Unnatural Justice ob-7

by Quintin Jardine

  I didn't raise the subject of his problem: I'd never intended to. But he did. Just as I was finishing my pint of orange squash and picking up my second crab mayonnaise roll, he reached across and squeezed my arm. "Thanks, son," he said, quietly.

  "For what?"

  "For helping me through that thing, for putting some backbone into me and showing me the way."

  "Nada," I muttered. I assumed he'd read the Courier, although he didn't say.

  "It wasn't nothing at all. It was…" He paused. "It's a funny thing, Oz, we go through our lives thinking of ourselves as role models for our children, and then a day can come when we realise that they've outgrown us, and that it's the other way around."

  "Bollocks," I responded, cheerfully.

  "I don't know about them," he remarked, and the moment had passed.

  "How's Susie?" he asked me suddenly. "How's Janet? And how's my next grandson?"

  "The first one's still working her socks off, although I'm trying to get her to slow down. The second seems to have appointed herself class captain at her nursery school. The third may actually be an elephant, going by the size of his mother."

  He laughed. "Naw, he's a Blackstone male, that's all. You were exactly the same. Your mother was like an elf with Ellie, but she was like a fucking pillar box when she was carrying you."

  "Don't say that to my wife, for God's sake." I looked across at him.

  "How about your other grandsons? Fences mended?"

  "With Colin, certainly. He's a corruptible wee sod, right enough; those skates did the trick: them, and a sincere apology. As for Jonny, he still acts a bit different towards me. Sometimes I wonder if it'll ever be the same with him."

  "Probably not, Dad, but don't put it down to what happened. Jonny's growing up fast; the absence of a father has… I won't say it's robbed him of his childhood, but it's accelerating his adolescence.

  I've got great hopes for him, you know. He's a special kid."

  "He's you."

  "So Ellie says, but he's not. If he was I'd know everything that's in his head, but I don't. There's something in him that wasn't in me when I was his age. I see it in the way he looks at his mother, and his brother. It's a sort of worship."

  "You mean you didn't worship me?" my Dad asked, quietly.

  "You're a fucking dentist," I reminded him. "There have been, and are, people on this planet who've worshipped cows, birds, cats, the Sun, the Moon, their ancestors, living emperors, money, precious stones, graven images, actors, musicians, racing cars, and the people who drive racing cars. But never across the great span of human history and endeavour will you find a case of anyone worshipping a fucking dentist."

  He was still chuckling when he waved me off, after I had driven us back to Anstruther in his Jag and said "So long' to Mary. I could hear his laughter all the way home. I had been lying, of course. I did worship him.

  Nineteen.

  Although movie-making's a high-pressure business, I always like to get back to work. There may come a day when I'm blase about the whole business, but I'm a way short of it yet. I love turning up for a new project, meeting my fellow actors, the guys and gals behind the scenes, the caterers, and even the publicity people.

  I have to say that since I've moved out from under Miles Gray son's hugely generous and protective wing, I've enjoyed it even more, since I'm beginning to feel like a real actor, as if I'm with my peers. That even includes Ewan Capperauld, the British star most respected by everyone in the business, including himself.

  Ewan has played just about every type you can name, and played them all brilliantly. For all that Miles did a great job in the part, I was sorry that in the end Ewan didn't get to play Bob Skinner, for that role could have been written for him, or he for it. But in my professional opinion, he's at his best whenever he plays the bad guy.

  Of course that may be true of all good actors, for as they'll often tell you, the villain is usually the meatiest role in a movie.

  That isn't necessarily the case with Mathew's Tale, for the hero part, my character, has loads of meat about him, but Ewan's guy, Sir Gregor Cleland, an amazingly nasty baronet, is one of the 'best' baddies I've ever encountered.

  "How's it been with you?" I asked him, after we'd greeted each other at the first cast meeting. You can never be sure how Ewan's going to react at times like that. He has a habit of dropping unconsciously into whatever character he's playing; on this occasion, Sir Gregor was still in his box, for he answered affably.

  "Fine, thank you. I've been working my butt off, though. I've just come off a month playing Hamlet at Stratford-on-Avon. The offer was made, and I decided to do it one last time, before I got too ridiculously old for the Prince's costume. The Bard's a progression for an actor, you know. One starts with Hamlet and Henry the Fifth, then moves on to Richard of Gloucester and his kin, until finally, one is offered Lear. That's when you know you're over the hill. Have you ever done any Shakespeare, Oz?"

  There was a time when I'd have thought he was taking the piss if he'd asked me that… and probably he would have been… but not any more. Now I'm taken seriously, even by people as eminent as him.

  "As a matter of fact I have," I told him. "I played Romeo, once; Jan, my first wife, played Juliet. Doesn't count, though. It was at school."

  "Of course it counts. It all goes on the Cy my lad."

  "Speaking of wives," I began, a shade tentatively.

  "The divorce is final," he replied. Ewan's private life had turned chaotic a while back; that was what had forced him out of the Skinner movies.

  "Sorry."

  "Thanks, but don't be."

  "Are you still seeing Natalie Morgan?" She had been the start of his trouble.

  "Not for a while. I've been going around with Rhona Waitrose."

  "You and the Scots Guards' I thought, suppressing a smile. Rhona was known as one of the friendliest girls in town; I'll never forget the night she turned up at my place for a spot of 'rehearsal' wearing nothing but a raincoat. Neither will she, I suspect; Susie had turned up just after her.

  "Nat's totally committed to her company now' Actually, I'd known this, for Natalie Morgan had succeeded Susie as Scottish Businesswoman of the Year, after succeeding James Torrent, her late uncle, as head of the office supplies giant that bore his name. "You should keep your eye on her, Oz," he added, quietly.

  I looked at him, surprised. "Why? She doesn't fancy me, does she?"

  Ewan gave a deep theatrical chuckle. "Far from it. She hates you, actually."

  Surprise turned to astonishment. "Me? What have I done to deserve that? Come to think of it, I seem to recall saving her life once."

  "That counts for nothing. She blames you for getting involved in that business in the first place. Don't ask me why, but she does."

  I shrugged. "I can live without her love."

  "I'm sure you can, but that's not why I say you should keep an eye on her. She's a very ambitious lady, and she is not content simply to run her company in its present form. She wants to use it as a base for expansion by acquisition, and one of her main targets is the Gantry Group."

  I whistled. "Is it now? She's wasting her time then. Susie has a controlling interest in the business, and I can tell you now, selling out ain't in her plans, or in mine."

  "There are minority shareholders, though, aren't there?"

  "Yes, but very much a minority."

  "Nonetheless. I don't know a lot about company law, but if a significant offer came in, your wife might be told that she had an obligation to all the shareholders to accept."

  "Who'd tell her?"

  "The courts, possibly."

  "Do you know this is going to happen?" I asked him.

  "Not at all," he insisted. "I know that the thought has crossed Nat's mind, that's all, because she told me. Talk to Susie, Oz. If I were you I might be thinking about buying out the minority interests and taking the company private again."

  I could see the logic in that, and the sense; I even knew
how it could be financed. But then I thought of Jack Gantry, and his newly recovered interest in the Group, and realised that it wouldn't be as easy as it sounded.

  Twenty.

  To say that Susie did her nut when I told her about Natalie Morgan's ambitions would be akin to describing the Eiffel Tower as a big television aerial. I've seen her angry before, but her reaction was one of sheer unbridled fury.

  "The bitch," she yelled. "That arrogant, conceited, jumped-up twat!" I was glad that I'd delayed telling her until Ethel had taken Janet off to bed. "She thinks she's going to take over my company? In her fucking dreams she is! She's a bloody glorified photocopier sales girl and she thinks she can turn me over? Let her try, that's all. Let her bloody try."

  "What are you going to do about it then?"

  That silenced her for a while. "Nothing," she said finally. "Nothing that I'm not doing already. I'm going to build up the Gantry Group until it's absolutely invulnerable, and until no conceivable offer could ever match the company's potential."

  "How about buying out the minorities?"

  "And hamstring myself financially? If I did that I'd wind up working for venture capitalists, and that is something I'll never do. It's an option I rejected when we went public. No, my love," she said, tight-lipped. "I'd go in the other direction first. I'd make a hostile bid for her."

  "Torrent's big, Susie. You'd have to do the deal with shares; you'd lose personal control of an expanded business."

  "I know," she conceded. "And there's another consideration. I don't want to be a photocopier sales girl." I was pleased to see that her brain was starting to work again. "Just because Natalie Morgan thinks that diversification is the way to go, doesn't mean that it is. So let the bitch come, and let her try to swallow me. She'll choke."

  It was a while before the subject was raised again over our dinner table. Her anger abated, and her judgement restored, Susie did a couple of typically well thought out things. She hired a firm of investor relations consultants to raise the profile of the business in the City, and she filled the vacancy on the board created by Joe's death by appointing Sir Graeme Fisher as non-executive chairman of the company.

  Fisher is said to be Scotland's only genuine billionaire, having built his fortune, along with a formidable reputation for plain speaking, in the direct insurance business. He once said, famously, that he did not know a single Scottish company, other than his own, of which he would consider becoming a director, and so, when Susie sweet-talked him into joining the board of the Gantry Group, the announcement made the front page of the Financial Times, and was reported in every other business newspaper in the UK.

  Graeme Fisher's appointment was as big a surprise to me as it was to the rest of the country. Susie didn't discuss it with me at all. I could tell that she was up to something, and for a while I worried that she had changed her mind about having a go at taking over Torrent. She told me eventually, though, five minutes before she told Gillian Harvey and Gerry Meek at a board meeting, held on a Saturday morning to fit in with my filming schedule.

  Mathew s Tale was in its early weeks of shooting and was going well; I loved my part, finding that I could associate with him better than with any character I'd ever played, better even than Andy Martin in the Skinner movies. Make-up was a bit of a bugger, since "Mathew' had a war wound, a sword-cut across his face sustained when fighting against Napoleon, and that had to be put on every morning. It was worth putting up with that, though, for the sheer pleasure of working on the project, and the great luxury for a film actor on location of being able to commute from home.

  When Susie broke the news of her coup, my first reaction was to take a small huff that I hadn't been consulted. That cut no ice; my wife told me firmly that this was a decision for her alone, without being coloured by anyone's personal prejudices. Gerry Meek's first reaction was nervousness; our new chairman had been backed in his own business by a very high-powered finance director and he was worried that he might try to introduce him. Gillian Harvey wasn't worried at all; on the contrary, she was both astonished that Susie had pulled it off, and dead chuffed by the personal cachet that serving on a board chaired by Fisher would bring her within the bank.

  The appointment was formalised there and then. On the following Saturday morning, at another board meeting, I had my first experience of Sir Graeme Fisher's famous plain speaking.

  Our new chairman was a slightly built man in his late sixties, totally bald and with piercing blue eyes. At first sight, it occurred to me that he would have made a perfect James Bond villain. This was confirmed when he spoke. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, in an unreconstructed Lanarkshire accent, "I want to make one thing clear from the outset. I'm not here as a figurehead. I've agreed to chair this business because I believe that it has potential and can go on to achieve a mass not far short of the company with which I've been associated until now. I hope I don't need to tell you that it's my job as chairman to represent the interests of all the shareholders and to ensure that they achieve maximum value for their investment in this business." He looked at Susie through those unblinking blue eyes.

  "That means, Miss Gantry, that I don't give a damn about the size of your shareholding, and that I will not allow you to pursue policies which I believe may be holding the company back. This is a publicly quoted company, and I will not let it play by private company rules."

  This was too much for me. "Excuse me, Sir Graeme," I interrupted, 'but I was under the impression that last week we appointed you as chairman, not managing director."

  He didn't even look in my direction. "I'll come to you in a minute, Mr. Blackstone." I wanted very much to reach across and twist his head round to face me… and then maybe twist it a bit further than that… but for Susie's sake I sat there like a scolded schoolboy.

  "You may not like what I'm saying to you, Miss Gantry. You may even think you've made a terrible mistake and be tempted to correct it at once. If that is the case, of course I'll go at once. However, I don't need to tell you how that would be viewed by the business community, especially after the publicity which greeted my appointment.

  Now, do we understand each other?"

  Susie drew in a deep breath; I feared that when she exhaled it would burn off his eyebrows, leaving him totally hairless. But it didn't.

  Instead, she nodded. "I understand you, as long as you understand that I am indeed managing director, as my husband pointed out, and that the day-to-day running of the business will remain mine." She paused, and gave him a sweet smile. "And as long as you understand that if you ever threaten me again, implicitly as you did just now, or explicitly, I will blow you out one second later."

  For the first time, Graeme Fisher blinked, then he too smiled.

  "Agreed."

  Then he turned to me and the smile was gone. "Mr. Blackstone, you're a shareholder as well as a director, I understand."

  "True," I said, coldly. I had decided that I did not like the man, and I wasn't about to disguise the fact. "An unpaid director," I added.

  "There's no virtue in that," he retorted. "If you're contributing, you should be rewarded. Now let me ask you something: if a situation arose where your wife and I had a disagreement, and let's say, her position threatened your interests as a shareholder, who would you support?"

  "Her."

  "So you're saying that your first duty as a director is loyalty to your wife?"

  "I'm saying that I know my wife, and her abilities, better than anyone on this planet. I don't know you; I only know what you've achieved in another business. If it was a matter of choosing between your judgement and Susie's, then based on experience, I'd back hers."

  "Mmm," the old knight muttered, 'commendable, maybe, but still not exactly objective. Mr. Blackstone, I'll be as direct as I can be.

  Other than support for your wife, I can't see a single quality that you bring to this table. I've looked at your CV and I can't find a thing on it that qualifies you to be a director of a listed company. Son, this m
ight have been a family business once, but it's gone beyond that; it did as soon as it offered shares for public subscription. I have an instinctive dislike of husband and wife teams in this situation; I don't like pillow talk, or any other discussions between directors to which the rest of the board aren't privy. So, what I'm saying is that I'd feel a lot more comfortable chairing this board if you weren't a member."

  "You're asking me to resign?"

  "I am indeed."

  "And if he doesn't?" said Susie, heavily.

  Fisher looked at her and gave her another flicker of a smile. "Don't worry, Miss Gantry, there was no implied threat there. If he doesn't I'll chair it uncomfortably, although I will ask you both not to discuss agenda matters outside the properly constituted forum for such discussions. That is, round this table. Fair, I think."

  "Fair," my wife conceded.

  I reached an instant decision. "It's okay, Chairman," I told him. "You won't need to bring your haemorrhoid cushion to meetings. I'll resign, on one condition; that you don't seek to replace me with a nominee of yours, or with anyone else who is not acceptable to Susie."

  "I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing."

  "Fine," I said, although I didn't quite believe him, and stood up. "See you in the car," I said to Susie, who was frowning up at me, seriously.

  "What the hell did you do that for?" she demanded, when she joined me forty-five minutes later.

  "It seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe I can't support you as a director, but I sure as hell can as a husband. Besides, no way am I going to let that guy tell us what we can and can't discuss in our own bedroom."

  She grinned at me. "You're not as dumb as my chairman thinks, are you?"

  Twenty-One.

  As the weeks went by I began to think that maybe Sir Graeme Fisher wasn't as smart as he thought, either. Susie gave me blow-by-blow accounts of her meetings with him, and of the board meetings to which I'd given up access. The overall impression that I formed of the guy was that he was efficient, but maybe, just maybe… listen to me, criticising a guy who's made a billion from scratch… not quite as comfortable in the construction industry as he had been in the world of insurance and finance. All the initiatives still seemed to be coming from Susie, but, that said, we both had to concede that with him in the chair, the share price hit an all-time high, around one sixty-five a share, and stayed there.