due South meta: Did Bob take the hush money in the pilot?

[luzula]

I've been discussing this with desireearmfeldt a couple of times, and I'm curious to see what other people think.

My personal head-canon is that Bob did not take the hush-money, and before I discussed it, this wasn't something I'd reflected much over--it was just my spontaneous assumption. Desiree had spontaneously gone in the opposite direction. Anyway, now that I've thought more about it, my reasons for thinking he didn't take the money are:

1) What we see of his character later in the show: we know he bends the rules sometimes, but when we see him doing that, it's not for personal gain (hmm, can you think of any instance?). I just don't see him as putting that much value on money/material gain. And he's a sergeant, it's not like he wouldn't get a decent pay anyway, enough for what he'd need.
2) Gerard absolutely has a motive for faking the evidence, because he wants Fraser to back off and not turn him in.
3) At the end of the pilot, one of the RCMP superiors (Underhill?) says: "There is no record of your father making any withdrawals. None of the deposits were made in person. People will believe what they want to believe. I know what I do." Which I guess means it could easily have been faked?

Of course, it could also be that I don't want to believe Bob took the money because I like him. So, what do you think?

Comments

[sage]

Awesome! In terms of fic, I mean. (See plausibility of comment below.)

Due South was just so SMART in so many ways, I'd love for this to be the actual subtext of the pilot. I mean, it is cynical and awful, yes, but totally possible, what with how alienated Fraser is from the room full of mourners at his dad's funeral.

[brigantine]

Mind you, that wouldn't hold up to a lot of scrutiny. There'd be a date on the record in the computer that I don't think could be fudged, and there would be the usual security cameras in the bank.

So, if Gerard and his accomplice had to convince law enforcement that Bob had really signed the paperwork, with him insisting that he hadn't... Bob might be able to provide evidence/witnesses that he wasn't in the area on that date, and depending on how thorough the cameras were one might expect him to show up on camera if he'd come into the bank to set up the account himself.

Of course now that he's dead, he's not going to be raising much of a contest, is he. :P

[sage]

Right. That makes sense. Although I suppose there might be ways around it given a) some skulduggery (because who knows if the security tape got changed that day? Assuming the camera even worked) and b) good old Due South handwaving.

I mean, Gerard can approach a bank officer after hours and tell them what they're going to do or else. Or, going in another direction, I wonder what arrangements existed for banking by post for gvt employees stationed in remote areas? Gerard certainly has access to enough examples of Bob's signature (from reports) to have good forgery templates...so if he could pretend to be Bob on the phone, get acct set up forms mailed to him, fill them out as Bob, return them by mail, etc. I mean, things were SO DIFFERENT before internet banking. And the North is so very spread out, bank branches might be hundreds of miles apart.

Gah, now I want to get input from people who know the area first hand! *g*

[brigantine]

...so if he could pretend to be Bob on the phone, get acct set up forms mailed to him, fill them out as Bob, return them by mail, etc.

And Bob might or might not be able to prove that he was nowhere near the address the forms got sent to at or around the date that the bank sent them. He spent so much time on his own. Maybe he was in a certain village for long enough that people there could vouch for him not being in the right place to receive the forms, or maybe he was all by himself up on whatever pass, with no witnesses but the caribou.

Gerard would be in a position to at least hazard an educated guess as to when Bob might be somewhere off by himself. Could be tough for Bob to clear his name thoroughly. Even if the bank account wasn't enough to convict him, there'd always be a cloud - kind of like now. ;)

[sage]

At least Bob gets him in the end.

(*ouch*)