Beware of the Ides of March (part 3 of 10)

Damian Searl is as dodgy as they come and he knows it. He is not particularly proud of it, but neither does it keep him awake at nights. Only in the past - in his teenage years, perhaps - was he unduly concerned about irrelevant sentiments of virtue and morality. He grew up in Our Lady’s convent home, in Bexley. Since his unidentified mother abandoned him as a baby at the doorstep of St Alfred’s Church, the Sisters had brought him up as a Catholic. That experience enshrined - yes, ‘enshrined’ was the exact word that the Sister Michael often used - in him a conscience that was more restrictive than a cast iron cage. Over time, however, and with the regular shock treatment of life’s reality, he has come to find the forbidding, ever nagging, little voice to be an irritating hindrance rather than a helpful guide. It was nothing but a voice of doubt and deterrent, a crippling handicap turning him into an excessively cautious person who found it hard to make any meaningful or timely decisions.

Now, of course, he has matured to the point that he has conquered his squeamishness and attained the mastery of his conscience. He can confidently say that he is immune to guilt. He is capable of focusing on matters of interest to himself alone, with no regard for the thoughts of others, and without any misgivings. All he wants to do now is to get on with the business of making a way for himself in life, putting behind all those wasted years of trying to be the model catholic and the perfect citizen, because, frankly, all that hassle gets you nowhere.

And there have been many wasted years indeed: a period when he neglected to pursue any particular ambition. He wandered about in the wilderness of ignorance, misguided by a false sense of purpose and deluded by vacuous doctrines of pointless piety. At the age of nineteen, he dropped out of his Medical degree in the University of East London in his first year. Then he roamed the streets of Hackney and Dalston for three years in a futile search for self-realization, although other people thought he was going through mental illness at the time - something he would never accept.

It took an accident to bring him to his senses: A hit-and-run in broad daylight – ‘without any witnesses’. That was when Eric came to his rescue. Eric, of all people, was a criminal, so he did not report the incident to the police, but instead looked after him with the expectation that Damian might become part of his gang. The irony was that Daman found out later that the person who ran him over was the son of a clergy. Pater dimitte illis, non enim sciunt quid faciunt.

With his recovery from his injuries came a new self-discovery that gave him the will to stay off the streets and begin to think of making something of his life. He resisted all of Eric's attempts to drag him into a full fledge life of crime. The brazen way in which Eric and his boys stole cars and burgled houses and shops was not something with which Damian wanted to be associated. That simply was not his style.

Damian’s personal mantra is ‘appearance counts more than substance’. This nugget of truth has enabled him to work as a construction engineer, a financial consultant, a land surveyor and an IT contractor, without any formal qualifications in any of these disciplines. The key, of course, is the skill of deception and make-believe. Most importantly, if you are genuinely able to delude yourself about your own abilities, then you stand every chance of getting what you want out of other people. Perhaps he has picked up something valuable from his catholic upbringing after all.

Right now, he is an SAE – not a Self Addresses Envelope, but a Security Advisory Executive, which, in essence, is a call-out mobile locksmith. His services include misleading his ‘clients’ on choices of locks and residential security systems, changing or replacing locks that have nothing wrong with then in the first place, and getting into places where keys have been lost or misplaced, with unnecessary force. He has placed some ads in the yellow pages and in the Dartford Gazette where he has also claimed to be an expert in automobile security.

He would prefer, of course, to be many other things instead of a small-time hustler - a millionaire, a wealthy politician, a famous rock star - but the fact of life is that he is what he is, and that will have to be that for the time being, or, at least until he breaks into the good times. Who knows, he could well be on his way. He is his own boss; he makes his own decisions and pays his own way.

Damian may have dabbled in the odd robbery at some point, he may have bought and sold stolen equipment; he may have dealt in class-A drugs or jostled with the local bad boys, but he is not a criminal. Dodgy, crooked and bent, perhaps, but certainly not criminal - because, after all, has he ever committed any act of violence against anyone, and, most importantly, he does not have a police record. He is conducting his business completely above board, paying all his taxes, fulfilling all the necessary formalities of a normal business, forging all the necessary documents and faking all the important certifications.

He has scrupulously avoided any possible contact with the police - No traffic offences, no drunken brawls, and no careless, risky business with known criminals in the neighborhood. No hanging about in the crowd of curious onlookers around anywhere or anything that remotely resembles a scene of crime. If anything should happen around him that might attract the presence of the police, he is gone. He must avoid any careless risk of becoming a involved, even as a witness, at all possible cost.

For some time, he found business to be quite lucrative. Thanks to exorbitant call-out charges (sometimes in excess of £200, depending on how refined the caller’s voice is.) and highly inflated labour charges. Charging top whack for used, inferior or fake parts, or claiming for work not even done at all - all this is fair game in the Mobile Locksmith's stock-in-trade. Sometimes, which is very rarely, he stumbles upon some useful information, in customer’s houses, which Eric is often willing to pay for. Although Eric and his boys may burgle the house as a result, that is none of his business.

It is only in the last couple of weeks that business has really slowed down. Damian thinks that it is because of a recent coverage of ‘Tradesmen from Hell’ in Watchdog on BBC TV, where Ann Robinson and her team have spilled the beans on every dirty trick in the Mobile Locksmiths’ cookbook. Nothing was left unsaid. The poor locksmith, Alan Cochins, who was the main subject of the program, was in every respect like Damian in his style of operation. He could not run away fast enough from the camera after the lid was taken off his can of worms. Now, because of Watchdog, everyone is mistrustful of all Locksmiths advertised in the yellow pages and in the Local papers.

When Damian’s cell phone rings at 7am and it turns out to be a potential customer, he quickly switches to his business voice. ‘Of course, we do. Whereabouts are you sir? …sure, please be aware that there is a callout charge…Yes, I’ve got that...No problem’

It is an early morning assignment. The man wants to have the lock of his front door changed immediately. He is an ideal customer – desperate and confused. As Damian drives into the neighborhood, he eyes the houses, dethatched cottages with large front and back gardens. People move to places like this to get away from the working class. This quiet suburb is the rich peoples’ retreat and he knows that one day he will buy a house in an area like this.

He does not drive into the driveway; he parks the van on the main road and carries his workbag with him into the compound. He finds the man standing in front of the house. He is dressed in a black suit and wearing a rich looking silk necktie. He barely grunts in acknowledgement to Damian's greeting before indicating that it is the lock to the main door that he wants changed. Damian examines the door, a five-lever mortise deadlock.

‘I think you should consider an Intelligent Central Locking System’ Damian suggests, ‘It is quite efficient and I can get it all done for you at a significant discount’

‘Look, I just want you to replace the lock with the same type, okay?’

‘You could also-’

‘I’m not interested, please. I told you what I already wanted. How long is this thing going to take?’ He glances at the road as a car passes by and then at his watch.

‘Only a matter of minutes’ Damian assures him. He wants to ask why he is getting the locks changed but he senses that the man is not in the mood for any kind of conversation. He shrugs and proceeds with dismantling the lock and replacing it with the one that he has brought with him. He decides that the man is probably going through a nasty divorce situation and is having the lock changed to spite his cheating wife, who knows?

The man glances towards the road again as another car passes. Why is he so jumpy? Damian wonders. Even when a helicopter passes overhead, he glances nervously up. The inner door that probably leads to the living area is firmly shut. Each time Damian casts a curious glance towards it, the man fixes him with a stone cold stare as if to say ‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘Right, all done now’ says Damian, ‘I will dispose of the old lock for you’ He puts his drill bits, screwdrivers and other tools back into ins bag, as well as the old lock. Taking out his letter-headed receipt book he writes out the invoice, ‘Now on the small matter of the payment… which comes to...er…£350 plus VAT, making £411.25p.’

The man brings out his wallet and counts £450 in fifty-pound notes without any hesitation. ‘Keep the change’. He turns round and shuts the door.

'Bugger,' Damian thinks, 'I should have asked for £650'.

Damian stops at the filling station on Princes Street. He hums to himself while filling his tank. At this time of the day there is nobody else using any of the other pumps. In the newly refurbished shop, there is only one person at the till. Damian picks up a CD of REM from the small music shelf. Today the 15 of March is, after all, his birthday and with such a good start in the day he deserves a little treat.

The sales assistant accepts a £50-note from Damian and examines it briefly; it has been a long time since he has seen one of these. With an apologetic smile, he switches on a small ultraviolet lamp and raises the note against it, squinting as he looks at it. He fiddles about with the note for a while with a confused look on his face.

‘What?’ Damian says, a sinking feeling starting to come upon him.

‘Your money is bad’ replies the sales assistant, in a strong Asian accent. ‘I can’t see the small queen’s head on it, and it has no black line. It is a fake’

‘OK’ says Damian, thinking very quickly. ‘Tell you what; I’ll use my credit card.’

‘Sorry sir, but I will be having to report the matter to the police’

‘No, no don’t do that! You don’t have to bring the police into this at all. I will find the bastard who gave me the fake money and I will…’

‘Am sorry but I been told that when we are having fake money in 50 pounds, I call police immediately. I don’t want no trouble.’ He is already reaching for the phone hanging on the sidewall in his booth.

Damian feels a trickle of sweat run down behind his left ear, along his neck and down his back. He has thus far managed to avoid any involvement with the police. He knows that the moment he enters into their radar he will be as conspicuous as a fully dressed Elvis Priestley impersonator in a funeral procession. He must get away at once before they appear on the scene. In three long strides, he is out of the shop, but not before brushing against a shelf of newspapers and magazines, and knocking it over. Not looking back to check any damage, Damian flees in the direction of his van. As he reaches the pump where he parked it, he stops, and stares in confusion and disbelief at the space where his van should be. It has vanished. Someone has driven off in it while he was in the shop.