Read Online The Devil I Know by Claire Kilroy - Free Book Online
Authors: Claire Kilroy
Tags: Fiction
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to sign the dotted line to get the money. I turned the document over in search of further instructions. The reverse was blank.
My name, the zeros, my name, the zeros – my eyes cranked up their shuttling. Money disrupts the cognitive process. It gums electrodes to your skull and scrambles your brain. That document was a test, I see now, of my character. A test I failed. Tristram St Lawrence I wrote at the bottom of the page. Everyone has a price.
That’s when I became the Director of Castle Holdings. The sixth of June 2006, it says here. In accepting the money, I was accepting the position.
Yes, that is correct: Castle Holdings was a shell company. It bought nothing, sold nothing, manufactured nothing, did nothing, and yet, as your piece of paper states there, it returned a profit of €66 million that first year. Huge sums of untaxed money were channelled through it out to the shareholders of its parent companies, which is perfectly legal under Irish tax law, as you know. I did not make the laws. You made the laws. You are the lawmakers and must shoulder some blame. Me? I was merely the conduit. My appointment struck me as appropriate on a mordant level. Who better to direct a shell company than a shell of a human being? M. Deauville could not have chosen a more fitting candidate. Uncanny. That was the word they used.
I went straight to the bank, as their records will confirm, and lodged the cheque into my account. Yes, into my personal account. I have no other type. At least I had a bank account, which is more than the Minister for Finance could say. I wrote out a second cheque while still at the counter. This one was made out to Father for €15,000. That sum represented his commission – no, commission is the wrong word – I take it back. Father had no hand, act or part in Castle Holdings. He never took a penny from them. His money came from me. Father’s cheque was drawn on my account, not theirs. I put it in an envelope and placed it on the console table outside his study. Guilt money, you could call it. This offering was accepted, or, at least, when I came down in the morning the envelope was gone. The €15,000 was lodged by him, as you can see. I noted when leafing through the subpoenaed records that he deliberated for a number of weeks before cashing it.
The same procedure was followed with every cheque M. Deauville’s courier delivered. I signed them, lodged them into my personal account, and made out a second cheque to Father, which I left in a sealed envelope outside his study. The way I’d heard it, the owner could use a few readies.
The envelopes were removed, the cheques were cashed, and no mention was made of the matter. Money was not a topic Father was equipped with the vocabulary to discuss, yet I suspect it was all he ever thought about. I suspect it ate him up. How could he but think about money, or the want of it, when the roof was leaking and the plaster was mouldering and the floorboards were caving in beneath his feet? Watching it all fall around him and knowing that when he passed away it would be entrusted to his fallen son. It is a mercy that he did not live to see this day.
I soon learned to take up sentry duty in front of the brass plaque at 3 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month, waiting for that envelope like a junkie for his fix. The cheques M. Deauville’s courier delivered were generally as substantial as that first one, yet the hit was never as intense. Always, I was left craving more. I became addicted to waiting for the man because that is my nature. M. Deauville had me exactly where he wanted me. Hi, my name is Tristram and I’m an alcoholic. And an addict and a diabolical gambler.
Iâm not sure I can, Fergus
Iâm not sure I can, Fergus. To try to do so, Iâll have to go back to the beginning. Iâll tell you everything I know about M. Deauville, which isnât all that much for a variety of reasons, one being that the gentleman in question is an
My name, the zeros, my name, the zeros – my eyes cranked up their shuttling. Money disrupts the cognitive process. It gums electrodes to your skull and scrambles your brain. That document was a test, I see now, of my character. A test I failed. Tristram St Lawrence I wrote at the bottom of the page. Everyone has a price.
That’s when I became the Director of Castle Holdings. The sixth of June 2006, it says here. In accepting the money, I was accepting the position.
Yes, that is correct: Castle Holdings was a shell company. It bought nothing, sold nothing, manufactured nothing, did nothing, and yet, as your piece of paper states there, it returned a profit of €66 million that first year. Huge sums of untaxed money were channelled through it out to the shareholders of its parent companies, which is perfectly legal under Irish tax law, as you know. I did not make the laws. You made the laws. You are the lawmakers and must shoulder some blame. Me? I was merely the conduit. My appointment struck me as appropriate on a mordant level. Who better to direct a shell company than a shell of a human being? M. Deauville could not have chosen a more fitting candidate. Uncanny. That was the word they used.
I went straight to the bank, as their records will confirm, and lodged the cheque into my account. Yes, into my personal account. I have no other type. At least I had a bank account, which is more than the Minister for Finance could say. I wrote out a second cheque while still at the counter. This one was made out to Father for €15,000. That sum represented his commission – no, commission is the wrong word – I take it back. Father had no hand, act or part in Castle Holdings. He never took a penny from them. His money came from me. Father’s cheque was drawn on my account, not theirs. I put it in an envelope and placed it on the console table outside his study. Guilt money, you could call it. This offering was accepted, or, at least, when I came down in the morning the envelope was gone. The €15,000 was lodged by him, as you can see. I noted when leafing through the subpoenaed records that he deliberated for a number of weeks before cashing it.
The same procedure was followed with every cheque M. Deauville’s courier delivered. I signed them, lodged them into my personal account, and made out a second cheque to Father, which I left in a sealed envelope outside his study. The way I’d heard it, the owner could use a few readies.
The envelopes were removed, the cheques were cashed, and no mention was made of the matter. Money was not a topic Father was equipped with the vocabulary to discuss, yet I suspect it was all he ever thought about. I suspect it ate him up. How could he but think about money, or the want of it, when the roof was leaking and the plaster was mouldering and the floorboards were caving in beneath his feet? Watching it all fall around him and knowing that when he passed away it would be entrusted to his fallen son. It is a mercy that he did not live to see this day.
I soon learned to take up sentry duty in front of the brass plaque at 3 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month, waiting for that envelope like a junkie for his fix. The cheques M. Deauville’s courier delivered were generally as substantial as that first one, yet the hit was never as intense. Always, I was left craving more. I became addicted to waiting for the man because that is my nature. M. Deauville had me exactly where he wanted me. Hi, my name is Tristram and I’m an alcoholic. And an addict and a diabolical gambler.
Iâm not sure I can, Fergus
Iâm not sure I can, Fergus. To try to do so, Iâll have to go back to the beginning. Iâll tell you everything I know about M. Deauville, which isnât all that much for a variety of reasons, one being that the gentleman in question is an
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