There was silence for a moment and then Palmer chuckled and it turned into a laugh, ‘back of the net,’ he said.
I didn’t feel guilty about the money we’d shoved away. There were a lot of people on my payroll and I had to stump up the cash for them week in, week out. There were also the ‘drops’ to various fixers, problem-solvers and intelligence-gatherers, not least Amrein and his highly shady and very expensive organisation, who effectively legitimised us in the criminal world. Amrein’s outfit gave us permission to control the city and, in theory at least, ensured no one else could take it away from us. All of this was a form of tax and I didn’t want to be shelling out millions more for the government to waste it on Enterprise Zones or the Big Society. Magicians use distraction, misdirection and sleight of hand to make people look the other way while they get away with their trick. We are just like magicians, only on a much larger scale.
Some of our legitimate businesses still paid tax of course. It was great cover and we are not entirely hard hearted. Besides, we weren’t the worst offenders. The biggest money launderers are the banks. Standard Chartered, a noble old British bank, was forced to pay a fine of $340 million to the US government because it laundered two hundred and fifty billion dollars of dirty Iranian money through its marbled corridors. That pales compared to the $1.9 billion dollars HSBC was fined for laundering drug money for criminal cartels. I don’t see Britain’s biggest bank mentioning that on any of their uplifting TV commercials.
Big corporations have been moving profits abroad for years. In their world it’s simply clever accounting. The billionaire retailer Philip Green avoided a?285 million pound tax bill by making himself an offshore resident of Monaco, then putting his company in his wife’s name. The government came after him straight away but only to seek his advice. The Prime Minister got him to conduct a review of government spending. You honestly couldn’t make that shit up.
We talked all afternoon, until Baxter inadvertently stumbled on a thorny topic. It was strange that among the millions we’d laundered it was a few grand that caused the falling out.
‘Three per cent tax?’ Palmer said, as if he still couldn’t get his head around it, ‘normal people pay way more than that.’
‘And there’ll be plenty left over for a sizeable donation to the Conservative party,’ Baxter told him.
‘A donation?’ Kinane was incredulous, ‘to the fucking Tories? Are you having a laugh?’
‘If we drop fifty grand into Tory coffers they’ll leave us alone,’ explained Baxter, ‘they’ll be too embarrassed to catch us, if they’ve got to admit they took money from us. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy; they only take money from legitimate businessmen therefore, in taking our money, we must be legitimate businessmen.’
‘But we’re not legitimate, we’re bent and everybody knows it. SOCA will warn them off us,’ said Palmer.
SOCA or the Serious Organised Crime Agency was tasked with bringing down drug smugglers, money launderers, armed, violent criminals and people traffickers. We’d never trafficked human beings but we ticked every other box on their wish list and always had to assume they were keeping an eye on us.
‘SOCA would warn them about taking money from Gallowgate Holdings, but they know nothing about Barrack Road Investments.’ I informed him, ‘and our real names aren’t on the founding papers.’
‘But are there not rules about political parties taking money from offshore companies?’ Palmer asked.
‘Barrack Road Investments has a UK-based sister company, for want of a better phrase, with a discreet, private little office in London from which we can donate to whoever we please. In reality it’s little more than a PO box.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Kinane’s mood had soured, ‘giving money to the Tories? Might as well give it to the IRA or the Taliban.’
‘Oh don’t be ridiculous Joe!’ mocked Baxter.
‘Why not?’ Kinane protested, ‘they’ve both done less damage to the north-east than the fucking Tory party,’ and he folded his arms defiantly.
‘Let’s talk about it later, eh?’ I suggested. ‘Nothing’s been decided.’ I had been hoping for a calm and pleasant day for once, but this wasn’t going to be it. What should have been a celebratory lunch ended on a tense note.
7
That night I went looking for Vince. He was an unassuming lad who kept his head down and his hands clean but could be relied upon to manage a handful of our bars and clubs in the Bigg Market and the Quayside. This time of night he would normally be down at Privado, our low-rate lap-dancing bar. We didn’t spend any money on fancy trimmings here. All we needed was a couple of poles and a glitter ball, then we turned the lights down low and we were in business. The lasses here made their money persuading the punters to shell out for a private dance. They would pay to see them topless and give more to get them fully nude but it would all be over in the time it took to play two tracks. Then another lass would come over to fleece them out of more cash. I’ve seen drunk guys walk out of there hundreds of pounds down, with absolutely nothing to show for it but the hazy drunken memory of a bit of naked flesh.
There was never any shortage of lasses willing to give it a go. I didn’t know what the guys who came here thought of the girls after they left but I knew what the girls thought of the men; mugs, every last one of them.
I’d not been in Privado for a long time. There was no need. Vince ran it and the place virtually looked after itself. I had bigger things to care about. Big Auty was on the door, as always, with one of the younger lads from Joe Kinane’s gym.
‘Evening Davey,’ he said. I’d known ‘Big Auty’ for years, ever since I was a kid in fact. He was a legend on the doors of Newcastle and he had a sideline as corner man for our boxing prospect, Phil ‘The Warrior’ Watson. His hair was silver now but he was still one of the toughest guys in the city. When he was on a door for us there was never any trouble.
‘Evening Auty,’ I said, ‘Vince around?’
He nodded, ‘I’ll get him.’
I followed Big Auty into Privado and stood in the bar while he went out back to find Vince. The first thing that struck me was how dead it was. Either the economy really was beginning to bite or men had finally realised that going to a lap-dancing bar was about as sensible as keeping a bonfire going all night with ten pound notes. I could only see two punters. They were outnumbered by twelve girls in lingerie or skimpy dresses.
A voice from the bar said, ‘Look what the cat dragged in.’
I’d hoped that Michelle wouldn’t be in Privado. I figured she’d surely quit the business by now. She was sitting on a bar stool in an old-fashioned cocktail dress, the ones with the split up the side that go right up to the hip. A couple of the other girls looked a bit uncomfortable, because they knew who I was, but I ignored Michelle’s comment. She wasn’t going to let me off that lightly. ‘I thought you’d forgotten all about us.’
‘No,’ I told her quietly, ‘but I lived abroad for a while.’
‘So I heard,’ she said, way too brightly. She would also have heard I was shacked up with Bobby’s daughter and a father to boot. I made sure I kept eye contact with Michelle, so she understood she couldn’t push me too far. I knew why she was annoyed at me. We’d had a night, just the one, and I hadn’t bothered to call her for a repeat performance. At the time I was newly broken up with Laura and trying very hard not to climb into bed with Sarah, because I knew Bobby would never have tolerated that. Michelle was single and seemed the ideal solution but she woke up in the morning acting like I was her new boyfriend, while I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
Under normal circumstances, I would have made more of an effort to ensure there was no lingering bitterness between us. I would have at least called her, or bought her some dinner and explained I was just not ready for a commitment right now, but they weren’t normal circumstances at the time and I had way too much to deal with to worry about her hurt feelings.