by Mike Ripley
‘The analysts and backroom boys – and girls –’ Alec added as an afterthought – ‘have a bit more privacy.’
He gestured to the left, where thin partitions had carved out about a dozen offices. Some of the doors were open to reveal a desk, two chairs and a hat-stand. With luck there might have been room for three people to stand in each. If they were good friends, that is, and it wasn’t a hot day.
‘And this is Salome’s little empire,’ said Alec, rapping a knuckle on the door frame.
The door wasn’t shut, and I could see Sal coming round from behind her desk trying to slip her suit jacket on and speak into the phone at the same time. I thought for a minute she was doing a good juggling trick, then I realised the phone had one of those shoulder-rest attachments, which left her hands free. I made a note to ask her to get me one. That way, I could play cards and answer the phone at the same time. (Why else would I need one?)
‘... Yes, of course. Naturally. Yes, certainly. I’ll be back to Mr Stavoulos this afternoon. Yes, before three o’clock certainly. Thank you.’
She put down the receiver and allowed herself a brief smile.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi. So this is where it all happens, eh?’
‘Too right. Let’s go before the phone rings again.’
‘Busy morning?’ asked Alec.
‘Somewhere between hectic and paranoid. Is the dining-room ready?’
‘Yes, according to Mrs Pilgrim, but Terry will be a few minutes late joining us.’
I mouthed ‘Who’s Terry?’ at Sal as Alec opened another door at the end of the corridor.
‘Terry Patterson. He’s our head of Security Systems,’ Sal whispered.
‘Your boss?’
‘On this one, yeah.’
Alec led us into a dining-room complete with oak table, four place settings and a cruet that would have paid off my mortgage if I’d had one. At the far end was a bar.
‘We’ve got everything except beer,’ Alec said proudly, waving a glass in my direction.
‘Tequila Sunrise, please.’ I hate show-offs.
‘Er ... sorry ...’ Alec looked in one of the cupboards. ‘Except beer and tequila.’
‘Just the orange juice then, please.’
‘Coming up. Perrier, Salome?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said as if she knew she didn’t have a choice.
We all three swirled ice cubes around for a minute, then Alec decided somebody had better speak.
‘I don’t think you told me what you do, Roy.’
‘Oh good,’ I quipped. ‘I wasn’t that drunk, then.’
‘Now don’t be hostile, Angel,’ Salome mediated. ‘Alec and I are in this together.’
I nodded sagely.
‘So Terry’s the one to watch, eh?’
Alec didn’t say anything, but he looked at Salome as if to say, ‘He’s not daft, is he?’
‘Don’t worry, love,’ I reassured her, ‘I’ll be on my best behaviour. By the way, it’s the funny flat knife for fish, isn’t it?’
She tried to smile, but it ended as a shrug of the shoulders. Behind me, the door handle clicked, and she jumped about an inch with nerves.
‘Here we go,’ I said under my breath. ‘Lock and load.’
‘Morning everyone, sorry to keep you waiting.’
Patterson breezed into the room. He was a big bloke and looked bigger, because his suit jacket had shoulder pads Joan Collins would have envied. His blond hair was cropped short at the back, but a long shock fell carefully over his right eye, and I just knew he would have to brush it aside every 90 seconds or so. He didn’t look old enough to be a Prefect, let alone Salome’s boss.
‘Terry, let me introduce Roy Angel. Terry Patterson, Roy Angel,’ said Alec.
‘Good to meet you,’ he boomed, crushing my hand. How did he know it was going to be good? ‘Glad you could make it. Let’s eat and talk.’
‘Sure,’ I said, being friendly. ‘Time must be money to you guys.’
‘Isn’t it to everyone? There just aren’t enough hours in a day.’
He took his place at the head of the table and pressed a bell-push attached to the table leg.
‘I don’t agree,’ I said. ‘My Rule of Life No 19 is that if a job can’t be done between nine and five, you’re either understaffed or totally inefficient.’
Patterson looked surprised. Not impressed, just surprised. I’d got that reaction before, and always from people with jobs. That’s why I prefer to be my own boss.
The door opened behind me, and Patterson looked over my shoulder.
‘Ah, here’s Mrs Pilgrim. What’s the recipe today?’
I bet myself he said it every day, and this was confirmed by the soft but distinct sound of Salome grinding her teeth and Alec looking straight down at his empty place setting.
‘If it’s Thursday, it’s Chinese, Mr Patterson; you should know that by now.’ Good for her, I thought. ‘Crab and water chestnut soup, duck in hoisin sauce and then lychee sorbet.’
If I’d been expecting some ageing Lyons Corner House clippy waitress in black dress and white starched pinny, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
‘Mrs Pilgrim’ turned out to be a tall, long-haired brunette wearing black leather trousers tucked into high-heeled boots and a long, white frilled shirt – a man’s dress shirt – outside them. She had a waitress’s notepad and pencil clipped to a studded leather belt, which held the shirt around her waist, and a bootlace tie added to the gunfighter image. I doubted if she got many complaints about the soup being cool. Instead of asking if someone was ready to order, she probably said: ‘Feeling lucky, punk?’
‘Is everybody happy with that?’ was what she actually said. ‘No vegans, gluten-free freaks or anti-salt campaigners?’
‘We always eat our greens here, Mrs Pilgrim,’ said Patterson with a sickly smile. ‘Otherwise we don’t get any pudding, do we?’
‘Good. Then I’ll serve.’
‘Er ... one thing,’ I said hesitantly.
‘Yes?’ asked Mrs Pilgrim sharpishly.
‘Have you used fresh lime juice in the sorbet?’:
‘No.’
‘Pity, it gives the lychees an extra tang.’
She smiled as if she’d just seen a child drop an ice-cream and turned away to open the door. She wheeled in a heated trolley and served out four bowls of soup, the bowls being
fine china with lids on. I thought of my meagre kitchen back at Stuart Street, and I liked my grub, don’t get me wrong. But this was how the other half lived without a doubt. Strike
that; make it the other seven-eighths.
Mrs Pilgrim closed the door behind her, and Patterson dropped the small talk as subtly as if he’d banged for order with a gavel.
‘I’m told you can help us with a slight problemette we have, Roylance. You don’t mind if I call you that?’
Problemette? Roylance? Who wrote this guy’s script?
‘You’re buying lunch, Tel, you can call me what you like.’
Patterson just stared at me, although I knew he was still alive, because I saw his jaw working a couple of times. To my right, Salome choked quietly on a water chestnut. To my left, Alec Reynolds started the deep breathing exercises his psychiatrist had taught him to help combat moments of stress.
‘Er ... well ... good. Fine.’ He spooned some soup to give himself time to think. He’d probably come across people like me before, but he’d never had to talk to them.
‘I think, Terry, that we should tell Roy why we wanted to talk to him,’ said Salome, putting emphasis on ‘Terry’ and ‘Roy’ in the hope that we’d both notice. Well, I would if he would.
‘Yes, Terry,’ said Alec. ‘We’ve got to put Roy into the matrix on Capricorn Travel.’
‘You’re right, Alec. Will you input or shal
l I?’
I finished my soup and leaned forward on my elbows just to prove I was an oik not to be trifled with.
‘Listen. Before anybody plugs me into the mainframe, let me tell you what I know, and then you can tell me what the hell it’s all about. Fair enough?’
Patterson and Alec looked at each other, their eye movements faster than Morse.
‘Okay,’ said Patterson slowly. ‘You lead, but pas devant les domestiques.’
He pressed the bell for Mrs Pilgrim, and they small-talked among themselves while she cleared the table and served the next course – Chinese-style duck, served dry and fruity, with three-inch diameter pancakes, spring onions and shavings of cucumber accompanied by a small bowl of hoisin sauce. I gave her my best smile as she leaned over me, but I resisted the temptation to ask for chopsticks.
As she left, I asked Salome if she really was one of the firm’s domestiques.
‘No, she’s the founder of Mrs Pilgrim’s.’
I looked suitably blank and did a ‘so?’ shrug.
‘Just about the most successful external catering company in the country,’ she said in her don’t-you-know-anything voice. ‘It’s a franchise deal supplying high quality function
food to City firms. Cash for her, no overheads for us. It’s a business she started with some girlfriends from university, apparently. There are four of them and they’re all called
Mrs Pilgrim when they’re on duty. They’re slick, reliable, and the food’s good and ...’ She hesitated, hating to say it.
‘If they all look like her – the men love it,’ I finished for her.
‘Got it in one,’ she said.
Patterson coughed. I could take a hint.
‘Very well, Roylance ... er ... Roy, if you’d like to kick off, Alec will fix us some more drinks.’
Alec did, but nothing more exciting than Perrier, although I didn’t complain. The sniff of a pulled cork would probably have set me on a roll after the amount I’d drunk the previous night.
I skipped over most of the gruesome bits of the previous evening, concentrating on what I’d heard the Suits saying about Capricorn Travel. I also missed out the racist cracks I’d heard, so as not to embarrass Salome. This seemed a nice liberal firm, though. They didn’t worry that Sal was black; they ignored her because she was a woman.
When I’d finished, Patterson asked one question: ‘You are quite sure that this chappie you overheard said that the shit would hit the fan today?’
‘Well, he actually said “tomorrow,” but that was last night, so the answer is yes.’
Patterson hunched forward and said dramatically: ‘Then we have a leak.’
‘Don’t shoot the messenger,’ I said, and Salome smiled and patted my hand.
‘To fill you in, Roy,’ she said, watching Patterson all the time, ‘I’d better tell you our interest.’
‘I wish you would.’
‘We’ve been suspecting a leak in the building for some time now. Sensitive information has been getting to the market before it should, and it’s been information based on our research and analysis, quite definitely. In the past few weeks it’s been mostly my area – the leisure industry.’
‘Actually, Salome, it’s been only your area,’ said Patterson coldly. ‘Yours and Alec’s.’
‘Yeah, well.’ Salome shrugged. ‘Anyway, yesterday I finished a pre-result forecast on Capricorn Travel. They report in about a week’s time ...’
‘Ten days,’ interrupted Alec.
‘In ten days,’ Salome continued.
‘Report what?’ I asked. They looked shocked.
‘Their annual results,’ snapped Patterson. ‘Their profits.’
‘Or lack of them, in this case.’ Salome got back in her stride. ‘We got to know – well, I found out – that they were riding for a fall. They’d overstretched themselves on discounting and special offers for package holidays in the early part of the season just after Christmas. There’s been more cut-throat competition this year than ever before, and Capricorn just went over the top hoping to build up volume trade later on.’
‘So they cut their own throats,’ I said wisely.
‘Yes, but they couldn’t have foreseen how strong the pound has been, which made the US a far better holiday bet than some tacky hotel in Spain.’
‘You don’t have to race the Krauts for the sunbeds in Florida,’ said Patterson, smiling. I think it was a joke.
‘And apart from the usual problems of double booking and air traffic controllers on strike,’ Salome continued, ‘three of the eight hotels used by Capricorn are about to be closed down by the Spanish health authorities.’
‘Things must be grim in that case,’ I observed.
‘Probably one dead dog too many in the swimming pool,’ said Patterson – rather tastelessly, I thought.
‘Consequently,’ Salome soldiered on, ‘my note – we call them notes – to our clients, who have a stake in Capricorn, was to sell in advance of ... of ...’
‘The excrement hitting the ventilator,’ I said, and they all looked at me. ‘Well, that’s what the guy said last night.’
‘But how did he know?’ asked Alec quietly.
‘Search me.’
‘We do have a programme of body searches at random,’ said Patterson. ‘When people leave the building at odd times.’
‘Oh, goody. I knew I should have worn my Strip Searches Can be Fun T-shirt.’ I beamed at him, and he thought I was kidding, but I’d had one once, picked up for a couple
of quid at a Notting Hill Carnival.
‘No-one could possibly have seen my note last night,’ Salome said angrily, but mostly she was angry with herself.
‘Why not?’ I tried to sound interested.
‘The note would go to maybe a dozen people on our client list. The City investors, mostly the institutionals ...’
I must have looked blank. She stopped her flow to explain.
‘The big institutional investors – the insurance companies, the pension funds, the unions. Most of those are in the City, so their copies were not dispatched until this morning
at eight-thirty. The private clients – individual shareholders, that is ... I put theirs into envelopes myself and stuck their address labels on myself and the stamps and posted them myself last night at Liverpool Street Station before I went to the pub.’
She obviously felt she had to explain. ‘Liverpool Street because they do half-hourly collections in the early evening and it’s the one place from which you can guarantee next
day delivery.’
That at least was for sure. In West One district, for example, there were more troublemakers in the Post Office than there were in Dublin in 1916.
‘I’ve been over all this with Salome,’ said Alec, but he was talking at Patterson, not to me. ‘And I saw her post the client list myself.’
‘Well, somehow this friend of Roy’s knew enough to be blabbing to all and sundry in the four-ale bar last night.’ snapped Patterson again.
Where did he get his dialogue? What did he talk like before translation?
‘No, that’s not right,’ I pointed out. ‘The Chinless Wonder was explaining why he’d tipped somebody else off. He wasn’t broadcasting the news, more like covering up a mistake. The guy he was blagging – he called him Si, I’m pretty sure – seemed to know already, but was just pissed off ‘cos Chinless had grassed up some third party.’
Patterson stared at me. I don’t think he followed. Maybe he didn’t speak English at all; or at least not as a first language. Maybe he was Swedish. They speak English backwards; I’m convinced of it.
Alec pointed a finger at me in a thoughtful way. ‘You are pretty sure about that?’
‘Yeah. Definite.’
Well, almost. It was Thursday that day, wasn’t it?
‘It’s Cawtho
rne,’ said Alec. ‘I’m sure of it, even if you’re not.’
‘You could be right,’ said Patterson.
‘Who’s Cawthorne?’ I asked, because I presumed I was supposed to.
‘Simon Cawthorne,’ answered Salome. ‘He used to be something in the City before he retired. He was in the pub last night, but I didn’t invite him.’
‘Retired? The guy Chinless Wonder called Si was no more than 28.’
‘That’s him.’
‘The point is,’ Patterson interrupted, ‘how did Cawthorne know?’
He held up a hand to cut off Salome’s response.
‘Coffee,’ he said, and pressed his bell-push again.
‘Mrs Pilgrim’ appeared immediately, as if she’d been waiting outside the door, with another trolley. This one carried coffee-pots and cups and saucers. She began to collect up dirty plates.
‘Great sorbet,’ I said as she leant over me. ‘But take my tip and use lime juice next time.’
‘It’s tattooed on my heart,’ she said, through clenched teeth.
‘Leave the coffee, Mrs P,’ pronounced Patterson. ‘We’ll serve ourselves.’
She looked relieved and nodded to him, then left.
‘Salome,’ he said as the door closed, ‘would you mind?’
‘Yes, I bloody well would,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Of course, Tel,’ she said out loud. Then to me: ‘Black?’
‘Naturally.’
‘So, we return to the question of how Cawthorne knew,’ Patterson went on, unperturbed. ‘He’s not on our client list, and as far as I know, he doesn’t work for any of our institutionals. You two –’ he pointed to Alec then Sal – ‘alibi each other, and we just have to assume that Cawthorne was at this party by chance.’
He left a lot hanging in the air, not the least the nasty implication behind ‘alibi.’
‘There was nothing particularly private about that party,’ I offered in Salome’s defence. ‘I mean, it was in a pub and anybody could have been there. They even let me in.’
‘Point taken, but question remains – how did he know?’
I didn’t say anything, but I wasn’t convinced by the coincidence theory. After all, this Cawthorne character had been muttering about ‘the spade bitch’ earlier. But I didn’t say anything. Unfortunately.