A Day at the Races (8 page)

Mike knew all the committee members, some better than others, and their enthusiasm was amazing, but he had severe doubts if they could reach the massive target.

Mike pondered over his next move, as he was about to divulge details of the operation to two of his most trusted employees, without whom he would find it difficult to achieve.

Just then there was a knock on his office door.

“Hi Tony, come on in and sit down, is Derek with you?”

“He is just finishing the run on Gardener’s Weekly, he shouldn’t be too long”

Shortly afterwards Tony’s brother Derek Robinson appeared.

“Come on in Derek and sit down.”

Mike had known them for almost five years, they came from a very well respected family, and during this time he had become very close to them. Both of them were six feet tall almost like twins although Derek was twenty-six and Tony was twenty-four, they had both inherited their ginger hair from their father as well as his pale complexion.

They were very willing workers always prepared to put in extra effort to achieve better results, and Mike thought a lot about them.

They both confided in Mike all their personal problems, and there had been many over the years he had known them. They looked on Mike as a sort of father figure, after their own father had passed away some years previous.

Derek was the head of the print shop and was highly skilled, he had won a number of printing awards from various organisations in recognition of his ability. Mike felt he could trust them implicitly, but all the same, was very nervous about saying what he was about to do.

“Right lads you are probably wondering why I asked you here? Well as you know Rachel has been ill for a long time now, the treatment she has been receiving is not doing what the doctors hoped it would, so they have now suggested a liver transplant, that’s providing a donor can be found”

“I thought a fund had been started for her at the Duke?”

“That’s correct Tony, but it will take time to raise this amount of money, and unfortunately time is something that Rachel doesn’t have.”

“So where do we come in?”

“Well Derek, what I am going to ask you both, may take your breath away, and let me say at the outset, if it makes you feel uncomfortable and you are not interested, then feel free to say no, there will be no recrimination and we will not discuss this again.

What I am proposing to do in a nutshell is, to produce some counterfeit fifty pound notes.”

They both looked stunned, staring first at Mike and then one another.

“Bloody hell Mike, that’s a conversation stopper.” Said Derek

“I know and I don’t expect you to say yes without knowing what’s involved, I will elaborate if you want me to.”

They both looked at one another, and eventually nodded.

“I know there are a lot of well meaning people, and Brenda and I are blown away with the enthusiasm and generosity of all of the committee members behind the fund. However I have to be realistic about the amount that is needed, and the time scale involved.

If six months down the road the fund is short, Rachel will not have time on her side. She is the only reason I am prepared to embark on this, there is no desire for greed or anything like that. You know my views on people who steal and break the law, I have never done anything like this in my life, Brenda will kill me if she ever finds out, but I have looked at all other avenues to raise the money and this is the only way it can be done.”

Derek looked at his brother and then at Mike.

“Jesus Mike, I never would have thought I would hear you come out with anything like this, I can only assume you must have been under an awful lot of pressure to think of doing this.”

“I agree.” Said Tony.

“Look both Brenda and I have been at our wits end for months as to what to do, we just can’t sit on the fence any more, it’s crunch time. Seeing Rachel coughing up blood and in so much distress was just too much for me to accept any more. I have to do more for her…. to help save her life.

It’s possible the fund will be able to raise the money, although I have my doubts, this is a safeguard or backup protection if you will.

If at the last minute the fund reaches its target, then we hold off distributing the money and just destroy it, and if it doesn’t then it’s there to fall back on.”

“It’s difficult to get my head around this Mike, I know you need our help, otherwise you wouldn’t have put your trust in us. Do you honestly think you can get away with it?”

“Yes if we do it right and follow strict guidelines, we can.”

Mike proceeded then to outline the plan, of how to hit the various race meetings on Boxing Day.

Just then his phone rang.

“Hello Mike there is a rep here from Harrison Graphics, he has some samples for you and just wants a quick word, can I send him up to your office?”

“No Susie I will come down, just ask him to wait in reception, I will be down in a couple of minutes.”

Mike stood up and walked across to the door.

“Just talk it over between yourselves, I need to speak with this guy in reception and I will be back shortly.”

The two brothers couldn’t believe what they had just heard, they had know Mike for years and he was a pillar of the community and this was not him.

“Look Tony he is asking for our help, he has always been there for us and god knows there have been numerous occasions when he has helped us.”

“I know that, did you see the way his lip was trembling when he asked us? God I feel so sorry for him.”

Derek got up and walked around the room.

“Look Tony if we don’t help him, he will probably have to call the whole thing off, and think how you would feel if Rachel died as a result, and like he says if they manage to raise the money with the fund down at the Old Duke then he wont need to distribute the notes. We should help him, he needs it and if the situation was reversed, I don’t think he would hesitate to help us.”

Tony agreed.

Just then Mike returned to his office.

“We have talked it over Mike, and Tony and I will help you in whatever way we can.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Firstly how do you intend to print the notes, gravure or litho?” asked Derek.

“Well gravure will give us a crisper image, but the gravure plates will be a pain in the arse to etch, so we will go for litho it will be easier and quicker, although a couple of the elements we will have to print with letterpress.”

“You appear to have thought this out carefully Mike.” Said Tony.

“I have, believe me”

“The new Brazilian plates we tested last week are excellent quality, you can get lots of fine detail with them and if we put it on the eight colour Heidelberg, we can zip it through in short order.” said Derek.

“What about the paper?” Asked Tony.

“Well I have some old stock I brought with me a good few years ago. The previous company I worked for was in the business of printing Government Currency, Bonds and Securities. It’s made from cotton fibre and linen rag and is exactly the same paper as used in official UK bank notes. All the paper has the metallic security thread and watermark embedded in the paper.

The Bank of England supplied us with the paper along with the inks. Any unused paper stock and inks were supposed to be returned to them at the end of the contract. However there was a fire in the paper store at John Derby’s the Security Printers, and a lot of stock was water and smoke damaged during the fire. On inspection the assessor deemed these pallets of cotton-based paper were too badly damaged to use, and ordered them to be disposed of.

He was employed directly by the Bank of England, and from a security standpoint, he was most insistent it was done immediately. All this was going on while firemen were still damping down the paper stores, pallets of smouldering paper being brought out with the smell of smoke everywhere it was bloody chaos. He was hopping around from one foot to the other you would think his life depended on it. In an effort to pacify him we had a large coal fired boiler for generating hot water for the factory’s central heating system, so it was decided to put the reams into this boiler to dispose of them.

Anyway we had only disposed of about fifty or so reams of the paper when he got called away. So we just left the remainder for him to record the batch numbers when he returned. Later that day I got a phone call from him to say he had an emergency and he wouldn’t be able to get back to us for at least a few days, and would I carry on and burn the rest of the paper, so I said I would.

To be honest I had more urgent things to be getting on with, because the fire although only confined to the paper store, had put us seriously behind in production.

We were beginning to miss deadlines on some of our other print business, and we were in the middle of printing an order for 2.5 billion in Kwacha notes for the Central Bank of Malawi, and there were penalty clauses in the contract if we missed the shipping deadline. With this in mind I just put the remaining paper to one side in the factory and carried on as normal or tried to do in the chaos that was everywhere.

He phoned back to make sure we had disposed of everything so I told him we had, as I fully intended to burn the rest of the paper when things calmed down a bit and I got chance.

However on further investigation, I found most of the stock was ok, only the outer packaging got damaged, so I made sure they were put in a safe place along with all the inks.

Not with any intention of doing anything untoward, its just I could not see six full pallets of what was perfectly good paper being destroyed, its just not in my nature.

When I came to Hurricane Press, I brought the stock with me and it’s at the very back in the old storeroom. No one knows its there, the outer wrappers are a faded purple, but the stock itself is ok, I have tested it.”

“What about the foil patch, will you attempt to print that?”

“No I am getting those made and we will heat laminate them on, I have an old hot foil machine I bought at auction years ago, it’s a bit of an antique but with some modification it will do the job great. There is also an old letterpress numbering machine at the back of the paper stores, so we can give out notes individual numbers and letters, and this is important if we are to pull this off.”

“How many notes do you intend to print?” Asked Derek.

“About three million pounds worth, there or there about, in for a penny in for a pound, obviously we will have to do this on the nightshift or at weekends when no one is around. When you finish each stage, put the pallets back in the old storeroom under the stairs. Nobody ever goes there, plus I am the only one with a key.”

“Do you have enough stock to print that many?”

“Yes Derek, probably more than double that amount if needed. At this stage I think that’s all we will be able to distribute, but we are going to have a dummy run at a race meeting shortly, just to see how many bets its possible to place with the bookies and the tote without being sussed.

Based on the rehearsal, we will adjust either up or down as need be. The last thing we need is a vast surplus left over, because we are going to have to destroy everything, plates, films, stock, ink anything that might link us in any way.

This has to be a once off operation, bang that’s it! The whole place will have to be disinfected, any trimmings put through the shredder before we burn them. We will use the correct inks for either process or spot colours, although I am not sure how many colours we will finish up with, until its all scanned and separated, but we should have more than enough paper and inks to do the job.

A thorough wash up will be essential, so there is not a trace of anything that could link us to this. We may have a couple of days before it becomes evident that there has been a major sting, and they start checking repro and print companies, or they may never know that anything untoward has taken place. A lot will depend on how good a note we produce, I am sure they will have to examine them under a microscope to detect anything suspicious, by that time a lot of them will be in the banking system, and will probably never be detected.”

“When are you going to start the plates?” Asked Tony.

“Already started, had a fifty up on the new Crosfield Scanner, and separated out the colours for the Queens head on the front and Sir John Houblon on the reverse of the note. There is a bit of clutter coming though from the other colours, but with the new software I can retouch it out easy enough. Its much easier to retouch the separations enlarged up so I currently have them at 400% of their original size and they will sharpen up when the are scaled back down to the correct size. I think I can finish both sides inside three weeks, that’s separated, retouched, step and repeated into a large panel thirty two up ready for plate making.”

“Gee, so your ahead of schedule?” Asked Derek.

“Not really, because the finishing of the notes will be very involved. To heat laminate the foil patches with the reflective rose and the medallion and the individual numbering will take time. Also we will have to print the ‘Bank of England’ by letterpress and we will have to use a foam base in the ink and when the note goes through the hot foil press, the heat from the press should make that lettering rise like a cake, so it has a raised feel when you rub your finger nail over it.

I also have a friend over at Lasergraphics in Dublin who owes me a couple of favours, he says he will laser cut the foils for me so, that’s one job I don’t have to worry about. We will also have to run them through a tumble drier to give them an aged look, so all this will add to the overall time, but we should have them finished by end of November early December.

Now this conversation has to go no further than these four walls, and none of the other members of the group will know about you, because they don’t have as much to lose as you, so if I am asked I will say I did it all myself.”

“But what about the race meeting, it sounds like a fun day out?”

“Well I didn’t want to ask you, because I consider you are doing more than enough, but if you really want to do it that’s fine by me.”