It was just another Friday morning at Bankstone News. I fixed myself a coffee and fired up Post Mag’s video news review of the week. Which newsroom nose is pick of the week today, I wondered.
Then – boom – there she was. I was looking at some kind of angel. Jagged pixelation couldn’t stop me falling into her warm dark auto-cueing eyes. Then reality pulled me back with a jerk. What was she saying?
Barbon on the rocks. Broker hit with massive fine. Fraud. Scandal. I blinked. I reeled. I clicked pause in a hurry.
This was no ordinary Friday. I needed more coffee. I fixed it strong.
I went back to the screen and tried again. I’m Amy Ellis, she purred, her gorgeous lips only slightly out of sync. I began to drift.
But - wham - there it was again. The High Court has found Barbon Insurance liable to pay £8m, plus costs, plus interest, relating to an alleged mortgage fraud case involving Nationwide Building Society back in 2006.
This one needed looking into. But first I needed a coffee. Make that a double.
I hit the archives. Barbon Insurance – the Windscale of the insurance broking world – formerly known as Erinaceous Group. So what’s with the Barbon tag?
I dusted down another volume. Dr Nicholas Barbon aka Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had- Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebone (sic). Picked up the crazy name from his dad, some kind of religious nut. Messed around in the quack business in Holland. Got into property speculation back in London. Set up some insurance company in the 1600s. Figures, I thought.
But Erinaceous? I let the pages fall through my fingers. C, D, E. Erinaceous: adjective, zoology: of the hedgehog kind or family. A picture began to form. It didn’t look pretty.
I had to find a way of warning Amy what she was getting herself into. But first I needed coffee. A lot of coffee.
