44 Scotland Street Read Online Free PDF Page B

neighbours were difficult. A flat three doors down had gone recently for three hundred and eighty thousand pounds (Todd had told him about that transaction) but that was on the first floor, which added to the price, and so: Three hundred and twenty thousand pounds , thought Bruce, and then, feeling benevolent to the purchasers and their mortgage needs, he added a further eight thousand pounds for good measure. A fine, late-Georgian flat with many original features. Superb cornice in the south-facing drawing room; wainscoting in all public rooms; a fine bath which a purchaser might wish to preserve, and a decorated fireplace in the rear bedroom depicting the Ettrick Shepherd, Walter Scott and Robert Burns in conversation with one another in a country inn. These reports wrote themselves, thought Bruce, if one was prepared to loosen up one’s prose a bit.
    He drove back to Queen Street, parked the car in the mews garage (for which the firm had paid the equivalent price of a small flat in Dundee) and made his way into the office. There the report was dictated, presented to the secretary, and delivered to Todd in a crisp blue folder.
    Todd gestured for Bruce to sit down while he read the survey. Then, looking up at his employee, he asked him quietly: “You inspected the roof, did you?”
    “Yes,” said Bruce. “Nothing wrong there.”
    “Are you sure?” asked Todd, fingering the edge of the folder. “Did you get up into the roof space?”
    Bruce hesitated, but only for a moment. There was nothing wrong with that roof and it would have made no difference had he been able to squeeze through the partly-blocked trapdoor. “I went up,” he said. “Everything was fine.”
    Todd raised an eyebrow. “Well,” he said. “It wasn’t when I went up last week. I looked at it for another client, you see. He

    lost interest in offering before I wrote a report, and so I thought a fresh survey appropriate. Had you really gone up, you might have seen the fulminating rot and also noticed the very dicey state of one of the chimney stacks. But …”
    Bruce said nothing. He was looking at his shoes.

 
     
     
     
    8. Hypocrisy, Lies, Golf Clubs
     
    The silence lasted for several minutes. Todd stared at Bruce across his desk. I trained this young man, he thought; I am partly responsible for this. I had my reservations, of course, but they were about other things, about more general failings, and all the time I was missing the obvious: he’s untruthful.
    Bruce found it difficult to meet his employer’s gaze. I tell far fewer lies than most people, he thought. I really do. Everybody – everybody – has cut the occasional corner. It’s not as if I had made a report in bad faith. That roof looked fine to me, and I did open that trapdoor and look inside. Fulminating rot? Surely I would have smelled it.
    Todd drew in his breath. He was still staring at Bruce accusingly, a gaze which was unreturned.
    “If surveyors lie,” said Todd, “then whom can we believe?”
    Bruce said nothing, but shook his head slightly. Self-reproach?
    “You see,” said Todd, “when a client approaches a professional person, he puts his trust in him or her. He doesn’t expect to be misled. Hmm?”
    Bruce looked up briefly. “No,” he said. “You’re right, Todd.”
    “We rely on our reputation,” went on Todd. “If we lose that – and you can lose that very quickly, let me tell you – then we have nothing. Years and years of hard work by my brother and, if I may say so, by me, go out of the window just because somebody is found to be misleading a client. I’ve seen it happen.
    “And there are much broader considerations,” he went on. “All of our life is based on acts of trust. We trust other people to do what they say they’re going to do. When we get on an aeroplane we trust the airline to have maintained its aircraft. We trust the pilot, who has our lives in his hands. We trust other people, you see, Bruce. We trust them. And that’s