is such a sincere, genuine person…he’s growing up more slowly, he’s hanging around that age which is a lovely age for all parents.’
Ffoulkes smiled warmly.
‘We’ve been told that with love, and care, and stimulation and stability he could achieve a mental age of about twelve by the time he’s twenty or twenty-five. And he could live in a hostel where he’ll have his own room and cook his own meals if he wants to but staff will always be there, and prepared meals will be available if he wants them.’
‘There is that provision then?’
‘Oh, yes. And it means that we’ll be a little out of the mainstream of life. We won’t have grandchildren, but where Jeremy has led us and what he’s given us is not at all unpleasant.’
‘Good…good.’
There was a tap on the door. Ffoulkes said, ‘Come.’
Fiona entered and handed Ffoulkes a slip of paper. ‘The information you wanted, Mr Ffoulkes.’
‘Thank you, Fiona,’ Ffoulkes said as she turned to leave the office. Then to Yellich he said, ‘Ibbotson, Utley and Swales, solicitors, Malton. Mmm. Names as solidly Yorkshire as you’ll find anywhere. Do you know the origin of your name, Mr Yellich?’
‘Don’t, confess, Mr Ffoulkes. Eastern European, but it’s been altered over the generations.’
‘As it would, I daresay.’
‘But back to Mr Williams.’ Yellich wrote the name of the firm of solicitors on his notepad. ‘Was there any pattern to the spending?’
‘Foolish, ill-advised…more than generous…but the strange thing is that I don’t think he made any enemies.’
‘That’s interesting, especially for a businessman.’
‘I think the answer to that is that he was not a businessman. You see, I’ve been in banking all my life and it has been my experience that men who are businessmen are the ones who make enemies, and the ones who go from bungalows to eighteenth-century mansions, from Volvos to Rolls Royces. Going up you make enemies, coming down you don’t, not so much anyway. People on the way down make friends.’
‘Friends?’
‘Of the sort who will be only too pleased to help you spend your money.’
‘Ah…’
‘Are you getting to see Mr Williams now? He wasn’t so much a businessman, no matter how he styled himself.’
Ffoulkes grimaced and raised his eyebrows. ‘He was more of a soft touch for cash. His reputation got round and he became the softest touch in the Vale of York and in ten years he blew six million pounds, with a little help from his friends, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘People starting up a money-minting business that just can’t fail…that sort of thing, just need a few thousand to launch them, and another few thousand to get them through the first quarter…you grasp the pattern?’
‘I do. I actually feel sorry for the man.’ Yellich doodled on his pad. ‘You couldn’t advise him?’
‘No. Can’t interfere and he wouldn’t listen. He seemed to live in a cloud-cuckoo-land. It wasn’t long ago that he sold his mansion and his Rolls Royce. Even the move to a cramped little bungalow and loss of his prestige motor car didn’t seem to bring home to him the enormity of his financial loss. Only recently he came to me for a loan of some money to have a house built…he got his loan but only upon surrender of the deeds to his bungalow, they’re in the vault. We can recover the money from his beneficiaries, so we won’t lose it - the bungalow is worth more than the loan. Feel sorry for his children…they’re not going to inherit the bungalow. But they’ve both got careers, they’ll survive…they won’t sink…but you know Mr Yellich, the only place Max and Amanda Williams were heading was the Salvation Army shelter.’ Ffoulkes paused. ‘Complex man.’