The Lubetkin Legacy

Violet: Cherry Blossom

Violet posts a card to Laura congratulating her and thanking her for putting in a good word for her. She feels like a small ship buoyed on a high tide of hope embarking on the journey of her life. Of which the first port of call was landing the job at GRM. Now she is set to travel deeper into the mysterious channel of Wealth Preservation, the domain of handsome and enigmatic Marc Bonnier.

But — first things first — what should she wear for the voyage? Gillian’s remark about looking businesslike has stuck in her mind; she wants to look the part. But Gillian’s style of severe suits and high heels doesn’t appeal — if she had her way, she’d spend her life in jeans and trainers. Her cousin Lucy, who works at a gallery in Bond Street, suggests Fenwick’s, so they agree to meet there for lunch on Saturday. Two hours later and £600 poorer, she comes away with a tailored dress in a dove grey with a matching jacket, a suit in a soft lilac colour like one she’s seen Amal Clooney photographed in, and a pair of high-heeled suede shoes that she can wear with either. See it as an investment, she tells herself, as she hands over her credit card. She also splashes out on a little baby suit in sea green from the baby section that would suit a girl or a boy, and goes to visit Laura in hospital.

Laura is sitting up in bed looking dreamy and blissful, surrounded by flowers. The baby — it is a boy — is fast asleep in a cradle at the foot of the bed, a tiny mite with dark wisps of hair like Laura’s and a red squashed face.

‘Oh, Laura, he’s gorgeous!’ she exclaims, though she suspects that newborns only look gorgeous to their mothers.

Laura laughs. ‘He’s not exactly George Clooney. But I hope he will be one day!’

The baby opens one bright eye, sucks his thumb, and falls asleep again.

‘Talking about gorgeous, Violet, did you hear anything from Wealth Preservation?’

‘Yes. Thanks for putting in a good word for me. They’ve seconded me to the WPU while you’re away.’

‘Be careful with Marc Bonnier. He’s got a reputation.’

A reputation. What exactly does that mean? Her stomach flutters with anticipation.

On Sunday morning she wakes early again and lies in bed, watching the daylight filter through the flimsy sari curtain, listening to African music on her iPod, as she waits for the tap-tap of the one-legged pigeon on her window. He’s late. Maybe he’s at church, ha ha. She remembers Sunday mornings in Kenya when her grandmother took all the cousins to church while their parents had a lie-in. They all stood together in a pew and sang at the tops of their voices — Fight the good fight with all thy might! — while an old man in a blue smock thumped at the piano.

At last the pigeon arrives and they eat their toast together on the balcony, the pigeon cooing in a chatty sort of way and trying to strut, which isn’t easy with one leg. After he’s flown off to his cherry tree, she stands for a while gazing down at the garden. She watches the woman in the purple coat emerge from the garden shed, still wearing her shower cap, as the wheelchair man passes on the footpath. They stop to talk. The woman starts waving a carrier bag, tossing chunks of something on the ground. A grey shadow emerges from the bushes like a kivuli, grabs one of the chunks in its jaws, and disappears. Other shadowy creatures creep up like giant rats. The wheelchair man waves his crutches at them, but they dart around and under his wheelchair, sneaking out between the wheels. He tries to grab the bag. Then he tries to bat away the white stuff with his crutches. The woman takes a swing at him with the carrier bag and knocks his baseball cap off his head.

Uh-oh! It’s time to intervene.

She races down the stairs and out into the cool freshness of the garden. Blossom is drifting down from the trees. As she approaches she sees that the man in the wheelchair is trying to shoo away half a dozen skinny cats fighting over raw chicken wings, snarling and hissing and batting each other with their claws.

The woman is egging them on. ‘Pss, pss! Come on, my lovelies! Eat up!’

The wheelchair man has fake legs — metal posts are fitted into his shoes where his legs have been amputated below the knees. He is not effective at shooing the cats away — they are literally running rings around him. Then the schoolboy she saw before, the one with the grey uniform and short trousers, appears from the other end of the path.

‘What’s up, Len?’ he asks the wheelchair man.

‘Bloody cats, innit?’ the man exclaims. ‘It’s against local authority regulations feeding vermin!’ His cheeks are red with rage, and his brow below his red football-supporter hat is shiny with sweat.

‘They’re not vermin, they’re God’s creatures!’ shrieks the lady in purple. Beneath the shower cap, her hair looks stiff with lacquer like a warrior’s helmet. It reminds Violet of another song they used to sing at church in Nairobi: Onward, Christian soldiers! A pair of arched pencilled-on eyebrows give her a look of permanent alarm.

The boy starts to run around, chasing the cats away. They scamper for the bushes, but then his phone sounds, he pulls it out of his pocket and wanders off down the path, busily texting with his thumbs. The cats slink back.

Violet asks the wheelchair man, ‘Why don’t you like them?’

At once, the old lady launches her counter-attack. ‘Don’t you go sticking your nose in here, young madam. I’m just doing the Lord’s work, feeding the hungry.’

‘They come in my flat, steal my food and piss in the corner!’ shouts the man. ‘And she bloody encourages them!’

They both seem mad with rage. When she was little, her Grandma Njoki used a trick of distraction whenever there was a fight among the cousins.

‘Have you seen these notices?’ She points to where the notices have been fixed to the lamp posts and tree trunks. Now she sees they have mostly disappeared; only a couple are still hanging by a shred of sticky tape.

‘More stray bloody cats. I’d poison ’em if I had my way! Or shoot ’em all!’ The man in the wheelchair is warming himself up for another eruption.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not the lost cat. An application for planning permission. They want to build a block of private flats here. On the garden. Where the cherry trees are.’

‘Get rid of all the bloody cats, wouldn’ it?’ mutters the wheelchair man, deflated.

‘Private flats is better,’ says the shower-cap lady. ‘No scroungers.’ She looks daggers at the wheelchair man.

‘But what about the cherry trees? They’d have to cut down all the trees,’ says Violet.

‘They make a bloody mess, don’t they?’ he mutters. ‘All that white stuff. Blows everywhere. Gets stuck on my wheels and ends up on the carpet. They don’t think about that, do they, when they plant them?’

From being at loggerheads moments before, they are now united — against her.

‘But don’t you think they’re beautiful? Uplifting?’

‘Uplifting?’ The shower-cap lady studies her through narrow eyes. ‘You don’t live around here, do you?’

‘I live up there.’ She points up at her window.

‘There’s a mad old woman lives up there. Potty as a whacker.’ Her look implies it is contagious.

‘Living in a natural environment is good for us. It’s an established fact.’ Her mother was always going on about trees.

‘Huh!’ snorts the wheelchair man.

‘Mm. But it could affect property values.’ The woman stiffens. ‘You!’ She jabs a finger at Violet. ‘You talk posh. Why don’t you ring up the Council and find out what’s going on?’

‘I can’t. I’m too busy.’

The woman has a cheek, insulting her and then bossing her about. She has more important things to do right now than get involved in some local squabble.

‘No you’re not!’ snaps the woman. ‘Nobody round here is busy.’ Then she adds in a softer tone, ‘Where I come from, round Thanet, there’s no end of cherry trees. God’s gift. Look proper at this time of year, don’t they?’

‘Well, all right, if I find time I’ll give the Council a ring. But don’t count on me to do anything else.’

By Monday morning the cherry trees and the planning application have vanished from her thoughts as she flaps around deciding which outfit to wear for her first day in Wealth Preservation.

She runs to the bus stop in her trainers, carrying her high heels in her bag. Crossing the cherry garden, she sees the boy again, dragging his feet as he crawls along a few metres behind his dad while she sprints towards the bus stop, and she feels how lucky she is to have an interesting job with good prospects — if only she could tell him it is worth putting in the effort at school.

Breathless and wind-blown, she changes her shoes in the lift. Marc looks up from his computer as she taps on the door and enters his office.

‘Welcome to Wealth Preservation, Violet.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘That colour suits you. Matches your name.’

She blushes and wishes she’d worn the dove grey.

His office is small and hot, cluttered with papers and dead coffee cups. A fancy black and chrome coffee machine gleams on a side bench beside the copier. There is a subtle smell of coffee, expensive aftershave and something else — how would she describe that smell? Male. The smell of maleness.

‘Sit down. Coffee? Now, Violet, what do you know about Wealth Preservation?’

‘I’ve had a look on —’ She stops herself. To admit to looking things up on Google sounds naff.

‘It’s not as technical as it sounds.’ He presses a capsule into the coffee machine and hands her a thick slip case. ‘Here, have a look through these files. It’ll give you an idea of what we do. A lot of it is just about moving client money around to low-tax jurisdictions. How do you like your coffee?’

‘White with one sugar.’

It turns out Marc has no milk or sugar. She finds some in the fridge in the kitchen corner. Back at her desk in the outer office she sips her coffee, which is very strong and too highly roasted for her taste.

She misses having Laura to chat to. Most of her new colleagues are several years older than her and although they are perfectly pleasant towards her seem to be mainly interested in property prices, stock indices and other such fascinating topics. She sends off a text to Laura with an emoji kiss for the baby. Then she opens the slip case and starts to read through the papers.

At first, nothing seems to make much sense. The wealthy clients seem to be mainly from poor places — Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Greece, Brazil, China, India and several African countries. There’s even a file for HN Holdings. Could it be the same company that is building the shopping mall in Nairobi? This one is registered in the British Virgin Islands, not Kenya. Strangely, it appears to be a subsidiary of GRM. Marc Bonnier is named as company secretary on the paperwork. The firm seems to specialise not in building development but in imports. In fact they are importing large quantities of plastic buckets into Kenya. But why are they sending out repeat invoices for different amounts of money?

As she puzzles over the invoices, a pattern emerges. The buckets are purchased for $1 each in China, then sold on to the Health Department in Kenya. What is staggering is the sale price: $49 per bucket. How can a plastic bucket cost $49? There must be a mistake somewhere.

She struggles to make sense of it.

By lunchtime, her head still spinning with the impossibility of matching up the numbers, she decides to go out to a café instead of to the office cafeteria in case she runs into Marc and he asks her how she is doing. She doesn’t want to appear stupid. Instead, she tries to phone Laura for advice, but her phone is switched off.

Then she remembers she has another phone call she promised to make.

She has to listen to a long recorded menu of selections before she finally gets through to the Council’s Planning Department.

‘All objections must be in writing. We can’t discuss details over the phone. You can view the submitted plans at the Planning Offices,’ replies a nasal voice flattened with boredom.

Still, she’s made more progress than with the Nairobi Planning Department. The HN shopping mall development she’s trying to insure seems no more ludicrous than chopping down trees to build more flats. The fluffy pink cherry trees look lovely in this overbuilt part of London, and besides, one of them is Pidgie’s home. Yes, if she finishes early one day, she’ll go over and check out the plans. Somebody has to keep a watch on these developments; otherwise the sky gets eaten up before your eyes.

‘How are you getting on, Violet? Is it all beginning to make sense?’

Marc leans over her desk and places a hand on her shoulder. A shiver runs through her, but she tries to keep her voice cool.

‘I can’t see the point of all these invoices, Marc. Why is the invoice that comes from the British Virgin Isles so much bigger than the invoice that comes from China?’

‘Re-invoicing is an essential tool for wealth preservation, Violet. We use a corporation in an offshore tax haven as an intermediary between the onshore business and the home country. That way, most of the profits accrue to the offshore corporation, with obvious tax advantages.’

‘I see.’ She hesitates. ‘But how …?’

‘Look, say a company sells a million dollars’ worth of goods in a particular country, that company would be liable for tax on the profits, wouldn’t they? But say the goods are bought by a shell company in a low-tax jurisdiction and that company in turn sells on the goods to the first country, all the profit would accrue to the tax haven company, so no tax would be due.’

She feels a thud in her stomach, as though her little ship had struck a rock.

‘But isn’t that a bit —?’

‘It’s what we’re here for, Violet, to provide a service to our clients. It’s our business.’

‘But those buckets — it still doesn’t explain why HN Holdings are selling buckets to the Kenyan Health Authority at $49 each which only cost one dollar to buy.’

He sighs. ‘It’s not up to us to judge the business practices of our clients. We just provide a technical service.’

Her heart is pounding. Her mind is racing, trying to find another possible interpretation of what she is hearing.

‘But you … your name …’

‘Part of the GRM service is anonymity, so the identity of the beneficial owner needn’t be disclosed in the home country. We provide the nominee officers and directors for the shell company, and we issue shares to the beneficial owner, or we help them to set up a foundation. Most tax haven countries have strict laws on disclosure of confidential information.’ He pauses and lowers his voice, speaking close to her ear. ‘I’m hoping you’ll soon be able to act as a nominee, Violet, when you’ve got the necessary knowledge. It’s not difficult, but you have to be on the ball. I thought HN Holdings might be a good one to start with for you, because of your knowledge of Kenya.’

‘I see,’ she says, though she really doesn’t want to see.

‘Look,’ says Marc, ‘it can take a bit of getting used to. Why don’t you take the papers home with you this evening? Get things in perspective. I have an international call to take right now, but if you’re free tomorrow evening, maybe we can talk about it over dinner? Yes?’

She can hear the phone ringing in his office. He squeezes her shoulder again, his hand lingering just a moment too long, then disappears.

She slips her jacket on over her dress. In the lift going down, she changes out of her high heels into her trainers and runs to the bus stop.

‘I’m not sure I can do this job, Laura.’ On the top deck of the bus, she pours out her misgivings into her phone. For some reason, her eyes are wet with tears.

‘I know it doesn’t seem right at first, but you’ll soon get used to it, Violet. Everybody in the City does it.’ Laura sounds tired and harassed. In the background the baby is yelling above the noise of the news on the radio. ‘I read somewhere that ninety-eight out of the hundred top London Stock Exchange companies have subsidiaries, associates, or joint ventures in tax havens. If it wasn’t GRM it would be somebody else doing it, and you’d be out of a job.’

‘I think I might be happier just dealing with insurance.’

‘How are you finding working with Marc?’

‘Fine. Actually, he asked me out for dinner. But now I’m not so sure …’

Laura laughs. ‘Don’t be such a fogey, Violet. Go. Enjoy yourself! But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’