Due Diligence

by Grant Sutherland

  As he steps past, I clutch his elbow. ‘Darren. If you ever come here again, I’ll have you thrown out on your ear.’

  He jerks his arm free, the full vigour of his anger suddenly returned. Lifting his head, he looks me straight in the eye.

  ‘You and your old man,’ he whispers, ‘are history.’

  9

  * * *

  Returning to my office, I find Henry lounging in my chair, his feet on the window-sill.

  ‘Going nowhere fast,’ he informs me over his shoulder. He drops an empty crisp packet into the bin. ‘Your bid’s 202,’ he says, ‘the offer’s 205. You’ve picked up dribs and drabs.’

  He swivels, handing me the deal-sheet. He doesn’t know it, but I am down to the last million pounds of ammunition.

  I hit the switch on the squawkbox. ‘Pull the bid back to 200.’

  We watch the number change on the screen: mine still appears to be the only bid. Henry asks how the press conference went, but I have other matters on my mind.

  ‘Could you find out if Sandersons pulled their line on anyone apart from us last Tuesday?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Now?’ I say.

  Once he’s gone, I punch up the CTL bond price: stationary; it has stopped moving down. Then I ring through to Hugh who tells me there’s still no sign of Twintech or the fraudster.

  ‘He’s clocked up a decent loss though. If he’s got any sense, he’ll close out. And by the way,’ he says, lowering his voice, ‘Ryan appeared fifteen minutes ago.’

  ‘Where is he, with Karen?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he is.’ Hugh sounds surprised. My guess was a little too astute. ‘Should I know why?’

  ‘I’ll explain later, Hugh.’

  After hanging up, I doodle on my pad. Darren Lyle is a liar, I know that. But I worked l with him long enough to be able to read his signs. Put the reneged-payment rumour aside. He really was indifierent about Wolsey, but why? Have they had some disagreement? It doesn’t add up: there’d still have been some flicker of interest, or concealment, when I mentioned the name. And if Lyle hasn’t been, and never intended to be, in the market for Carltons, why would he want Wolsey to destabilize us? And that odd visit from Wolsey yesterday: I was definitely too hasty there, accusing when I should have listened. Even a lie from Wolsey might have given me a clue as to what has been going on.

  I am still doodling when Henry returns.

  ‘It wasn’t just us,’ he says. ‘Sandersons’ system crashed, some kind of IT problem.’

  ‘When I asked you to check the other day, you said it was Lyle’s doing.’

  ‘I got it wrong.’

  I make a sound. So Darren was telling the truth here too. While Henry waits by my desk, my eyes wander to the screen. I ask him what he thinks would happen if I remove my 205 bid.

  ‘Not much. There’s been sellers all the way down. They see your bid comin’ up, they’ll hit it.’

  ‘So the price’ll keep falling.’

  ‘I doubt it. You in there buyin’, the Meyers gettin’ Parnells.’ He examines the screen. ‘I’d say the worst of it’s over. The price’ll just ride with the market awhile. It's found a level.’

  The price has found a level. Over a third of our capitalization wiped out, Boddington in hock, and now the Carltons share price has found a level. Excellent. Sound the cracked trumpets.

  The broker calls over the box: he has someone interested in bidding 195, just behind me. Henry nods, his assessment confirmed. ‘It won’t fall out of bed now.’

  A rather bleak consolation. In the space of twenty- four hours I have poured Boddington away. I’ve kept the bank under my family's control; I’ve done what I set out to do, but I have, in the process, poured Boddington away. I wonder where my father is right now.

  There’s a sharp rap at the door. Inspector Ryan looks in. In the voice of a man who means business, he says, ‘Where’s Vance?’

  10

  * * *

  The press conference is over. The journalists are all milling around, looking for a quote or a glass of champagne, and I beckon to Vance over their heads. While I wait for him to break free, Reuben Meyer approaches. He shakes my hand and thanks me.

  ‘What now for you?’ he says. ‘Holidays?’

  If only. I try to smile pleasantly as he tells me David also appreciates the work we've done, and then he moves back into the thinning crowd where he’s buttonholed by Gary Leicester. They look pleased. Everyone looks pleased. The Meyers got what they paid us to get for them, and even Reuben, in the end, doesn't give a damn how it was done. Another satisfied customer in the City.

  A minute later Vance joins me, and I lead him back to his own office. ‘Ryan’s there,’ I tell him. ‘With Karen.’

  He takes this news in silence. He appears to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. When we enter his office he goes straight to his desk, and sits. Then he says to Ryan, ‘I can have my lawyer here in twenty minutes if you care to wait.’

  Ryan looks at me, but I stay put. I want to hear this myself. He returns his attention to Vance.

  ‘Mr Vance, your lawyer can't stop me from arresting you. And if I’m not satisfied with your answers this time, that’s what’s going to happen. Now,’ he faces Karen, ‘did you see him here that Wednesday night?’

  She nods.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  Ryan turns to Vance. ‘And you saw her?’

  Vance doesn’t reply.

  Ryan sighs. ‘Miss Haldane, did he see you here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you talked together, didn’t you say?’

  She nods again.

  ‘More than once?’

  ‘Twice.’

  Vance drops his head. He knows what Karen’s like: she won’t tell Ryan an outright lie. If Stephen wants to remain silent now, he’s on his own.

  ‘Do you recall the time of these conversations?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  Karen glances at Stephen, but he keeps his eyes averted. I wonder if Ryan senses the undertow here.

  ‘Once at around eleven thirty,' she says. 'The next time later.’

  ‘Sometime after 1.00 a.m., isn’t that what you told me?’

  Yes, she says, but she’s not sure exactly.

  ‘It was after you spoke with Mr Win Doi in the restaurant. And he’s quite certain that was just after one. I think we can be reasonably certain.’ Ryan turns. ‘Mr Vance. Perhaps you’d care to tell me why neither of these conversations appeared in your statement.’

  Stephen maintains a stony silence.

  ‘In fact,’ Ryan reminds him, ‘there was no mention at all of Miss Haldane’s presence here that night. Should I read anything into that?’

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ Stephen says quietly.

  ‘No, Mr Vance. You’re wasting my time. And if it continues, we’ll be walking out of here together, you and I, and you won’t be coming back for quite a while. How will that look on your CV?’

  ‘For God’s sake.’ Karen takes a step towards the door.

  ‘We’re not finished yet, Miss Haldane,’ Ryan tells her.

  She stops. She turns back and waits, arms folded, a picture of barely restrained fury. It’s more than an undertow now.

  ‘Now, Mr Vance,’ Ryan says, ‘I’d like to hear your version of those two conversations. Take your time.’

  We all watch Stephen. He’s quiet for several moments, then he looks from Ryan to Karen. ‘Speak to my lawyer,’ he says.

  Ryan stiffens.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Karen says angrily, stepping forward. ‘Just tell him. I’ve already told him anyway.’

  Stephen looks at her in dismay. ‘Why?’ he says.

  ‘Was I meant to perjure myself?’

  ‘Miss Haldane,’ Ryan breaks in. ‘If you don’t mind.’

  Stephen seems thoroughly confused now. Ryan, I notice, is studying him closely.

  ‘Everything?’ Vanc
e asks.

  Karen’s belligerence fades; she’s gone beyond anger. ‘Just tell him, Stephen,’ she says.

  Vance peers at her. And the way he peers at her gives me a terrible sinking feeling.

  ‘Yes,’ he tells Ryan finally. ‘we spoke twice.’

  Ryan asks him to elaborate.

  ‘Personal,’ Vance says.

  ‘You spoke about Stewart, Mr Vance. Please. Let's not waste more time.’

  Now I feel a cold tingling up my spine. They were discussing Daniel that Wednesday night? And both of them have tried to conceal it? Voices pass along the corridor outside. They sound very distant.

  ‘I asked Karen if she’d like to go somewhere. Dinner, a club' - Vance waves his hand vaguely - ‘somewhere. She turned me down and we had an argument.’

  ‘The subject of which was Stewart,’ Ryan suggests, and Vance nods unhappily. I look at Karen: her face is turning pink. A new and queasy understanding begins to glimmer in me.

  Vance directs his next remark at Karen. ‘Things were said that weren’t meant.’

  Ryan consults his notepad. ‘You said you wanted to throttle him.’

  ‘A figure of speech.’ Vance clearly taken aback. ‘No one could have taken it seriously.’

  When Karen makes a sound in her throat, Vance looks at her in surprise.

  ‘And the second occasion you spoke,’ Ryan says, ‘sometime after one?’

  ‘I went back up to apologize. She was upset.’

  ‘How upset?’

  A little, Vance replies.

  ‘How could you tell she was upset?’

  ‘Because that’s how she seemed.’

  ‘Nothing in particular?’

  ‘No.’

  This exchange means nothing to me, but Ryan glowers when he receives Vance’s answer. He gets to his feet.

  ‘She was bawling her eyes out, Mr Vance.’ He thumbs his own chest. ‘I know, because she told me. You know, because you saw her. Now do we carry on this conversation here, or do you want to keep playing silly buggers?’

  Vance doesn’t know which way to turn. Finally his gaze settles on Karen. He says her name.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ she murmurs.

  And then I know. The way he’s said her name and how he looks at her now; the way she can’t bear to face him. Ryan knows too, he'd have to be a blind man not to see. He studies the pair of them darkly. He appears to feel no embarrassment for Vance. And how many times have I sat in the same room with Karen and Stephen — at the same table — and never seen it? Stephen Vance looks dreadful now, completely stricken. He is in love. Karen Haldane, just as obviously, is not.

  Ryan says to Karen, ‘You were crying because of Stewart?’

  Vance jumps to his feet. He tells her not to answer. ‘We’ll get you a lawyer.’

  She rounds on him. ‘Shut up!’

  The colour drains from Vance's face, it’s almost too painful to watch.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ she says to Ryan. She points at 'Vance. ‘This stupid bastard thought it was me. He thought I killed Daniel.’ She looks at Vance. ‘Didn’t you?’

  Vance doesn’t have to answer, his baffled look says it all. Karen swears.

  ‘And why would he think that?’ Ryan asks her mildly.

  She hesitates. But she’s said too much now, there is no turning back. And finally she seems to realize that. ‘I was crying because Daniel dumped me.’

  There it is. Karen and Daniel. But by now it doesn’t surprise me. Since the first mention of Daniel, the argument between Karen and Stephen, I’d half seen it coming. And if I’d thought about it properly before, I could have seen sooner, back when Karen told me Stephen hated Daniel. Why did any man hate Daniel? Didn't I learn that from bitter personal experience?

  'When was that?’ Ryan asks.

  ‘December,’ she says, as though it's carved on her heart. ‘The twelfth.’

  ‘So what upset you on Wednesday night?’

  ‘When Stephen asked me out, I turned him down. He started shouting about Daniel. And Daniel was at the party on the boat,’ she adds flatly. ‘That too, I guess.’

  Ryan asks Vance how long he’s known there was something between Daniel and Karen. Vance tells him: since the middle of last year.

  Ryan gives it all some thought. At last he points at Karen. ‘You didn’t come forward, because you thought that once you opened your mouth you’d incriminate him.’ He jerks his thumb at Vance.

  Karen can’t hold Ryan’s gaze; he seems to have hit the bullseye; she thought it was Vance who killed Daniel. On the Thursday morning, each must have remembered the words spoken in heat the previous night, and each drew an unwarranted conclusion. Vance has been protecting her by sending Ryan after the likes of Lyle and David Meyer. And she was protecting him by keeping her mouth shut. But neither one of them is a murderer.

  Vance now sees what's happened, how completely wrong they have both been. He sits and buries his face in his hands. Through the mesh of his fingers he begins to apologize.

  ‘Save it.’ Ryan glares at Vance, then at Karen, and he finishes with me. Each one of us, in our own way, has deceived him. ‘You fucking people,’ he says, and he walks straight out the door.

  Vance opens his hands and looks up at Karen. She swears again and turns on her heel. I go after her, striding down the corridor.

  She stops by the Ladies.

  ‘I need to ask you something,’ I say, catching her up.

  ‘Not now.’ She pushes open the door.

  I clutch her arm. ‘Were you going to marry Daniel?’ She tugs her arm free. ‘Were you pregnant?’ I say.

  A split second she looks at me, and then the door slams in my face. But in that split second, I see.

  11

  * * *

  ‘The broker reckons the bidder behind you’s getting ready to take the 203 offer,’ Henry tells me. He gets out of my chair and I drop into it, glancing at the screen and the deal-sheet. Almost no-one has hit my 200 bid for the past hour. ‘I reckon he’s right,’ Henry adds. He repeats his assertion that the price has found a level. ‘It might get to 220,’ he says, ‘but that’s it.’

  He brings me up to date with CTL: apparently some of the institutions are threatening to boycott the next issue we bring to market. A worry that can wait. Then Henry goes off to check on the Dealing Room.

  Alone now, I turn this whole thing over. It was Karen: not Theresa, but Karen. When Daniel told Celia he’d got someone pregnant, that he was going to marry this other woman, that was the truth. It wasn’t what I thought, a convenient cover while he sorted things out with Theresa. It was Karen all along. And the same with Daniel's will, that page I found in his hidden drawer. I pull it from my own drawer now to check. 500 K. 1,000 C. Not K for thousands. Not C for hundreds. Their names: Karen and Celia. But then Daniel changed his mind: he didn’t rewrite the will, and instead of marrying Karen, he dumped her. The twelfth of December. Within weeks of finding out about Annie. What was it, the shock? Did Daniel suddenly realize something about himself? Did he finally discover, so very late in the day, what it actually means to be a husband and a father?

  Daniel. Jesus, Daniel, I think. Why?

  All those women, the craving of affection, the need in him for such constant reaffirmation, did he see the truth at last? His mother might be dead, but he had his own family. He was already loved.

  The broker calls over the squawkbox. ‘200—203, your bid.’

  Swivelling in my chair, I study the clouds. Had Daniel really turned over a new leaf? Once the shock of Annie had worn off, might not the old habits have reasserted themselves? Even Daniel couldn’t have known the answer to that; but I find that I want to believe it, that he was strong enough, that it might really have happened. And Karen. What kind of private hell has she been through these past few months? Somehow, even in the act of returning to his family, Daniel managed to wreak destruction. To the very end he retained his strange blighting gift in these matters of the heart.

  Bri
nging out Theresa’s letter, I read it once more. It goes right into me now, every word. Could this be the truth?

  I hit the switch on the squawkbox. ‘Is this price going anywhere?’

  ‘Nowhere.’ Friday afternoon, and the market is winding down for the weekend. ‘There’s a good-sized bid just behind you,’ the broker says. ‘If he gets tired of waiting, he might pay up. I told Henry.’

  And what then? The Carltons share price will hover between 200 and 220, and my family will retain control. The bank, badly weakened, will maintain its short-term independence. And something else: we will not have the funds at our disposal to redeem my father’s pledge, so Boddington will pass out of our hands.

  Henry returns. I leave him watching over my bid, and wander down to the Dealing Room where the usual Friday afternoon torpor has taken hold. Half the equities desk has left to celebrate with the Corporate Finance team, and the lads on the proprietary trading desk are getting set to join them. Just days ago, the market shutting us out, it was all so very different. Now the only visible scars remaining from that battle are the two empty chairs on the bond desk. I doubt that even Daniel could have handled it better, a real tribute to Henry. The traders have played no part in the Meyer bid, but it seems to be the only subject of conversation out here, everyone bathing in reflected glory. I pause for a word at the bond desk: they inform me that our name is dirt in the bond market right now, our dumping of CTL has not been appreciated. After completing a circuit of the Room, I go on up to Funds Management.

  Here the story is the same, the weekend has already taken hold. Trevor Bailey, our top fund manager, comes over for a word.

  ‘I’ll tell you the truth,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think Vance could pull it off.’

  ‘Never in doubt.’

  He laughs. ‘So what now for Carltons? Onward and upward?’

  He regards me from the corner of his eye. With our share price where it is, we’re vulnerable, and Trevor’s seen these situations too often, he knows the score. We’ve survived an horrendous week, far and away the worst in my career, but it’s still too early to say if the goring we’ve taken, the damage we've sustained, won’t attract predators. By Trevor’s look, I see that he thinks it will.