Brand New Friend

by Kate Vane

  ‘She threw herself into the revolution. She kept things from me. For my protection or the people she was working with? I’m not sure. But when it came to it she put us first.’

  He wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell Mark. That she blamed herself? Or that she blamed him?

  She had thrown herself assiduously into media, campaigning, features, interviews, social media, live chats. Until they were free. Then she had gone quiet. She no longer spoke to anyone.

  Sometimes he thought she no longer spoke to him.

  Paolo read for a while, then his mind drifted, then, after their third round of refreshments, they talked though their plan.

  Mark was sitting still and straight in his seat, neatly minimal, as if to show his disapproval of such excessive space. Never mind, he could enjoy the tight embrace of Economy on the way back, because Paolo was staying a couple of extra days without him.

  Mark had accepted a decaffeinated coffee but had refused dairy, soya, almond and rice milk. Paolo was sipping pleasurably at his tea with fresh mint.

  ‘Do we want to go through it again?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ said Mark, ‘have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Paolo.

  ‘Cool,’ said Mark, and despite himself, Paolo was proud that Mark believed him.

  63

  It was dark by the time they got out of the taxi and entered Dudley’s building. Normal office hours ended at 7pm, but an hour later the reception was still staffed and people were coming and going. Paolo thought that if anyone looked askance at Mark, he’d say they were recording a podcast and Mark was the sound guy. As Paolo spoke to the receptionist, Mark shivered ostentatiously and muttered about the aircon.

  ‘I wish I’d brought my coat,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you were in the army? Toughened to withstand any physical challenge.’ He thought of Mark sitting unflinching in the rain and cold at Threapton.

  Mark didn’t answer. An assistant showed them to the lift, greeting them in bland, international English. The lift went so fast they barely had time to respond to his toneless enquiries about the comfort and punctuality of their flight.

  Paolo would not have recognised the man in front of him. He wasn’t like the image in his mind of the student or the profile picture on LinkedIn. It was hard to make out the features of the young Dudley in the fleshy face topped by an impressively shiny dome.

  He was wearing a pinstripe suit with a red silk tie. Paolo could tell it was expensive but it didn’t sit well on his shoulders. Dudley was one of those men who wore a suit like they’d worn a school uniform, it was a badge of identity, nothing more. If Paolo had been spending that kind of money, he’s have taken an interest in the fabric and the cut (he would have got the size right, for a start).

  Dudley’s office was everything he’d imagined. He was a little disappointed that it was so predictable. The corner office from a film set. Striking views of lit-up towers of steel which housed other corner offices. Behind the reflective glass were no doubt other Dudleys looking unseeingly back at them.

  Dudley sat behind his desk in a chair that was only slightly bigger and more expensive than theirs. Then he looked at them expectantly. Despite Paolo’s sarcasm with Mark, the aircon was just a little too cool to be comfortable and no wonder. Dudley’s suit was more London than Dubai.

  He had thought Dudley might have resisted the corporate clichés. Back in the day he had seemed happy with his microwaved meals and tea with dried milk.

  Mark’s arms were folded across his chest, hands under his arms, as if he were stranded in a blizzard waiting for mountain rescue. Paolo hoped they’d be offered tea, to both warm and wake him, but another assistant brought in a tray with glasses and a selection of cold beverages. There were no PR people in the room though. That was good. It meant Dudley knew that he wasn’t here to do a puff piece.

  If Dudley was surprised to see Mark he didn’t show it.

  ‘Paolo! It’s good to hear from you. It’s been too long.’ Like he was reading from a script. Hadn’t they been friends? Didn’t he deserve something more real than this universal bloke-speak? But then, had they ever really talked about anything other than their record collections? Apart from when they were stoned and that didn’t really count as conversation.

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to see – me,’ said Paolo.

  ‘Always happy to make time for the BBC.’

  ‘I’m not here in my BBC role.’ He had phrased his call carefully, saying he was a journalist who worked for the BBC, not that he was calling from the BBC, and thought that he was just about on the right side of the ethical line.

  ‘I assume you will be recording the interview and so I am doing the same. But I give this interview on the understanding it is off the record.’

  After they had ostentatiously arranged their respective devices, Dudley asked, ‘What can I do for you?’

  There was no trace of Dudley’s Midlands upbringing. He had the clipped accent of many Brits of their age in the Middle East, which was that of Hollywood villains and a certain type of minor public school. In fact, Paolo rather suspected he might be hamming it up for his benefit.

  ‘What happened to Lucy?’ Paolo asked suddenly.

  ‘Lucy?’ asked Dudley, as if the name was unfamiliar to him, but Paolo thought he saw something in his eyes.

  ‘You were so sure you’d get married.’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’ Paolo wanted to ask if they’d split up before Graham’s fateful birthday party, if that was why he’d suddenly gone home midweek.

  Mark shifted ostentatiously and Dudley and Paolo both turned their heads towards him. He was slouched in his chair like a teenager, making no concessions to corporate culture.

  ‘I didn’t know you were bringing a plus one,’ said Dudley. He smiled and for a moment Paolo thought he saw a man with a sense of humour. The ghost of Dudley stoned.

  Mark didn’t answer, just looked to Paolo as if waiting for him to take the lead.

  Paolo began. ‘We know that Sid Jenkins was working for you.’

  ‘Not exactly. We hired a contractor who hired him.’

  ‘Fargold.’

  Dudley gave a conspiratorial, just-between-us smile. ‘He was working for a consultancy which we used from time to time. They provided security for events. We held a weekend retreat for our senior executives and he approached me, asked if we could talk. He said he was setting up on his own and thought he could offer services that would interest me. Undercover work. I wasn’t interested.

  ‘Then he told me about his experience with the Met, and how he had worked with Mark. He knew all about the house we’d shared, things he could only have got from someone who had known us. Things I’d forgotten about myself. It was only a few months, after all. But it was strong evidence that he was telling the truth.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘Graham’s birthday party. Some psychodrama about sheets. Apparently I accused him of being a wanker. He suggested Mark would be useful. I suggested Mark might not want to work for us. He said he had leverage. I didn’t ask any more. I told him we would commission him via Fargold to keep everything arm’s length. There was no need for me to know.’

  ‘Weren’t you shocked? That Mark had spied on us?’

  Dudley shrugged. ‘The opportunity fell into my lap. I evaluated it and decided to take it.’

  ‘Did you know about Sid’s freelancing? That he was scamming money from members of the asbestos group?’

  ‘I soon found out that Sid was a liability. He had an inflated sense of his own importance. He was constantly trying to call me, although all contact was supposed to be through Fargold.’

  ‘But you were still happy for him to use Mark.’

  Another shrug. Not meeting Mark’s eyes, but Paolo got no sense of embarrassment.

  Paolo went off script. ‘And was Mark useful to you? Did you sense he was really trying?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dudley, with amusement. ‘There is so
me highly organised opposition on the fracking site. Mark’s cover was ideal. He was playing himself. Or at least the version of himself he’d been for thirty years. He managed not to deviate from the plan as far as I know.’

  ‘So he gave you useful information?’ asked Paolo, leaning forward, watching Dudley intently.

  Dudley’s eyes flicked to Mark.

  ‘He told us that he thought one of the other protesters was an undercover agent.’

  ‘And was he?’

  ‘Yes.’ Dudley smiled ruefully. ‘He was one of ours but neither Sid nor Fargold Consulting were aware of that. We recruited him through another consultancy.’

  ‘You were spying on your own spies?’

  ‘Of course. Rightly, as it turned out. He was a little too enthusiastic. And there were some inconsistencies in his backstory.’

  ‘So the only thing that Mark told you was something you already knew.’

  ‘He told us about a member of our staff who was sympathetic to the protesters and was supplying them with information. Obviously we had to let her go.’

  Paolo looked at Mark. This was new to him. Mark didn’t meet his eyes.

  Paolo tried to get back on script. ‘Mark didn’t give you enough, did he?’ The words sounded empty now, but he pressed on. ‘Even though you threatened to reveal his identity.’

  Dudley looked confused. ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because –’

  ‘It would be pointless. It’s a threat you can only use once. And exposing Mark could bring trouble back to me. Sid may have said I made that threat but if he did he was lying.’

  Paolo was quiet. He had only asked the question to protect Graham. Until recently he had been sure that Tilda’s story came from either Mark or Sid and he didn’t want Mark to think he knew different.

  As it grew dark the view of the city was broken up with reflections from the room, shadowy figures and spots of light. The ghost-Dudley in the window was slimmer than the real one, some trick of perspective, and he found himself imagining that this was the Dudley that might have been. Did Dudley enjoy all this? Or was it necessary only to make a point? A demonstration of power.

  Mark spoke for the first time. ‘We want something.’

  Paolo had been building up to it, carefully, but Mark had no feel for diplomatic niceties.

  Dudley’s smile indicated amusement.

  ‘We know about the patent.’

  Dudley’s smile stayed firmly in place but Paolo saw it die in his eyes.

  Paolo spoke as they’d agreed. ‘You were the Finance Director for a medical research company in the Pennines.’

  ‘You’ve read my LinkedIn profile.’

  ‘One of the scientists was pursuing another project in his downtime. He wanted to find a low-cost way of testing for diabetes that would help people in developing countries. He developed a simple machine that didn’t require disposable testing strips and didn’t need a sterile environment to operate safely. The testing strips can be expensive and difficult to source in some countries.

  ‘It was patented and then apparently forgotten. The patent belonged to the company because it had been developed in work time and in the company lab. The scientist wanted to buy it. He thought if he owned it he could make the patent freely available or even manufacture the machine himself and sell it at cost, but he was turned down. He sadly died in a car accident a few months later.

  ‘Then suddenly the patent was written down in the accounts, a footnote among other similar projects which hadn’t quite come to fruition. Around a year later a company registered in Bermuda bought it. They licensed the manufacture of the machines but at an inflated price. What should have been a low-cost option was suddenly out of reach of the people it was made for. Still it is making the patent owner handsome profits.’

  ‘Nice story, but so what?’

  ‘It’s fraud. You wrote it down and then bought it yourself, through a complicated company structure.’

  ‘And?’ said Dudley.

  ‘We’ll go public,’ said Paolo.

  ‘You’ll never get it past your lawyers.’

  ‘It might leak,’ said Mark. ‘Like my identity.’

  ‘The thing is,’ said Dudley, ‘you can’t hurt me with this. Who would care? Every day company directors take money from pensioners and taxpayers and pay themselves bonuses and saddle the company with debt and when it all goes wrong the taxpayer pays again. You’ve got child labour, pollution, people forced to work until they literally drop dead. The left shout and scream and nothing changes. Who’s going to care about one little patent?’

  ‘Your boss?’ asked Mark.

  Dudley laughed again. ‘Petrov knows. That’s why he recruited me. He admired my initiative.’

  Paolo and Mark looked at each other. Mark was more slumped than ever and Paolo sank too, mirroring.

  ‘That’s the trouble with you lot,’ said Dudley. ‘You’re always trying to do what’s right but the rest of us aren’t constrained by your rules. It means you always lose.’

  ‘Petrov might know,’ said Paolo, ‘but does his daughter?’

  Dudley’s face dropped.

  ‘Natalya Petrov has campaigned tirelessly for better diabetes treatment. It’s an unfashionable cause but she has been undaunted. She has talked about the lives it takes in South Asia. She has even spent time in a remote Indian village, documenting the experiences of the villagers in a film you can see on YouTube. Shot by a Bafta-nominated director at her expense. I’ve heard Petrov adores his daughter. What would happen if she learnt what you had done, and his complicity in it? I’m sure Petrov would be happy to drop you as a gesture of his love.’

  ‘So you keep quiet about that and I – what?’

  Mark spoke up. ‘You keep quiet about anything Sid might have told you about our political activities. Either now or when you were students. And your company withdraws from Threapton.’

  ‘He really is quite amusing,’ said Dudley to Paolo, and Paolo was inclined to agree. But then he said, in the tone he might use if he had been asked to consider a new paperclip supplier, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Paolo and Mark exchanged glances. Paolo didn’t understand. Why was Dudley being so emollient? Why was he giving in to Mark so easily? Was it because he had something much bigger to hide?

  Suddenly Paolo’s heart was thumping in his chest. ‘No,’ said Paolo. ‘I can’t agree to that.’

  Mark turned and looked at him, confused.

  ‘I can’t be a party to cover-up and corruption. I came because I wanted your comment on the allegation.’

  ‘I deny it of course,’ said Dudley. He spoke calmly but he looked shaken. ‘Please direct any further questions to my lawyer.’

  We’ve got him, thought Paolo. He pressed on, while the tape was still running, while even Mark hadn’t gathered his thoughts. ‘Why did Sid have to die?’

  Dudley’s face froze for a moment as he looked askance from Paolo to Mark, and then he laughed.

  ‘You think that was me? Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘He’s dead. No one knows who killed him. That’s pretty effective.’

  Dudley was relaxed. He wasn’t even trying to defend himself. His laughter felt genuine. Even Mark was looking at the incongruous deep-pile carpet.

  ‘You do it in Russia,’ Paolo said, but it sounded weak, even to him.

  Dudley shrugged dismissively. ‘The rules are different in Russia. Both sides understand that. When your wife stood proud in Tahrir Square, she accepted the rules of that particular game.’ Paolo went to protest but Dudley waved a hand to quiet him. ‘We respect local customs. Either way we win.’

  64

  Mark was looking straight in front of him, giving the impression he was trying to bore a hole in the driver’s head with his stare. He had shown no curiosity about the city outside the taxi. Paolo had suggested (before the meeting, clearly he wouldn’t say it now) that Mark stay a few days with him. Mark had said he had to get on with his winter pruning.


  ‘We had a plan,’ said Mark blandly.

  ‘It made no sense,’ said Paolo. ‘Blackmailing Dudley to keep quiet about Claire. Now the truth is out about you, people will be looking at your past. Afzal is already interested.’

  ‘He won’t get anywhere,’ said Mark. ‘This goes much higher than him.’

  ‘If not him then someone else.’

  Mark didn’t reply but he turned his head to look at Paolo. ‘I was going to use what we had to persuade him to pull out of Threapton.’

  ‘That wasn’t in the plan either,’ said Paolo drily. ‘And it hardly seems likely.’

  ‘A lot of experts think the potential of fracking in the UK has been overstated,’ said Mark. ‘The reserves are less than predicted and what is there will be costly to extract. The protests mean that security and legal costs at Threapton are almost double original projections. My contact suggested they might be thinking of pulling out anyway.’

  ‘So what would you have gained?’

  ‘They pull out now, it gets publicity. Other companies wonder what they know and become more cautious about investing. The delay gives us more time to organise. It was achievable. Then you decide to accuse him of murder. What were you thinking?’

  I had to get him on the record, thought Paolo. ‘I thought if it wasn’t him, it had to be you,’ he said quietly.

  Mark didn’t respond.

  Paolo said, ‘You didn’t tell me that you got your contact sacked.’

  ‘It happens,’ said Mark. ‘If you want to do anything, change anything, sometimes you have to accept that people suffer. You can’t always be on the sidelines, taking the high ground, keeping your hands clean. You of all people should know that.’

  Paolo let that go, as he always let such comments go.

  It was widely assumed, though never said to his face, that their hurried departure from Egypt was due to him. That he had persuaded Salma to put family first.