He swung round to me again and poked the finger rigidly under my nose. ‘Bloody liar. Locking up’s too bloody, good for bastards like you.’
The manager arrived, with the head waiter hovering behind.
‘Mr Elroy,’ the manager said courteously. ‘A bottle of wine for your party, compliments of the management.’ He beckoned a finger to the head waiter, who deftly proffered a bottle of claret.
The manager was young and well-dressed, and reminded me of Vivian Iverson. His unexpected oil worked marvels on the storm, which abated amid a few extra ‘bastards’ and went back to its table muttering under its breath.
The people at the other tables watched from the cover of animated conversation, while the head waiter drew the cork for Elroy and poured the free wine. The manager drifted casually back to Jossie and me.
‘There will be no charge for your dinner, sir.’ He paused delicately. ‘Mr Elroy is a valued customer.’ He bowed very slightly and drifted on without waiting for an answer.
‘How cool of him,’ Jossie said, near explosion.
‘How professional.’
She stared at me. ‘Do you often sit still and let people call you a bastard?’
‘Once a week and twice on Sundays.’
‘Spineless.’
‘If I’d stood up and slogged him, our steaks would have gone cold.’
‘Mine has, anyway.’
‘Have another,’ I said. I started to eat again where I had left off, and so, after a moment or two, did Jossie.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I’m all agog. Just what was that all about?’ She looked round the restaurant. ‘You are now the target of whispers, and the consensus looks unfavourable.’
‘In general,’ I said, spearing lettuce, ‘people shouldn’t expect their accountants to help them break the law.’
‘Sticks?’
‘And accountants unfortunately cannot discuss their clients.’
‘Are you being serious?’
I sighed. ‘A client who wants his accountant to connive at a massive piece of tax-dodging is not going to be madly pleased when the accountant refuses to do it.’
‘Mm.’ She chewed cheerfully. ‘I do see that.’
‘And,’ I went on, ‘an accountant who advises such a client to declare the loot and pay the tax, because otherwise the nasty Revenue men will undoubtedly find out, and the client will have to pay fines on top of tax and will end up very poorly all round, because not only will he get it in the neck for that one offence, but every tax return he makes in the future will be inspected with magnifying glasses and he’ll be hounded for evermore over every penny and have inspectors ransacking every cranny of his house at two in the morning...’ I took a breath. ‘...such an accountant may be unpopular.’
‘Unreasonable.’
‘And an accountant who refuses to break the law, and says that if his client insists on doing so he will have to take his custom somewhere else, such an accountant may possibly be called a bastard.’
She finished her steak and laid down her knife and fork. ‘Does this hypothetical accountant snitch to the tax man?’
I smiled. ‘If the client is no longer his client, he doesn’t know whether his ex-client is tax-dodging or not. So no, he doesn’t snitch.’
‘Elroy had it all wrong, then.’
‘Er,’ I said, ‘it was he who set up the scheme from which Sticks drew the cash. That’s why he is so furious. And I shouldn’t be telling you that.’
‘You’ll be struck off, or strung up, or whatever.’
‘Sky high.’ I drank some wine. ‘It’s quite extraordinary how many people try to get their accountants to help them with tax fiddles. I reckon if someone wants to fiddle, the last person he should tell should be his accountant.’
‘Just get on with it, and keep quiet?’
‘If they want to take the risk.’
She half laughed. ‘What risk? Tax-dodging is a national sport.’
People never understood about taxation, I thought. The ruthlessness with which tax could be collected put Victorian landlords in the shade, and the Revenue people now had frightening extra powers of entry and search.
‘It’s much safer to steal from your employer than the tax man,’ I said.
‘You must be joking.’
‘Have some profiteroles,’ I said.
Jossie eyed the approaching trolley of super-puds and agreed on four small cream-filled buns smothered in chocolate sauce.
‘Aren’t you having any?’ she demanded.
‘Think of Tapestry on Wednesday.’
‘No wonder jockeys get fat when they finally let themselves eat.’ She spooned up the dark brown goo with satisfaction. ‘Why is it safer to steal from your employer?’
‘He can’t sell your belongings to get his money back.’
The big eyes widened.
‘Golly!’ she said.
‘If you run up debts, the courts can send bailiffs to take your furniture. If you steal instead, they can’t.’
She paused blankly in mid-mouthful, then went on chewing, and swallowed. ‘Carry right on,’ she said. ‘I’m riveted.’
‘Well... it’s theft which is the national sport, not tax-dodging. Petty theft. Knocking off. Nicking. Most shop-lifting is done by the staff, not the customers. No one really blames a girl who sells tights all day if she tucks a pair into her handbag when she goes home. Pinching from employers is almost regarded as a rightful perk, and if ever a manufacturing firm puts an efficient checker on the staff exits there’s practically a riot until he’s removed.’
‘Because he stops the outward march of spanners and fork-lift trucks?’
I grinned. ‘You could feed an army on what disappears from the fridges of hotels.’
‘Accountants,’ she said, ‘shouldn’t find it amusing.’
‘Especially as they spend their lives looking for fraud.’
‘Do you?’ she said, surprised. ‘Do you really? I thought accountants just did sums.’
‘The main purpose of an audit is to turn up fiddles.’
‘I thought it was... well... to add up the profit or loss.’
‘Not really.’
She thought. ‘But when Trevor comes to count the hay and saddles and stuff, that’s stocktaking.’
I shook my head. ‘More like checking on behalf of your father that he hasn’t got a stable lad selling the odd bale or bridle on the quiet.’
‘Good heavens.’ She was truly astounded. ‘I’ll have to stop thinking of auditors as fuddy-duddies. Change their image to fraud squad policemen.’
‘Not that, either.’
‘Why not?’
‘If an auditor finds that a firm is being swindled by its cashier, for instance, he simply tells the firm. He doesn’t arrest the cashier. He leaves it to the firm to decide whether to call in the handcuffs.’
‘But surely they always do.’
‘Absolutely not. Firms get red faces and tend to lose business if everyone knows their cashier took them for a ride. They sack the cashier and keep quiet, mostly.’
‘Are you bored with telling me all this?’
‘No,’ I said truthfully.
‘Then tell me a good fraud.’
I laughed. ‘Heard any good frauds lately?’
‘Get on with it.’
‘Um...’ I thought. ‘A lot of the best frauds are complicated juggling with figures. It’s the paperwork which deceives the eye, like a three card trick. I paused, then smiled. ‘I know a good one, though they weren’t my clients, thank God. There was a manager of a broiler-chicken factory farm which sold thousands of chickens every week to a freezing firm. The manager was also quietly selling a hundred a week to a butcher who didn’t know the chickens had fallen off the back of a lorry, so to speak. No one could ever tell how many chickens there actually were on the farm, because the turnover was so huge and fast, and baby chicks tend to die. The manager pocketed a neat little untaxed regular income, and like most good frauds it was discovered by accident.’