39. Loss Adjustment at a Funeral

Loss adjustment at a funeral

Andrew Tanner careful y straightened his tie as he approached the church gate.

Such a very pretty church. Nice. But not easy to get to.

Network Rail seemed to be digging up half of Oxfordshire and it had taken Tanner two trains and a replacement bus service to make the trip from the City to the little village of Great Tew. It was worth it though, Tanner thought, because had he not made the trip he would always wonder if anything useful could have been gained from it. is way he would know and you could not put a price on peace of mind.

Peace of mind was probably the only thing on which Andrew Tanner could not put a price.

Putting a price on things was his job. He was an investigator and loss adjuster for the Wigan and Wigan Equitable Insurance Company and it was up to Andrew to determine what an item was worth and who was liable for that sum.

In this case the item was a life and its value was not in question. It was worth two mil ion pounds. at was the sum which Wigan and Wigan would be required to pay out had the life ended as the result of an accident. e question was, had it?

Were Wigan and Wigan liable?

e interim coroner’s report had been inconclusive. Not as to how the deceased had died. at was beyond doubt. He had died from massive injuries sustained when the car he was driving hit a brick wal at sixty- ve miles per hour. e question was why.

Was the death an accident? Or had the driver deliberately jerked the steering wheel and accelerated towards that wal ? e coroner would not say. He was waiting for further police and psychological reports.

An open verdict had been recorded and therefore Wigan and Wigan would not as yet make payment.

Andrew passed the two sombrely suited ushers at the church door, taking an order of service from one of them as he went. ‘Excuse me,’ Jimmy asked, ‘but could you identify yourself, please?’

In light of Lizzie’s public pro le, there had been some press interest in her husband’s funeral and one or two photographers were being held back by a constable at the church wal .

‘Andrew Tanner,’ Andrew replied. ‘I am with Wigan and Wigan. e deceased’s insurers.’

‘Wow,’ said Jimmy, ‘that’s amazing.’

‘Amazing?’ Andrew asked.

‘Wel , you know, you don’t expect such old-fashioned business ethics, do you? Not in the modern world.’

‘Business ethics?’ Andrew asked.

‘You coming to pay your respects to a valued client. I didn’t think companies took that sort of trouble any more.’

‘Uhm. No. Quite,’ Andrew replied and moved on into the church.

‘Isn’t that something,’ Jimmy whispered to Rupert. ‘I’m with Wigan and Wigan myself and quite frankly I’ve been hating them because they’re giving me such a hard time over the premiums on Webb Street, but something like this makes me see things a bit differently.’

‘You idiot, Jim,’ Rupert replied. ‘It’s obvious why the bastard’s here, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’

‘Of course. ey don’t think it was an accident! I must say, I did wonder myself.’

Andrew Tanner turned and looked back at them. He had taken only a few steps with his slow, measured tread and was almost in earshot. eir heads were bent towards each other: clearly they had been whispering about him and now they were frozen, watching him as he watched them. Andrew inclined his head in acknowledgement and then went in search of a pew. Finding a place towards the back of the church, he glanced at the little booklet he had been given.

A service in remembrance of Robson ‘Robbo’ Cartwright. Husband. Father.

Mate.

Andrew icked through the pages. It contained the usual stuff, a couple of hymns, the Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ and that poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral. And speeches – ‘Remembrances’, ‘Re ections’, ‘A Eulogy’. Every word no doubt serving to establish that Robson Cartwright was the best, the nest and most upright of men who had ever walked the earth.

But was he?

Or was he in fact a thief? For thief was the only word to describe somebody who arranged their death in order that his family might bene t from a policy which paid out only on illness and accident.

It happened al the time. Men and occasional y women at the end of their tether, broke, failed, shamed. Seeking to cash in on the one potential asset that remained to them. eir own life.

Andrew could see the two ushers standing in the church vestibule, glaring at him. ey had been joined by a third, a trendily dressed man who wore conspicuously fashionable glasses. ey were looking at him with such contempt. Such malice.

Andrew hated the way people treated insurance companies. ey wanted ful cover, of course. ey wanted ful cover and instant payment for when they fel asleep with a burning cigarette in their hand and scorched the couch, or wrapped their cars round lamp posts while trying to send texts. But they also wanted to pay minuscule premiums.

What’s more, they wanted to make exaggerated and even false claims while stil pretending to occupy the moral high ground! at was what real y got Andrew Tanner’s goat. e hypocrisy of it al ! It would not be so bad if they were honest about it. If they admitted that they basical y wanted a premium service for virtual y nothing from a company that they expected to be al owed to cheat on with impunity. But no. Instead they reserved the right to paint the insurers as the villains, as cheating, money-grabbing and immoral, when in fact that was them! It was the clients, not the insurers, who were the cheats. It was they who made the fraudulent claims, expecting instant and ful payment on losses that weren’t even covered. Which, if paid, would force up the very premiums that these same hypocrites insisted should be kept to a minimum.

e widow and her children were entering the church now. ere she was, Elizabeth Cartwright, celebrated lifestyle guru and in Andrew’s opinion potential insurance fraudster. What else should he cal the woman? Her lawyer had already been in touch with Wigan and Wigan to notify them of her husband’s death. Of the accident. She was broke. e world knew that the dead man had lost the family fortune through greed, trying to grab ludicrous interest rates in what had turned out to be a vast Ponzi scheme. Now she wanted the shareholders of Wigan and Wigan to support her. She wanted to claim a two-mil ion-pound life-insurance policy on the ludicrous assertion that

her husband Robson, Robbo, that great guy, that great husband, father and mate, had died as the result of an accident.

Like hel , thought Andrew. A man learns he’s lost everything and made his family destitute and that very night he drives off alone and smashes his car into a wal !

No witnesses. No one else involved.

An accident? Pul the other one.

e widow sat down among her family at the front and the service began.

Hymns were sung. Several of the ushers spoke their gushing eulogies. ere were readings. An acoustic medley of Beatles songs and then, in a surprise change to the order of service, the widow rose to her feet.

e vicar had been on the point of bringing the service to a close and instructing the congregation to repair to the graveyard for the burial when Lizzie interrupted him.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I have something to say.’

Andrew watched intently from the back of the church as she rst arranged for a relative to take the children out and then turned to face the congregation.

He studied the bereaved woman with an expert eye. He’d seen a lot of widows in his time; it was part of the territory. Some were genuinely distraught. Some of them had mixed emotions. Some, of course, didn’t give a damn. Glad the bastard was dead. You could see it in their eyes, a cold triumph hiding behind widow’s weeds. Sometimes it was pretty clear to Andrew that the grieving widow had not been entirely unconnected with the circumstances of her husband’s departure. And if the police couldn’t see it he could.

But not one of them, not one widow in his entire experience, was so distraught that they were indifferent to what happened next. No matter how upset they might be, no matter how much they might protest that life was no longer worth living, they would stil wonder how they were going to cope now they were on their own. at was Andrew Tanner’s grim worldview. Every widow wanted her policy. ey wanted their payout. ey wanted their money from Wigan and Wigan.

And they could have it, yes they could. If it was their money. If the circumstances of the death fel within the remit of the contract.

And that remit never included suicide.

At the front of the church Lizzie raised her veil and looked about her, clearly gathering her thoughts.

‘I had not intended to say anything today,’ she began in a faltering voice that grew in strength as she progressed, ‘and I don’t intend to speak for long. Robbo would never forgive me if I kept you from the drinks! Besides, Henry, Rupert and Jimmy have already said quite enough on the subject of how wonderful a man Robbo was. What an incredible husband, father and friend. How every single person who ever knew him either liked or loved him. You al know it’s true. Of course it’s true, al of it. And I have only one further truth to add.’

Lizzie paused for a moment, once more surveying the congregation. Her eyes were dark-ringed with tiredness and bloodshot with grief, but she was not crying now and her exhaustion seemed to have left her. Sitting at the back, Andrew wondered whether it was his imagination or had she looked directly at him?

‘I know what a lot of you have been thinking,’ Lizzie said loudly and rmly.

‘No, don’t look down at your orders of service. Look at me! Look at Lizzie!

Robbo’s life partner, the one who knew him best. I know that since the news came through of poor Robbo’s nal failed investment everyone has wondered.

Yes you have! Just a little. I know you have. Despite what you know of Robbo.

Why did he die on that speci c night, you’ve asked yourselves. e night of his lowest ebb. e night when he must have been desperate. How did he die?

What was he thinking, al alone at that moment? Wel , let me tel you the answer! He died in an accident and he was thinking about getting some cigarettes. He did not point his car at that wal in despair at ruining his family!’

Of al the silences that must have descended upon that ancient church in al the centuries in which it had contained the grieving of its ock, the silence that fol owed Lizzie’s utterly unexpected raising of this dread topic might wel have been the deepest.

‘Robbo loved me!’ Lizzie shouted suddenly. ‘Robbo loved his children!

Robbo loved his friends! He would never ever have deserted us!’

Lizzie’s voice rang out in the beautiful acoustics of the church. People had jumped. Hymnbooks were dropped. As her distraught voice faded into the mel ow stonework she went on, quieter now but no less intense.

‘Robbo was many things,’ she said, ‘some of them funny, some of them a little pathetic even. I think perhaps a few of you thought he was a bit of a loser.’

‘Never!’ a voice rang out. It was Jimmy and his voice shook with passion.

‘Bloody never!’

‘No, Jimmy,’ Lizzie said, and for a moment there was a tiny smile, ‘not you.

I know that. But some people did. But Robbo wasn’t a loser!’ Her voice was rising again now. ‘And I’l tel you something else! He wasn’t a coward either!

He would have faced the consequences of what he had done like the man he was. He would have risen above it! He would have lifted me above it. We would have risen above it. As a family! So understand this, al of you. Put that terrible, unworthy thought from your minds. My husband, my friend, my children’s beloved father, did not kil himself. Al right! He died in the sil iest of accidents on the stupidest of nights racing to get some cigarettes, wondering how he was going to explain to me that he’d been royal y ripped off by some bastard on Wal Street! Al right? Got it? Now let’s bury the best man I ever knew and then go and get pissed!’

People cheered. People hugged. e widow herself col apsed into her pew and sobbed and sobbed.

At the back of the church Andrew Tanner rose quietly and left.

She believed it. Andrew was sure of that. But the fact that she believed it did not make it true.

Of course she believed it, who wouldn’t? What wife would want to admit that a beloved husband would rather die than face the prospect of tel ing her the truth? What wife could ever accept that someone in whom they had invested so much, personal y and social y, couldn’t bring himself to stagger through the rest of his life in her company. Would rather accelerate his car into a wal than face her in the morning.

e very idea was a personal affront.

Of course she couldn’t believe it. No widow ever could. Because what would it say about them? Deep down, Andrew thought, Freud was right, everything comes down to ego in the end, even grief.

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