The Concrete Ceiling

by Peter Rowlands

  “No, no, of course not, Mike. Obviously I didn’t put you up to this, and there was no deal between us.” He hesitated. “But what made them so sure it was you?”

  “I was there when his daughter found him. I went into the house and called the police. The trouble was, she thought I was the one who killed him, and for a while the police agreed with her. They gave interrogated me for hours, and then stuck me in a cell overnight.”

  “So they actually arrested you?”

  “Yup. I think the only reason they eventually backed off was that all the evidence was circumstantial.”

  He drew a deep breath. “Do you think this had something to do with Magic Bookseller? Could it have been done by some other irate author?”

  “You have to wonder. But it would mean this other author must have done the same thing we did – tracked Openshaw down from California to London. It’s perfectly possible, but it would be a bit of a coincidence.”

  “Maybe this is about something else, then – something we don’t know about?”

  “Exactly.”

  For a moment neither of us spoke, then Graham said, “Looks like I’ve said goodbye to my money, anyway.”

  It was a black comment, and I couldn’t think of any suitable response. However, to his credit he added, “I can hardly blame Rob Openshaw for that. He was ready to repay it, after all.” He paused. “Most of it, anyway.”

  Chapter 23

  The centre of Solihull was a paradox. At a glance it looked quaintly traditional, yet it had a kind of upmarket modern gloss, as if someone had taken the template of an English market town and worked it into a set for a theme park.

  In the aftermath of Rob Openshaw’s death I’d almost forgotten about my appointment to visit Antler Logistics for the Smart Headings web site. A reminder email from the company saved me from missing it, and after an hour and half’s drive up the M40 I was ready swing into action. It was a relief to find myself doing something normal again.

  Antler occupied the top floor of a smart redbrick building on the fringe of the town centre, and after a short wait I was ushered into the office of Will Ponsonby, the chief executive. He was about forty-five, and had slightly receding light-coloured hair and a reddish, pock-marked complexion. He looked as if he’d been left out in the sun and wind too long, but his blue-green eyes were piercing and difficult to ignore.

  “Solihull has been voted the most attractive place to live in Britain,” he told me. “We thought it would make a suitable location for our offices.”

  “Not much hope of finding any space for an operational base in this part of the world.”

  “Ah, but we don’t need one. That’s the beauty of this type of operation. We open new sites to cater for each contract. We don’t have any need for a permanent physical footprint. We prefer to be flexible.”

  He refused to allow me to record our interview, but said he was happy for me to take written notes. He regaled me for half an hour with facts and figures about the company, and finally the conversation came round to the contract with the Japanese electronics company. “It’s only our second operation,” Ponsonby said. “It’s given a big boost to our market credibility.”

  “What was the first operation, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “It’s a food logistics contract over in Worcester. One of my colleagues set that one up for us. A good man to have on board. He’s out today, or I would have introduced you.”

  Carefully I said, “The logistics world was expecting the electronics contract to go to Vantage Express. People found it odd when you pipped them to the post.”

  He looked surprised, though I couldn’t tell whether this was at my knowledge of this development or at my nerve in raising it with him. Recovering, he said, “That’s what we like to do – keep the market guessing. Vantage wants to expand from parcels delivery into full-service contract logistics, and they thought they had this one in the bag. We showed them you can’t afford to be complacent.”

  “I heard that you undercut them by a tiny margin.”

  He fixed me with those piercing eyes. “Did you now? I don’t know where you got that from.”

  “So it’s not true?”

  “You don’t expect me to talk to you about prices, do you? That’s a confidential matter between our company and our clients.”

  My pulse was racing now. Confrontation went against all my instincts, yet I forced myself to say, “I heard that some people thought you must have known the prices that Vantage was quoting.”

  “Some people? What people are these? What the hell are you getting at?”

  “And you signed the lease on a new warehouse before you even clinched the deal.”

  Now he was glaring at me. “What the hell are you implying? That was a perfectly legitimate commercial transaction. Completely above board. I won’t have you printing anything different.”

  I put my pen down, trying to keep my composure. “I never said it wasn’t.” I gave him what I hoped was a friendly smile.

  He stared at me for a moment, then said, “I asked around after you called me, to find out what people had to say about you. You used to be a firebrand journalist – always poking your nose in where it wasn’t wanted. But the word was that you’d calmed down since those days.”

  “The word was right. I’m just here to talk up your company, trust me.”

  “I’m not sure that I do.” He pushed his chair back from his desk. “What are you up to here? Looking for a scoop to pep up that web site of yours, or trying to improve your journalistic street cred?” He practically spat out that last accusation.

  His words stung. He’d identified more or less exactly what I was doing, and it was humiliating to have the knowledge thrown at me. All I could do was try to remember that there might genuinely be some shady dealings at the heart of this. Let him be as indignant as he liked; it didn’t mean his attitude was justified.

  Tersely he said, “I think we’ll call it a day there, if you don’t mind.” He stood up. “Send me your article to check – but don’t be surprised if you find a red line through most of it.”

  * * *

  As I headed back to London down the M40 it occurred to me to stop off in Banbury. It was on my way, and a quick visit would allow me to take a look at the offices of Cavenham Risby, the property agency that had handled the warehouse transaction. I had no real agenda; I simply felt that seeing the company’s premises would make it more of a reality for me.

  Samantha was in Banbury too, of course – living in her picture-book cottage. Maybe that thought was at the back of my mind, but I had no intention of visiting her. The events of the previous week were still too recent. I had nothing to add to what had been said while she was in London.

  Three quarters of an hour after leaving Solihull I pulled off the motorway. Banbury was a country town, and to my eyes more authentic-looking than Solihull. I quickly reached the crossroads where the famous Banbury Cross stood in the middle of a small roundabout – a spire-shaped monument about fifty feet high, looking like something lopped off the top of a church. Broad tree-lined streets led off the junction in every direction, some flanked by period buildings from centuries past. Through traffic queued at the junction in a seemingly incessant stream. I pulled into a small surface-level car park and set off on foot in search of the property company.

  It didn’t take much looking for. After walking only a couple of hundred metres I spotted it across the road, housed in a white wood-beamed mock Tudor terrace. It looked like a domestic estate agency, except that there were no “house for sale” photographs in the front windows.

  I stood there indecisively, not sure exactly what if anything I’d learned, but then I spotted the name Hathaway & Simms on a fascia only a couple of doors further on. It was a branch of Nick Hathaway’s estate agency, and might also be its headquarters.

  Suddenly I felt exposed. What would Nick think if he spotted me here? Perhaps I would be able to persuade him that I was on my way to visit him,
but I didn’t want to give him that impression. I’d had as much exposure to him lately as I wanted.

  I started making my way back to the car, then on a whim I glanced back over my shoulder, and immediately I spotted Nick himself on the other side of the road. For a moment I felt certain he would see me, but in fact he was stabbing at his smartphone and paying no attention to his surroundings. I half-turned away and waited for him to pass, but he stopped at the front door of the Cavenham Risby office.

  At that moment another man emerged from the office, nearly colliding with Nick. They stepped apart, then shook hands warmly. Nick clapped an arm round the other man’s shoulder and ushered him back inside.

  The other man was Daniel Risby. I’d seen his face on the company’s web site. Yet Nick had told me he’d fallen out with Dan Risby. What was that about?

  Chapter 24

  A couple of days later I had an unexpected phone call.

  “Mike? It’s Jess – Samantha’s friend. We met at her party. I hope you don’t mind me calling you out of the blue.”

  “Of course not. It’s good to hear from you.”

  “The thing is, I’m in London today, and Sam said you spend most of your time here. If you’re around and you’re free, I wondered if you would fancy meeting up for a quick drink later on? There’s something I wanted to run past you.”

  “Absolutely. When and where?”

  Her suggestion turned out to be a thronging bar in a narrow pedestrianised passage behind Baker Street. When I arrived at six o’clock she was already there, sitting in the sun at an outside table with her head bowed over her mobile phone. A glass of white wine stood on the table in front of her.

  “Jess?”

  She looked up and smiled. “Mike, thanks very much for coming.”

  I squeezed my way through to the bar and returned a couple of minutes later with a bottle of light beer in my hand and a second glass of wine for her. She watched as I sat down, sliding her phone into her bag.

  I said, “What brings you to London?”

  “I work for Noodles, the fashion retailer. I’m the sales director there.” She gave a quick self-deprecating smile. “I’m based in Cheltenham, but every week or two I have to come down here to our admin centre. We’re quite near the old Marks & Spencer headquarters.” She waved vaguely behind her. “Basking in their reflected glory, you could say.”

  “I don’t know much about retailing.”

  “I don’t think anyone does these days. Economic uncertainty, online shopping, changes in lifestyle habits – it’s a fool who would predict where it’s all heading.”

  “But your company is making ends meet?”

  “Up to now.”

  Her curly hair was fanned out behind her shoulders as it had been at the party. Perhaps it was her trademark look. I noticed now that her angular features were sprinkled with freckles. She looked businesslike in her dark suit; I wondered idly if it was from Noodles’ own range.

  I said, “You mentioned that you wanted to run something past me.”

  “Ah.” She hesitated, then said, “Have you seen Sam lately?”

  Did her question mean I had to recount the whole Rob Openshaw saga again, and explain how it had prompted Sam’s visit to London? I felt I’d had enough of it for the moment, so I decided to be circumspect. I said, “As a matter of fact, she invited me over to Banbury for dinner a few weeks ago.”

  “Did she now? That’s a surprise.”

  “How so?”

  She looked at me coolly without replying, then said, “How did she seem to you?”

  I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say. “Pretty good, all in all. I think she misses spending time in London with Ronnie, but that was to be expected.”

  “But she seemed happy to you, did she? No regrets, nothing like that?”

  My pulse jumped up a notch. Where was she going with this? I said, “Well, no.”

  She nodded to herself. “Fair enough. That’s good to know.”

  “Come on – what are you getting at? Presumably you asked me here because you have concerns.”

  She looked at me judiciously. “I was due to go over for lunch with her last weekend, but then she called it off for no apparent reason.”

  “And … ?”

  “It just isn’t Sam.” She leaned forward over the table. “I mean, she might cancel an arrangement, but she would always explain why, and we would reschedule. This was different.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “It was as if she was suddenly shutting me out.”

  “So what conclusion do you draw from that?”

  She sat back again. “I think I’ve been banned by Nick. I’ve become persona non grata. And Sam is going along with it.” She gave me a meaningful stare.

  “Seriously?”

  She made a tetching sound. “I don’t know for sure. It’s just an impression. But that’s what it’s beginning to look like.”

  “And it’s got you worried?”

  “Of course it has! I mean, who is this guy Nick? What makes him tick? I find him seriously creepy, don’t you? He seems all sweetness and light when you first meet him, but there’s a kind of fakeness about him. It’s as if he’s desperate to hide what he’s really like.”

  I’d had similar thoughts myself, but I felt I shouldn’t chime in too readily. I said, “Have you had some kind of falling-out with him?”

  “In a way yes. I was over there one evening a few weeks ago for a meal – like you, I suppose – and I got into an argument with him. It didn’t really involve Sam, except indirectly. It was about public versus private education. We were discussing where one would send one’s children to school, that kind of thing. He was all for sending his hypothetical offspring to a private boarding school. I said they would be better off in the public-sector mainstream, and Sam seemed to be agreeing.”

  She paused, staring into her wine glass, then looked up again. “It wasn’t like a shouting match or anything. I thought I was getting my point across, but then Nick suddenly went quiet, and I felt a coldness come over him. He was like that for the rest of the evening. Polite, but … ” She paused, struggling for the right words. “Blanked off? Disappeared to another place?”

  She picked up the glass and took a generous sip, then replaced it emphatically on the table. “And then Sam calls me and tells me our weekend is off. I’m certain Nick was behind it.”

  We sat in silence for a while, then I said tentatively, “What made you contact me about this? Sam must have other friends back home.”

  “Yeah, course she has, but there’s not much any of us can do. I thought … I don’t know, I thought you were the right person to run this past.”

  I shrugged. “Why exactly?”

  She gave me an admonishing frown. “Do you need to ask? She was really into you. You must know that.”

  I smiled sadly. No point in dissembling. I said, “It was a two-way thing, if you want to know.”

  “So what stopped you acting on it?”

  “A prior involvement.”

  “Ah, your girlfriend. I know about her. But I saw the way you were looking at Sam at the party. You couldn’t hide it.”

  “Not much point now, though.” I could hear the disconsolate tone in my voice.

  “You should have thought of that when you let her go.”

  Now it was my turn to sit back in my chair. I said, “Please don’t start getting at me.”

  “What I’m saying is that if you still care about Sam, you have a duty to look out for her.”

  “But what are you expecting to happen? You and I might not like Nick, but evidently Sam does, and it’s not as if he’s an axe murderer or something. She’s not going to break up with him just because he’s not our favourite person.”

  “I think he deceived her. He caught her on the rebound, and made himself out to be something he’s not. She was taken in, but she’s not stupid. She’ll soon see how the land lies. She needs to know she’ll be supported when it comes to the crunch.”


  “You really think there’s going to be a crunch?”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  I reflected for a moment. “You said he caught Sam on the rebound. What did you mean by that? Nothing ever really happened between her and me.”

  “Is that how you see it? Don’t you think you’re being a little naïve?”

  Chapter 25

  Three days later I was on the train to Cornwall. I’d written my article about Antler Logistics and sent it off for checking by Will Ponsonby. Now seemed a good time to catch up with the rest of my life.

  I’d wondered lately why I’d kept on my flat in Truro, given that I hadn’t lived there full-time for half a year, but in reality I knew the answer. It would still be there when Ashley came back from America. The two of us could resume our old life.

  Until lately this had made a kind of sense. With a bit of bargaining, I would have expected to be able to continue the Smart Headings work from there. Given Guy Dereham’s current frame of mind, that was now looking doubtful, but I did have other work in Cornwall. In particular, I sometimes took on editorial jobs for Ashley’s employer, Latimer Logistics. These days most of that work was done by a high-powered public relations firm in Plymouth, but Latimers still called on me when they thought my specialist knowledge might be useful.

  However, it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to imagine what our old life would look like, when and if we attempted to resume it. There’d been no talk of a split, but there seemed to be too many tiny fractures; there was too much divergence in the way we lived our lives. The flat was beginning to look like wishful thinking.

  However, Bob Latimer, the company’s chief executive, had phoned me three days ago and asked for a meeting, and his summons was one I couldn’t ignore. Besides, I was overdue a visit to check the flat and pick up my mail.