A Clean Pair of Hands (2 page)

“They are not claiming sex as a possible reason; Madame Bodin is very attractive.”

“No, they haven’t said so, but sometimes victims are too ashamed to admit it. But in any case, you don’t normally have four professional burglars entering a house to rape a woman. That is not the modus operandi of a sex maniac.”

“So were they perhaps after something else, which they
took, and Bodin can’t say because it was something illegal? Or at least something he can’t admit in front of his wife,” suggested the woman.

“That’s a possibility. When I said I would come with you today, it was because a number of unrelated reports have mentioned this address and I wanted to meet Monsieur Bodin. I’ll ask for some more background on him and have the earlier reports reviewed to find out if he’s treading in something murky. Some businessmen get drawn into crime financing because they have an honest front and clean cash to invest; once they start doing something dirty, however minor, they are in the hands of the criminals. I don’t think this is something we need to investigate as a crime because I believe it was more a disciplinary matter, but it gives us some information to add to what we have.” He slid his hand across to Paula’s knee and they drove back to the office in silence to file their reports.

After the police interview Michel Bodin climbed slowly back upstairs, feeling increasingly stiff after his ordeal. He planned to take a hot bath and soak for a long time. When he opened a drawer of the chest in the bedroom to take a clean towel, he saw to his amazement a brown envelope he recognised. It had been crudely resealed with thick brown tape. He tore it open. Inside was a wad of twenty five-hundred-franc notes, with their images of Pierre and Marie Curie and smelling of fresh oil from the printing press. He quickly hid the envelope under his dressing gown, then on second thoughts put it on the top shelf of the wardrobe where he knew Charlotte could not reach it. He was sweating profusely and his head was banging. He really needed that bath.

Michel Bodin grew up in Paris in the 1950s and 60s. His mother Huguette was to be the major influencer of his life, during the early years as a mentor, and long into adulthood as a strong competitor. She had left home at seventeen to escape paternal discipline and improve her prospects, and married first, briefly, a young man who shared her taste for excitement; but once the whirl of dance halls and laughter had subsided, Huguette realised that her husband's modest intellect and vision left him with little prospect of wealth acquisition, so for the foreseeable future she was faced with a daily reality of living in a tiny second floor apartment above a shop in an unfashionable Paris suburb, with a downstairs, shared outside toilet. She could see no way forward, and became increasingly frustrated with her narrow existence. She was
not someone who would obediently endure.

There had to be a way forward or out. Huguette was a talented singer and dancer and as a child had hopes of becoming a star. At the age of seven she had won a scholarship to the Paris Opera Ballet School, but her family's limited resources meant there was no question of taking up the opportunity, even with a partial scholarship. Now, twenty and married, she was already too old for all that, but the idea lingered that she might try to get into show business. She had good looks, vivacity, and enough determination to succeed as an actress, so she continued to dream of getting into a drama school at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile, her husband's succession of business ventures, financed by his parents, all ended inconsequentially, but at least the experience she gained within their small-scale commerce demonstrated Huguette's innate business sense and a facility with figures. If it wasn't for the fact that her husband was less capable than her, slower on the uptake, and unwilling to let her take control, the results may have been better. Their ensuing arguments, mostly about lack of money, were loud and sometimes violent.

After nearly two years of married life, Huguette felt like a trapped tigress. All her plans were blocked, but she determined to regain control of her life somehow, so at this point she swallowed her pride, went back to her parents and found a job at a local hardware and paint shop. There, she showed the young owner how to expand his business by offering decorating services to local shops and from the success of that basic idea, she developed a wider range of services including refitting local shops, bakeries and bars that had been neglected since the Second World War, engaging teams of artisans to carry out the work under her direction. François Bodin, the young owner of the business, which he had inherited from his father, was
impressed by the ideas and by the woman herself, and soon after Huguette got a divorce, the pair married. Huguette's theatrical dream was replaced by a more accessible new vision – success in business.

Huguette's marriage to François Bodin brought her fulfilment on several levels. François appreciated her flair for commerce, combined with toughness and ambition, which when teamed with his energy, enthusiasm, and creative skills as a designer, boosted their business substantially. He was happy to involve her fully as an equal partner, though his male pride demanded that when he told the story he tended to take full credit.

What Huguette actually did was to make forceful and relentless demands for high standards at every level of the business. She had no training in quality control and had read no books on achieving excellence, but she knew instinctively what was right and would accept nothing less, and she had the courage to make it happen.

She started with the artisans who carried out the shop-fitting work. Some had learned a trade and had some talent, but in the main they were untrained, sloppy, casual and often turned up for work drunk. Huguette's attempts to raise standards were initially studiously ignored by the men. What could a young blonde woman know about the work they did, even if she was the boss's wife? Life just wasn't like the way she wanted it to be and there were plenty of reasons why not.

Huguette at first didn't argue face to face, but when the men expected to be paid she would rigorously inspect their work before issuing a certificate of completion. Without a certificate of completion they would not be paid, and Huguette held the cheque books and cash. The cost of replacing fittings damaged during movement or installation would be deducted from pay; irregular tiling had to
be ripped out and done again, electrical installations had to be tested and shown to work; rubbish, including piles of beer and wine bottles, newspapers, remains of food and cigarette packs had to be collected and disposed of cleanly; piles of unused materials and debris had to be removed and the site left impeccably clean, ready for use.

Quite quickly, things were done right first time; there were more pre-work consultations to ensure the right things were being done in the right way, a number of workers with uncooperative or unhelpfully independent attitudes were replaced, wastage fell significantly, job times reduced and customers were happy with the results.

The fruits of their partnership included an only son, Michel, who was born soon after they were married, and the money the business brought in enabled Huguette, her husband and son to enjoy a life of nouveaux riches. Thus, in his teenage years, Michel could enjoy the madness of a ‘blouson doré', a description applied to the spoilt children of wealthy and indulgent French families.

Michel's mother wanted him to miss out on nothing, so, as she was heavily committed to building the business with her husband, she expressed her love for Michel mainly through generous allowances and by turning a blind eye to his increasingly loose morals.

Michel later described his life at that time as a lust for experience, to a point of wanting to kill himself. During his early teenage years, he was one of a gang of youths who, on warm summer evenings, gathered to drive around quiet suburbs on small-engined but ear-shatteringly noisy mopeds that only the French seem to tolerate, and for which no driving licence was required. Later, he drove his increasingly powerful motorcycles faster and faster, racing friends around Paris until one of them hit a traffic sign and subsequently died. Another jumped a
red light as part of their games and was seriously injured in a crash with a lorry. Girls were attracted to the little band of high-spending youths, and sex was a commodity that required no relationship beyond sharing a ride on a motorbike as a prelude.

Many acres of print have been published about violent political extremist groups that sprouted in the late 1960s across Europe, a time when horrendous crimes were committed by young people who were simply floating aimlessly and seeking excitement. That could have been where Michel headed next. However, just as he was beginning to tire of the easy life and was wondering where to find further stimulation, he was called up for compulsory military service.

Although army generals wanted infantrymen and were not concerned about the future career prospects of their temporary charges, there was a steady undercurrent of unofficial negotiation in which wealthy parents could obtain favoured postings for their offspring. Clearly Huguette and François Bodin knew somebody with a lot of influence because Michel was posted to the island of La Réunion, to the east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It wasn't the most useful posting from a career development or character building perspective because he spent most of his time guarding the military airbase by walking the perimeter with a dog, but it was safe and there was an attraction to offset the boredom. He was followed by a besotted girlfriend, Charlotte, and together they spent all of his free time in a thatched cabin or beachcombing for magnificent nautilus shells which formed the central attractions of a collection that Michel brought back to France.

Once his military service was over, Michel found that his dissolute school years and consequent absence of educational
qualifications left him little alternative but to settle into the family business, for in France, academic qualification is the only recognised key to career opportunities in the public and private sectors. One could say that he pursued the only career that nature fitted him for, but it turned out to be an excellent move for him and for the business. He shared his mother's drive and ambition, and he had the wit and cunning to channel it in ways which added significantly to the company assets once he had learned from practical experience how the business worked, and especially how it depended on good personal relations with the clients, an art that he soon mastered.

Huguette and François Bodin were in many ways a dream team. They were intelligent fighters who would do what was necessary to achieve success. They were powered by acquisitiveness and their frenzy for visible wealth was amply rewarded. One might have expected a clash of Titans from time to time, but, although François was an archetypal alpha male, he adored Huguette and always gave way to her. Michel noted this, and later commented that his father was a sheep, rather than a wolf. He said this about his father although their relationship was normally respectful. But it was his mother's outrageous ostentation that Michel admired and copied and he was determined that he would show he was her equal. He also learned from his mother that once you were locked onto making money as your first priority in life, other sentiments could take a back seat. You could always be generous with money as a substitute for affection. The roots of her pugnaciousness extended back to another generation when Huguette's mother, who lived through the Second World War in occupied Paris, fought for food and subsistence. She would push to the front of queues on some pretext of priority, and amazingly got away with it by pure assertiveness
and aggression. “You get what you're prepared to fight for,” was her motto. By the end of the war, poverty was widespread, but Huguette's parents survived and managed with meagre resources to bring up their two children, Huguette and her brother. Both children had high ambitions, though as things turned out they exercised them very differently.

Charlotte had been in love with Michel since the age of fourteen, and having followed him to the other side of the world, no-one was surprised that once established in his new job Michel married her, and by their late twenties they had three daughters, Annick, Estelle, and Lydia.

With time and experience, Michel proved capable of taking further responsibilities for the business, but his parents were not yet ready to relinquish absolute control, a situation which resulted in a build-up of friction from time to time, especially between Michel and his mother. By now they were effectively rivals. Their differences came to the surface because whilst Huguette considered the French tax authorities to be public enemy number one, and therefore to be opposed at every opportunity, she had very strict standards for dealing with clients, an area where Michel tended to have a more flexible attitude. Later, as his parents moved towards retirement and to pursue other interests, they handed control of the business to Michel and Charlotte, and it took another forward leap under the impetus of Michel's new initiatives which included discarding some of his parents' ethical constraints.

The François Mitterrand presidency, which came to power in 1981, established itself as the flag-bearer for a culture that pervaded and has continued to pervade French life. It flourished in an environment of inequality, self-interest and cheating, and set up its own framework for cheating on a massive scale, based on an earlier communist model. It demonstrated how a government can quite overtly exploit ways of playing beyond the limits of its own rules to tip the odds in favour of staying in power, and acquire whatever financial resources are necessary to secure support and influence election results. In short it was a kleptocracy. So how did French taxpayers respond?

They felt under threat from their own government, so just as in ancient times, those who had the means built their own citadels to protect them. The modern equivalent
of a stone fortress and private army was to set up contact networks of influence and protection along the lines of the socialist government’s own model.

Tax evasion, in France, is founded and justified in the belief that the level and form of taxation is onerous and unfair, and evasion has become a national sport. Knowing this, the tax authorities assume that taxpayers will under-declare, so for business tax assessment inspectors arbitrarily increase declared benefits or reduce offsetting losses before calculating taxes – thus inciting taxpayers to be even more determined to beat the system. Anybody who raises objections to the treatment is likely to be subjected to invasive tax inspections over a long period. Large companies in all business sectors contribute hundreds of thousands a year to political funds by hiring fraudulent consultancies such as Urba, and more recently Bygmalion, to look after their interests with the government. No measurable service is provided but being a contributor to the party in power tends to keep the tax inspectorate under control and open doors to lucrative contracts for public works.

As they operated well outside the sphere of government influence, the Bodin family business conscientiously practiced the national sport, and did whatever was necessary to wage war on the taxman as part of their mission, whilst considering that their business was run on entirely ethical lines. During their period at the helm, Huguette and François were able to encourage some of the smaller customers to pay cash, thus reducing their Value Added Tax (VAT) bill. However, Huguette Bodin baulked at some of her son Michel’s suggestions for profit improvement, though she did allow any builder’s and tradesman’s idle labour time to be used on projects for the family, their friends, or for ‘marketing purposes’.

Later, as the younger Bodins were able to exert more control over the direction and style of the business, their ideas were unbridled. Michel’s motivation at first was to prove to his mother that he had more to add and that his newer, expansive ideas could generate greater wealth for them all. He was about to demonstrate over a period of years that in his business and private life, his motivation to achieve could overcome obstacles or constraints. He and Charlotte expanded the business into new market segments, and one of their most successful initiatives was a change of emphasis from shop-fitting mainly for big luxury retailers, a sector that was becoming more competitive and favoured larger suppliers, to renovating the multitude of bars and restaurants for which Paris is noted. The owners of these establishments were a breed apart of mostly independent entrepreneurs, a no-holds-barred community, partly from the provincial regions of France, but also from other European states, including Eastern Europe. It proved to be a turning point in the company’s fortunes and Michel’s relationship with this market fostered a broad relaxation of corporate and personal ethical constraints. The clients’ businesses dealt mainly in cash which they hugely under-declared, so they were able to pay at least partly in cash for significant building works. A single transformation project was worth hundreds of thousands and the contracts went to the supplier who was most accommodating in a number of ways, including tax avoidance, but who could also fulfil some of the most private and secret desires of the owners.

Michel quickly got to know the preferences and sensitivities of his clients, and a measure of his success was that he and Charlotte could afford to live in a palatial house which they built in the park of an old film star’s residence, in the elegant and wealthy suburb of St Cloud, to the west
of Paris. They took time off to travel the world in a quest to satisfy Michel’s lust for knowledge and culture, taking on deserts, mountains and jungles. Charlotte was always his willing partner in business and social life, adding glamour and sound advice to Michel’s enthusiasms. They were seen by family and friends to be an ideal couple. Michel brimmed with relentless energy and a sensual curiosity which filled Charlotte with admiration and delectation. She didn’t question what was happening in the business and where it might lead. She wanted it to last.

It was Charlotte who thought it was time to seek out members of the family who, for various reasons, had drifted away to a social perimeter to run their own lives, so she made some initial contacts and encouraged selected relatives to renew close relations with her, Michel and their three daughters. Thérèse Milton, François Bodin’s much younger sister, had been a favourite aunt in Michel’s childhood, and because she was only nine years older than him, she bridged a gap between two generations. She was now happily married to George Milton and living in Northern Ireland.

Michel had attended Thérèse and George’s wedding in Paris when he was fourteen, and that was the last he saw of them for a long time. When Thérèse married, she moved from her parents’ home in Paris to Ireland, tearing herself away from her parents for the first time beyond holidays, and she had to make a new life in a new country with a new language. There were lots of other demands for her attention over the next fifteen years and the Miltons could only afford the time and cost of travel to France to join Thérèse’s parents in Paris once a year, usually at Christmas. Holiday entitlements for George and Thérèse at that time were only two weeks per year, so communication with Michel and Charlotte was limited to fleeting moments over
the holiday period, during meetings at the homes of family or friends, and maybe a phone call every six months.

The first opportunity for Thérèse and George Milton to spend time alone with Michel and Charlotte Bodin came during one of their visits to Paris for Christmas and the New Year, which they were able to extend by a few days. They responded enthusiastically and with some curiosity to an invitation to dinner at the house that Michel and Charlotte had built near the racecourse at St Cloud.

It was a truly stunning place.

The electric wrought-iron front gates opened onto a vast park of mature cedars set in carefully swept and manicured lawns bordered by well-pruned shrubs. It was dark when the Miltons arrived, and as they drove forward between stately pillars topped by large stone pineapples, hidden projectors lit up the park, illuminating the massive trunks and swooping lower branches of the trees, spreading pools of light randomly across the smooth lawns to the walls of the house. From the outside, the house was undistinguished, apart from its great size, which was comparable with other residences in the area; but once the heavy wooden front door with its prominent ironwork and studding was opened, the full effect of a fantasy world took over the senses, starting with a wide flagstone-floored entrance hall, bordered on two sides by a massive curving stone staircase, and with tall double doors leading off to reveal a high, hammer beam ceiling in the main reception hall. Like a huge wooden sailing ship built upside down, thought George Milton.

The first impression was the antithesis of a warm and friendly home. It was ostentatious to a point of comedy. A folly, like a Hollywood film set for a gothic period movie. An imaginative visitor could easily picture Christopher Lee, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing sitting by the blazing
wood fire in the monumental chimney of the great hall, discussing the next supernatural threat to mankind.

A tour around the house gave no respite from the grandiose scale. The bedrooms were enormous, furnished with original but perfectly renovated four poster beds from the sixteenth century. A Templar’s armoire in dark wood, at least eight feet high, must have been dismantled to pass through even these large, ornately panelled double doors. Charlotte’s clothes room was on the scale of a high street boutique and similarly equipped with clothes racks and walls of drawers. Life-size marble statues and bronzes gazed across the polished wooden floors from their vantage points. Charlotte explained that Michel was an avid buyer at auctions and he had acquired these genuine, rare pieces at a fraction of their retail value at provincial auctions where chateaux were being stripped of their contents.

“It’s like a museum,” whispered George to Thérèse.

Dinner for four was served by efficient and polite caterers at one end of what looked like a monastery dining table that could have seated twenty-four monks, surrounded by high-backed carved chairs in dark wood with deep red velvet cushions. The table was lit by gothic iron candelabra and decorated with spectacularly hand-painted Limoges porcelain. The cutlery was ornate and heavy-handled, and George soon found that it easily fell off the scalloped plate edges if you weren’t careful. Thick, heavy-based antique stem-glasses completed the table display. The food was excellent, the Aloxe-Corton ten-year-old Burgundy wine was dark, delicious and copious, and by the end of the evening the visitors were not only impressed, they were concerned as to how they could possibly reciprocate, and more than a little curious as to how a family building and shop-fitting business could generate enough to pay for such a lavish lifestyle.

Despite their disparity of wealth, over the following years the Miltons and the Bodins drew closer and as the Miltons’ travel budget and holiday entitlements increased, they found more occasions to get together in France or, less frequently, in Ireland. Visits and attendance at anniversary celebrations became so frequent that there could be no doubt that for Thérèse and George, the rapprochement was welcome. The two couples were closer in age and had more in common than other, older members of the wider family and as the years passed, and as the age gap became less noticeable, they developed a genuine loving friendship. The new-found intimacy was based on mutual trust, and respect, together with shared hopes and fears, and they seized new opportunities to reconnect with enthusiasm.

Most of the immediate Bodin family and other, more distant relatives were also happy with the renewed relationship and reciprocated the Bodins’ apparent joy at their rediscovery of an extended family. As the initial contact developed into a more relaxed and regular dialogue, and as Thérèse and George observed and learned more about Michel and Charlotte, so Michel’s approach to life and his obvious success became a regular subject of conversation in the family. Sure, he had started from a foundation of business success established by his parents, but he was so forceful, energetic, and just like his father, had such an easy, engaging way with people that it was unsurprising that he should be doing so well. He was lucky that the economy in France was buzzing and Paris was the hub, where internal renewal of catering outlets and new or retro-style changes of decor were essential to attract and retain customers.

In those early days Michel was easily able to demonstrate to potential clients that a direct relationship existed
between new investment in interior and exterior styling and increased turnover, so customers followed each other in a competitive race. Once he knew who was competing with whom it was relatively easy for Michel to clean up groups of businesses in a neighbourhood, as each tried to outdo the others.

Between the Bodins and the Miltons, family stories and business experiences were shared, especially as Thérèse and George had recently launched their own business in Ireland and could therefore exchange thoughts and ideas on a par with Michel and Charlotte. The two couples appeared to share a sense of what they wanted from life and a common feel for subjects to be treated with humour or seriousness. They discussed business problems and opportunities and those discussions tended to confirm their affinity, though under the surface there was always a marked difference in the scale of devotion to wealth acquisition, levels of risk they were willing to take, and once wealth was achieved, the degree of ostentation in flaunting the results.

Thérèse and George Milton did not often have to worry about signing cheques for whatever they wanted; the funds were usually accessible, but either they were happy with less than the Bodins considered normal, or it was simply that their budget didn’t extend so far, but whatever the reason, there was a visible contrast in the level of wealth sought and displayed by the two families. The Miltons were happy to share their success with friends and family, but were more discreet about it, and as they were to discover later, more conventional in their means to achieve it.

The Miltons’ existence was largely regimented by their growing business, which was demanding of their own professional input in addition to the cares that went with management of others. Their business was deeply affected
by economic cycles and there were worrying times when it lost money for long periods. The trick was to know when and how much to cut back, and how to regenerate business quickly after a recession. They believed that success in business, as in other endeavours, consisted of getting up one more time than you fall. As a result, through the earlier years of the business, they concentrated on developing a professional contacts network, so there was little time for private socialising. Their business commitments encroached on the time they had to maintain regular contact with their family and a close circle of a few long-standing friends and as older family members died, their relationship with the Bodins assumed greater importance.