Bad Influence

by Desmond Harding

  Margaret turned and Bonnie realised the woman hadn’t made a mistake. “Mrs Norsteadt... Maggie .”

  “Mrs Norsteadt will do... at least that hasn’t changed.” Margaret dragged the case closer. Everybody watched in fascination.

  With a massive heave, she swung the case onto the table. “If you go around stealing husbands you should know...”

  A couple of men from Rendall pushed their chairs away. “Gentlemen. This can be explained,” Bonnie said.

  Margaret snapped open the locks on the case. “... marriage has two sides.” She threw open the lid. “And here’s the other. The bloody washing.”

  She up-ended the case, tipping a heap of dirty laundry on to the table. Shirts and socks tumbled to the floor and a pair of grubby boxer shorts fell into the lap of Gabriel Noyee, Rendall’s slightly camp marketing chief. With a delicate thumb and forefinger he put them back on the table.

  “You should know that his underpants need extra attention.”

  Noyee tried to hide a giggle behind his hand. “He’s not as clean as he might be. But I’m sure you’ll get used to it,” she said and left.

  Outside, Margaret stopped at the first pub she found and ordered a very large gin and tonic.

  *

  On the Wednesday, de Banks didn’t even bother to book the Divane Monns conference room. Instead, he met Finian and Denny in his office. It was a sober place. Copies of the damaging newspaper reports were scattered around the room.

  De Banks’s easy-going manner of the previous weeks had gone. He looked Denny hard in the face. “There are now serious doubts over the value of your company.” Denny opened his mouth to speak. “Let me finish,” de Banks said. “It was on that valuation that our underwriting was made.”

  “But it’s not true. Please believe me.” Denny was almost pleading with de Banks.

  “The whole thing smells of sabotage... and I know who’s to blame,” Finian said.

  Denny managed a weak smile and touched Finian affectionately on the arm. “People don’t do that sort of thing.”

  Finian thought that Denny was one of the most decent, trusting... and possibly naïve men he had ever met.

  “Whether I believe you or not – or whether there have been unethical activities – is not the point. What matters is that the City believes it.”

  “What can we do?” Finian asked.

  “We have two choices. Postpone the float – for a few months. Give the rumours chance to die down,” de Banks said. “Perhaps we can get Abercrombie’s help in straightening this out. Talk to this man, Norsteadt.”

  “He’s the last person who’ll help,” Finian said.

  Denny rolled his head back and stared at the ceiling. “No. It’s either now, or never. I’m under massive pressure to repay earlier investments.”

  De Banks looked down at his notes. “In that case, it’s with great reluctance that the bank must exercise the let-out clause in our agreement.”

  Denny looked shocked. “What does that mean?”

  “The change in circumstances means our underwriting obligations no longer apply.” Denny raked his fingers through his hair. He still hadn’t grasped the significance. “Cancellation of the float,” de Banks said.

  Finian didn’t know what to say. He just patted the scientist’s back, hoping that some sort of human contact would ease the pain.

  *

  Norsteadt had been in Germany, arranging the opening of his next slimming clinic. This brought the chain to four and their success exceeded even his most optimistic forecast.

  When he arrived at Bonnie’s house, he was tired from travelling and looked forward to a quiet evening. Bonnie had other ideas: she was going to make sure that Norsteadt shared her embarrassment from earlier in the day.

  Bonnie sat waiting. Once she saw him pull up outside, she started. He found her in the kitchen, opening doors and drawers and crashing them closed again. In her hand she held the operating instructions to the washing machine. Her kitchen had been refitted eighteen months before, but she had never used the machine, relying instead on a local laundry service.

  Scattered across the floor, so Norsteadt couldn’t miss it, was the washing delivered by Margaret.

  “That woman,” Bonnie said. “She can’t be allowed to go on like this.” Bonnie was intentionally obtuse, forcing Norsteadt to ask questions and so dragging him into the matter.

  Norsteadt picked up a shirt from the floor. “Where did this come from?”

  Snatching it from his hand, she threw it into the machine with the rest of the washing, and set it going.

  Bonnie had practised how she would retell the story of her humiliation. She also anticipated Norsteadt’s comforting support.

  “She did what?” Norsteadt tried to stifle a grin. That was not what Bonnie wanted.

  “In front of clients. It was terrible.”

  “Of course it was.” Another half-suppressed smirk. “I didn’t think she had it in her,” he said with grudging admiration. He was about to add “Good for her”, but he thought better of it.

  This was getting nowhere, so Bonnie changed tack. “And I wanted everything right when I told you about the thirtieth. And now she’s spoilt it.”

  “Spoilt what?”

  “That’s when you go to dinner.” Her face broke into a mischievous grin.

  He would play her game. “And where are we going on the thirtieth?”

  “Not we, my love. Just you. To Chequers... as the guest of the Right Honourable Frazer Drucas, First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister.”

  *

  Ever since Norsteadt decided to set up his slimming clinics, he had come to rely more and more on Ketler. Despite the time he had spent heading Norton-Hunter, Norsteadt’s detailed knowledge of pharmaceuticals remained thin. He survived by being a brilliant front man.

  With dinner at Chequers looming, he had to arm himself with enough superficial facts to hold his own. And not be found out.

  “Have you got it?” Norsteadt asked anxiously.

  Ketler took out an envelope, but left it on his lap.

  “Ah. You’re naming your price at last.”

  “I would prefer to call it my reward,” Ketler said. “You want enough background to convince the Prime Minister you’re an expert.”

  Norsteadt was being played by Ketler and he didn’t like it. He was about to say so, but the sight of the envelope made his remain silent.

  “You’ve taken credit for my book; I’ve kept quiet about the clinics... and now you want the rest of my knowledge.”

  “You’ve been well paid.”

  “Yes, but I want more,” Ketler said.

  “How much?”

  “It really is quite cheap. I want Denny’s job.”

  Was that all? Norsteadt thought. The whole idea might work out very well, having someone he could trust at Lycad, Norsteadt thought. “Poor Giles – he’s gone through a lot recently. I think the strain has affected his reliability.”

  “Excellent,” Ketler said and passed Norsteadt the envelope. He ripped it open and studied the pages of notes. “I’ve kept it simple. There’s a section on the issues facing the biotech industry, some great-sounding buzz words... and one or two other topics that should impress the hell out of the man.”

  Twenty-Six

  As he drove up the long drive and saw the house for the first time, Norsteadt caught his breath. Even in the half light of evening, Chequers was imposing. An Elizabethan mansion set in the Chiltern Hills, it became the country home of Britain’s Prime Ministers after being given to the nation by Lord Lee of Fareham, soon after the First World War.

  Frazer Drucas had none of the pretensions of some of the house’s previous occupants. As Norsteadt pulled up in his car, Drucas came to meet him.

  “My dear Bram. I’m so glad you could come.”

  Before dinner, the two stood on the terrace with their drinks. Although October, it was still unusually warm. “We have wonderful countryside around here. Mind you, i
t takes a Scot to really appreciate this kind of pastoral calm. The English don’t deserve such beauty.”

  They both laughed.

  “I want to hear more of your work,” Drucas said, and Norsteadt obliged.

  Biotechnology was one of the great hopes for British business, he told him. Norsteadt explained that it was creating jobs faster than any other sector. He talked of the discovery of DNA in the 1950s by two Cambridge scientists, James Watson and Francis Crick, and how it was the genetic blueprint for life itself. “It’s heredity at work,” he said. Norsteadt was pleased with himself when he remembered DNA stood for deoxyribonucleic acid.

  Drucas was intrigued to learn that science was even using man’s oldest enemy, the retrovirus, to fight disease. Stripped of any damaging material, it had become nature’s genetic bullet, carrying corrected genes accurately to the cells where they were needed. Ketler had taught him well.

  Norsteadt quickly proved his credentials as a man of science, but he had no intention of talking about biotechnology for the rest of the evening. Bonnie had warned him about being pigeon-holed as a bio-expert and relegated to working with some committee that sat in a far-flung outpost of the Ministry of Lost Causes.

  “You’ve got to be at the centre of things. To do that, you must be of more use to Drucas than just businessman-cum-boffin,” she told him as he set out that evening.

  As they went in for dinner, Norsteadt skilfully moved the conversation on. “The future of biotechnology is not certain. We’re hampered with miles and miles of red tape.”

  “Explain,” Drucas said, drawing him out.

  “It’s the latest band wagon on which the bureaucrats have jumped. They’re all trying to justify their jobs. Take your health department. It’s full of civil servants looking for places where they can interfere next,” he said.

  “Ah, your Blackpool speech. I wondered when you were going to mention that.”

  “I’m sorry to say this, Prime Minister, but we survive despite government, not because of it.”

  Over dinner, Norsteadt said that almost every industrialist despised Whitehall bureaucracy. Civil servants wielded enormous influence – without responsibility. The Civil Service was over manned and needed breaking up. “They’re there to help nobody but themselves.”

  Drucas nodded. One of the confidential opinion polls he had commissioned, showed similar findings. He came to the conclusion that Norsteadt had an uncanny sense of knowing what large sections of the country thought and felt.

  “Most civil servants – and MPs for that matter – forget that government is a business – and should be run like one. The trouble is that very few have any experience of that world,” Norsteadt said.

  He finished his coffee and suddenly went silent. He realised he had dominated the conversation for most of the evening and apologised.

  “Nonsense. You’re the first person who’s spoken his mind to me for ages,” Drucas said. “That’s what I hoped for when I made the invitation. Why do you think we’re on our own? No hovering officials.”

  Norsteadt knew things had gone well and decided to take a chance. As a parting shot he urged Drucas to create a new team of advisers. “So many of the people government rely on for ideas seem to have run out of steam.”

  Drucas walked Norsteadt to his car and waved him off. Back inside, he poured himself a whisky. A door in one corner of the room opened. “How did it go?” asked Duncan Quest, one the Prime Minister’s closest confidants.

  “Very well indeed. He may be what we’ve been looking for. Get him checked out.”

  *

  That night, Norsteadt would have granted Bonnie anything. In fact, the reward she requested was modest. What was it? Norsteadt asked himself. Nothing more than a few phone calls.

  *

  Instantly, Nathan knew that something was wrong. Whenever he had visited Finian’s office in the past, there had always been people charging up and down the stairs. But that day it was strangely quiet.

  He pushed open the door and looked around. All the desks Finian had squeezed in for the extra staff he’d needed to handle the new work he had won over the previous few months were empty. Even Wendy, the PA Nathan was paying for, was not at her usual place.

  “Hello?” Nathan said. “Anybody here?” There was no answer. He was about to leave when he heard the scraping of a chair in the next room. He found Finian sitting with his back to the door and staring into space. “Finn, where is everybody?”

  “Well,” he said without turning round, “I let Wendy go early. She had some shopping to do. And Emma went to pick up Kiki.”

  “And the rest?” Nathan said. “Last week this place was buzzing.”

  “That was last week; this week things are different.” He swung round to face Nathan and picked up a pad from his desk. “Look at this.”

  The pad listed the fifteen clients Finian’s consultancy looked after. The top ten names were crossed out with a heavy red line. Nathan was about to ask what it meant when the phone started to ring. Finian swung back to look out of the window.

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

  “Why bother? I know what it is,” he said over his shoulder.

  Nathan picked up the phone and listened. “Walter, it’s Nathan here... I’ll see if I can find him.” Finian shook his head. “No, he seems to have stepped out for a moment. Can I take a message?” Nathan listened and said in a quiet voice, “I see. I’ll tell him when he comes in.”

  Nathan replaced the receiver. “Why didn’t you tell me this was going on?”

  “What would you have done? Slapped your daughter’s backside? And told her to stop her lover wrecking her brother’s business?”

  Finian picked up a red pen and tossed it to Nathan. “Do the honours. You’ve got the list,” he said. “I didn’t realise that Bram Norsteadt’s influence stretched quite this far.”

  “We all lose clients.”

  “Yeah, but not at this rate.” Finian got up from his seat and poured himself some coffee from a pot bubbling in the corner. “It looks like Bonnie’s won after all. The Lycad float has collapsed and I’m left with a couple of piddling little companies and the union.”

  “You’ll pick up some more.”

  “I don’t know if I want to.”

  “You can’t give up.”

  The chance of beating Bonnie and Norsteadt now seemed more remote than ever. Finian put on his coat. “I’m going out for a while.”

  Finian loved walking through Soho. He always experienced a small tweak of anticipation when he discovered a new mews to explore or restaurant to try. But that day was different. He wanted to lose himself in the bustling street. He needed to think.

  After about half an hour of aimless wandering, Finian found himself at the top end of Soho Square. The sky had suddenly become leaden and he wished he had brought a raincoat.

  He decided to cut through the square and its well-tended gardens. Along with others, Finian felt the rain begin to spit. People sitting on park seats looked for shelter.

  In the centre of the square was an odd-looking building, It reminded Finian of an overgrown doll’s house, but it was really where the gardeners who looked after the square, kept their tools.

  Just then, the rain started to tumble down and he made a dash for cover. As Finian reached the building’s overhanging roof, he collided with a man. Both were so anxious to keep dry they hadn’t seen each other.

  The man was dressed in a good suit and he held a briefcase over his head. His shoes were highly polished. “Sorry,” he said. “That was close.” He was still looking out at the rain and hadn’t bothered to see who was sharing the shelter.

  “Kit,” Finian said. “Is it you?”

  The man looked round for the first time. “Finian.”

  Kit Thayer looked a lot older than Finian remembered. “What are you doing here?” Finian asked. “I thought...” he said and then stopped.

  “You thought I was out of work? Well, I am.”

 
; Finian looked at his suit and briefcase and Kit knew what he was thinking.

  “But I still come to London every day,” he said, swallowing hard. “It’s easier than telling my wife I got the sack.”

  Kit sat down. “Would you believe I still catch my normal train in the morning and return home at the same time? And all this...” He gestured to his suit. “Just going through the motions.”

  “With your experience...”

  “You thought I would have had no problem getting a new job,” Kit said, finishing off Finian’s sentence. “In the last three weeks I’ve had eighteen interviews. But when the companies discover I’m over fifty, they don’t want to know. I’ve come to the conclusion that people of my age are unemployable.”

  The rain eased and Finian looked at the sky. “I don’t know if you want to stay here or make a dash for my office. It’s only five minutes away.”

  Nathan had gone when the two men arrived. Kit sipped from a mug of coffee and walked round Finian’s offices. “This is nice,” he said.

  “I call it home – for the time being.”

  Suddenly it all came pouring out; how Bonnie had pushed him out as well as Hanborough and Sinclair, and how she had demoralised the staff. “I’d been working with Nat for nearly ten years before that bitch even joined the company.”

  Finian asked if he wanted something stronger to drink than just coffee.

  “This’ll do,” Kit said and continued his tirade. “The latest thing I heard was that she’s let a whole bunch of my clients go... on the grounds that they were too small for her grand plans. They were nice little businesses.”

  Finian thought for a moment. “Call them.”

  “Why?” Kit asked.

  “To see if they’re interested in your new agency.”

  “W-h-a-t?” Kit said slowly.

  Finian waved his arms round the office. “I’ve more than enough space.”

  As they parted company three hours later, Finian tossed Kit a spare key. “You’d better have one of these.”

  *