I’d practised endlessly what I was going to say on the journey here, but in front of his impassive face, I forgot the lot. He looked more like a hanging judge than a sympathetic and receptive listener to initially implausible excuses. As my tongue-tied silence lengthened he shifted restlessly and I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind. ‘In a way. Except it’s not my dispute. It’s Rose’s. She’s being blackmailed by Nigel Flaxman.’
Whatever he was expecting to hear, it certainly wasn’t that. He put down his coffee cup with a resounding clink, looked at me with narrowed eyes and said, ‘Let me guess. He wants her to get Jeremy to agree to the land sale.’ I nodded. ‘And he’s got something on her?’
I nodded again.
‘And of course she confided in her best friend.’ He linked his fingers together, eyeing me with polite interest. ‘Why has she deputised you to act for her and not come to see me herself?’
I could feel myself flush at the derisive tone in his voice. ‘She’s too frightened to talk to anyone. In fact, she doesn’t even know I’m here, and I thought... I thought that you were, well, the person most likely to take an active interest in thwarting Nigel.’
‘What impeccable logic,’ he said mildly.
My hands clenched in my lap. I was not going to squirm under his sarcasm. I forced myself to keep still and look at him while I said, ‘It certainly seemed better than the other option.’
‘Which is?’
‘Do what Nigel wants.’
‘It didn’t occur to you to go to the police?’
‘No, Rose can’t risk Jeremy finding out…’
‘I really can’t imagine what little peccadilloes Rose has in her past that she’s so desperate to keep from Jeremy,’ Hamish said, leaning back in his chair and looking at me as if he suspected I was playing an elaborate practical joke. ‘Over-ran her Barclaycard limit? Had a few more boyfriends than she’s admitted? I think he knows that already.’ He didn’t know quite how many more, though. ‘Is there a naughty picture or two in existence?’
It wouldn’t have surprised me, she had a photographer boyfriend at one time, but if there were any Nigel didn’t seem to have got hold of them. ‘Nigel has got a dossier in which he’s gathered as much dirt about her as he can. Including that she married a Russian in return for having a debt annulled.’
Hamish’s pencil dropped out of his fingers on to the desk. ‘Oh,’ he said slowly. ‘I can see why she might not want Jeremy to know about that. What happened?’
‘You won’t tell Jeremy, will you?’ I asked cautiously
‘Of course I won’t,’ he said impatiently. ‘At the very least, you might have the decency to realise I’m not going to do Nigel’s dirty work for him.’
‘Sorry,’ I muttered, staring at my hands. I took a breath and began.
‘What a bastard!’ he said softly once I’d finished. He frowned abstractedly, tapping the end of his pencil on the polished wood of his desk. ‘I don’t really see what I can do. Technically speaking, Nigel committed a crime himself by arranging for Rose to marry this Russian, but frankly it’ll do Rose much more harm than him if all this gets out, which is what he’ll be banking on.’
‘Oh,’ I said in dismay. Unrealistically, I’d been hoping that Hamish would come up with some magic legal formula by which he could impose a gagging order on Nigel - at the very least - a hang, draw and quartering order would be even better, in my opinion. ‘But there must be something he doesn’t want coming out about it, otherwise he could have rung Rose and given her the order as soon as she came back from honeymoon, rather than go through all this elaborate palaver with Luke.’
Hamish’s frown deepened. ‘Luke?’ he said sharply. ‘What’s he got to do with it?’
If I’d hoped that Hamish would feel for my humiliation in discovering that his supposed rival had only been interested in me for the short cut I could offer him to a lot of money, I was disappointed. He did crack a smile about Nigel and Luke turning up at the wedding though. ‘Nigel must have nearly had a heart attack when he saw me.’
‘His original plan was to suggest to Rose at the reception she help an old friend by persuading Jeremy to sign on the dotted, presumably with the hint that it’d be better for her she did. That went out of the window when he realised Jeremy probably knew a good many unpleasant things about him via you, then when he found out you’re the estate solicitor too they decided to go for the subtle approach with Luke.’
‘And that’s where you came in,’ Hamish said flatly. ‘I’m sorry for you that it had to turn out that way.’
The detached sympathy in his voice was like a hammer blow in the stomach, winding me so I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t get the breath to tell him his pity was wasted, I didn’t give a damn. He went on thoughtfully, ‘You’re right, there must be something he’s risking by threatening to expose Rose, but what? The problem’s time. I doubt the man I’m using can discover much concrete in three days.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘I might be able to buy a couple of days or so by asking some legal questions, but I’ve already covered most of those. And from what you say Rose’ll have a nervous breakdown if this is spun out for much longer.’
‘Might this speed things up?’ I asked, opening my bag and handing over the print-out of the file on Champion properties.
Hamish took it and his eyebrows rose as he scanned it rapidly. ‘Is this genuine?’
‘As far as I know. When Luke gets fed up of toadying to his grandmother he goes around to Martin’s and gets stoned. I think Martin’s always been worried Nigel and Luke might do the dirty on him, so he’s been collecting as much information about the project as he can as protection, and since Luke gets loquacious when stoned there’s been a lot to collect.’
‘And how did you come by this?’ asked Hamish, giving me a very old- fashioned look.
‘It’s all right,’ I assured him. ‘I didn’t burgle Martin’s house to get it. We - er - opened a drawer in his desk, found a floppy and looked through it in case it had stuff to do with the agency on it. It was just luck that all that stuff about Champion was on there as well. I put it back after I copied it,’ I added virtuously.
‘You still broke into Martin’s desk and helped yourself to a piece of his private property,’ Hamish said in a resigned voice, and sighed faintly. ‘I suppose it was in a good cause.’
‘I had no idea you had such a refreshingly liberal attitude to the law,’ I said admiringly. He glared at me down his nose. ‘What it doesn’t say in there though,’ I went on, ‘is Nigel’s already used some of the money he got from his backers to fund his venture in America. He was counting on being able to get the banks to put up more once the contracts were signed. That’s why he’s so desperate to get this going ahead and quickly, otherwise he’ll have to repay the money and that’s going to be extremely difficult. According to Martin, his backers aren’t the sort of people you want to have thinking you’ve embezzled their money.’ They must be seriously nasty if Nigel was afraid of them, I thought with satisfaction.
‘According to Martin...’ Hamish echoed. ‘What did you do, feed him a truth drug or something?’
‘No, I went round to clear up one or two things. He must have overdosed on the Benylin, because when he lost his temper and started shouting he got very indiscreet.’
‘You went to see a man whose files you’d just hacked into-’
‘That was Jenny, not me,’ I interrupted.
He threw me a withering glance. ‘When you were preparing to blow the whistle on a scam he had going, and when presumably you didn’t know if he was alone or had his accomplice with him . . .’ He saw my involuntary shudder as I remembered my panic when I realised Luke was turning up and his face hardened. ‘Are you completely mad?’ he demanded.
For a moment, I basked in the pure bliss of Hamish getting all hot under the collar and protective about me. Then my raised spirits came crashing back down to earth as I realised it was probably no more than the general concern he�
�d show towards any woman. Apart from his initial surprise at seeing me, he’d behaved with complete professional detachment. Hardly the behaviour of a man who was eating his heart out, I thought, feeling more depressed by the second.
He was looking at me enquiringly, probably wondering why I’d apparently been struck dumb. I swallowed hard to get rid of the lump in my throat and said, ‘I won’t do it again, I promise you, but it did get results.’
‘It could have been at too high a cost,’ he retorted grimly. ‘Did you find out anything else useful from Martin?’
‘Only how much he dislikes me, which I’d gathered already.’
‘Are you surprised?’ he asked, a distinctly oblique comment, in my opinion. He began to tap the end of his pencil on the desk again, thinking. ‘Rose really is caught in a cleft stick here. I can easily see why she doesn’t want Jeremy to know about this Russian, but it would be almost as bad if he were to believe she’d colluded with Nigel over the land deal. He’d never trust her again, especially since Luke Dillon is involved too.’ He glanced at me quickly with half-closed eyes. ‘Jeremy’s much more observant than you think,’ he said with emphasis. ‘I’ll get another couple of men digging around and we’ll see if they can discover anything concrete which we can throw at Nigel to get him to back off.’ He smiled in a distinctly malicious manner at the thought.
There was a knock on the door and Jessica came in. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr Laing, but Mr Pierce has arrived and is waiting for you in the boardroom.’
‘Hell!’ Hamish swore softly, and looked over at me. ‘Is that all? He can wait another few minutes if it isn’t.’
I opened my mouth to speak. Then closed it again. What was the point? He was hardly going to be concentrating on what I had to say while he was clock-watching. He might even think I’d been softening him up first by telling him all this to demonstrate how terribly I’d been misled by Luke. Oh, why had I bottled out at the beginning? It was too late now. Too late. The most bitter words in the English language. With leaden legs I rose to my feet, smiling mechanically, and said, ‘I won’t keep you.’
Jessica hurried forward with what sounded like a small sigh of relief and handed Hamish a buff-coloured file. ‘This is what you need, Mr Laing. I’ll show Miss Tradescant out.’
‘You’re incredibly bossy, Jessica,’ he said with a smile as he took the file and turned to me, his face not showing any regret that we hadn’t moved to matters personal. ‘Thank you for coming to see me, and ring me if there’s anything else you can think of,’ he said in a politely bored voice that seemed to intimate ‘please don’t bother’.
‘Shall I make you another appointment to see Mr Laing?’ Jessica asked.
I shook my head. ‘There’s no point,’ I said sadly.
CHAPTER 22
In a thoroughly melodramatic manner, I contemplated throwing myself off the top level of the multi-storey car-park for messing things up quite so comprehensively, then realised I hadn’t yet handed over the proof of Martin’s nasty little scam to Stephen. I certainly couldn’t let him get away with that. Suicide would have to wait for the moment. And then I’d have to check I’d remembered to clean the bath this morning and get rid of the shaming remains of the giant bar of Fruit and Nut chocolate from beside my bed... I sighed gloomily. It looked like life would have to go on.
Stephen was already in his office when I got in, and called me straight in to see him, looking unusually solemn and worried. ‘Susie, Martin’s been making some very serious accusations against you,’ he began as I sat down.
Why hadn’t I expected him to try and fight back? ‘What a slime ball he is! What’s he been saying?’ I asked with interest.
Stephen shifted uncomfortably and took off his glasses, polishing them industriously. ‘Basically, that you’ve been conducting a vendetta against him. You’ve been interfering with his clients, bad-mouthing him, even manufacturing evidence to make it look like he’s ripping off our clients,’ he said in the general direction of his handkerchief, not meeting my eyes.
Nice one, Martin, I thought with grudging admiration. Quick thinking for someone half doped with flu remedies. ‘And did he say why I might be doing this?’
The polishing went up a couple of degrees in intensity. ‘Um…er…because you feel rejected,’ Stephen mumbled.
‘What!’ I exclaimed in disbelief. ‘Let me get this right. Martin claims I made advances to him? And he turned me down?’ Stephen nodded. ‘In his dreams!’ I snorted with laughter. ‘I’d rather neck a cockroach! Couldn’t he have come up with a more plausible scenario?’
‘I thought it was a little unlikely,’ Stephen murmured.
‘More than unlikely, downright flaming impossible,’ I retorted. ‘And what about Jenny? Has she also been panting with unrequited love for Martin?’
His stared at me in frank astonishment. ‘What’s she got to do with it?’
‘She was with me yesterday when I took the call from Mrs Murray…’ It took some time for what I was saying to sink in, which wasn’t so surprising. Stephen simply didn’t want to believe his second in command had been on the take and at first tried to insist that Jenny and I had to be mistaken, we’d taken a whole lot of circumstantial evidence and drawn the wrong conclusion, on the face of it a reasonable conclusion, but a wrong one nevertheless. Eventually, he had to admit that the circumstances added up just too well.
He sat there, face pale with shock. ‘I trusted him,’ he said at last. ‘He’s probably been doing this ever since I employed him, and laughing at me behind my back for being a soft, gullible touch.’
I’d been thinking about this myself. ‘I don’t think so. If he’d done it before he’d have known not to make the mistake with the planning permission. I reckon Martin saw a golden opportunity to make a lot of easy bucks and took it, but honestly, Stephen, how often does a cottage with a big garden come up for sale on the edge of a development? Let alone one where the elderly owner doesn’t even bother to apply for planning permission?’
‘Hardly ever,’ he said, looking slightly more cheerful.
‘Assume this was a one-off, then put Rosewood Cottage back on the market with “planning permission applied for” and no one will ever be any the wiser.’
The colour started to come back into Stephen’s face as the spectre of the regulators and the law descending on the agency and ruining its reputation began to recede. ‘Funny thing, Liddy never liked Martin, said he was a sleazy toad, even if he was good at his job,’ he said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. ‘As of now Martin has resigned due to ill health, which will become much worse if I ever lay eyes on him again. Amanda can take over as senior negotiator, she’s more than capable of it, but I’ll have to get on with finding her replacement... Can you get on with drafting an advertisement…?’ He looked up, eyes alert. ‘Unless of course, you, Susie…?’
‘Me?’ I asked.
‘I’m well aware that you’re capable of doing a lot more than finding my misplaced filing,’ he said dryly. ‘I don’t want to lose you as a PA altogether, but I was thinking that perhaps if we got a junior in to do all the routine stuff it would free you up for at least half your time. You’d be good as a negotiator, it’d suit you down to the ground.’
He was about to launch into his persuasive spiel, and what with one thing and another I wasn’t feeling strong enough to resist. If I didn’t stop him I’d find myself as an estate agent (trainee, part-time) before I’d had time to think. I probably would anyway, Stephen had that deadly persistent look in his eye that brooked no argument, but I wanted to feel that the decision was at least partially mine. ‘Can I think about it?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ he said promptly, with a satisfied air. As far as he was concerned, it was already as good as confirmed. I escaped before he could start listing all the benefits I should consider and sank into my chair with a sigh of relief to have got off so lightly.
Too soon. My behind had barely hit the fabric before Rose was on the line
and she wasn’t in a good mood. In fact, she was incandescent. ‘How dare you go running to Hamish?’ she hissed. ‘You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone.’
It didn’t seem like a good idea to point out that in fact I’d only promised not to tell Jeremy, she wouldn’t have appreciated it. I felt like beating my head against my computer screen. I’d been intending to warn her as soon as I got into the office, but what with Stephen immediately landing me with Martin’s accusations and my potential new career I’d had no chance. Hamish must have got his meeting with Mr Pierce through in good order, for he’d already been on to her, checking up on the name of the Russian she’d married. I wondered if she’d given him the earful she was giving me. I doubted it somehow. ‘How can I ever trust you again?’ she demanded. ‘You might have thought you were doing it for the best, but you’ve laid me wide open to Nigel. If he finds out he’ll go straight to Jeremy and it’ll all be your fault…’
I was tired, the morning had been a series of stressful encounters and though I knew Rose was so wound up she couldn’t think straight, this was just too much. Luckily, it’s impossible to really lose your rag when you’re having to speak in a hushed tone so the rest of the office, not to mention a client, can’t hear, so what I said about spoilt princesses who think only of themselves didn’t slip from offensive right into the never to be forgiven, downright abusive. As it was, the call ended rather abruptly and when I’d calmed down, about half an hour later, I realised there was now probably another name on the lengthening list of people who didn’t want to speak to me ever again.
I thought my cup was finally going to run over completely when Jenny called across to say Gina was on the phone. Remembering her distinctly cool attitude when I last saw her, I braced myself for a rough passage. She’d probably asked Hamish how I was and he’d answered along the lines of ‘enjoying Luke Dillon in a bath towel’ and was ringing me full of sisterly wrath. I almost fell off my chair with surprise when I heard her tone. It couldn’t have been friendlier. ‘I’m at the Stable Gallery hanging the pictures and I thought how nice it’d be to see you again. Shall we have lunch?’
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