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?’ Vance 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 beli
eve 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.
Bringing 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.
I tell him not to fret, that he’ll still get his bonus. I ask him if Mannetti is around. Trevor says he hasn’t seen him, and I retreat before he can ask me any more questions.
Hugh sees me through the glass wall as I pass Settlements. He makes a sign with his fingers: nothing.
The bank, this place, it’s been so much of my life, maybe more than it should have been; but walking along the corridor to the Boardroom now, I feel strangely detached. The ties that once held me so firmly have loosened. Inevitably, after all that’s happened this past week, things have changed.
A minute later I circle the Boardroom table and study my grandfather’s portrait. Why have I come in here? To ask myself, What would he do? I used to ask that question quite often, but today it seems faintly absurd. He was a good banker, he had a fine career, a good life; but many years have passed since then, and now his life, and his world, have both gone. Studying the dark picture now, I consider just what it is I really owe, and to whom. I weigh in the balance my obligations, to the living and the dead.
12
* * *
‘Unchanged,’ Henry tells me as I pull up my chair. ‘200—203, your bid.’
I thank him and he heads out to the Dealing Room. Checking the deal-sheet, I find I’ve only two hundred thousand pounds left in hand.
‘Lose my bid,’ I tell the broker. ‘How does that leave you?’
‘195—203. Frankly, Raef, the bid’s not a problem. That offer’s going to be taken any minute.’ The price, he’s saying, is about to rise.
I hit the switch again. ‘Sell fifty thousand at 195.’
‘What?’ He’s astonished. He asks me to repeat my order, he’s not sure if he has heard it correctly.
So I repeat it.
'This guy’ll pay 200,’ he advises. ‘You want me to try him?’
‘Sell at 195. Now!’
I turn and watch the screen. A few seconds later, it happens.
‘You’re done for fifty at 195,’ the broker tells me. On the screen, the 195 winks off, then on again. The deal has gone through. I have triggered the agreement with my father.
I count the seconds. Before I reach ten, my private line beings to ring.
‘Raef, it’s traded at 195. Did you see?’ My father’s‘ voice is tense; slightly broken.
‘I saw.’
‘I’ll call the board, then contact Gifford.’
There is a hesitancy in his voice that I hadn’t expected. As though he’s asking my permission. Head in hand, I agree that what he suggests will probably be best.
‘Raef?’
‘I’m still here.’
In the pause that follows I hear him breathing. ‘I never wanted this Raef. I’m sorry.’ He rings off, and I hang up the phone.
Once Gifford buys us we’ll have the cash to redeem the loan against Boddington; the family estate will stay in our hands. But not Carlton Brothers. Not the bank. I watch the screen: the bid has already risen to 200.
More than a century and a half after our arrival, the time has come for the Carlton family to make its unceremonious exit from the City.
13
* * *
Trading in Carltons is suspended. ‘Pending further announcements on merger talks between Carlton Brothers and American Pacific,’ the Reuters newsflash says. I just had time to warn Sir John before the calls started coming in: journalists, competitors, clients, some to question and some to gloat; but the general reaction is one of regret. It seems I am not the only one who thinks something of value is being lost. Several of the older callers mention my grandfather.
When I told Sir John, he took the news surprisingly well. His first concern seemed to be that I might not be given the chance to run the merged business, a possibility that had also occurred to me. He enquired about the possible sale price too: his options in Carlton Brothers have taken a sudden turn for the better. I left him fielding calls in his office.
In my own office now, I do the same. There's one, naturally, from Penfield.
‘This doesn’t change my mind,’ he says. ‘The Unit still goes in tonight.’
All charm. I assure him that thwarting him wasn’t the purpose of the proposed deal, then I add the usual cant phrases about this being a good deal for both parties.
‘Next thing I know, Raef, you'll be telling me it’s a merger, not a takeover.’
‘Would you like to see Gifford?’
'He’s booked in here for a courtesy call at five,’ Penfield informs me. ‘He might not be too pleased to find a fraud investigation underway at Carltons. I take it he doesn’t know yet?’
‘Not from me.’
‘Would you rather he heard it from us?’
Roger Penfield wants the merger to go ahead smoothly. Any problems we have in the Dealing Room will be more easily absorbed into a larger capital base; and being completely cynical about Penfield’s motives, American Pacific’s involvement will now blur the supervisory lines of responsibility: the Bank of England, at worst, will be able to spread the blame.
‘That might help,’ I say. ‘I’d appreciate it if my name didn’t come up.’
Penfield seems pleased with how this is all turning out. He tells me to leave it to him.
The phones are still pealing when Vance comes in. He smiles crookedly, I can see he’s tipsy, but he isn’t drunk. Celebrating the Parnells victory with his team, I suppose; that, and drowning his private sorrows over Karen.
‘I don’t know i
f I should be angry you didn’t tell me,’ he says, ‘or pleased with how well I taught you to keep your mouth shut.’ He regards me askance. ‘Is it congratulations?’
‘Ask me again this time next year.’
‘Ah,’ he says nodding. ‘Like that.’
But he offers me his hand anyway, and we shake. Last night at the Savoy seems a long time ago. Like Sir John, Vance has a stack of options in Carlton Brothers, and this merger will enable him to cash them in early. I ask what he’s going to do with himself now that he’s rich.
‘Retire and play golf with Gordon,’ he says.
‘No chance.’
‘No, maybe not,’ he agrees smiling. ‘What about you?’
What about me indeed? Where do I go now? Do I really want to stay on, waving the Carlton family flag over territory no longer our own? And if I did that, how long would it be before colleagues and clients began pointing me out to each other as the man that was, yesterday’s banker, the last of the Carltons, kept on as living relic by Gifford’s good favour? I could sail, I’ve always said I wished I had the time for a long trip. But after two or three months, what then? I can’t retire down to Boddington, I’m too young. Besides, where I want to be is here, right here in the City, and what I want to be doing is the work I was bred for: banking, it’s too much a part of what I am.
‘You don’t have a bloody clue,’ Vance says. ‘Do you.’
We both laugh. Then I ask him if he’ll do me a favour and speak to his people in Corporate Finance.
‘American Pacific’s got nothing in Europe,’ I say. ‘There won’t be any jobs on the line here.’
Vance says he’ll pass on the good news. When my private line starts ringing, Vance heads for the door.
‘One other thing Stephen.’ He looks back. ‘Hand on heart, did you ever really think Lyle had anything to do with Daniel’s murder?’
Rather shamefaced, he turns his head from side to side.
‘Pointing Ryan away from Karen?’ I speculate aloud.
‘Not one of my brighter ideas,’ he confesses.
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