by Neil Rowland
“That’s a matter of total grief to me,” Clive remarked.
She dipped down to replace her shoe - which was only mildly scuffed. “What are you doing back here? You were supposed to be locked up in a secure ward, or out of the country.”
“Sorry to disappoint you Pixie,” he said, ruefully.
“I’m not disappointed exactly. More like completely disillusioned.”
“Oh, really,” he thought. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be sorry. Look what you did to me. Chasing me around and, you know, wrestling me to the ground.”
Clive was somewhat alarmed by her reaction. He remembered Pixie (as far as he did) as a calm and reflective lady. Pitt kept reminding himself. This cool quality encouraged him to confide in her. Such anger was completely against her nature, despite his extreme provocation. She had a way of lowering her eyes and then raising them again, boldness fighting with shyness, that had captivated him.
“Where have you been hiding out, anyway?” she asked, brushing down her pale, now smeared, skirt.
“I’ve not been hiding out,” he insisted. “To be honest, I don’t really know.”
“Why didn’t you keep in touch? Don’t pretend you don’t understand how to do that.”
“I have to ask you some vital questions, right now,” Clive admitted.
“This seems totally irrational, or surreal,” she commented.
“Equally for me,” he replied, as if empathising with her.
“Are you tired of being a fugitive? Run out of places to hide? Is that it? You’ve come back to face the music?” she accused.
“Yes, maybe that’s it. I wanted to face the music. I am like, totally knackered right now, to be straight with you... but I’ve not been running as long as you imagine.”
Did he have a passionate affair with this woman? Pixie Wright? Been ready to cheat on Noreen and, ultimately, abandon his family, his beautiful young son Josh? To risk everything, betray solemn vows to himself as well as the vicar?
Pixie was a beautiful picture; she was appealing in looks and intellect, and (presumably at one time) very sympathetic to his views. He already heard a note of complicity in her voice, fluting and refined, beneath those initial cries of outrage. So was this so far-fetched? Or was it merely a response to her vulnerability and his notoriety?
“Look,” Clive said, “we shouldn’t hang about here, visible to the eye. There could be somebody following me, just as I trailed you. Let’s find somewhere else to sit, shall we, and talk this through. At least as far as we can,” he remarked.
This time he offered a hand to help her. “Certainly, let’s go then, I didn’t choose to sit here,” she objected. “Normally I choose a seat. You definitely have form with the ladies, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t intend to be rough. I didn’t want to give myself away.”
Their rumpled look drew bemused expressions from a scattering of fellow park-goers. A kindergarten group gazed bug eyed at them while licking ice-cream cones. Luckily for Clive there had been no “have a go” heroes in the park. Pixie had composed herself by now, and was back to her usual self.
14
Clive felt numb and subdued as they strolled; as if the whole traumatic day was catching up with him. She was a woman who enjoyed her composure, but she hadn’t been thrown to the ground before. Not as far as he knew. They both looked a mess and fought to regain self-possession.
“Why have you come back?” Pixie asked. “Or should I ask how you have achieved this?”
Clive lurched backwards in his mind. “I haven’t got a clue about all that. I’ve had some strange experiences. I’m still shaken,” Clive mused.
“Don’t play games with me Clive,” she warned. “Not with me.”
“This is serious. I experience periods where reality gets confused. There’s a continuous buzzing in my ears. I kind of hallucinate and get blind spots. It’s like suffering the after effects of being beaten up.”
She obviously believed he was exaggerating, to cover his behaviour. “Can you say where you’ve been? When did you decide to abandon your responsibilities?” she complained.
“I can’t say.” He tried to burrow into the tunnel of clouded memory, hoping for reminders. The park was expansive, but he was in a hedged maze.
“When was the last time you saw me, Pixie?” he wondered. “You know, before this evening that is.”
“You seriously need an answer to that question?”
His hammered bloodshot eyes conveyed total bafflement.
“It was only a couple of weeks ago,” Pixie told him.
“Really?” he absorbed the news with amazement.
“After you had raped that poor girl!” she explained.
“You insist that I am a rapist as well,” he said miserably.
“That’s just a small word, is it? But it was more than a little word for her. How can you not understand the consequences? Why did you turn out to be such a heartless kind of monster?” she objected.
“I can only draw a blank,” Clive suggested, uneasily. He strode stiffly by her side, moderating his step to stay alongside her. He realised that his jacket was ripped at the elbow.
“You want to erase the experience?” Pixie challenged.
“No, I am only trying to bring it back,” he insisted. “Sometimes you try to bring back a nightmare, in a bid to understand yourself. That’s what I’m trying to pull off here.”
“You forget who you are? That’s what you are claiming?” she replied.
“How can I know myself?” Clive said.
“What that girl went through! And you entirely betrayed my trust,” she reminded him.
“Why should I need your trust?” he wondered. “In what way?”
“I saw you as a man of honour... how was I taken in by a man again? ...when you stood up to them. How could you abandon your campaign? Why throw your case away? By indulging such base instincts?” she accused, clutching the bag tighter.
Pitt was crestfallen. “I’m completely out of your network.”
She pulled her arm to slacken his grip. “Let me free, will you, Clive.”
“All right, Pixie, I’m sorry for that...if I was holding you too tight,” he said.
“Why did you behave in such a nasty... such a beastly way, when you’d already collected a damning report against them? You literally, you know, compiled an entire dossier of evidence against them.”
“At what stage?” he said. “Then in what regard?”
“You could have exposed the take-over,” she told him. “You raised questions of governance... if you had behaved in a professional manner.”
“You are referring to a significant acquisition?” he replied, some outlines clarifying in his mind.
“Certainly, it was the ZNT takeover. It was a landmark deal. Sep gave you the lead on the negotiations for that acquisition. Our team was heading up the agreement. You had the job of advising on buying a controlling interest of the pharmaceuticals group,” she confirmed. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Which particular company are we talking about?”
“British Imperial Pharmaceuticals,” she informed him.
“That’s right, a significant global player,” he considered.
“You told me to work with you, while I was on your team... as the deal was going through.”
“You’re implying that this was a leveraged buy out? Somehow I objected?” Pitt urged.
“Yes, but they concluded the transaction... in your absence. This is a Geneva based hedge fund. ZNT purchased the BIP shares at below market rate... during the divestiture... that was a nice piece of business for that particular fund... and the upshot was... that Winchurch rescued his company, literally drew his chestnuts out of the fire...which covered his
losses since two thousand and eight,” she explained.
“No doubt big commissions and bonuses for those staff still involved,” Pitt speculated.
“Certainly,” she agreed. “Including you...or should I say us?”
“So we had to blow the whistle on the deal, did we?”
“Correction. You blew the whistle, Clive,” she informed him. “Why do you think that I’m still here?”
“So if I decided to expose their transactions, they’d regard me as the death-ray.”
“Is that how you like to see yourself?” she replied. “But Mr Death Ray, what happened to the evidence? Where did you put your dossier? You jeopardised our effort to expose corruption by attacking Sep’s daughter. You sacrificed our investigation by taking revenge on the Winchurch family. That was, you know, the stupidest and vilest act you could have dreamt up.”
Pitt stared at her in horror.
They kept to the pathway and strolled around the park perimeter. To the casual observer they presented a careful and thoughtful pairing.
“Whistle blowing is a dangerous game,” Clive said. “That’s like stepping off a high building to join the lunch queue. Presumably the people in Geneva were near to closing that deal?”
“The hedge fund managers were very confident of success. They were in close contact with Septimus,” she recalled.
“The people in Geneva would not be impressed by my actions.”
“The people in Geneva, as you describe them,” Pixie said, “have mafia figures as partners, money launderers, trying to go respectable by purchasing BIP... buying into numerous world famous brands in the pharmaceutical business.”
“All right then. This explains why I was gathering evidence against them. Why I was determined to stop the deal going to completion. We were surely crazy to take them on!” Clive exclaimed, going crab-like to her side to avoid a low branch. They skirted a cluster of oaks and beeches, around the perimeter of a seared cricket pitch.
“Septimus was involved to keep us, that is his firm, afloat. I guess that employees should be grateful to him. It’s an old name, from back in the time of the promissory dinosaurs,” she said.
“Those were desperate days following the credit crunch,” he recalled.
“They urged us to be more daring, more risky in these times, if we wanted to keep our bonuses, our life style, and our global position.”
“Like some ageing footballer ...flattering to deceive?” he remarked.
“More like a London version of Lehmann Brothers, to be precise... and Sep didn’t want to share their fate. Neither did his staff want to collect their few belongings into a cardboard box and leave...with camera flashes as a curtain call.”
“My heart bleeds for them all, Pixie,” he said. “We hit the triple dip and we threw away a lot of chips...or should I say ‘chits’?”
“Admittedly the markets were running out of control,” she agreed.
“It was more money than the old lady could print,” he objected.
“Winchurch Brothers may not have survived as long as that,” she told him.
“Then we reached the point of no return, as bad debts chased bad debt,” he protested.
“You have some memory at least?” she wondered, looking at him in a challenging way.
“Why should I suddenly turn into a liar?” he asked.
“ZNT have the capital reserves to gain a hold. Septimus is prepared to broker these deals,” Pixie recalled.
“The old chap was going to save his company... and our jobs. Only in the process British people would lose theirs...the same with all copyrights, patents and installations in this country ...stripped and removed abroad. They could launder their ill-gotten profits from criminality,” Pitt argued, animatedly “... transferring profits to sympathetic tax regimes, running off shore, in personal and corporate terms... with liberal employment law...more so than here in the UK.”
“You are able to sketch the deal,” she remarked.
“Unfortunately I have lost the script,” he added, rubbing his burning eyes.
“You took your opportunity with that young girl,” Pixie recalled.
“This again? That’s a total misrepresentation,” he argued. “That’s their version...my enemies’ version.”
“Then how Clive?” she challenged.
“Look,” he said, “I have a complete memory blank about that girl.... about what I am alleged to have done to Emmy Winchurch,” he insisted.
“That would suit you, wouldn’t it?” Pixie said.
“They make these accusations, all right, but this crime took place in a dark period...in my mind. That’s why I had to get hold of you again,” Clive explained.
She turned to him with hostile incredulity. “Don’t give me the old lie that men aren’t responsible. Are you one of those cave men with a degree? That struts and preens around the floor of Winchurch’s? Calling us ‘secretaries’ and such rubbish? Next you will be telling me that she deserved it. She had it coming to her, right?”
“But, you see, Miss Wright, I really don’t remember anything about that,” he insisted.
“Not only aren’t you responsible, Mr Pitt, but you don’t remember,” Pixie said.
“Exactly right, ‘cause I have no memory of what I’ve done,” Clive reiterated.
“Let me go. Let go of me! I had no idea who I was getting involved with!”
“But I tell you I have lost my memory for the year gone by.”
“You destroyed all the work we were doing...researching, collecting data...evidence. You left me exposed. Fortunately they decided to leave me alone. I’m sorry Clive, but a loss of memory is too convenient.”
But a measure of perplexity was added to her response. They began to take another lap around the park, as they edged about the truth.
“Why did I come back like this?” Clive said.
It was strange to describe his experience as “coming back”. But it was easier to accept his claim of amnesia than a tall story about a guy in a limousine, who described himself as the devil.
“You couldn’t stay hidden forever. It suits you to return at this point.”
“Sure, it suits me to discover that I’ve been booted out of my job, lost my home and that my wife and son have emigrated to the Pacific North West,” he smarted.
Pixie allowed him to deal with his evident grief for a few minutes.
“Why did Noreen decide to leave me for this guy? A guy I remember as no more than a friend of hers from the village. Don’t you know anything about that?”
“You told me it was sensitive. You didn’t want to discuss it.”
Yet delicacy kept him from asking Pixie if she was his former girlfriend. Had they really been an item? He always thought it was strictly professional.
“Don’t give me a hard time, Pixie. You have to understand this... that I found myself flying above the City skyline... as if hallucinating.”
“I suppose you came down again, in both senses of the phrase.”
“After that I was bundled into the back of a car. I meet this freaky guy, a right nutcase, and then I was pitched a year into the future. Definitely these negative events didn’t happen like you said.”
“How did you lose your memory? Did an apple fall on your head?”
“Don’t try to make fun of me Pixie. Why should I invent such a story? Why did I wander back to the Winchurch building? Under the very nose of Sir Septimus Winchurch... that diminutive legend of the City!”
“Clive, short of faking suicide or hiding overseas, I was convinced you’d be back in touch with me, eventually,” she argued.
“Were you?” he replied, surprised. “Maybe I’m determined to unscramble this mystery,” he argued.
“You think you can finish this off?” she said. “F
rom where you left off?”
Clive absorbed this information carefully, staring at her. They must surely have been living together, he registered.
“But if I am guilty of that crime.... if I was looking for your help... why did I take such risks?”
“I stopped trying to explain your motives,” Pixie retorted.
“Do you imagine I am so crazy as to gad about the trading floor at Winchurch’s? Is it the usual style of a hunted man?”
“I was too worried about my own safety,” Pixie told him. “We were brave to challenge our employer, so you are capable of risky moves.”
“When I attempted to speak to you... last Friday... I was just looking for moral support. You see, I decided to go out to lunch for some reason... then it got extended and I lost all track of time. Hasn’t that ever happened to you? Now I am told about a sex crime,” Clive said, grasping his temples, shielding his eyes from a horizontal sun. “They’ve got me in this moral noose.”
“Forget about amnesia, Mr Nice Guy, we are approaching insanity.”
“Is that what you really think?” Loss of sanity would have to be his plea.
“Don’t believe the criminals who employed us,” he argued. “Follow your own judgement.”
“But Clive, I watched you walking away with that girl.”
His head jolted back. “That isn’t possible,” he declared, frozen to the spot.
“It isn’t? I literally saw you,” Pixie said. She was colouring, and the muscles of her neck were under strain.
Clive was shaken at the horror. Yet he couldn’t begin to doubt his own veracity, in the middle of a crisis. He couldn’t let himself fall apart, with this bombardment of negative data.
“You honestly think I’m the type of guy who rapes someone?”
“How can we talk about a type of man?” she proposed. “Many of you guys get out of hand...you don’t know when to stop.”
“Is that right? I wonder why you bothered with me!” he commented.
“Oh, a very good question,” she agreed, taking some of his sting.