phoney wires to make the device look even more daunting. The sleek flat cables that normally attach to the blood-pressure cuff, the respiratory band, and the dermal-response pads, had been replaced with the kind of wiring you would associate with an electric chair. Harry liked his subjects feeling ill at ease, and the more his machinery resembled something out of a Frankenstein movie, the better he liked it. He called his polygraph – “The Beast”.
“It’s Walter, right?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your first name,” Harry said, “it’s Walter.”
“No,” Toliph said, “it’s James.”
Harry looked James Toliph directly in the eyes. “Is James a family name?”
“Yes. It was my grandfather’s name.”
“Good. And what did your grandfather do?”
“What?”
“Your grandfather, what was his job?”
“He was a grocer. Why would you want to know that?”
“No reason. Now James, who do you think stole the Isle of Man money?”
The junior executive stood thinking for a moment and said: “It could be anybody.”
“OK Jim, before I unpack all of this crap, let me ask you one more question. Is the money gone?”
“How would I know?”
“’Cause you took it, James.”
“That is ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not. An innocent man would have just said, ‘No, I didn’t’. Guilty people, or to use the common term, liars, normally respond with an equivocation, like, ‘That is ridiculous’. And liars tend to not use abbreviations. Saying, ‘That is,’ instead of ‘that’s’ makes you a liar.”
“This is nonsense.”
“It isn’t, it’s neuroscience. Admittedly it only works for the mean of the general population but I have a feeling, James, you are about right in the middle of the Great American Bell Curve.”
“I don’t have to stand for this,” Toliph said as he made a move towards the door.
“I wouldn’t go out there, Jim. Out there is jail but I think I can get you out of this.”
“This is bullshit. I won’t go to jail because your bunion throbs.”
“It’s more than that. When I asked you about your grandfather you told the truth, right?”
“Of course.”
“Of course you did. Why would you lie about that? But you had to think about your grandfather’s occupation. Since long-term memories are stored in the left hemisphere of the brain, most people look to the left when accessing them. When you retrieved your grandfather’s job your eyes shifted left but when I asked you who might have stolen the money, your eyes shifted right. Now the right hemisphere is the creative side; it’s the side that you use when you want to make stuff up. Like when you contemplated who you could frame for your crime.”
“So let me get this straight: you say I’m going to go to jail because I have shifty eyes?”
“It’s not just the eyes,” Harry went on, “it’s also the stupid joke you made about everybody having a first name. You said that to avoid my question. And then there is the fact that you unconsciously put this table between us when you entered the room, and the observation that your hands have been in your pockets ever since I met you, like you think they’re dirty.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“No, and neither will the results of this machine when I hook you up to it but it will give those big shots out there enough cause to go over every one of your transactions with a fine-tooth comb, and when they find something – you go to jail.”
“I still think you are full of shit.”
“Don’t, James. I am very very good at my job. Now, the money that you stole: is it spent or is it recoverable?”
“Again, I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Yes, you do. Now, is it gone or can you get most of it back? ’Cause,” Harry pointed to the door, “I know these guys. Actually, I don’t know these guys but I know the type. All they want is their money back. They don’t want to arrest you ’cause arrests mean trials and trials mean their clients get to see how easy it is for a guy like you to steal their money. If you give it back you only lose your job and the ability to ever work in the financial sector again – which is a good thing because you seem to have a tendency… how shall I say… to give in to temptation.”
This was it. They don’t call it the moment of truth for nothing. The young exec squared his shoulders but then thought better of it. He fell back against the wall and slid down, hanging his head between his knees, his foppish hair flopping into his face.
“How could they have spotted it this fast?”
“It has been my experience, James, that people with a lot of money tend to know how not to have it stolen. Is the money get-back-able?”
“Yes. Of course. When would I have had time to spend it?”
Harry reached down and helped James to his feet. He looked like a middle schooler on the way to the principal’s office. “Come on, Jimmy, let’s keep you out of jail.”
* * *
Harry assembled the senior partners and sat back with a smug self-satisfied look on his face, until he heard James confess that he had only executed his dubious transaction “yesterday afternoon”. James’s Isle of Man scam wasn’t why Harry had been called.
After security had escorted Jimmy away, Harry found out that his employers hadn’t even known about that one. They thanked him – then briefed him on why he was really there.
* * *
Harry unpacked The Beast and proceeded with his usual routine of polygraphing everybody, starting with the senior management. This was one of the conditions companies had to agree to before Harry would accept a job. He explained to the executives that it caused fewer objections from junior staff if their bosses agreed to be hooked up first. But the real reason was that, half the time, Harry found the culprit was one of the bigwigs.
He was no closer to finding out who had pocketed the loose twenty-four million out of the Dubai fund and had resolved himself to the fact that this was going to take a couple of days, when his 4.30 appointment did a runner.
“My work here is done, gentlemen,” Harry said as he looked up from a surveillance video of Mr Patel getting into his car in the employee car park and hightailing it out of there. Even a child could see he looked guilty and scared as hell.
* * *
In the elevator down to the car park, Harry sent a message to Trooper
