Kennedy straightened. Ross recovered – or at least tried to recover – some composure. ‘You should watch your tone, Kennedy. I’m about to become a very rich man,’ he said, mustering a little defiance.
Kennedy made a small, sharp motion with his hand and allowed himself a smile as Ross Norton flinched. ‘A very rich man who can’t even tie his own shoelaces,’ said Kennedy. ‘Now get dressed in a manner appropriate for somebody who, first, has just lost his grandfather and, second, is about to speak to his beloved and grieving grandmother.’
Ross trooped off. Kennedy switched on the television, established a link with the laptop. A screen appeared confirming that end-to-end encryption was successful and that the host would shortly be beginning the meeting.
Ross returned to the spacious lounge, looking smarter. He sat down until the television, which up until that moment had shown a black screen and the simple message ‘waiting for host’, suddenly changed, and a thirty-second countdown began.
Twenty-eight
Twenty-seven
The host had begun the meeting. They were live. And suddenly the screen was split, tiled into faces that Ross knew well.
First, there was the lawyer, Jeffrey Coombs. Coombs sat at his desk in London. Late-fifties but looking good on it, weathered, tanned skin merged with the wood panelling of his office behind.
He wore glasses that he removed, and he made a play of doing something with his mobile, as though to reassure the assembled surviving members of the Norton clan that they had his full attention and, for a handsome fee, would continue to command it for as long as needs be.
Then there was his mother, Montana Norton, who would have been horrified to discover that a word such as ‘milf’ even existed but flattered to find that she easily qualified. She was based in Malibu and if Ross’s experience was anything to go by, would mention the fact that she had watched dolphins from the balcony of her beachfront home at least once over the course of the conversation.
For the moment she sat at what looked like her breakfast bar, exuding exactly the right amount of age-appropriate glamour, Liz Hurley’s only real competition in this world.
‘Ross, how are you?’ she asked, and showed the usual lack of interest in his response.
‘And how are you, Mother?’ he asked in return.
‘Lovely thank you, darling,’ she glowed. ‘This morning I had breakfast on the balcony and watched the dolphins.’
She stopped, interrupting a train of thought that would have probably gone on for quite some time were it not for the fact that something had just occurred to her. ‘And where is Simon?’ she said. ‘Is this going to be another one of his no-shows?’
‘No, Mother,’ sighed Ross, ‘I think even Simon is going to make the effort for this one.’
As if in response, his younger brother, Simon, flicked into view.
There were some whose money prevented their drug use from taking its toll on their looks. Ross should know, having been to school with a number of them. Some had quit, some had been to rehab, some were still what you might call ‘functioning’. They all looked the picture of sun-dappled health.
Not Simon.
Simon looked as he always looked. Strung-out and needy. The sort of person from whom you averted your eyes in case their obvious addiction was catching.
Next to appear was Juliet Norton. Ross’s grandmother and the wife of the deceased. Sir Charles Norton’s widow.
She wore the clothes and make-up of a grand lady about to attend high tea, complete with pearls, although the truth was that she had the money to pass herself off that way but not the breeding. Her husband, Sir Charles Norton, RIP, was a man who had hauled himself up by his bootstraps and was in the eyes of the world a Labour-supporting, successful self-made man, a knight of the realm by dint of his many achievements. And yes, those achievements were based on a gambling empire of somewhat dubious provenance, but he had been a trusted figure under the Blair government and never really out of favour since, such was his man-of-the-people popularity.
Juliet Norton, though? Born simply Julie Smith – comprehensively educated, the childhood sweetheart of her husband – had never enjoyed quite the same ascendancy nor respect. Juliet Norton, despite the clothes she wore, the accent she affected and, perhaps more pertinently, the money and influence to which she was party, had never really enjoyed that same level of respect from, say, the wives at the golf club and the institutes and societies to which her husband was affiliated. Whether those women genuinely considered her an interloper, a ‘competition winner’, would never be established for certain, since of course they would vehemently deny the fact. But that was how Juliet had felt throughout her marriage to Sir Charles Norton. It was how she’d felt then and how she felt now.
And that made her dangerous.
Ross, sitting on his sofa in his assistant’s clothes, knew it all. He looked into the face of his beloved grandmother and all he saw there was steel and resolve. Ross knew that Juliet and Charles had been devoted to one another and even with his grandfather’s love of pranks and gamesmanship, there was one thing of which they could all be certain: Sir Charles Norton would have left the bulk of his estate to his wife, Juliet.
But Sir Charles Norton’s estate was worth, not millions, but billions. And even though Juliet might take the bulk, she would take tens of billions, and that still left an awful lot of billions for everybody else.
CHAPTER 9
For a moment the faces on the TV screen waited expectantly.
And yet there was one tile still black. One member of the meeting yet to make an appearance. Ross looked towards Jeffrey Coombs to explain, and when there was nothing forthcoming, looked to his grandmother, Juliet, instead. Her face was implacable. Either she knew what to expect or, more likely, as the long-time partner and now widow of the late Sir Charles Norton, simply knew to expect the unexpected.
It was left to Montana, impatient, to break the ice. ‘Mr Coombs? Are we to begin?’
‘Just one more member of your family to arrive, ma’am,’ said Coombs. ‘The late Mr Norton begs your indulgence.’
‘He what? He’s dead, how on earth can he be begging my indulgence?’
‘I would ask that you talk about your father with a little bit more respect,’ said Juliet quietly, commandingly.
‘I’m sorry, Mama,’ said Montana, lowering her eyes.
Ross knew that Montana had always been his grandfather’s favourite child, just as he liked to flatter himself that he was the favourite grandchild. With Simon his main competition, that wasn’t difficult. Nor was it necessarily a trophy he particularly wanted in the cabinet, but still, you snatched your victories where you could.
He glanced sideways at Kennedy, who stood clear of the laptop’s camera. ‘You enjoying this?’ said Ross quietly from the side of his mouth.
‘Positively Shakespearean, sir,’ replied Kennedy.
‘Something tells me that you’re going to relish the next development, then?’
‘The missing delegate?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Wait, you know who it is, don’t you?’
‘I’ve got an idea.’
‘Well? Don’t keep it to yourself.’
‘Put it this way, sir, when did you last see your father?’
‘Are you having your own private meeting?’ barked his mother on the screen. Ross had taken his astounded gaze from Kennedy back to the meeting, knowing that his PA was correct.
As if on cue the face appeared. The face of a man in his early seventies.
He was pasty. His dark, curly hair was unkempt. His eyes wore the same darting, nervy look they wore when seated at boardroom meetings of Norton Gaming.
His name was Clifford Levine. He was father to Ross and Simon. Ex-husband of Montana who had, albeit briefly, taken his name during the marriage but then reverted to Norton shortly after the split, while Ross and Simon had also adopted the Norton name. Sir Charles had given him a place on the board as a wedding pre
sent despite always professing to hate him.
Simon gave a sheepish lopsided grin. ‘Hi, Dad.’ Ross looked at Kennedy, who smirked, and then back at the screen. Juliet maintained her poise.
Montana, however, reacted as though administered an electric shock. ‘Mr Coombs, what is he doing here?’
‘He is here on the express wishes of your late father, ma’am,’ replied Mr Coombs.
‘He’s not blood.’
‘Indeed, ma’am, I can only reiterate . . .’
This was it, they all knew. If even in some distant recesses of their minds they had wondered whether things might proceed along vaguely conventional lines, now they knew better. Sir Charles Norton, a man who had built his fortune by pitting his wits against those of the consumer, a man for whom life was a game and games a way of life planned to play with them from beyond the grave.
They would play, every single one of them. The stakes were too high to do anything otherwise.
And now it came time to read the will.
The family sat poised. Every single one of them, apart from Simon was already wealthy beyond the wild dreams of most, but even so, this – this was different. An entirely new stratosphere of wealth. And they were all hungry for it.
‘I shall begin,’ said Jeffrey Coombs. ‘To my wife, Juliet, I leave my share in our house and its contents, as well as our homes abroad, our cars and our private jet. She has access to all of our personal bank accounts so that she may continue to live in the manner to which she has become accustomed.’
Juliet’s shoulders straightened. It was what she had been expecting. Anything less would have been a considerable blow, an undermining of what had been a happy and successful marriage.
‘To my son, I leave the Clement Attlee.’
‘The Clement Attlee is a yacht,’ exploded Ross. ‘I live in Switzerland. What the fuck am I going to do with a yacht in Switzerland?’
‘My son Simon shall receive monies to the same value,’ continued Coombs.
‘But that’s not fair,’ complained Ross, not wanting to give either Kennedy or Coombs the satisfaction but unable to help himself, ‘I want the money, not a yacht.’
The grin on Simon’s face slid off as Coombs continued, ‘But these monies shall only be awarded when Simon is able to provide my lawyer, Jeffrey Coombs,’ he looked up again as though to confirm that, yes, it was he, Jeffrey Coombs, ‘with the medical proof of a year’s abstinence from any form of hard drugs.’
Coombs continued. Montana was gifted an estate in Norfolk. She nodded with a look as though to say it was her birthright. Nothing less than she deserved. For Clifford Levine there was nothing. Not yet, anyway.
Now came the main event.
‘As for the distribution of my controlling stock in Norton Gaming, I have devised something unusual.’
They tensed. Montana’s jaw set and her eyes closed as though in anticipation of bad news.
‘First, I should like to make it clear that the controlling stock in Norton Gaming will be awarded to one person and one person only.’
Their eyes widened, because what they all knew was that houses and cars and even the private jet was one thing. The big prize, and the reason that they all felt that same hunger, was a controlling stake in Norton Gaming, an empire worth over 100 billion.
Whoever had that share was effectively the head of one of the country’s largest companies, which as well as wealth meant influence and power. It meant having the prime minister’s private number. It meant the royal family and the president of the United States would take your calls. It meant taking a seat at the top of the table and watching as you bent the world to your own will.
‘As you know, my first passion has always been for games, and so to decide who shall be the one, I have devised a game,’ continued Coombs. ‘A game that I trust you will find most diverting.’
CHAPTER 10
Abbott had planned to spend the rest of the morning drinking and watching TV, but that was before he realised that he’d left his jacket in The Sportsman. Which meant that even though he’d fully intended to offer his apologies for last night’s disturbance when the dust had settled, he was going to have to do it sooner rather than later. As in, today.
Now to dress. A few weeks back he’d won the pub’s quiz and been given a T-shirt bearing its name as a prize. Partly in the absence of anything else that was remotely clean, and partly in a bid to butter up Nigel, he pulled it on, dragging an unbuttoned black shirt over the top of it.
He checked himself in the mirror. Not good, but then again not too bad. Yes, he looked as though he’d been in the wars, but at least he didn’t have the appearance of a drunken wreck.
‘You’re not fooling anybody, you know,’ Cuckoo had said to him, and he was right about that. In the supermarket Abbott had exchanged a glance with another guy buying his daily supply. Nothing was said. No words exchanged. Just that look. The look that told both men, Here is a fellow traveller.
‘What have you become?’ Abbott asked himself aloud, and when no answer was forthcoming, he left his room and made his way carefully downstairs, trying to ignore the throbbing in his head.
He reached the landing below and there stood the little Somalian kid, the same one from before.
‘You look better, man,’ said the kid, and Abbott, who had been about to hurry past, stopped in his tracks. As a Royal Marine, he’d spent time in Northern Ireland and joined Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. As a member of the SBS, he had worked in counterterrorism, gone up against drug gangs and carried out counterinsurgency operations.
Then there was his humanitarian work. As part of a four-man team, he had worked with a charity to crack a child-trafficking ring in Thailand, rescuing kids, bringing them to safety.
He thought of the lads. Ward, the explosives expert, who now ran a garden centre in Whitstable. Miller, who had morphed into a personal trainer, and Brace, a full-time mercenary who was also the best sniper Abbott had ever worked with.
Worldwide, over 1.6 million kids a year were sold into sex slavery. Abbott, Ward, Miller and Brace had rescued twenty-two of them on one occasion, and even though it was such a small drop in the ocean, it was those rescues that had given Abbott his proudest moments.
Kids like this one? For a moment, Abbott felt the shackles of his ever-present grief fall away as he cast a practised eye over the boy, taking in the fact that he looked nourished and wore clean, if ageing clothes. Most importantly, there was a light in his eyes.
‘How’s things with you, mate?’ he said.
‘I’m very good, man,’ the kid grinned. ‘Better than you.’
Abbott ran a finger over the scab. ‘You like my cut, do you? You ever get any cuts and bruises yourself?’
‘If I fall over.’
‘You fall over often?’
The kid shook his head, and privately Abbott gave him the all-clear. He reached to ruffle the kid’s hair. ‘Just you stay out of trouble, you hear?’ He pointed to himself. ‘You don’t want to end up looking like this, do you?’
Abbott let himself out of the front door of the B&B, thinking that maybe all was not lost after all. Perhaps there was enough of him inside, enough of the man from before.
The feeling didn’t last long. It lasted about as long as it took to make his way to The Sportsman, knock on the locked door and see the expression Nigel wore when he opened it.
‘You’re fackin’ barred.’
Nigel seemed about to close the door on him but stopped himself. ‘And do me a favour, would you, pal? Take off that facking T-shirt.’
Abbott stepped back, flapping open his black overshirt to reveal the T-shirt beneath in all its glory. ‘What? I thought you’d be pleased, mate. Flying the flag and all that.’
‘It rather depends on who’s flying the flag, doesn’t it? Because just between you and me, pal, you ain’t looking too lively.’
‘Yeah, I get that a lot. Listen, look, just give me my jacket. I’ll zip it up, nobody will see the T-shirt, I w
on’t darken your door again.’
Nigel rolled his eyes but seemed to soften. ‘Nah, it’s all right, you can come in, like. There’s something I need to tell you, anyway.’
Abbott sat on a stool suddenly feeling very thirsty indeed. Nigel threw him a disapproving expression but began to pour him a pint anyway, and Abbott thought it was just about the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
‘Greg collapsed yesterday,’ said Nigel, placing the pint down in front of Abbott. ‘He was taken to hospital.’
Abbott looked at the drink thirstily, but in a bid to project a sense of being in control of his drinking, did not automatically reach for it. ‘Who’s Greg?’
Nigel shook his head. ‘Greg was the bloke you was about to beat up last night.’
‘I wasn’t about to beat him up, and what do you mean “taken to hospital”? We didn’t even touch each other.’
Nigel looked evenly at him. ‘You sure about that? Do you remember anything about last night? Just that I’m hoping that you wasn’t quite yourself, like.’
‘Why? What did I do?’
‘It wasn’t what you did. It was what you said. You and Greg sitting here, having an argument about who had it worse. Greg told you he had cancer. You was like, “I’d rather have cancer than a dead son.”’
Abbott felt his shoulders drop, his gaze fall away. ‘I said that, did I?’
‘Yes, you said it. Whole facking pub heard you say it, pal.’
Abbott cringed inside. ‘So Greg being taken to hospital, that was nothing to do with what happened outside?’
‘No, you’re in the clear. Nothing to do with you and all to do with the fact that he was dying of cancer.’ Nigel leaned forward. ‘Listen, pal, I know when a bloke is on edge. When they’re likely to do serious damage to themselves or someone else. I’m looking at it now.’
‘It’s in hand, mate,’ Abbott assured him. ‘Believe me, it’s in hand.’
He sank the rest of his pint, ordered another. And because that went down almost dismayingly easily, he ordered another.
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