The Tigerman

Chapter one

London

Aftab Hermani looked about carefully. He was alone in that part of the enormous container yard.

The manifest said it was a consignment of pre-packaged Dates from Turkey. He cut the blue seals on the doors.

The handles screeched as he pulled the levers to swing open the tailgate doors. He cursed under his breath and paused. He could hear the forklift trucks several aisles down still working. He threw the doors open.

The container was full to the roof with pallets. With difficulty he climbed up and balanced while he took a look.

The smell was lovely. Fresh dates mixed with a hint of plastic from the packaging. He frowned in disappointment. Why had Stevie made a fuss. Dates were dates. Or were they?

He reached in and took a package at random and opened it. Sweet dates with stones in, beautifully presented in long rectangular packaging. He chewed one and spat out the stone.

Delicious.

It was quiet.

Carefully Aftab pushed between the pallets of dates, using his body to create a narrow passageway between two pallets. They were heavy and ceiling high so he moved methodically. The floors were metal and he could slide the wooden pallets slowly but surely. He wanted to verify that behind the pallets of packaged dates, the next layer would be the same.

When he got to the inner edge of the first row of pallets he used his iPhone torch to throw light on the proceedings.

He gasped in surprise. There were pallets. There were packets on the pallets, but he couldn't believe his eyes.

He reached in and grabbed a handful and edged back to daylight.

In his hand he had two neatly bound bundles of fifty pound sterling notes.

Money laundering, must be millions in the container, was his shocked conclusion.

Each neatly bound bundle held fifty of fifty pound sterling notes.

Aftab felt a rising panic. Something this big had to be organised crime. Big time money laundering.

He could call the police.

Be worth more than your life to open that one, Stevie, the Yard Supervisor, had joked when they were arranging the audit on the previous Friday.

Aftab began to have a panic attack. It wasn't his first panic attack and it wouldn't be his last. But this time it was big. He struggled to breathe and get on top of it.

The Container Yard stretched hundreds of yards along the docks and parallel to the large warehouse and office buildings. He could hear the sound of the fork lift truck where Brendan Duffy, his audit junior, was supervising the emptying and count of and verification of, the contents of a randomly selected container. Stevie, the Yard Supervisor was directing operations. That suited Aftab as it gave him freedom to move about without Stevie watching hawklike, his every move. Even Stevie couldn't be in two places at once.

Aftab was the audit senior and had arranged for the inspection to take place on a Sunday when the yard would be quiet and so avoid interfering with the busy hubbub that was daily fare on the site.

The yard was a very busy place and most containers had to quickly move on into the warehouse, or to their final destination, to ensure that the yard did not become choked.

Slowly the panic began to subside. Aftab's gut was tight and his head was in a whirl as he considered the situation.

Then he followed his gut. He squeezed back alongside the pallets of Dates and began passing wads of fifties from right hand to left hand and tossing them out onto the yard. When he considered he had a suitcase full he backed out and rearranged the pallets as best he could.

Aftab resealed the container after he climbed down.

He needed something into which to put the bundles of fifties. Fortunately the wrappings had held. The notes he had taken were on the ground but not blowing about in the wind.

He stacked the notes alongside the rear wheel of the container and put his coat over them.

He took deep breaths to become calm and organised. First he went and put the 'seal making machine' he had 'borrowed' back into Stevie's office. Then he went into the general office where the forklift truck drivers would have their tea breaks. He found a large black plastic sack and then wandered casually down to see how the count was going

What did you do with your coat? Stevie asked as he came up.

In the car.

You'll catch a cold standing about in the wind.

Aftab went over to Brendan and smiled. How's it going young fellow.

Brendan smiled at the unusual form of address, but remembered Aftab was from the Indian sub-continent where some old formal English expressions still survived.

Could be quicker if you were helping, but they are still unloading. Then they'll have to reload the container.

Tell the driver to take out the middle two aisles. We can count the rest in situ.

Good thinking, Brendan said gratefully.

Aftab went and explained the plan to Stevie.

Good thinking, Stevie agreed.

When the count is finished can we leave you and the drivers to reload. We don't have to be here.

It'll take a good hour for us to finish up, will you sign the overtime docket for the office?

Make it an hour and a half extra each, to be sure to be sure, Aftab said with a grin.

Right so, will do, Stevie agreed with a touch of gratitude in his tone.

I've finished writing up my notes, Aftab said, repeating the excuse he had used to gain access to Stevie's office. I'll help Brendan and speed things up.

When Aftab was satisfied that the count matched the manifest he called a halt.

Brendan, you go ahead and wait in the car. I have some papers to collect, he instructed.

Fine, Brendan said, delighted to get out of the biting wind.

Stevie went with Aftab as far as the office so as to collect his sealing machine.

See you, Aftab said, as Stevie went towards his office. I'll leave you and your drivers to reload and seal the containers.

Safe home, Stevie replied and went inside.

Aftab gave him a moment and then doubled back towards the container yard.

Aftab made a detour and arrived back at the Turkish Dates container. He put the bundles of fifties into the black sack. Then he wrapped his coat around the bundle.

When he got back to the car he threw the coat and the sack on the floor of the car between the back seat and the driver's seat.

As expected the Gate Security people checked the boot of the car when they came to the exit.

Then they were home free. Aftab was delighted.

Brendan just listened to the radio as they drove in silence.

Aftab was inwardly tense and he wondered had he done the right thing. It had been such an impulse.

Presumably the money would be missed, but given the trailer was full maybe not. Who owned the money was not going to be his problem. He wasn't going to risk his life exposing a major money laundering racket. That was way above his pay grade.

He was due to go home to India and that was that. His wedding was planned and he was leaving as soon as this audit was signed off with his boss, a senior Partner in Morley and Landau, Chartered Accountants.

The money he had taken posed an additional unexpected problem. It had to be a considerable amount and he couldn't just walk into a bank. No, it needed laundering. This would be possible back in India.

Aftab and Brendan shared a small apartment in West Hampstead, not far from Kilburn, with a work colleague, Michael Ali. Michael was of Asian descent but in London from British Guyana to study accountancy.

Brendan had graduated from University in Ireland but as he was studying accountancy in England he did not get any exam exemptions.

Brendan had just finished his intermediate exam and Michael was a year ahead, having passed part one of the two parts of the finals. Only Aftab had finished and was a qualified Chartered Accountant and an Associate Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, to give it its full name.

Brendan will you write up the notes for Monday so we can sign off the audit with the Partner?

No problem, shouldn't take long.

You getting your head down for your finals? Aftab asked.

In their group a lot of talk was of exams and progress and studying.

I have a year, I'll take a break for a month or two. I've signed up to a correspondence course with Foulks Lynch. I'll get stuck in after I have a few nights out. I need to recover from the Intermediate exam.

How did you do?

Ok, the Partner was pleased. Top ten percent is good he said, given fifty percent fail every time.

You did good. More brains than I thought for an Irishman.

Don't be racist, Brendan reprimanded.

Aftab laughed. Only joking, he said. Then he had an idea.

The idea was simple. He'd invite Brendan to the wedding in India and then ask him to help him by taking an extra suitcase. He would say he needed help to bring his textbooks home. Except it would not be textbooks. It would be the money. He had just the suitcase. The one his sister had bought for him years before when he had first departed to London to continue his studies.

Yes, Brendan could be his mule. If Brendan was caught smuggling currency too bad. But if he did not know he was carrying, the odds were he'd get through customs. Brendan had an easy going, almost invisible persona.

Ideal for the task.

Chapter two

Unusually for an Indian citizen Aftab was not Hindu. There were still millions of Muslims in India and Aftab was from the Bohra clan. His family were rich and landed and had a palace deep in the centre of rural India.

Michael Ali was also Muslim but much less inclined to pray and go to mosque.

Brendan was from poor farming stock. Not in the same class and standing as Aftab and Michael who came from landed prosperous families. Brendan got by hand to mouth, having worked his way through University and found a position in London to study Accountancy on the low pay of an Articled Clerk.

Aftab had never voiced his sense of superiority to Brendan, whom he regarded as peasant stock. Not the sort that would ever cross the front door of his father's Palace were he in India. But in more egalitarian London it had amused him to let Brendan join and share their Apartment with himself and Michael.

Both he and Michael agreed that they found it amusing and interesting to observe the mannerisms and values of a European Christian citizen up close. It was like meeting another species. But they were all swimming in the same river for the moment and that made it acceptable. And Brendan was friendly, quiet and diffident.

Brendan had given up going to mass when he settled in London. In Ireland it was as much a social habit as a matter of conviction. He liked to have his Sundays as a free day. He had a few Irish friends that he knew from College, who had also moved to various jobs in London. When he needed a pint of beer he met them as Michael and Aftab rarely let alcohol pass their lips. He understood it was a religious thing for them and never pressed them to come for a pint.

Brendan was surprised when he came to London to find that there was still a British sense of superiority that resulted in a racist attitude to the Irish. That said, older hands in the Irish community had told him things were much improved from the nineteen sixties when advertisements in shop windows for bedsit accommodation would bear the remark, 'no coloured’s, no Irish, no dogs.'

He had shrugged it all off. He had inner confidence.

And the fact that he was flat sharing with two men of colour from two different continents had not crossed his mind as a racial issue. He liked the diversity and the comradery of being on the same qualification path and working in the same firm.

I have a date tonight, taking her to the movies at eight this evening, Aftab said with satisfaction as they arrived back outside their ground floor flat.

Brendan gave an admiring grin. Since he'd qualified Aftab had gone mad on the women. Whereas he and Michael were weighed down by inhibition and lack of funds and the need to study, Aftab was a man of charm and now was a man about the town.

The fact that Aftab was getting married in India in a month had spurred him on. He wanted to play the field before he went home. Indian girls liked to marry before they had sex. English girls liked him and liked to share with him. He felt a great sense of pride when he managed to persuade them to open their legs and let him into their beds.

He hadn't yet met his bride to be but his father and mother had selected her. They would have picked a virgin of high Caste.

Go inside Brendan, Aftab instructed. I'll find a place to park the car. And I'm going to drop over to the supermarket to get a few things. I'll see you shortly.

Aftab waited as Brendan went up the steps to their ground floor flat. He watched as Brendan smiled and said hello to the young woman coming down the steps as he went up.

Three women, a nurse and two trainee doctors, had the upstairs flat. But there was little interplay with them. They led very separate lives but could be relied on to say hello and good morning or good evening. But otherwise they had their own friends and had little time for the three lads downstairs, other than a general willingness to get on when they crossed paths coming in and out.

Aftab had designs on one of them but he had not yet made a move. He was too involved with other women but he was resolved to make a move soon, before he ran out of time and returned to get married. He just had to figure out how to make a break through.

He moved to park the car. So far, so good, everything was going swimmingly. Next step was to get the money into his room un-noticed.

Chapter three

Brendan had the day off. He had lots of untaken annual leave and he had decided to take a day off to review his affairs.

Aftab had come up with a startling idea. He had suggested Brendan and Michael might like to come to his wedding in India.

Aftab said that his Dad would cover the airfares and that they would be accommodated, all food supplied, in his father's house. A house that he happened in passing to describe as a palace.

Brendan had kicked to touch, saying he'd need to review his finances. But being of a completer finisher mentality he immediately began to research what he'd have to do to make the trip a reality. Passport he had. Visa needed. Funds to be accessible. Emergency fund. Suit for the wedding.

He was ticking off his list in his head when he heard a scream. From upstairs. From the flat upstairs. A woman giving a shriek.

Brendan rolled out of the couch and went to the foot of the stairs.

Everything all right up there? he shouted.

The access to the flat upstairs was by way of a door set into the foot of the stairs.

Neither he nor Aftab nor Michael had seen beyond the first steps, and only when, on occasion, the door opened while they were in the hall.

Help please, a pleading voice said, sounding distressed.

The door to the stairs was secured by a yale lock and Brendan had no key.

Brendan went into the kitchen. He found a brush with a wooden base that was used to polish shoes.

Taking the brush he struck the frosted glass beside the yale lock. The brush went in easily and he just avoided cutting his hand with the jagged glass that remained in the door.

He reached in and turned the yale lock and opened the door.

Are you all right. Will I come up? he shouted.

Please!!!!

Brendan bounded up the stairs.

Where? he shouted.

Here!

He followed the voice into the small front bedroom.

A woman in a dressing gown was bent over a single bed.

You Ok? Brendan asked coming tentatively into the room.

Idiot do I look ok!!!! she cried in distress.

Brendan assessed the situation.

The woman was kneeling with one knee on the bed and holding herself braced against the wall.

Immediately he saw the problem. Her left leg was trapped between the bed and the wall.

Please don't faint, Brendan urged. I'd not know what to do.

She managed a smile.

I was adjusting the bed when I let go and it trapped me, she said through gritted teeth.

Brendan leaned across the bed and supported himself with one arm against the wall.

He put his left hand down the gap between the wooden side of the bed and the wall. The side of the bed would have been flush to the wall. The gap was there because the woman's trapped leg was being squeezed by the weight of the bed and the woman on the bed.

Put your weight across my back, Brendan instructed.

The woman yelped as she moved, putting an arm across Brendan's bent back and then hoisting herself so she lay across him, her leg still trapped but now with most of her weight supported by Brendan who was using his legs together with his arms against the wall, to provide a bridge without putting any weight on the bed.

Then he grasped the underside of the frame and pulled on the side of the bed and leveraged with his legs.

She screeched as the side of the bed came up and scraped her leg but as Brendan raised the bed her leg came free and her weight came down on Brendan. He dropped the bed and braced against the wall. As he straightened up she fell off him and across the bed.

For an instant her dressing gown was open and he stared down at her naked body. She whipped the dressing gown back in place and crouched back into the corner as if she had suddenly taken fright.

Brendan stood up and hands on hips, he eased his back by stretching. Then he smiled down at the woman.

She had got over the startling effect of suddenly being exposed and managed a small smile. Thank the lord you were home, she said. I don't know what would have become of me if I was trapped there until the girls got home. Thank you so much.

Show me your leg, Brendan asked.

They both blushed but Brendan