Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

“Eighteen years now.” She knew straightaway without having to count. “Eighteen years for the company, although not in this building; we only moved in here twelve years ago.”

“A loyal servant.” Time to ratchet the tension again. “And how long have you worked for Mr. Rogers?”

Rogers opened his mouth as if he were about to interrupt, then closed it again. He was jiggling one leg as if a wasp had just flown up his trousers.

“Eight years now.” She knew that straightaway as well. Probably chalked every one of them off on the wall, like a prisoner in a gulag.

“You must know all the secrets here then, nothing’ll get past you.”

Marian laughed nervously, darting glances from Mr. Rogers back to me. Who is this man, I could see her thinking, what can I say that will not get me into trouble. I stood up, nodded to her, and got my coffee, wedging a custard cream into the saucer. “Thanks, Marian.”

“Um yes, that will be all, Marian,” Rogers said, attempting to reassert his authority. “Remember, hold all my calls. I’ve got no appointments this morning, have I?”

“There’s Steven’s appraisal, the work evaluation session you wanted—”

“Cancel them. Both of them.”

“Yes, Mr. Rogers.” She left the room, risking one last curious glance back at me. I sipped at my coffee and dipped my biscuit, not looking at Rogers.

“Right, shall we get on?” I said.

He came over, sat on the chair, muttered something and got up again, walking back over to his desk to get his coffee. When he sat back down again I would have bet that he wished he had not bothered, because when he rested his cup and saucer on his knee the crockery tinkled with the shaking of his leg. He took another sip to disguise his next action, and then with a too-studied casual gesture put the cup down on the floor, as if that was where he had always wanted to keep it.

“How can I help you, Detective?” His voice was full of bonhomie, the concern of a good citizen to help the forces of the law, full of earnest interest. The shake betrayed him though, an unconscious informant. I wondered what his secret really was. It wasn’t sex, he didn’t look the type and I think that Marian would rather have forced her head through the office shredder. Money. He was fiddling something, I could tell from the way that he started when I announced that I was Fraud, an involuntary backwards jerk of the head, a licking of the lips, the way his eyes looked like those of a sheep at the slaughterhouse. Expenses maybe. Or overordering, some scam involving bogus invoices that ended up with payments for goods that were never received to a company that never existed. I had done my research, knew that this company had a reputation for slack accounting, had sat patiently in a pub while an obnoxious man drank the drinks that I bought him and sweated and broke wind and told me about all the dodges he had got up while he had worked there. And mentioned Mr. Rogers, a man who was most certainly up to something, even if no one really knew what.

“It’s about counterfeit money, Mr. Rogers. Or to be more specific, the laundering of counterfeit money into the banking system. A very serious crime.”

I sat back and watched the expressions chase each other over his face. Bewilderment. Confusion. Then hope, the prisoner finding out that the bars are loose, that the door has been left unlocked. I don’t know what this is about, he was thinking, but maybe, just maybe it’s nothing to do with me and I’m going to get away with whatever it is I am up to.

“I... I don’t know anything about any counterfeit money.”

“Mmm.” I paused for a moment and just stared at him. “Do you not? Isn’t it the case that you disperse a fair amount of money via these premises?”

“Well, it’s not a huge amount, but some — but I—”

“Put a figure on it.”

“Sorry?”

“In a week, how much?”

“Er, I don’t know, I mean, without looking it up, six or seven thousand, it’s not a lot these days, really—”

“Six or seven thousand pounds a week. Fifty weeks a year, say? That’s three hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year. Three years, and there’s over a million in cash passing through here. No, it’s not a lot, Mr. Rogers, but that’s how many counterfeiting operations work, drip-feeds so the banks won’t notice it, using seemingly legitimate businesses to get the bent cash out there.”

“No, but that’s impossible, I mean — the money doesn’t come from me, how could it, it comes in from head office.”

“Does it indeed?” I sat forward in my seat, not hiding my excitement. “And does anyone in particular handle that side of things? In head office I mean.”

“Er, yes, it’s a Mr. Hassan,” Rogers said, “that’s who I deal with. Anwar Hassan.”

“Anwar Hassan.” I said the name slowly, in the way that you do when it is a name that you have said many times before.

“You already know about him?”

I said nothing, but let the silence speak for itself. I could see the spark in Rogers’s eyes, the quick assumption, the prospect of an escape into daylight when only minutes before he had thought himself condemned to darkness.