Sunday 3 October, 7-ish. At home: Half-watching some woke nonsense on Countryfile when the boss rings. “Meeting, Corinthic Room, 7.30am tomorrow.” OMG! Has Sporty Girl dobbed me in over that bit of harmless banter last week? Is this the chop? Sleepless night follows.
I walk into the room bug-eyed and trembling, then relax. Old Tom is here! The man GBH fired for ensuring his favoured housebuilder got first dibs on land. I look around the room and it dawns. This is the team that bought £130m of manky shopping centres for that Malaysian politician Tom snagged at Mipim back in 2018.
Turns out details of the deals were exposed yesterday in the Pandora Papers – including our very generous 1% fee. Worse, far worse, is a killer email from Tom to villain’s brother: “Relax. GBH uses Nelson’s Blind Eye to protect clients who wish to remain private. Just make sure the paper trail does not lead back to You Know Who.”
Three days are spent combing our files to make sure all the boxes were ticked and no other incriminating emails sent. Phew! Nothing. GBH issues the boiler plate “the Know Your Client rules were followed”. But Tom is thrown to the wolves with a half-truth; “the author of the email has been dismissed”.
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