"I've been doing some sums and I think we've got a problem," Tonia said soberly.
"If an accountant can't get her sums right, we've really got a problem," Lola cackled.
"Shut up, Lola. This is serious."
"Sorry. Fire away."
Tonia began to pace up and down. "Our plan was to make pounds, convert them into Euros and deposit them in lots of bank accounts. Now, I don't think we can convert more than about £250 a time. Any more than that would arouse suspicion. As there's three of us, we could take £750 from each Bureaux de Change in one go. We planned, well I believed, we could get away with £1,000 in each account which we would transfer out and we could use the account twice, maybe three times before the banks cottoned on. So we would need 4 exchanges for each deposit and twelve in total for each account. Okay, so far?" Lola and I nodded. "Now let's start at the other end. How much money do we need in all?"
"I don't know. A hundred thousand?" I hazarded a guess.
"No way," Lola said. "That wouldn't even buy this place." We were in Tonia's lounge. "To get anything like we wanted we'd need the best part of a million."
"A million?" I spluttered.
"Tonia's and my flats are worth around two fifty grand each and even yours is worth over fifty. Haven't you looked at the property market recently?"
I hadn't. "I'll take your word for it."
"A million," Tonia said. "To deposit a million we'd need 4,000 exchanges and 350 bank accounts."
The silence was painful as Lola and I thought about the implications.
"Four thousand exchanges?" Lola said in awed tones. "If we managed one very fifteen minutes, that'd be a thousand hours, which is…"
"Nearly forty-two days. A month and a half working flat out twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week," Tonia said instantly.
"Oh, my God," was my helpful contribution.
"Wait a minute. That's just with one person doing it. There's three of us so it would only take… Oh."
"Fourteen days," Tonia nodded. "But assume a useful 'working day' of four hours so you'd actually take eighty-four days or the best part of three months. Actually, it would take longer because you couldn't do seven days a week even if the banks were open all the time. In reality we're looking as six months of solid work; hardly a quick, in-and-out operation."
Gloom descended upon us all. In the silence we could hear the noise of the cars outside and the rumbling of the buses on the main road. The strident wail of a distant police car reminded us what we were facing.
"You were being cautious in your estimates," I ventured. "Couldn't we up the amount in each account to £5,000 or even £10,000?"
"Hmm. I suppose we could if we did it in one big hit," Tonia said. "The bank accounts aren't the real problem. It's changing the money."
Gloomy silence descended again.
"This is daft," I said suddenly, jumping to my feet. "Charles, if we went into a Spanish bank, could you find out how Euros work the same as you did here?" I spoke aloud deliberately.
"I was wondering when you'd get round to asking," he said smugly.
"I take it that's a 'yes'."
"Of course."
"Right," I said to the ladies. "We cut out the first step entirely. We go to Spain, visit a bank, Charles makes us lots and lots of Euros and we deposit them. Problem solved."
"I love it when he's so masterful," Lola grinned.
"Especially when he's right," Tonia grinned back and the next moment the two of them were rolling on the floor, doubled over with laughter.
"Charles, I think I bucket of water might be required," I said loudly, trying to look as stern as possible.
They paused and looked up at me before breaking out in laughter again. I left them to it and went to make some coffee, the old-fashioned way. When I returned, they had recovered their composure and were sitting demurely side-by-side on the settee.
"Have you fully recovered," I asked, setting the tray down on the coffee table."
"Yes, Master," they chorused.
"Enough," I sighed, deliberately taking a one of the armchairs. "Where were we?"
"Making lots of lovely money," Lola said.
"Be serious."
"If we cut out the exchanges, we only need to do the depositing," Tonia said, thoughtfully. "How would we work that? If we deposit it £1,000 pounds a time, that'll still mean a thousand deposits for £1M."
"That's still way too slow," Lola said. "And it would need a thousand banks. Do they have that many in Spain?"
"Particularly since only I can do it," I added. "Why can't we just whack it in all in one go?"
"Imagine what the teller would say if someone straight off the street walked in and dumped £10,000 on the counter." Tonia was aghast.
"Not if I was with them."
"How so?"
"Charles could 'persuade' the teller not to notice."
"But you'd be seen on their security cameras."
"It won't matter. I'm going to disappear anyway so they couldn't trace me."
"Yes, they could. They'd simply show your picture round all the hotels until somebody recognised you then they could trace you back here."
"Oh. Right. I didn't think of that."
"How had you planned on doing it?" Lola asked.
"Doing what?"
"Persuading people to deposit the money."
"I hadn't thought about it. Wait outside the bank until a likely victim turns up, I suppose."
"That doesn't seem a very efficient method."
I shrugged. "I know but I can't think of anything better just now. Have you an idea?"
"Not really. Bear with me for a while. Does the persuasion have to be immediate? I mean, if you get control of someone do you have to be around for it to work?"
"I don't know. I'll ask." I threw a silent query at Charles who responded in the negative. For once he was polite so I suspected this was something he hadn't thought about himself. "No. It can be delayed," I said aloud.
"So you could give someone the money and tell them to deposit it tomorrow or next week or whatever?"
"Charles says yes."
"Or," Tonia said, getting in on the act, "you could give someone ten lots of money and tell them to deposit them over the next week."
"Charles says he thinks so but he's not sure."
"Would it help if the instructions were written down?" Lola asked.
"Charles says yes. Reduces the number of variables."
"I don't like the idea of written instructions," Tonia said. "Someone's bound to lose them or leave them lying around."
"I was thinking of an envelope," Lola said. "You can't just hand someone £1,000 in the street."
"I can vouch for that," I said with feeling.
"So you put the money in an envelope and write the bank details on the outside. That way they're not likely to lose it," she continues
"And I could instruct them to destroy the envelope afterwards," I added.
"Okay." Tonia was nodding. "So we divide the money up into £1,000 lots, put each lot in an envelope, write the account details on the outside and give to someone to deposit some time in the future. How will we know they've done it?"
"We won't," Lola said, dispiritedly.
"Does it matter?" I asked. "We're talking lots and lots of envelopes here and it isn't costing us anything. If a few go astray, what does it matter?"
"As an accountant that goes right against the grain," Tonia grinned. "But you're right."
"I don't like it," Lola frowned. "I think we're on the right track but this doesn't feel right."
"I'll step it through and you tell me where it feels wrong," Tonia said.
"Fire away."
"We go to Spain. We visit a bank. Charles makes lots of Euros. We divide them up into £1,000 lots. We put each £1,000 lot in an envelope. We write the account details on the outside of the envelope. We find a number of willing victims. We hand each them an envelope. We tell them to deposit the money in the account at a convenient time."
At each of these sentences, Lola had nodded her head. Now she held up a hand. "It's that last step that's wrong."
I had been following Tonia's steps myself and an image suddenly popped into my head. "Bookies' runners," I said.
They turned and gave me a look. "This is a serious discussion. Now you've ruined my train of thought," Lola complained.
"I am being serious. Bookie's runners. You know, when gambling was illegal there used to be people who took bets from punters and took them to the bookies. The runners didn't actually make any bets, they just carried the money. That's what our victims are, really. Bookies' runners."
At first Lola looked cross but gradually her face cleared. "You know I think he might have a point. The thing about bookies' runners was that they didn't hang about. It's the time factor that's been bugging me."
"Two thoughts in one day," Tonia said, jokingly. "His brain'll be overheating."
"I resent being talked about as if I was the village idiot," I said, mock-huffily.
She tilted her head to one side and regarded me thoughtfully. "No, I'd say you were maybe one step higher in the food chain than village idiot." I made as if I was going to leap out of my chair and attack her. She held up her hands in surrender. "Okay, okay, you're really the king boss-man."
"And see you don't forget it," I growled.
"Yassuh, boss," she grinned.
"If you children have finished playing…" Lola said.
"You know," I said, "I've just had the daftest image of walking around Spain doling out envelopes of money like Santa Claus. 'Here's one for you… and one for you… and one for you…"
"That's it" Lola cried. "You've got it!" She started jumping up and down. "Santa Claus! That's it!"
"Now see what you've done. You've unhinged her," Tonia said.
"No! No!" Lola cried, catching hold of Tonia's hands and pulling her to her feet. "It's perfect. We stroll around town and whenever we come across a likely victim we hand them an envelope and tell them to deposit it. We don't wait. We just stroll on, looking at the sights and that and hand out envelopes. We can do dozens at a time. And go shopping at the same time."
She grabbed Tonia and started waltzing round the room.
"Lola, stop it. Leave me be. It may be obvious to you but I need to get my head round it and I can't do that if you're whirling me around like a dervish."
Lola released her and she collapsed, laughing, into a chair.
"Now tell me all that again, slowly," she said, trying to catch her breath.
"Right," said Lola, calming down a bit. "We have all our money in envelopes. We take them and go walking about the town. Whenever we meet a suitable candidate, we give them an envelope with instructions to deposit the money, destroy the envelope and forget all about it. We don't need to wait, we don't need to be seen: we won't even look suspicious. It'll just look like we're asking for directions or something. Once all the envelopes are handed out we just disappear. We should be able to do the whole thing in an hour."
As the simplicity of the idea slowly sunk in, Tonia and I looked at each other and huge grins spread across our faces.
"By George, I do believe she's got it," Tonia cried.
"I do believe you're right," I said. "Wait. Even better. You two don't need to be involved at all. I can take a stroll and hand out the envelopes."
"While we sip cool drinks by the beach and imagine all that money rolling in," Lola crowed.
"We'll still need to work out the details but, yes, I think we could do it. It'll still mean a lot of work as we'll have to do over a thousand deposits but it could be possible," Tonia said more soberly.
"A hundred a day and we'll be done in ten days," Lola said.
"Can we do a hundred a day?" I asked. "How many banks will a seaside resort have?"
"I don't know. Possibly only one or two in the smaller places. Perhaps ten in a larger one."
"Then we'll have to do a lot of travelling."
"There's bound to be hundreds in Barcelona," Lola said.
"There's hundreds here too, but they're pretty widespread. And Barcelona's a bigger city than here," Tonia said.
"Then we'll have to drive," I said.
"Have you ever driven in Spain?" Lola asked.
"No. Okay, we'll hire a chauffeur."
"A limo would be kind of conspicuous."
"I didn't mean that kind of chauffeur. I meant a car and driver."
"That would work and it would make it easier in the larger places. This is starting to look better and better," Tonia said.
"So, are we agreed on the plan?"
"Yes," I said.
"Yes. But we'll have to do a lot of research first. We can't afford to stumble about blindly."
"Well, if we're all agreed, I think this calls for a celebration. Let's go out and get rat-arsed."
So we did.