Full of Money by Bill James

Author:Bill James [Bill James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2009-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Twelve

It really grieved Adrian Pellotte when someone in the firm tried skimming off the top, and cornering money that rightly should have come to the treasury of Happy Gardening Solutions. They were on their way to see someone in that dismal category now. Pellotte found disloyalty almost impossible to understand. If you belonged to a company, drew your income through a company, you surely owed it your full, honest allegiance.

Of course, Pellotte knew that many would say the amount of money involved here with Gordon Basil Hodge – less than £21K – they’d say this bagatelle probably did not justify an a.m. door knock by him, Adrian Pellotte: that is, Adrian Pellotte personally. It meant risk and it was footling. But Pellotte believed he should let it be known once in a while around Whitsun that he – yes, he personally, Adrian Pellotte himself – he, Adrian Pellotte, still checked the accounts for fiddling, and could become so hurt by these attempts at deception that he felt it correct to show his, yes, again, his personal pain and disappointment on the spot, such as Hodgy’s nest in Larch Street. Pellotte’s pain and disappointment might be acute, but they did not disable him.

People needed to be reminded that Adrian Pellotte was more than a mystical, pervasive presence on Whitsun, occasionally glimpsed being chauffeured across the estate to collect from and supply sales executives. When it suited, Adrian Pellotte could and did take a down-to-earth part in things. Even someone as minor as Hodge might have to be made an example of pour encourager les autres, as the phrase went. The BMW outside his front door would inform neighbours that a procedure, reproachful and serious, driven by disappointment as much as anger, was probably under way at Gordon Basil Hodge’s. They’d listen out. They’d absorb the lesson. They’d pass on that lesson to others on Whitsun. What they would not do is pass on anything to the police, suppose the emergency services became involved at the address later as a result of the visit by Pellotte and Dean. Pellotte regarded his actual participation as to some degree a public relations matter, but also a chance to reacquaint himself with basic fieldwork skills not often called into play these days.

Dean Feston drove the BMW over towards Larch. Dean had obviously been doing some thinking, and had a fair whack on general topics to speak about now. Dean wouldn’t degrade himself by discussing Hodge and how to deal with him today. A skimmer could never deserve that kind of attention. Nor would Dean refer to his arrest, with Gabrielle Barter Cornish, on suspicion of involvement in the death of that grossly, persistently, invasive journalist. Dean would regard such behaviour by the police as an automatic, blind, impulsive, not worth a word. Dean liked discussions to be on larger issues. Pellotte could put up with it. Sometimes what Dean said did matter. ‘Very regrettably, some fail to realize the hold a child – son or daughter – has over the feelings of a father, Adrian,’ he stated now.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.