The Throwback

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Book: Read The Throwback for Free Online
Authors: Tom Sharpe
money in only four days?’
    Mr Treyer leant forward and clutched his head with a hand. To be lumbered with a mentally deficient creature with a photographic memory who went around burning Her Majesty’s official correspondence with a disregard that bordered on the insane was shortening his life.
    ‘Look,’ he said as patiently as he could, ‘from now on I don’t want you to go anywhere near those files, you or anyone else, do you understand?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Lockhart. ‘What I don’t understand is why the richer you are the less tax you pay. There’s Gypsum earning a whacking £80,000 and paying £1,758.40 while Mrs Ponsonby who only got £6,315.32 in income had to shell out £2,472. I mean …’
    ‘Shut up,’ screamed Mr Treyer, ‘I don’t want to hear any more of your questions and I don’t want to catch you within ten yards of a filing cabinet. Is that clear?’
    ‘If you say so,’ said Lockhart.
    ‘I do say so,’ said Mr Treyer. ‘If I so much as see you glancing towards the files … Oh, get out.’
    Lockhart got out and Mr Treyer tried to restore his shattered nerves by taking a pink pill and a paper cup of whisky. Two days later he had cause to regret his instructions. A series of terrible screams from the room which contained the Value Added Tax records sent him scurrying through to find an officer of the Customs and Excise VAT department trying to extricate his fingers from the drawer of a filing cabinet which Lockhart had slammed shut just as he was reaching for a file.
    ‘Well, you told me not to let anyone go near those files,’ Lockhart explained as the VAT man was led away to have four broken fingers attended to by a doctor. Mr Treyer stared at him frenziedly and tried to think of an adequate phrase to describe his detestation.
    ‘I mean,’ continued Lockhart, ‘if he had laid a hand on Mr Fixstein’s VAT records …’
    ‘Laid a hand!’ screamed Mr Treyer almost as loudly as the VAT man. ‘The poor sod won’t have a hand to lay after what you’ve just been and done to him. And what’s worse we’ll have a hundred Excise men descend on us tonight and go through our books with a fine-tooth comb.’ He paused and tried to think of a way out of the ghastly mess. ‘Now you just go through and apologize and tell him it was an accident and perhaps …’
    ‘I won’t,’ said Lockhart. ‘It wasn’t.’
    ‘I know it bloody wasn’t,’ yelled Mr Treyer. ‘I suppose if he had stuck his fucking head inside you’d have done the same.’
    ‘I doubt it,’ said Lockhart.
    ‘I don’t. Still, it’s a relief to know …’ Mr Treyer began but Lockhart ended what little relief he had known.
    ‘I would have kicked the door shut,’ he said.
    ‘Christ,’ said Mr Treyer, ‘it’s like living with a murderer.’
    That night the staff at Sandicott & Partner worked late transferring records to a Rent-A-Van to be taken to a barn in the country until the VAT storm was over. Andnext day Lockhart was taken off all accounting and given an office of his own.
    ‘From now on you will stay in there and if there is anything I think I can trust you not to make a hash of I’ll give it to you,’ said Mr Treyer. Lockhart sat at his desk and waited but it was four days before Mr Treyer could think of anything for him to do.
    ‘I’ve got to go to Hatfield,’ he said, ‘and there’s a Mr Stoppard coming in at twelve-thirty. I’ll be back by two so all I want you to do is to take him out and give him an expense-account lunch until I get back. That should be easy enough. Just buy him lunch. Right?’
    ‘Buy him lunch?’ said Lockhart. ‘Who pays?’
    ‘The firm pays, you fool. I said an expense-account lunch, didn’t I?’ He went away dejectedly but with the feeling that Lockhart could hardly make a total cock-up of a lunch with one of the firm’s oldest clients. Mr Stoppard was a reticent man at the best of times and, being a gourmet, seldom spoke during a meal. When Mr Treyer returned

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