“That’s natural, but you are coping well so far.”
“May I show you something sir? Something I have discovered?”
“Go ahead, please.”
“Could you please give me the light bulb from your desk lamp, sir?”
The man frowned, puzzled, but unscrewed it and handed it to Christian.
It immediately lit up.
“I have never seen that done before!” the man grinned.
Christian put it down on the man’s desk, and immediately picked it up again. This time, it did not light.
“I can do it or not do it, as I like. If I think about it, it happens. Like everything else. It only works when I want it to.”
“The power of thought,” said the teacher. “That’s the secret of our abilities.”
“But what possible use can that be?” asked Christian.
“I don’t know, boy. Perhaps no use at all. Time will tell.”
“Perhaps I should join a circus or something, when I leave school.”
“Others will guide you later,” said the teacher. “For now, I simply wanted to reassure you that you are not alone.”
“Thank you, sir. I feel a bit better about things already.” He stood to leave.
“Before you go, I must warn you of one thing. Next term, you will start learning French. Your teacher is French. It is her native tongue. You will be able, almost like a computer, to download her memory into your own, and immediately be able to speak her language as well as if it was your own. Be very careful not to draw attention to your ability. That’s all.” He waved the boy away.
***
“Come in, Luke.” It was his manager.
Christian went on to the spacious office of his boss at the bank where he had been working for some years – since he had left school, in fact.
“I won’t beat about the bush,” said the man. He waved to the chair facing him on the other side of his desk. “Sit.”
Hardly friendly, thought Christian. He guessed what was coming, and looked around at the other people present. Nobody he recognised, although he could tell who were in the police.
“You know that we have had several serious losses of cash in this branch in recent years,” said the man. A statement, not a question. “Well over a million pounds, now.”
“I had heard,” said Christian.
“Other banks in the county have been reporting the same thing.”
Christian nodded. He had heard about that, too.
“The odd thing,” said the man, “is that these losses only started when you joined the bank.”
“As you say - ‘odd’.”
“We have had a widespread and thorough investigation, in conjunction with the police – fraud squad and everything. Us and all the other banks.”
“And?”
“And you are the only common denominator.”
“So you think I’m stealing millions of pounds, do you?”
“We have no evidence to suggest that, I must confess, and no idea how the money is disappearing.” said the man. “We’ve looked carefully at your bank accounts, and not just at this bank, either. It’s just odd, that’s all.”
“We’ve also looked carefully at your lifestyle,” said another man, who Christian knew was from the police.
“So?” asked Christian.
“So we have no evidence,” admitted his manager. “But I - we - wanted to warn you, in case in some mysterious way you do have anything to do with these massive losses, that we shall be keeping a very careful watch on you and everything you do form now on.”
“Thanks for the warning,” said Christian, standing up without being asked.
His manager waved him away.
As he left the office, the psychoanalyst who had been present shrugged. “Cool as a cucumber,” she said. “No trace of guilt, or even interest, so far as I could tell.”
They all agreed that it was ‘odd’.
Christian, however, was more than angry. To be summoned like that was an indignity he could have done without. Others in the bank, including the few friends he had been able to make, all knew that he was under suspicion, in spite of the fact that there was not a shred of evidence to connect him with the huge losses of cash.
He had made sure of that.
What the banks had lost, they could afford. Never mind the investors and their huge dividends, just look at the bonuses the banks’ top people all got every year, whether they deserved them or not! The charities he had chosen, however, were doing great work with his donations. Medical research was benefitting, deprived children, hospices – all of them. His mission, as he understood it, was to benefit people as best he could. He had been told more than once that he should use his extraordinary powers to help other people and not to help himself. Well! That’s what he was doing. And that’s what he would continue to do.
The odd bit he had kept for himself was neither here nor there, he thought. They obviously knew nothing of his deposits of gold in China or his hoard of diamonds in Africa. How could they?
But he decided that perhaps he should be a bit more careful in the future. Perhaps find other ways of benefitting society rather than simply robbing his employers. But he would have one last, massive raid, first.
Until now, he had used his unique powers to develop a technique that allowed him simply to enter a locked building and its vault, without setting off the alarm, fill his bag with as much as it would hold in high value notes – not bonds – and walk out again when he could see that the coast was clear.
This time, he would be bolder.
Since ‘the toy box’, he had known he could get into and out of places with ease, and now he knew that he could take things in with him – briefcases, back packs and so on. But they were limited in size.
So why not drive in?
That’s what he would do. Load the vehicle with gold bars, rather than take a meagre suitcase full of notes.
He hired a four-by-four. He knew exactly which bank to hit.
***
Nothing had gone well, that night.
Christian’s powers were obviously, as he had just discovered, not transferrable.
The Range Rover had not simply slipped through the fortified walls of the bank into its re-enforced vaults and the alarmed, steel cavern which held the bullion. He, Christian, could have simply walked in, the same way that he had reached for the toy train in Tim’s’ toy box, or the box of felt-tipped pens in the nursery school.
Not this time.
The fact that he was driving the vehicle apparently made it different. It smashed into the building, and smashed Christian with it.
Effectively, he was ‘DOA’ when they eventually got him to hospital. Physically, anyway. The surgeon in A&E peered down at him, under the glare of the operating theatre lights.
He said nothing. Christian would not have heard him if he had spoken. His physical presence at an end.
But he knew that the man with the mask over his face and the surgical skull-cap covering his head was communicating with him. He had similar powers.
“There’s nothing I can do for you,” he told Christian. “You’ve gone too far this time.”
“I know,” Christian conveyed back to him. “But I meant well.”
“Like China and Africa? You’ve missed the whole point. You’re not here for your benefit, but to benefit others; that’s the point.”
As a human being, Christian was dead.
“I suppose this is better than crucifixion.”
“At least your spirit will live on, as it has before.”
***
The cremation was three days later. There were only a few people there: Mary and Jo, his mother and father, two friends, Peter and John, his old maths teacher and the surgeon. The curtain closed on an empty coffin.
***
8 - D
ON’T BANK ON IT
Pierre Gustave never had sufficient cash to allow him to live the life he craved. He had a reasonable job, but it didn’t pay half enough to support his life style, so he was always in debt.
His job was certainly secure, but living in Switzerland was expensive at the best of times, and his salary hadn’t by any means kept up with inflation. The rent for his flat cost the earth and he refused to move to a more modest apartment, for fear of what his elegant friends would think. There were cheaper places to eat out, too, but he much preferred good restaurants to fast food chains. So did his friends. And he liked bespoke shirts and jackets, rather than the cheaper clothing mass produced in the third world.
This is why he was always in debt. On all his credit cards. He took care not to be too overdrawn on his bank account, though. That was another of his problems. He worked at the bank as a junior manager. There he sat, day after day, surrounded by millions and millions of Swiss Francs, with no way of getting at them. It was all too frustrating.
He had spent many hours trying to devise a way of getting at some of the bank’s reserves, but of course it was impossible. Simply raiding the till would be of no use at all. He needed to raid the safe or the vaults. That way he could clear his debts and clear the country to start again somewhere else. Somewhere far away, perhaps somewhere a bit warmer, too. Spain would be too close, but one of the smaller islands in the Caribbean would be nice and relatively safe, he thought. But he could only dream.
Until one day when, quite by chance, a possible solution to all his problems presented itself.
***
The bank had many dead accounts. Accounts which had been opened many years ago, and left untouched, abandoned, forgotten, lost, dormant, perhaps homes for laundered money, now too hot to touch – whatever the reason, the money just sat there, doing nothing. The bank had a policy that, after fiteen years without activity or contact with the depositor, the money was frozen while efforts were made to trace the account’s original holder. Other banks started that process after ten years, but this was Switzerland, so it had to be different. According to reports, there was a sea of unclaimed assets sloshing around the financial system, very conservatively estimated to be worth 112 billion Swiss Francs! Some of that was in his bank.
In nearly every case, family members were quickly traced, and found to be unaware that they were entitled to collect unclaimed assets owned by deceased relatives. But Pierre Gustave had been put in charge of a case which was now subject to this research by his bank, where it appeared that there were no heirs to the fortune. And when that happened, after legal notices had appeared in all the proper places with no result, the money went to the State.
Now, that was a real waste. Pierre could think of a far better home for it, if only he could devise a way of getting at it.
The account in question had been opened by a man in Hong Kong. Pierre looked it up. Ah, yes! A civil engineer of some prominence by the name of Ronald Twyman, an Englishman who had been working in Hong Kong for many years. According to the papers on the account’s file, he had been involved in running many major projects including building the Metro system. The man had died suddenly, and no-one had come forward at the time. The company he had worked for had no record of any next of kin, and apparently none of his colleagues knew of any. Ronald Twyman was therefore buried in Hong Kong, and the bank into which his salary and allowances were paid, froze his assets. These appeared to be considerable, as they were in Switzerland, where he had made many wise and very lucrative investments. He had another extensive portfolio of investments in Hong Kong, as well as cash. The Hong Kong bank, which Pierre had contacted, had transferred their holding of the man’s fortune after ten years, and his dormant account had been closed. He had also contacted Twymans’ former employer, but, like the bank, they had not been approached by anyone since he had died claiming to know or be related to the man.
He appeared to have been alone in the world.
Now the fifteen years was up in Switzerland, and Pierre Gustave had been given the job of closing the man’s Swiss account, one way or the other.
He set about inventing an heir to Twyman’s fortune.
***
For some years, Pierre had taken an interest in genealogy and had managed to trace his own family back almost 300 years, until he came up against a dead-end. He tried every avenue he could think of to discover his missing ancestor, but eventually gave up and admitted defeat. But he had learnt enough to know how to carry out the research, mainly using the specialist ‘family history’ web-sites on the internet.
Now he looked up Ronald Twyman. Before long, he had traced his date and place of birth, and both his parents. He now had two branches of Twyman’s family to explore. His father’s side looked the more promising, since he had both a brother and a sister. It was Ronald Twyman’s aunt who attracted his attention, since, if she had married, her surname would cease to be Twyman. Indeed she had married, he discovered, and he was eventually able to trace a daughter of hers. It took some time – longer than he had hoped – but finally he was able to work out who the daughter had married and look up the names of their children, a boy and a girl. Second cousins, that’s what they were, and that’s just what Pierre had been hoping to find. Distant relations who had probably never met Ronald or even knew that he had once existed, let alone that he had died. He was not bothered about the girl, Sheila Goodwin, as a bit more research had revealed that her brother, Dillon, lived in a small village in Surrey, where his young daughter had recently been baptised. This was looking good. The chances were that Dillon and his wife needed a bit of cash, to help with a mortgage and a young daughter, living, as they did, in a small rural community.
He wrote to Dillon, to offer a substantial sum of money from his unknown relative’s estate. Pierre was not about to part with all of it, but at least if he was caught out, he could claim some legitimacy by having found a living relative of Ronald Twyman.
***
Neither Dillon Goodwin nor his wife Sarah knew anybody in Switzerland, so they were intrigued to receive an air-mail letter in an envelope bearing a Swiss stamp. They were even more mystified when they read the letter. It was addressed to Dillon from a chap named Pierre Gustave, who gave his phone number and an e-mail address, but no postal address. It read:
“Dear Mr Goodwin,
Allow me to introduce myself. I am Pierre Gustave, and I am a manager in one of the oldest and most respected private banks in Geneva. Part of my responsibilities includes settling what we call ‘dormant accounts’, which are accounts held in this bank which have seen no activity for fifteen years. Unless it proves possible to identify the owner of such an account or, in the case of their death, a surviving next of kin, then the value of the account is handed to the Swiss State Treasury.
One of the accounts which I am presently dealing with is proving particularly difficult, which is why I am writing to you privately rather than officially. I would ask you to respect this privacy and confidentiality, and to keep the contents of this letter secret between us, since no one else is aware that I am contacting you in this way.
The account in question was opened by a Mr Ronald Twyman, who was a prominent civil engineer working for some time in Hong Kong, where he died apparently intestate and with no known relatives. This bank holds a very considerable sum in his name, in both investments and cash. Similar holdings were deposited with the Hong Kong branch of BEA Investments UK Ltd, but regrettably their policy is to close dormant accounts within ten years of them becoming inactive. They have confirmed to me that Mr Twyman’s account was disposed of in accordance with their stated policy, after they also failed to trace any possible beneficiary.
My own researches have similarly failed, except that I believe that there is a very remote possibility that you may be a distant, far removed, ancestor. Since I have exclusive
access to the papers relating to Mr Twyman’s affairs, I am in a position to nominate you as the sole beneficiary. I similarly have the power and authority to decide that no such person can be traced, and to transfer Mr Twyman’s estate to the Swiss Treasury.
What I therefore propose is that, if you agree to be so nominated, we should divide the estate between us. Should you be prepared to co-operate in this way, I shall arrange for the electronic transfer of what will become your portion of the estate from my bank to your own, and report the satisfactory outcome of my research to my senior partners. All I shall require from you is your bank’s sort code and your account number. If, on the other hand, you decide against my proposal, then I shall have no alternative but to declare to my senior partners that my searches have been unsuccessful, and arrange the transfer of the entire estate to my Government in line with my bank’s stated policy.
You will see why I have chosen to contact you privately rather than officially at this stage. I ask you to be good enough to observe the confidentiality for which I have asked, and to contact me personally at my home either by telephone or by e-mail with your decision, if possible within the next few days.
Finally, I should tell you that the amount which could be transferred to your UK bank, should you agree to my proposal that you should be nominated as the only surviving, if distant, relative of Mr Ronald Twyman, amounts to some 4.5 million pounds sterling.
I look forward to hearing from you soon, hopefully with a positive response.”
When he returned home from posting the letter, Pierre Gustave got on the internet and looked up the Turks and Caicos Islands.
***
Neither Dillon nor his wife Sarah could believe what they had read. So they read it again, several times.
“This must be a hoax!” exclaimed Sarah.
“Or some kind of scam,” said Dillon.
“Perhaps whoever it is will simply take what little there is from our account, once he’s got the details of our bank.”
“I don’t think he could do that, without passwords and Pin numbers and so on,” replied Dillon. “And in any case, if he could, he’d be more than welcome to our overdraft!”