Free The Triple Goddess by Ashly Graham Page A

have a wife who spent her days leaving equally gibberish messages for her husband at the office, nobody had the heart to make life more difficult for him than it already was. He hoarded his luncheon vouchers instead of squandering them on coffee and rolls downstairs at the greasy spoon, and took bags of canteen sandwiches home for dinner.
    The Chimp endeared himself to everyone by always offering to get his co-workers “scratches” done. Scratches were underwriters’ initials that had to be obtained on endorsements, or riders, to contracts, making some footling amendment such as a change in the assured’s name from the Acme Insurance Company to the New Acme Insurance Company. Brokers were embarrassed to be seen taking the glaring white panels—they were printed with crossword-like boxes for each syndicate to initial, signifying its agreement to whatever contract change was to be made—instead of the pristine grey slips that denoted a new placement, around the market because it implied that they were not senior or trusted enough to negotiate terms.
    Getting a risk quoted was a broker’s premier job, because it involved dealing with the market leaders. Only when a rate or rates had been secured and presented to a client, and a “firm order” obtained, could the broker proceed around the market in an attempt to secure enough lines to complete the order; which task, because it involved a new placement was a responsibility much greater than being charged with getting an as-before contract renewed with, one hoped, the same underwriters the following year.
    Nonetheless, a contract renewal was still preferable to getting the hateful scratches done, a job that put one on a level only marginally above that of being a claims broker, which in turn was only slightly superior to working in the back office on accounts and contract wordings, which was only a little more interesting than studying for one’s ACII, or Chartered Insurance Institute exams, which nobody bothered to do—even the bosses took a dim view of any trainee who tried to impress them by studying for them.
    Occasionally brokers would give the Chimp their unplaceable contracts, the no-hopers that nonetheless had to be shown around the market for form’s sake to prove to the client or prospective client that they had been turned down by everyone; or, if a rate had been secured from some third-rate underwriter, that they were uncompletable. Frequently the brokers were astounded when the Chimp returned to the office with sellable rates and lines on their “dogs”. How the Chimp achieved the impossible was a mystery even to the underwriters whom he had somehow suckered or soft-soaped into subscribing to them; and as Chandler Brothers’ simian servitor was nattering his way back to the office in the company of some fellow worker he had latched onto along the way, these Chimp-Chumps, as such underwriters were called, having come to their senses, would be scrambling unsuccessfully to offload the thing in the reinsurance or secondary market at twice the premium.
    The Chinless Wonder was another well-heeled ex-military man, late of the Grenadier Guards, a regiment for which he was genetically ill-suited because had no underside to his jaw over which to secure the strap of his bearskin. Several times the King had complained to Chinless’s Commanding Officer about it falling off on ceremonial occasions.
    Chinless had been dismissed from the military for insubordination, after an incident involving his Regimental Sergeant-Major, Mr Battershell—a man with chins to spare who used to rub the fact in, literally, by obtruding them during inspection where Chinless’s own might have been, so that they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
    “There’s a cunt at the end of this stick, Guardsman,” the pigeon-chested Sergeant-Major snarled one day after watching a square-bashing rehearsal for Trooping the Colour, as he poked Chinless, while he was standing in the At Ease