Unravel a Crime - Tangle With Women by Neil Wild Read Free Book Online Page A

chairs.
    “ So, how did you start out as
a surveyor? “
    “ Well, I went to Worcester
Royal Grammar, but I wasn't particularly bright, and so I left at 16 after
getting a few G.C.E Certificates, and got a job at the old Worcester County
Council in the surveyors department. I just worked my way up; sat the Chartered
Surveyors exams and qualified as a surveyor about 10 years later, when I was
26."
    “ You didn't stay?”
    “ Well, no. Having qualified,
there wasn't really a job for me!“ He laughed. "That's the worst of local
government, you don't get promoted by ability, you either have to wait for dead
men's shoes, or move on. So I moved on and joined the National as an in-house
surveyor. "
    “ And from then on you did have
the chance to work your way up?"
    "Yes. You've heard of
Clive Masters?"
    Brakespeare was sipping his
mug of strong Yorkshire tea, and nodded while trying not to splutter.
    "Well, when I joined it,
the National was just another small provincial building society. It's head was
Ken Good; he was in his sixties then. He was an old fashioned building society
man, and made the National into a good, solid organisation; one where your
money was safe; no chances taken, no speculation, nothing like that. However
Ken was looking towards his retirement and brought in Clive Masters who was
young and pushy. I didn't really take to him. He was too slick; too smooth for
a building society man. I think that Masters always saw the National as the way
to make money for himself: and the only way he could do that was to turn it
into a bank, with himself as Chief Executive.
    He couldn't do it immediately
of course, because Ken was in his way, but he persuaded Ken to amalgamate with
other smaller building societies, which Ken was quite happy to do, and so the
Society grew and grew."
    "So how did this affect
you?"
    "Well as we were a small
society when I joined, a lot of our mortgage valuation work was farmed out to
private firms of surveyors. I and the other surveyors did one or two surveys to
keep our hand in so to speak, and to provide enough income to make our
department pay for itself, but the job gradually became a desk job; checking
and vetting the independent valuations. As the Society grew, then the volume of
loans became so great that Masters wanted us to take on our own surveyors
because he could see that the survey fees that the borrowers paid would
supplement the income of the Society. We're talking of some quite serious money
here."
    "And so National
Surveyors was formed."
    "That's right, and
eventually as the National grew even bigger, and then became a bank, we had
branches everywhere. As one of the "old boys" so to speak, I just
moved up the ranks until, as you know, I became head of the Greater London
section."
    "A plum job?"
    "A plum job. We were not
only on basic salary, but on commission. "
    "Really. How?"
    "Oh, yes, this was all
part of Masters strategy. He sees everything in terms of profit and bonuses. We
were not only there to service the Society; we were encouraged to take on
outside work also. He wanted Surveyors run as an independent profit making
business."
    "Although wholly owned by
the Society?'·
    "Quite so."
    "When did you leave
Birmingham?"
    "As I say I was very much
a desk man, and so I remained in Birmingham while we recruited surveyors in the
Greater London area. While on our staff, they functioned as the independent
surveyors had; they worked from home. We sent them valuation instructions; they
sent in their reports and I checked them. Occasionally I would spend days in
the area with them, and would do the occasional survey myself – to keep my hand
in as I said."
    "How long did this
situation last – you being on Birmingham. "
    "A year or two, and then
we grew big enough to open a dedicated office, in London, and I had to go down
there."
    "Were you living in
Malvern by this time?"
    "Yes, my wife has a job
at the Royal Radar Establishment, and it was just as easy for me to catch