‘The rest of the family?’
‘Not taking our calls. Everything's being filtered through to them by Sandersons.’
The Parnells Board is packed with members of the Parnell family, their solidarity’s been a thorn in our side all along. If we could drive a wedge between them, convince even one of them that 180 is a good price, the defence would probably collapse. But so far we haven’t even come close.
‘Haywood’s had an idea,’ Vance says. After pairing Haywood and Cawley on the bid, he’s been watching over them like a father. ‘He thinks he can get to Ian Parnell. Apparently Ian hunts with the Heythrop. Haywood thought he might take a day with them himself tomorrow.’
I turn this one over. At worst, Haywood will get in a good day’s hunting for his trouble: no doubt he has thought of that.
‘Okay. But tell him not to make any promises. Just keep it all within the terms of the bid.’
Vance makes a note. He seems tired. There’s a knock at the door; it is Mannetti.
‘Raef. Got a moment?’
Setting the Leicester fax aside, I ask him what’s up. He glances at Stephen.
‘About some possible withdrawals,’ he says.
Vance offers to leave but I gesture for him to stay.
‘Piedmont and Trumpton-Cave,’ Mannetti tells us. ‘I’ve just heard they’re lining up beauty parades. Word is, they want to withdraw the lot.’
Vance groans.
Piedmont and Trumpton-Cave are two of our five biggest clients up in Fund Management. We run both their pension fund portfolios, and sundry other investments, for which we receive an annual fee and a share of the profits. Ideal customers. My father has the respective chairmen down to a shoot at Boddington once a year, we keep their pension fund returns in line with the market, and everybody, until now, remains happy. But if they’re lining up beauty parades — inviting submissions from other City institutions which want to manage their funds — they must be seriously thinking of leaving us. And if they take everything it will knock a gaping hole in our own Fund Management revenues. Mannetti regards me steadily.
‘How soon?’ I ask.
‘A week. A month.’ He shrugs. ‘Tomorrow? They can pull out when they like.’
Turning, I glance at Stephen. He doodles glumly on his pad.
‘Thanks, Tony. If you hear any more, let me know.’
Once Mannetti’s gone, Vance looks up. ‘Your father?’
‘I’ll see what he can do.’
We are silent a few seconds, pensive: this is really not good news. Now seems like the appropriate downbeat moment to mention that other matter.
‘I was upstairs, earlier. With Karen.’
‘Oh?’ He replaces the fax on the pile.
‘She seemed a bit upset. You know what she’s like, Stephen. It might be an idea to keep out of her way for a while.’
He regards me coolly. The shutters are up. This isn’t territory into which I’d normally stray, but the relationship between these two also affects the bank. ‘She asked me to ban you from the floor.’
‘She what?’
‘I told her there was no chance. But that doesn’t mean you should race straight up there just to prove a point. Okay?’
After ‘some consideration, he inclines his head. A thought occurs to me.
‘Do you ever go into the filing room?’
‘Why?’
‘It’s a simple question Stephen.’
‘To which the answer is, no,’ he says. ‘And whose question was that? Yours, or Ryan’s?’
It hadn’t crossed my mind till now, but Ryan’s investigation is probably providing useful cover for my own. Small comfort.
‘What about Daniel? Do you know if he went up there?’
Vance flicks through his diary. 'Be serious, Raef. He didn’t report to me, he reported to you. And to tell you the truth, I’ve had enough of this cat-and- mouse already from Ryan.’
‘He’s doing his job.’
‘Well I’m trying to do mine.’ Vance flips his diary shut. ‘Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.’
In the face of his evident displeasure, my resolve to maintain suspicion on all fronts suddenly crumbles. Old habits, it seems, are the strongest. He puts on his glasses and sorts through the faxes again. I assure him, protégé to mentor, that I’ll try to help him wherever I can.
11
* * *
‘Pea and ham,’ says my father, emptying the contents of the can into the saucepan.
The maid is off sick, and Mary Needham is busy with one of her committees. As I explain what’s been happening at the bank, my father stirs the soup carefully. It is do-it-yourself night in St James’s. I am in charge of the toaster.
‘Lyle couldn’t have been more unpleasant if he’d tried.’
‘Nature of the beast,’ my father comments. He brings the saucepan across and pours the soup into our bowls. I butter the toast.
‘That pair from the DTI weren’t just pointed in our direction,’ I tell him. ‘They were shoved.’
He says that he will speak to the President of the Board of Trade.
‘A word in Whitehall might be better.’
He raises his eyes. ‘Penfield’s heard I presume. This DTI visit?’
I push my spoon through the soup. Penfield’s second call came through at five thirty. He was, as I expected, almost speechless with rage: the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England does not take kindly to being kept in the dark. But he seems to have decided that the DTI are the real culprits of the piece, so I caught only the blistering edge of his wrath. But I know now that all those stories about his temper weren’t exaggerated. Tomorrow does not promise to be the best day of Mr Skinner’s year. Penfield also asked to see what Hugh and I have uncovered so far. I explain this to my father too.
‘And is there anything?’
‘Nothing concrete. Hugh thinks he’s found a few deals we should look into.’ I omit to mention that Hugh has washed his hands of the whole affair after discovering the Odin deal; my father and I have been down that road one too many times already.
‘If you need some help,’ he suggests, ‘you can always ask John.’
I stress yet again that no one at the bank should know, not even Sir John.
‘Gifford’s asked us for lunch tomorrow,’ he says. I look up. I have a sense that something is being withheld. And when I say that I can't make it, my father wonders aloud if Charles Aldridge might come. Nothing important, he says. Then he brings the saucepan over and refills our bowls.
Sitting here in my father’s kitchen, grinding pepper into the pea and ham soup, it is hard to recapture that momentary impression of pure menace of that moment when Mannetti threatened Skinner. But it did happen. The threat was real.
‘If Gifford can let us know any more about Mannettfs record at American Pacific, I’d like to hear it.’ And then I ask a question I should have asked a long time ago. ‘If Mannetti’s so good, why did Gifford let us have him so easily?’
My father recites the argument: Gifford couldn’t afford to have the Funds Management joint venture with us fail; there had to be someone he trusted involved, someone with a real track record. My father dabs at his lips then puts down his napkin. ‘We went through this at the time, Raef.’
Yes, I think; but at the time we hadn’t seen Mannetti in action.
‘Are you saying he’s not quite as good as we imagined? As we hoped?’
It is worse than that. I am thinking that Carltons might have been used as a dumping ground. Did Gifford use the opportunity of our joint venture to offload a troublesome senior employee onto us? So I reiterate my request that it might be useful to hear from Giifford if there were any problems with Mannetti back in New York.
My father clearly thinks it will be a waste of time, but he agrees to do as I have asked. ‘I really do believe,’ he adds, ‘that John has a right to know about this fraud business.’
Old age, is this how it happens? This reversion to a subject we've
already discussed has become an unwelcome but familiar pattern. When I mentioned it to Theresa last year she said that my father was simply tired, that I was worrying without reason. But since then the pattern has hardened; until now the signs are there for anyone who wishes to read them. In the person of my father, dotage has begun its slow encroachment upon wisdom.
I put our bowls in the dishwasher and rinse the saucepan in the sink. Moving around the kitchen, I run through the arguments again, making sure he understands why Sir John cannot be told.
‘It has to be like that,’ I conclude, drying my hands. ‘If we tell Sir John, why not Vance? If we tell Vance, why not the senior traders?’
‘But John,’ he says.
I hang the tea-towel on the rack and face him. My father is old, but not foolish; he knows we have to draw the line somewhere.
‘You’re right,’ he concedes at last. ‘Those deals you mentioned, the ones Hugh turned up?’ Here it comes, what I’ve been waiting for: those deals, as he knows, might be lethal. ‘Were they’ — he searches for the appropriately guarded phrase - ‘were they of any real size?’ What he wants to know, and can’t bring himself to ask, is whether Carlton Brothers is set to go the way of Barings. After so many generations of prosperity, is one torpedo going to send us down? The weight of this possibility is actually bowing his shoulders.
‘They’re not that big. And they’re not hidden trades, they’re just losses we shouldn’t have taken. We can ride it out.’
‘How big?’
‘We can’t be sure.’ He doesn’t accept that. He watches me and waits. ‘Probably less than ten million,’ I say.
‘Dollars?’
‘Pounds.’
He sinks back into his chair and closes his eyes. Relief. The financial loss would have hurt, no doubt, but the shame could have finished him.
‘That’s only a guess,’I warn him quickly. ‘And the size of the loss won’t stop Penfield from barging in on Friday. We’re not out of the woods yet. Not by a long way.’
He puts his elbows on the table. ‘Ten,’ he murmurs.
I go out to the drinks cabinet and pour two whiskies. When I return to the kitchen he hasn’t moved, he’s still seated at the table, one hand to his forehead. He takes his drink gratefully and we sit in silence awhile. He looks like my grandfather. He never used to, but age has chiselled out the deep family lines. To divert his thoughts, I tell him about our progress with Parnells, but it takes some minutes before he finally seems to listen. Gradually the shock of relief passes.
When I mention that Vance is sending Haywood out with the Heythrop, he cocks his head, the first sign of any interest he’s shown. It seems I have reminded him of something.
‘The meet on Saturday down at Boddington. I hope you’re not going to cry off on me Raef.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘Good. Don’t let Theresa back out either.’
Saturday with Theresa at Boddington. I have a big decision to make. But not now. With a twinge of guilt, I push it to the back of my mind.
He seems to have recovered himself, so after a minute we rise and go out to the drawing room where he puts on a record. My mother was an avid collector, classical and jazz, but I doubt if he has added even one LP to her collection, and he certainly hasn’t moved on to CDs. I should be at home making a few late calls, but I sense that he wants me to stay; a short while at least.
When the music comes it’s light and airy, Mozart, and I drop into an armchair. My father kicks off his shoes and stretches out on the sofa. Mother never saw this place, he bought it after she died, but so much of what’s here, the furniture and paintings, even the clutter on the mantelpiece, is hers. And the music. But other items, like the burgundy curtains and lampshades, she would never have chosen. These recent additions are the handiwork of Mary Needham. But they don’t jar; I don’t find their presence offensive. My father, I think, has been more than lucky in his women.
‘I had a message from your Inspector.’
I look over. He’s lying on the sofa, eyes closed.
‘Ryan?’
'That’s the one.’ The music dances up and down the scales. ‘Wants to see me apparently. I’m busy tomorrow, so he can wait till Thursday.’ He turns his head and opens his eyes. ‘Raef, the other night, you mentioned when you came to see me about Daniel.’ We look at one another, but I say nothing. ‘I think I might have given you the wrong impression. I never told anyone.’
He never told anyone? He never did what I, at the time, intended him to do? I ask him now, tentatively, what he means.
‘I was going to speak with Daniel myself. Talk some sense into him. After . . .’ He waves a hand. ‘Well, I never got the chance.’
Is he saying what I think he is saying?
‘You didn’t tell Charles?’
‘No-one, Raef.’
My head reels. If he told no-one, my lie couldn’t have had the fatal consequence I believed. Whitehall and Westminster never knew.
‘I told you that Daniel was going public about the Odin deal, and you didn’t pass that on?’
He turns his head. ‘I wanted to speak with him myself first.’
‘But what? He was murdered before you had the chance?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Raef, I promised you that Odin was strictly between you and me. That still holds.’
I nod, lightheaded, drunk with the sensation of innocence. It wasn’t us. It wasn’t me. Guilty of an evil intent, yes, but an intent that had no consequence. I am innocent. I am not responsible for Daniel Stewart’s death. The wave of elation buoys me upward, and for the first time in a week I feel free, gliding into sunlight. But then as fast as it has risen, the wave breaks. If I’m not responsible for Daniel’s death, if Odin had nothing to do with the murder, if Whitehall and Westminster played no part in it; if I, thank God, didn’t kill him — who did?
WEDNESDAY
1
* * *
The early years of my marriage were good. We lived in Kensington then; Theresa worked at a charity just round the comer from our flat. We had wealth, youth, good health, it wasn’t hard to be happy and we were; but now all that sometimes seems like an alternative reality — not a life that was, but one that might have been. Theresa putting everyone at ease during our first big dinner party; the pair of us flying to Venice one weekend to see a Tintoretto exhibition; skiing trips to the States and fishing in Scotland, we stinted ourselves nothing. And I worked too, but I was learning more than doing, ambition spinning like a flywheel disconnected. We seemed to have so much time for each other but did we ever believe we could go on like that for ever? Perhaps in the unreflective optimism of our youth, we really did.
I remember one morning during a fishing trip up to the Borders, we rose before the rest of the party and climbed the hill behind the lodge. How long ago must it be? We emerged from the mist, sat on the grey rocks of the hilltop and watched the sun burn the mist to a thin haze. Theresa and me, and no sign of life for miles except a hawk circling slowly down the valley. Beautiful, the treeless hills and the clear sky; and I put my arms around my wife and kissed her. When we returned to the lodge the others had already left for the river, so we climbed into bed and made love and slept, and made love again. Happiness. That’s what seems so unbelievable now, the pure joy.
And I just can’t shake off those times, I can’t shed them like a skin outgrown, hard though I’ve tried. If I close my eyes even now I can still hear her breathing beside me, pressing close to me on a bed in the Borders.
Don’t get up. Hold me, she said.
How long ago? Fourteen years? Lying there in the quiet clear morning, we seemed complete. Not fourteen years but a lifetime. Lying there on a bed in the Borders, my wife said that she loved me.
‘Mr Carlton?’ The car has stopped, my driver has opened the door, and now he peers in at me curiously. It’s still dark outside. ‘We're here,’ he says.
Here. Kensington. We have stopped outside Daniel’s house. Bracing mysel
f, I get out, mount the steps and ring the bell. While I wait, I turn my collar up against the cold.
After leaving my father last night I returned home to find a message from Celia: she sounded worried, so I rang straight back. Apparently Daniel’s life insurers won’t be paying out on his policy until they receive a full coroner's report. I assured her it was just standard practice, but God knows if I’m right. Her other concern is the will. She has learnt from the lawyers that Daniel was amending it, but he left them no signed codicil. As an executor, a friend, and probably the only person she can turn to, I have been asked to come and search his study.
‘The boys are still asleep,’ she whispers as we go down the corridor. She asks if I've had breakfast, but I tell her not to bother, that I don't have the time. When we get to Daniel’s study she opens the door and steps back. ‘I appreciate this Raef,’ she says.
To me, the man who wanted her husband dead. She says that she’d rather not go in there. ‘Do you mind if I leave you to it?’
‘No. I’ll call if I find anything.’
‘I’ll be in the kitchen.’
The study isn’t large: one book-lined wall, a big oak desk, a cabinet by the bay window, and an armchair that Daniel salvaged from the attic at Boddington. Behind the door there’s a pile of old magazines. The room has the same air of friendly disorder as his office, but here I feel like an intruder. This is where Daniel conducted the business of his family.
After a quick circuit of the room, I sit behind his desk and work my way through the unlocked drawers. Here, instead of office business, there are credit card statements, council tax demands, electricity and water bills: the usual trail of paperwork that stretches behind every modern life like the wake from a runaway boat. Bills and receipts, letters from solicitors, one from the RSPCA thanking the Stewart family for their donation. But no codicil. No new will.
In the bottom drawer, I find a dictaphone. I hit the rewind button and the machine whirs for a while. When it stops, I hit play. Daniel’s voice. Nothing dramatic, just a reminder to himself of a phone call he has to make. It catches me raw. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a film of tears forms in my eyes, and I shake my head.
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