‘Did he tell you about the gardener in France? About Tony finding out about it?’
‘Yes, yes he did.’ Mel looked at me, puzzled and a little put out. ‘He said he hadn’t told anyone else about that.’
‘He hadn’t,’ I said. ‘At least, not then. I found out from Patrick Hoyle later. I spoke to Guy about it a few months ago. He was worried about Owen, as usual.’
‘Tony was trying to persuade Guy to stay on at Ninetyminutes. Guy didn’t want to, of course – he didn’t want to be Tony’s gopher. But Tony was threatening to go to the French police about the gardener and Owen’s role in his death.’
‘He was going to expose his own son?’
‘Guy couldn’t believe it, either. He thought it was a bluff, but he couldn’t be sure. I think he was as upset that his father would do something like that to Owen as he was about being forced out of Ninetyminutes.’
‘So it was lucky Tony died when he did?’
‘Very lucky,’ Mel said firmly. ‘Guy was heading for self-destruction.’
‘You say Guy told you all this the night before Tony was killed?’
‘That’s right. But he came round here again the following night. You probably know he was here when it happened.’
‘Yes. Apparently a friend of yours was here as well?’
‘Anne Glazier. We were at uni together. She works for one of the big British law firms in Paris. She was just staying here for the night.’ Suddenly, something clicked in Mel’s brain. ‘Why are you asking all these questions?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said casually. ‘I’m curious about what happened to Tony Jourdan, I suppose.’
‘You don’t think Guy had anything to do with it, do you?’ Mel’s eyes flashed with anger.
‘Oh, no, no, of course not,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I know he didn’t. I just don’t know who did, that’s all.’
‘Well, it’s best forgotten about, as far as I’m concerned. In fact I wish I could forget about Tony bloody Jourdan. I hated that man. I still do, even though he’s dead.’ The phone rang. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, and went to pick it up.
She turned towards me, her eyes alight. She carried on a short conversation with some yesses and noes, coolly delivered. Then she said: ‘Well, if you really want to come over, that’s all right … About half an hour? … I think I’ve got some food in the fridge. Do you want me to cook some dinner? … OK, see you soon.’
She put the phone down in triumph.
‘Guy?’ I asked.
She nodded.
‘I’d better be going.’
She smiled, a radiant smile, her misery banished. ‘I’ve got to go out to the shops and get some food for dinner. Thanks for coming, David. I’m sorry to burden you with all that, but it’s nice to talk to someone. You’re about the only other person who’s close enough to Guy to understand. Apart from Owen, of course, and I try to have as little to do with him as possible.’
‘Do you mind if I use your loo before I go?’
‘No, not at all. It’s down the hallway.’
As I returned I passed the open door of Mel’s bedroom. On the wall was a large frame holding a collage of photographs. There must have been twenty of them. Twenty cynical images of Guy, smoothing their way into a vulnerable woman’s bed.
‘Have a good evening,’ I said as I left. But despite Mel’s sudden change in spirits I hoped, for her sake, that she wouldn’t.
I went back to my flat, flopped into the sofa and turned on the TV. I was tired. Thoughts of Mel, Guy, Ninetyminutes, Tony and Owen tumbled over and over in my mind. I knew I should try to sort them all out, but my brain just wanted to shut down.
Eventually, I went to bed.
I kept my computer in my bedroom. I didn’t like it in the more public spaces of the flat, like the living room or the spare bedroom. Since I had joined Ninetyminutes, I had barely used it; I did most of my Ninetyminutes-related work on my laptop and I didn’t have time for much else. I probably hadn’t turned it on for two weeks. But, as I opened my bedroom door, I heard a low hum and saw a flickering glow.
Strange. I moved over to the small pine desk that supported it. Everything seemed as it should be, as I had left it. I grabbed the mouse and clicked to shut the machine down.
The hard drive whirred. A familiar animation flickered on the screen. A golfer. A golf club. My head with its idiotic corporate brochure smile. The impact. Blood, brains, that horrible squelching sound. It may have been crude, but it was so totally unexpected it shocked me. I leapt back from the keyboard and watched. The red gore slid down the screen to be replaced by shimmering orange letters.
JUST MAKING SURE YOU HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN ME.
I pulled the computer’s plug out of the socket. The image died, my bedroom returned to darkness.
Owen! In my flat! How the hell had he got in?
I turned on the light and scanned the room. Nothing was out of place. I checked the other rooms, all the windows, the front door. Nothing broken, nothing open, nothing moved, no sign of a forced entry.
I wondered whether he could somehow have planted his sick little program remotely, over the Internet. But that was impossible. The computer was switched on. That could only have been done by someone in the flat. Owen had wanted me to know that he had been there. Physically. In my room.
I glanced at the door to the flat. That was the only way in. The security at the front entrance of my block was pathetic: it would be easy to get in. But my door? He must have had a key. Instinctively, I pulled the key ring out of my pocket and checked that I still had mine. I did. He must have copied it. I could easily have left my keys unattended on my desk or in my jacket for a few minutes some time in the months we were working together. I shuddered. First thing on Monday morning I would change the lock. And I would never let the new key out of my trouser pocket again.
36
I dragged myself into work the next morning. I didn’t mind working on Saturdays, but I hated spending Sundays in the office. In Ninetyminutes’ current crisis there was no choice.
‘So what do we do?’ I asked Guy.
‘Get money from somebody else.’
‘Champion Starsat?’
‘Not bloody Champion Starsat.’
‘I know we won’t get a hundred and fifty million, or anything like it. But if we came out with a profit on our investment, that would be a result.’
‘No it wouldn’t. It would be a disaster. We’d lose our independence, they’d take control, it wouldn’t be our site any more.’
‘So what do you suggest?’
‘Did you try some other brokers?’
‘I spoke to a couple on Friday. My contact at Gurney Kroheim thinks there’s no chance of anyone taking us up in the current market, especially if Bloomfield Weiss drop us.’
‘Make some more calls tomorrow.’
I sighed. ‘OK. I take it Orchestra won’t change their mind?’
‘No. Derek Silverman’s been on to them, but they’re adamant.’
‘Then we’ll have to cut back.’
‘No.’
‘We have to, Guy! If we follow our current spending plans we’ll be out of cash in three weeks. If we’re tough enough we can make our cash last through the summer.’
‘No.’
‘Have you got any other ideas?’
‘I’m going to Hamburg this afternoon.’
‘To see Torsten?’
Guy nodded.
‘There’s no point.’
‘Yes there is,’ said Guy. ‘He sounded interested.’
I snorted. ‘You go to Hamburg and I’ll come up with a cost-reduction plan.’
I spent the day working on the numbers. I needed to make our half-million quid last the summer and beyond. It was a depressing exercise. Cut, cut, cut.
Retailing had to go. It was a long way from profitability and the more clothing we sold the more cash the business swallowed. We would have to close the European offices we had opened, even Munich. No more hirin
g, in fact we would have to fire fifty per cent of our journalists. The WAP company in Helsinki was on its own: the widespread use of WAP-enabled phones was too far off into the future. All that was left would be the original UK site. It would mean a loss of momentum, the quality of the site would probably suffer, but the cash would last well into the following year.
Ninetyminutes would survive.
The next morning, with Guy still in Hamburg, I decided to take an hour or so to track down Anne Glazier, Mel’s friend who had been staying at her flat the night Tony Jourdan died. Ninetyminutes’ situation was worsening by the day, and so was my relationship with Guy. I needed to know where I stood with him. And I couldn’t do that until I had cleared up my doubts over what had happened to his father.
A few minutes’ work on the Internet gave me the names and numbers of the major British law firms with offices in Paris. I picked up the phone and worked my way through the list. I was only on number three, Coward Turner, when the switchboard operator recognized Anne Glazier’s name. I tensed as I was put through, but the line was answered by her English-speaking secretary. Ms Glazier was away from the office for a few days, and wouldn’t be back until the following week.
So I returned to the numbers.
Guy arrived back in the office late afternoon. He smelled of alcohol.
‘How did it go?’ I asked.
‘Good,’ said Guy. ‘Torsten will do it.’
‘Really? How much?’
‘Five million, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘Yeah. I’ve still got to pin him down on details. But he said he’d do it.’
‘Pounds or marks?’
‘Pounds, of course.’
I eyed Guy suspiciously. ‘When did he say he’d do it?’
‘Last night. We went out. It was a good night.’
‘Was he drunk when he said it?’
‘Well, maybe.’
‘Had he asked his father?’
‘Not yet. But he will. He says he’s going to stand up to his father this time.’
‘And he said this at what time, precisely?’
‘What is this?’
‘What time of night did Torsten say he would stand up to his father?’
‘About midnight.’
‘That’s worth nothing,’ I said. ‘Last time he said he’d do it, the Internet was booming. If he couldn’t come through then, what makes you think his father will let him invest now?’
‘Trust me,’ said Guy, his voice slurring. ‘He’s a mate.’
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Jesus! I had some champagne on the flight. To celebrate. And I might just go out and have some more. Want to come?’
I ignored the sarcasm. ‘No. I really need to go over some figures with you. I think we can survive into next year. Provided we cut right back immediately.’
Reluctantly, Guy looked at my numbers. It took him a couple of minutes to figure out what I was proposing; it was clear his mind was far from razor sharp. Then he pushed the papers to one side.
‘This is crap,’ he said.
‘We have no choice.’
‘Yes we do. Torsten.’
‘Oh, come on. We can’t leave the company in Torsten’s hands again. We did that once before and look what happened.’
Guy was about to answer me, and then he stopped. He looked down at my figures. When he did speak, it was quietly.
‘Ninetyminutes means everything to me,’ he said.
‘I know. It means a lot to all of us.’
Guy stared at me with his piercing blue eyes. ‘I’m not talking a lot. I’m talking everything. You know me as well as anyone, Davo. Anyone apart from my brother, maybe. You saw me when I was pissing about pretending to be an actor. I told you about LA, how I cracked up. You knew my father. You know what I felt about him; still feel about him. I have spent most of my life this close to falling apart.’ He held up his thumb and index finger to show how close.
‘But this last year I’ve felt I’ve been back on track. I’ve built something that’s good. Better than good, remarkable. Something that will be worth tens of millions of pounds. Something that thousands of people use each day. A team that works together. Something unique.’ He was spitting out the words. ‘And now you want to destroy it all.’ He shook his head. ‘If Ninetyminutes goes, I go.’
I knew that Guy had been feeling the tension over the last few months, but this was the first time I had seen him facing it since that evening in the Jerusalem Tavern after Henry had turned us down. Since then he had been in denial, looking the other way from bad news, losing his temper, drinking, taking solace in Mel, or Michelle, or God knows who. But now he was facing it again, he didn’t like what he saw.
‘That’s just it,’ I said. ‘We have to save Ninetyminutes. Cutting back is the only way of doing that.’
Guy slammed his palm down on his desk. ‘You don’t bloody get it, do you? I’m not talking about the survival of Ninetyminutes as a legal entity. I’m talking about the idea. The big idea. Your plan would kill that stone dead. We’d never get to the number-one site slot. We’d be lucky to show a profit to investors on their money. We’d grind to a long slow death. As soon as we implement that,’ he waved my figures in the air, ‘Ninetyminutes is over. And I think I’m over too.’
I knew what Guy was getting at. But he needed a dose of realism and the only place it would come from was me.
‘There is no other choice.’
‘There is. Come on, Davo. We’ve done so much together. But now’s when I really need your support. This is the culmination of all that hard work, all the good times and the bad times. You can destroy Ninetyminutes. Or you can help me save it. But if you try to destroy it you should know I’ll do everything in my power to stop you.’
We stared at each other. He was calling it all in. Our thirteen years of friendship. For most of that time I had never been sure whether I was a true friend of his at all. Now, he was saying, it was up to me to decide.
He was tempting me. But one of the reasons I had gone into Ninetyminutes was to prove that I was more than a bag-carrying yes-man. That I was capable of making up my own mind, taking my own decisions. I could succumb to Guy’s force of character, or I could tell him what had to be done.
I took a deep breath. ‘I insist that we undertake these cost reductions immediately.’
Guy looked at me hard, the disappointment and anger written clearly all over his face. ‘Insist?’
‘Yes. Insist.’
He drew a breath. ‘OK. Well, I’m the Chief Executive. And I say no.’
‘If you refuse, I’ll talk to Silverman,’ I said. ‘And Clare Douglas.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘I’m just telling you what’s going to happen.’
‘Well, I’m having dinner with Silverman and Clare this evening. I’ll put forward your point of view.’
I started. ‘Dinner? You didn’t tell me about that.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t want to be involved in putting pressure on Orchestra?’
‘Yes. But you’re going to be talking about much more than that, aren’t you?’
‘Possibly.’
‘I want to be there.’
‘You’re not invited.’
I glared at Guy. He glared back.
‘I’ll tell you all about it in the morning,’ he said. ‘I’m going now. I think there’s something to celebrate and I’m going off to celebrate it. You’d better stay here and take inventory of the paperclips. I’m sure Amy uses far too many.’ With that he left the office. And he didn’t come back.
*
I waited anxiously for him the next morning. He didn’t roll up till ten. He looked dreadful – he hadn’t shaved and his eyes were puffy and unfocused. Guy could cope with a heavy night pretty well. This must have been a very heavy night. I was sure he hadn’t done that much damage with Clare and Derek Silverman: he must have carried on long after they had disappeared h
ome.
‘How was dinner?’
‘Clare won’t budge,’ Guy said as he switched on his computer. ‘But they were pleased to hear about Torsten.’
‘Has he contacted you?’
‘Not yet. Give him time.’
‘Huh.’ I picked up the papers I had been working on. ‘I want to talk to you some more about the cost reductions.’
Guy strained to focus his eyes on me. ‘Oh, yes. I want to talk to you about that too.’
‘I’ve done some more figures, and –’
‘Forget the figures. Let’s talk principles. Are you still determined to cut the foreign offices and the journalists and the retailing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even though that was what we set up Ninetyminutes to do?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There’s no other way.’
‘And there’s nothing I can do to change your mind?’
‘No.’
‘Are you quite sure?’
‘Yes.’
Guy was silent. For a moment he looked uncertain, almost sad. Then he seemed to come to a decision.
‘You’re fired,’ he said quietly.
‘I’m what?’
‘You’re fired,’ he said more clearly.
‘What!’ I looked around. No one else had heard. The bustle of Ninetyminutes continued as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t believe it. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Of course I can. I’m CEO. I set the strategy. You’ve just told me that you insist on doing something that will permanently cripple that strategy. You won’t be talked out of it. You’re fired.’
‘Silverman won’t let you.’
‘He will. We discussed it last night.’
‘And he went along with it? Clare went along with it?’
He nodded. I had been stuffed. Outmanoeuvred. I couldn’t believe how persuasive Guy could be. ‘We should talk about this.’
‘We have.’ For a moment his eyes softened. ‘Do you want to reconsider your recommendation?’
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