A Little Bit on the Side

Book excerpt: Disaffected with his profession and city life, Jack Manning is seeking only contentment and the good life when he settles with Kate, his wife, on Barton Hill in remotest Shropshire. He finds himself instead cold-shouldered by a suspicious, rural community where news of his occupation (taxman) has preceded him, and where all around him are chasing a little bit on the side.Farmers are fiddling taxmen, husbands are cheating on wives, and in remote rustic distilleries Customs and Excise are robbed of their due. Only the eccentric vicar and the Gillans offer a welcome, but with their help, with Jack’s lucky identification for a villager of a signed first edition by Churchill, and his drunken anti-Revenue rant in the Shagger, the village pub, the Mannings win acceptance.Content to turn a blind eye to the local minor misdemeanours, Jack is, however, faced with the ultimate personal temptation when the local politician offers him a bribe to destroy evidence of his serious criminal tax fraud. Jack sees before him a unique and risk-free opportunity to enrich himself instead of the Treasury. The offer is tempting and substantial. Should he take the money and run, or is the whole operation too risky?Absorbed with this dilemma, Jack is blind to Kate’s discontent with their marriage, and eventually she leaves him with a revealing ‘Dear John’ letter. But nearby, in the sleepy town of Barlow, Jack will find the beautiful Josie waiting to pleasure and comfort him, and the provocatively erotic activities of the ‘frail ladies’ of Eastgate Villa to tax his professional skills.