Текст книги "Guilt Tripper"

Автор книги: Geoff Small

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 8 страниц)

PART TWO

 

CHAPTER: 5

 That October, Judith started her sabbatical from work and moved to Glasgow, where she rented a one bed-roomed, West End apartment. Situated on the top floor of a blonde-stone tenement, her bow windowed living room was in the building’s conical roofed corner turret, which reminded her of a French Chateau. These tenements where broadly known as either blonde-stones or red-stones, but they were far more varied than that, with six different types of ‘blonde’ and four types of ‘red’ across the city.

 Judith’s apartment was only a couple of blocks from the university: a neo-gothic palace in blonde sandstone, which had a soaring bell tower with a sooty, skeletal steeple resembling a shuttlecock. It was here, after the first of her tutorials, that she ran into Angie beneath the vaulted cloisters that bisected the grass quadrangle. Wearing a grey woollen roll neck with jeans, and cloaked to the waist in red coiled hair, the youngster had just begun the final year of an English degree. Spotting Judith, her sea green eyes conveyed genuine delight and the pair of them walked together, emerging from the cloisters onto a hilltop overlooking Kelvingrove Park, which was now approaching its full autumn splendour. As Judith focused on the twin red-stone campaniles of the Kelvingrove art gallery, towering above the golden trees down below, Angie updated her on the Herman saga, which had taken a sensational twist. Apparently, he’d admitted picking the prostitute up, but reckoned somebody else had assaulted her. That somebody was Bob Fitzgerald.

 “The trial’s going on as we speak. I gave evidence last week and somehow managed to get through it without any aspersions being cast against my character, either by the barristers or the press – thank God.” Angie looked up at the pale blue sky momentarily, holding both hands together as if praying. “When they asked why it had taken me so long to go to the police, I said I probably never would have had it not been for you.” She winced in an expression of regret. “I’m sorry, but I mentioned your name in court…it just sort of happened before I realized.”

 Judith rubbed Angie’s shoulder. “That’s ok, don’t worry about it.”

 The young student puffed her cheeks out, trying to repress a smile of relief before continuing.

“The prosecution reckoned that Herman was an obsessive Squeaky Kirk fan who stalked the band. Bob exploited this by using him to procure prostitutes, so as not to run the risk of being seen soliciting himself and ending up on the front page of the Daily Record. On the occasion in question, Herman’s picked up this girl – Carina Curran – and driven her to Bob’s secret shag-pad apartment over in Govan.” To indicate where she meant, Angie nodded towards some dinosaurian looking, black shipyard cranes, beyond the tenement rooftops on the opposite, south side of the River Clyde. “Anyway, Herman’s been waiting in the kitchen there, ready to transport her back to Calton, post coitus, when he hears a loud argument in the bedroom. Carina – a classically trained cellist by the way – was taunting Bob, saying that she knew who he was and that his music was crap. Herman reckons she was going on and on and then, suddenly, she just stopped mid-sentence and there was complete silence. The next thing, Bob emerged and asked him to come to the room, where Carina’s lying in a pool of blood with a bronze paper weight on the floor by her head. Bob was convinced she was dead and begged Herman to dispose of the body, but he refused and left her at the side of Paisley Road instead, after ringing an ambulance.” Judith was shaking her head, lower lip hanging. “Of course, afterwards, Bob’s had no choice but to let Herman hang around with him full time, fearing he’d spill the beans otherwise.”

 “What’s Bob had to say?”

 Angie screwed her face up in disappointment, “nothing. He said zilch in the police station and, as yet, zilch in court. He’s being represented by a guy called Fergus Baxter, who looks after all the gangsters…but even he couldn’t prevent him being remanded in Barlinnie Prison.”

 “So what happened to Herman then?”

 “He got remanded in Barlinnie too, but after a week they transferred him to a mental hospital.” Judith closed her eyes and exhaled, as if a safety valve had been activated in her body, releasing some of the pressure induced by such hideous news. “Apparently, he’s an obsessive. Once he gets his mind on something it completely overwhelms his life, until the strain becomes too much and he has to be detained in hospital. Giving evidence, his psychiatrist said he suffers from something akin to Asperger’s syndrome…reckons that Bob and the Squeaky Kirk we’re most probably the only thing in his brain these last few years, outside of normal day to day activities.”

 There was a brief silence and Angie looked suddenly distressed, as if the possibility of a miscarriage of justice had finally struck her.

 “What did this girl who got beaten look like? Was she pretty?” Judith enquired, hungrily.

 Angie shook her head. “She was fat – especially for a junkie. According to Herman’s evidence that’s how Bob likes them. She had massive tits, long, shaggy dark hair, thigh length leather boots and a short black skirt to show her big butt off.”

 “She’s the opposite of Ingrid in other words.”

 “Ingrid’s a trophy, to be exhibited alongside his flash car and designer clothes. It’s not what she does for him sexually or emotionally that matters, so much as the impression she makes upon his audience. Perhaps Carina’s indicative of the real Bob, trapped somewhere beneath all that received snobbery…a Bob who secretly loves baked beans, even though he’ll only eat caviar in public.”

 Judith exhaled again. “How’s Ingrid coping with all of this?”

 “According to gossip, she was spending a lot of time with her ex-boyfriend, that taxi driver fellow who turned up at the party.”

 “Really?”

 “But then the apartment got repossessed. She went back to England and the taxi driver had a breakdown, apparently. Last I heard he was living over in the East End, where he’s being looked after by a brother who’s trying to get off herione.”

 Knowing how liberal people could be with the term ‘breakdown’, Judith was anxious to see for herself just how Danny was bearing up.

CHAPTER: 6

 The next day, after a busy afternoon of research for her course, Judith found Finley White’s address on the Internet. In the process she happened across a local newspaper’s website, its front page exclaiming:

JUDGE ORDERS RETRIAL – ROCK STAR RELEASED

According to the article, Bob Fitzgerald’s defence had demanded a retrial, not least because the only evidence against him had been from his co-defendant Herman Knapp – a certified madman. The newspaper also suggested that the retrial was just a formality, because, in the absence of compelling new evidence, Bob would almost certainly be acquitted. In the meantime he was free to go, unlike Herman, who remained incarcerated under the Mental Health Act.

 That evening, Judith drove across to Alexander Parade, a thoroughfare of fine sandstone tenements, just east of the city centre. Here and there in the darkness, the white light of a booze store or take away broke up the wall of corrugated shutters on the ground floors, but apart from that it was a murky place. She turned into a side street where a dozen teenagers were hanging about on the corner, wearing tracksuits and baseball caps and throwing lighted fireworks at one another. As she passed, one of them doubled up to stare inside the car, trying to ascertain whether its cargo was friend or foe.

 The White brothers lived in a quadrangle of three floored, brown brick apartments, huddled between an enclave of industrial units and the M8 motorway, which emitted an incessant hum. As Judith waited for a response from the intercom, she kept glancing anxiously over each shoulder, fearing that the street corner gang may have followed her. She pressed the buzzer five times without any response and was just turning to go when the speaker crackled into life and a husky, unfamiliar male voice asked her identity. Surprisingly, the communal door clicked open without her having to explain anything more than her name, as if the person on the other end were already aware of her existence.

 Judith was half-way up the brightly lit stairs when a thin character in a white Lacoste shell suit came to meet her, introducing himself as Finley White. About thirty-five years old, he had medium length greasy hair, a gaunt face and naïve looking, watery eyes. After taking her coat, he led her into the dank apartment, where she sat on a cigarette burned, burgundy coloured couch, next to a copy of that night’s local newspaper.

 “So you’re Judith,” he said, as if having finally solved some lifelong puzzle.

 “Oh, your brother’s mentioned me then?”

 “Oh yes – he’s mentioned nothing else. When I took him in, he just kept muttering, like one of those dying cowboys in the movies: ‘Must say sorry to Judith…Must say sorry to Judith.’ Does that make any sense to you?”

 “No. He’s certainly owes me no apologies that I know of.”

 “Well, he’s not uttered a single word since…I think it’s his pride.”

 “Pride?”

 “Yes.” Fin sat down next to Judith, his voice dropping to a gravely whisper. “I think he feels ashamed that he kicked me out the house, especially now he’s relying on me to look after him. It’s like he’s sent himself to Coventry. But it’s me who should feel ashamed and I do. I did nothing to help my ma, just compounded her problems with my antics. Looking after Danny now is my way of making amends. He was there for her and now I’m here for him. Perhaps you might be able to explain this to the bloody fool.”

 “Where is he?”

 “He’s in his bed as always. I think it’s best if we wait for him to appear of his own accord, when he comes out for the bathroom or something…to avoid any adverse pressure.”

 They talked for several hours and Judith found Fin to be the complete opposite of his older brother. Where Danny affected omniscience, incessantly lecturing, Fin seemed more intent on listening and learning. In fact he was so attentive, she soon found herself divulging quite intimate details about her life. He seemed genuinely absorbed throughout, as if even the tiniest thing had the power to astound him. Judith suspected it was this willingness to learn that had made him vulnerable to drugs. She imagined Fin was someone who couldn’t pass judgement on a subject until he’d investigated every detail and experienced it himself, unlike Danny, who would self-righteously denounce anything that contradicted his inherited ideology.

 When Judith mentioned Bob and Herman’s court case, Fin took control of the conversation, having been in Barlinnie Prison at the same time as the disgraced rock star. Apparently, Bob had been like a fish out of water inside, practically grovelling for his company. On spotting Danny’s younger brother in the prison canteen, he’d rushed over, ecstatically relieved to see a familiar face at last, even if it did belong to someone twenty leagues beneath his imagined echelon. This had been particularly cringe inducing for Fin, because Bob had always treated him with contempt in the past, snubbing his every salutation. On top of this, he despised the guy for running off with his brother’s girlfriend and detested him for the alleged assault on Carina Curran, whom he knew personally from the drugs scene. But his upbringing had prevented him from shunning Bob, and he’d even used what influence he had among other inmates to make sure no harm befell the man.

 Fin told Judith that he’d heard about his mother’s death and the apartment fire from gossip circulating the Sheriff’s Court waiting room, before being sentenced for shoplifting. He’d been insulated from the impact thanks to a king sized hit of opiates, afforded by using all his remaining stash before getting sent down. This had seen him through the blur of the hearing, the journey to Barlinnie and the now all too familiar strip search when he arrived, though only delayed the inevitable misery of withdrawal on a prison bunk. Anticipating this, a part of Fin hadn’t minded if that little extra in the syringe had finished him off. But, during withdrawal, his consciousness had refocused, as if he were walking out of a mist and into the twilight. Then, the cold, sharp light of reality had caused him to scream out, as if trying to expel his heart. The indecipherable shadow that had accompanied him all the way from the Sheriff’s Court now revealed itself: his mother was dead.

 Following a Methadone assisted withdrawal, Fin had sobbed on his bunk each night, not only in grief, but in shame at the way he’d let his mother down. He’d been determined to make amends and so, upon release, not only had he rescued Danny from Katy’s parents couch, but embarked upon a combination therapy of prescribed drugs to keep himself off the heroin. In the long term, he hoped to become a voluntary counsellor, helping others to quit the habit as well.

 Fin was an advocate of the state providing prescribed heroin for registered addicts. That was the carrot. The stick was that they would have to take the drug under strict supervision in controlled shooting galleries, removing the drug and syringes off the streets, while reducing deaths from overdose. As he argued his case, Judith closed her eyes for a moment and it sounded like Danny talking.

 “Why should I have to pay taxes to pleasure drug addicts?” she protested.

 “If the British Government were to deal directly with third-world producer countries, we’d be spending billions less as a nation than we presently waste through stolen property, police time, courts and prison cells. By cutting out the middle men, we could obtain the opium for a fraction of its street value, so that just several pound a day would sustain an addict, as opposed to the fifty or a hundred pounds a day they must find at present, through shoplifting, purse snatching, prostitution and of course, dealing. Money aside, it would also relieve our justice system, health and social services to perform more efficiently, while making the general population feel safer going about their business…not to mention the good the money would do for societies like Afghanistan…I mean, that’s what our army’s supposedly out there for, isn’t it?”

 “But how can you morally justify feeding our citizens heroin?” Judith exclaimed.

 “The prescribing of the drug must be seen as the beginning of a long term strategy. Once the government has monopolized supply, the criminal networks will dissolve and, with no alternative sources to undermine the project, the health service can start gradually, but compassionately, weaning addicts off.”

 “But then the addicts will just go looking for it on the street again. Once the criminals can see there’s a market they’ll go back to their old ways.”

 “That’s why we have to legalize and nationalise the distribution of all drugs, so that there’s no established cannabis or ecstasy ring that can easily expand back into heroin. And anyway, like I say, you wouldn’t start the weaning process until every last granule of the stuff had been vacuumed up off the streets.”

 “But this ‘weaning process’ contradicts everything you’ve said about saving money. It would become an industry in itself and cost a fortune to administer. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just write the current generation of addicts off as a lost cause and let them live the rest of their lives in peace, enjoying the prescribed opium you talked about? The minute the government withdraws supply you’re going to recreate the very situation we have now. One way or another people are going to find the stuff...you’d have to use really draconian measures to stop it taking grip again and our prisons are already packed. I mean, where are you going to accommodate a hundred and fifty thousand recusant junkies?”

 “We wouldn’t send them to prison. I’m far too liberal a person for that.”

 “Go on?”

 “We’d exile them to Afghanistan.”

 “What?”

 “That’s right. Anyone found in possession of black market heroin, we’d take their passport away and send them out there. If they want to take heroin all day, then who are we to stop them? Likewise, who are they to stop the rest of us living in a civilized society? So, we banish them to Afghanistan and send social security payments each fortnight. That way they can buy as much cheap opium as they like and the drugs never have to leave South-Asia. I’m sure the Afghans wouldn’t complain so long as the money was arriving every two weeks. We could even exchange them for clean living Afghans who want to live in a first world country…I’m serious Judith. Communities like mine can’t expect any quality of life so long as that shit’s on the streets.”

 While talking about heroin, Fin’s eyes sparkled, so much that Judith wondered if the Afghanistan exile idea wasn’t actually some paradise fantasy. Infuriatingly, just as he got into his stride, someone hammered loudly on the apartment’s door. He went out to answer it and Judith heard a familiarly pompous voice invade the hall and grow louder as its owner approached the living room.

 “Ok pin-head, where’s Che Guevara?”

 Bob Fitzgerald appeared in the door frame, his swashbuckling stride broken by Judith’s presence. He was still wearing a white suit and pink silk shirt, only his hair, once so expensively styled, had become a matted, dull brown helmet. Their eyes clashed and she tried to decipher any evil in them, before his gaze swerved and he turned to go, colliding with a trailing Fin in the process. He pushed him aside and carried on towards the bedrooms.

 “Where’s the righteous one, ‘Fin’?”

 Fin chased after him and Judith could hear doors opening and slamming shut.

 “How did you get in the building?” the younger White brother demanded of the imposter.

 “Ah, you can get in anywhere if you look the part…this one is it?”

 “No! You can’t go in there!”

 Judith got up and went over to the hallway where Fin and Bob were jostling for control of Danny’s bedroom door handle. Just then, the door was pulled open from the inside and a scrawny man, with wild curly hair and a bushy beard stood there, naked. Fin and Judith looked away out of embarrassment, but Bob milked the scene with a sly, lopsided grin on his face.

 “Where is she Danny?”

 “You’d better come in,”

 Bob strode into the bedroom and Danny pushed the door shut behind them.

 Back in the lounge, Fin went out onto the balcony to think, allowing the crisp, autumn evening into the apartment. Taking advantage of his distraction, Judith pretended to go to the bathroom, but eavesdropped at Danny’s door instead.

CHAPTER: 7

 “I spent the fortnight consoling her.”

 “Consoling?” Bob quizzed Danny aggressively.

 “Yes. I’d like to have said we consoled one another, but the moment I needed some attention she abandoned me. I’d distracted myself from grief by attending to her problems, then, when I finally cracked and started expressing my own sorrow, she disappeared. I searched for her all week before learning that she’d been evicted from your apartment and gone back to Oxfordshire.”

 “Yeah, that makes sense. Her parents have a big place down there. Right, that’s all I wanted to know.”

 “So what are you going to do now?”

 “Go down there to fetch her of course.”

 “Fetch her? Bob, you were unfaithful to her with prostitutes, one of whom you beat almost to death. You’ve publicly humiliated her, jeopardized her career and, worst of all, you’ve shattered her faith in human relationships. Isn’t it best you leave her alone to recover and start afresh?”

 “Yes, if everything you said was true. As always though Danny, just as in your politics, you ignore those facts which inconvenience your bigotry, such as there was no evidence against me…such as I was implicated by a certified madman…a fan who, in my decency, I took pity on and allowed into my company. I’m not bitter though. I feel sorry for him, I really do. Like you, he’s basically a decent guy who just can’t fit into society. It’s a shame.”

 Danny laughed sarcastically. “Would that be the same society I had to protect you from on the way home from your little private school that afternoon, when you were bullied for being a snobbish loner? When I had to take a kicking off the Ferguson brothers for standing between them and you, a complete stranger?”

 Danny was referring to their first, fortuitous meeting at the age of thirteen, one spring afternoon on a double decker bus. He’d been larking about on the top deck with a ‘team’ from Possil when Bob had unwittingly boarded in his Glasgow Academy blazer. Crazy Ferguson – a neighbourhood psychopath who ended up in Carstairs State Hospital for the Criminally Insane – had taken blood curdling exception to “Little Lord Fauntleroy” and intended to torture him. “Can you believe it?” he’d said, “cheeky wee bastard’s got the audacity to travel home from a private school – on a council bus!”

 With a tattooed hand round Bob’s throat, Crazy had been about to slash his cheek with a metal comb, when Danny ran down the aisle and leapt on his back, pulling him to the floor. The price of this heroism was paid several weeks later, though, when Crazy and his older brother, Buddy, had jumped him from behind outside the fish and chip shop, knocking him unconscious with a whisky bottle. At the time, Danny’s mother said it had served him right for defending “the enemy” against his own.

 “What’s that got to do with the real world, here and now?” A nerve had obviously been struck, as Bob’s voice was quavering.

 “Is that the real world which saw you speeding round the streets on your own in the brand new car your parents bought, while I was out and about in the city centre making acquaintances from the four corners of the Clyde, not least among them being a certain Mr. Alexander Addison and Billy McLean, who went on to form The Squeaky Kirk. I suppose you’ve forgotten me coming round and coaxing you out of your reclusive existence to meet them, because they needed a lyricist and I thought it might be an outlet for your writing…Jesus it was hard work getting past your ‘mammy’ at the front door! Nobody was good enough for her little angel were they? Do you remember how intimidated you used to be down town, outside the protection of your car? Is that the real world you mean Bobby? Eh? A world in which you could only communicate through songs; jealous of other people’s ability to interact. And it’s the same even now. There isn’t really anybody beneath those ridiculous clothes you’re wearing is there? Take away the designer suits, the sports car and a record deal – which allows you to be heard by thousands without ever having to interact with anybody – and what’s left? An anonymous, social inadequate, that’s what.”

 “I haven’t got time for – your – bitter – abuse.”

 Bob was almost crying.

 Judith saw the bedroom door handle move and stepped back into the dark bathroom behind her. Before Bob could get out, though, Danny lit the blue touch paper.

 “Not all the witnesses to what you did are clinically mad you know.”

 “What?” Bob bit.

 Judith heard the door being pushed to again and resumed her eavesdropping position at the threshold of the bathroom, where it met the bedroom door on a right angle.

 “Do you know what the greatest part of driving a cab was for me? I was able to observe you and Ingrid without being spotted. Sad, I know, but such is the nature of obsession. I could park opposite the pub, or pass you half a dozen times in the street and you’d never suspect, because I was just another taxi. But I had a special incentive to follow your Audi TT around town.”

 “That being?”

 “Catching you out of course. That way I could disenchant Ingrid and win her back.”

 “You bitter…bitter freak.”

 “It was devastating when Herman turned up at your little Govan lair with Carina. I was petrified she’d give you something that could be passed on to Ingrid…so much that I actually ran up the stairs and banged on your door. But, what with the noise you were making arguing, you obviously never heard me. When Herman carried her out of there I was sat in the darkness, behind the banister on the stair above, watching everything.”

 “So why didn’t you tell Ingrid?” Bob snapped.

 “Informing her you were a prostitute beater was no good. She’d hate me more than you, for trying to capitalise on a tragedy. So I kept quiet and waited, hoping the police would eventually do the job for me and, thanks to the arrival of Judith, they did.”

 “Oh. Her.”

 “That was a little maneuver of mine I’m not too proud of, but as I say, obsession does these things.”

 “Maneuver?”

 “She jumped in the cab one night and I deliberately dropped her at Oran Mor where I knew you’d all be. Then I promised half-fares in future, to guarantee we maintained contact. Knowing how you’re always seeking an audience to witness your lifestyle – The Fitzgerald Dream – I was confident she’d be embraced by the gang. She was my eyes and ears without realizing and, the more I revealed about myself to her, it was inevitable she’d mention me to Ingrid and, hopefully, be the catalyst for a reunion. The rest, of course, is history – though I never imagined she’d also precipitate your downfall.”

 Realizing that she’d been used as a pawn in their squalid feud, Judith felt sick.

 “Danny, you know me. I’d never deliberately hurt anyone,” Bob pleaded.

 “Yes Bob, I do know you and you’re a spiteful, jealous brat…Look what you did to me! You only noticed Ingrid because everybody else was raving about her beauty. Once you knew she was universally valued, like that gold ring on your finger, you had to have her and resented a poor man enjoying what you felt entitled to. If you could only get her on your arm, you thought, you’d be guaranteed more of the attention you craved but didn’t have the charisma to generate it yourself without going via people’s hi-fi systems. To you she was just another accessory, like all those ridiculous things you spend your money on. You’ve never been able to think for yourself, have you Bob? I used to think that the wrong people had all the cash, but now I’m not so sure. I think wealth is probably God’s compensation for people who have no imagination.”

 “Yes, like self-righteousness is God’s compensation for being poor.” Bob retorted.

 There was a hiatus before Danny chirped up again. “The point is I loved Ingrid as a person, not as an object. I loved her fresh, open mind. I connected with her like no one before or since.”

 “Crap! Ingrid was your opportunity to inflict on someone else what you’ve had done to you. What were you at the time, thirty one? She was the perfect disciple – just eighteen years old, intelligent and naïve. At Last, you had a captive audience to rehearse your mother’s brainwashing on…somebody to make you feel the big man.”

 “The way people who bought Squeaky Kirk records where a captive audience for your egotistical whining you mean?”

 “Yes.”

 Everything suddenly fell silent. It seemed that Danny had been fazed by Bob’s uncharacteristic humility.

 “Prison’s done you good Bobby. Being forced to mix with the great unwashed has given you some character. You know, when you burst in tonight you actually made me laugh for the first time I can remember – that Che Guevara line and so forth. You wisecracked your way in here with all the insecurities and bravado of a young NED…a real person instead of the old, self-loving prick. Humour is born of adversity and I think you’ve encountered it for the first time in your life. Even addressing Fin as ‘Pinhead’ was positively affectionate compared to the way you used to ignore him.”

 “Hah,” Bob laughed. “I had nothing to do but stew over my existence in that prison. What you said about my mother and nobody being good enough for me could almost have come out of my own head. Do you know, that four months inside was the first time I’ve ever really relaxed. It provided some peace and perspective. My whole life’s been a torment Dan, trying to be better than everyone, like she always told me I was. Of course, with dad away a month at a time on the oil rigs and her shielding me from him whenever he was home, I’ve grown up unable to accommodate criticism. That’s why I flew into a rage when that whore attacked my music. Did you know she used to be a classical cellist? I hated it when she told me that. You see, Dan, I’m the archetypal goldfish in a liqueur glass. That’s why I consort with prostitutes and have oddballs like Herman and Dickens tagging along. It makes me feel superior, like I’m supposed to be.”

 “You…you were right too.”

 “Sorry?”

 “What you just said about me being a victim of my mother and using Ingrid as a captive audience so I could enjoy the sound of my own voice.”

 “Well, we’re all victims of nurture, Danny. So what do you intend doing then? Are you going to the police?”

 “That’s entirely up to you.”

 “No it’s not at all! The balls are all stacked in your court. So what’s it gonna be?”

 “I’ll keep quiet on condition that you sign all the Squeaky Kirk royalties earned since you were arrested over to me, before lunchtime tomorrow. Seven hundred and sixty grand should do the trick.”

 Judith shook her tearful head in disgust. In the space of a minute, a man who’d spent a lifetime masquerading as a socialist had exposed himself as a phoney and a blackmailer, willing to profit from the attempted murder of a prostitute.

 “You’re friggin’ joking aren’t you?” Bob laughed exaggeratedly, through a combination of disbelief and nerves.

 “No. I mean, let’s face it, it’s only what you people should be paying in taxes anyway.”

 “According to you people who have nothing to lose and everything to gain maybe.”

 “Whatever. But what’s a hundred per cent worth in prison when you could be enjoying half of it in the fresh air?”

 “How do I know you won’t hand me in anyway, after I’ve paid up?”

 “Because I’d be incriminating myself wouldn’t I? With half your royalties in my bank it would be obvious there’d been blackmail and I’d be looked upon as badly as you. You know I’m a man of my word.”