Free The Grey Man by Andy McNab Page B

but sometimes they asked for help, or they made a show of loading the box with jewellery or money. Often they wanted Kevin to look. Last week, old George Rowlands had brought in a skull. His hands were shaking so much with some illness that he couldn't open his box, so Kevin had had to help him.
    Kevin had wondered why George might have made that deposit. He wasn't what you would call a nice man to deal with, so Kevin had come up with some not very nice theories. He had decided that George had murdered his wife, then dug up what was left of her from under the
patio. His two sons were planning to build him a lean-to so old George was bringing in her body piece by piece before they started. His deposit box was one of the larger ones. That was because it contained a black box, about the size of a briefcase, in which George kept nearly £100,000 in fifty-pound notes.
    George had boasted to Kevin about his cash when he came into the bank one afternoon to pay some money into his current account. He always came in at the same time each month and paid in the same amount – two hundred pounds. He had had quite a lot to drink that day and couldn't stop himself spilling the beans.
    Apparently he had cheated the VAT man when he had had his own building firm, and this little nest egg was the result. He had to put it in a deposit box, he said, because if it ever got nicked he wouldn't be able to report it. He was proud to say that he'd never looked inside the money box from the day he had put in the cash. He'd never touched it, and never would. He had more than enough money going into his current account to last him the rest of his life. Not even his wife and two sons knew about the secret stash.
    That seemed a shame to Kevin, because George's wife had died of cancer two years ago. Maybe she could have spent it on better care. He had gone to school with George's two sons and had kept in touch with them over the years. He knew that they helped out their dad with any spare cash they had. He wondered if that was where the two hundred pounds came from each month.
    It didn't seem right to Kevin that stingy George took money from his kids and never let on that he had all that cash of his own. He was keeping it for a rainy day, he said. And he wasn't going to let anyone else have a penny of it. Certainly not those useless sons of his – the wasters. Kevin knew it was none of his business what George did with his money. His job was to open the first lock on the deposit box for George and that was it.
    Kevin took the lid off the jumbo-sized Nescafé jar that was sitting on the table.
    When Symington had lost his diary last year, the names of customers who had deposit boxes had been written on the back page. Kevin had been saying for months that they should put the records on to the computer, and so had
Head Office, but Symington refused. He didn't do computers, he said.
    The day the diary got lost, Kevin had never seen Symington in such a state. He ran round the office like a headless chicken, checking every desk, every filing cabinet, every waste-paper bin. He twirled his moustache, as he always did when he was upset. Kevin would have found it very funny if the bank hadn't been expecting a visit from Head Office that day. They had phoned in the morning to say they were coming down later for a safe-deposit system inspection. Symington was likely to lose his job because the records weren't on the computer.
    When the man from Head Office came in, Kevin had lied. He said the computer was down. He had saved Symington's arse again and maybe all of their jobs too. Since then, Kevin had pieced together which deposit box belonged to whom and finally put everyone's name on the computer. Symington had never thanked him. Just like he wouldn't on Monday when Kevin sent off the monthly report as if Symington had done it himself.
    Kevin made his boss a cup of coffee. He'd ask
for next Friday off now. He couldn't wait to see the smile on Linda's face when he