"It couldn't bust the business, could it?"
"No, but it could put us back to square one, and make us vulnerable.
That's why Ms Morgan has to be behind it."
I couldn't argue with that.
By the time that Jay dropped me at Glasgow Airport to catch the sparrow-fart London shuttle, en route for Shepperton Studios, the Record was on the streets. Worse, all the other papers had picked it up for their last editions and BBC was running it on the morning news as well.
The follow-up phone calls had started a few seconds after the first copies of the Record had found their way into the hands of its competitors. Naturally, we were prepared for them; Alison Goodchild had been briefed… as I had expected, I had tracked her down with Ricky Ross; their strange, on-off relationship had survived for longer than either of them had anticipated… and had programmed our phone to divert all calls to her number.
That didn't mean that we had a peaceful night, though. Susie was approaching the really uncomfortable stage of pregnancy, where sleeping with her was like sleeping with a bag of rabbits. (We have a very big bed, but she always seems to drift towards the piece that I'm on.) Add to that the fact that she woke me several times to ask me what I thought of so-and-so on the payroll, and whether he or she might be the mole.
At five minutes to four, when all was still dark outside, even in early summer Scotland, she had convinced herself that Denise Scott was the prime suspect, and that she had set the fire in the office herself, then tried to leak the story to the media. She hadn't convinced me, not by a long chalk, but I grunted and rolled on to the last few square inches of unoccupied space on what I laughingly thought of as my side of the bed.
This was not the ideal preparation for my first day's studio shooting on the Mathew s Tale project. Nor was the news I received in the limo that picked me up from the execrable Heathrow, when I used my WAP mobile to check the Gantry share price. The London Stock Exchange had only been open for a couple of minutes, but in that blink of an analyst's eyelid it had fallen by just over thirty per cent.
I called Susie, because I knew that she'd have beaten me to the punch.
"What do you think?" I asked her.
Her optimism surprised me, especially after her night of paranoia. "Not too bad," she replied. "Fisher said we should expect at least a forty per cent mark-down in value. Apparently the City has a wee bit more faith in me than my chairman; the new price is based on the brokers' assessment rather than on actual trading. I don't expect there to be much, not initially at any rate."
"When there is I'm buying," I told her.
"Don't be daft, Oz. I don't want you to do that."
"You're not going to stop me. I'm going to instruct my brokers to pick up any stock that's offered, and I'm going to have the investor relations consultants let it be known that I'm doing it. I'm going to be seen to support you, honey, whether you like it or not."
She laughed. "You'd better be careful, then. If things get worse you could wind up owning all the minority shareholding." And then she paused. "Of course if it did get that bad you couldn't lose; as soon as a takeover bid came in the price would go up. You could sell out to Natalie Morgan and make a right killing." She paused again. "Here, Oz, you're not the mole, are you?"
When I thought about it, I realised that it wasn't a bad scam, but I protested loudly into the phone until she apologised for her bad taste joke. "By the way," I asked casually, after I had allowed myself to be mollified, 'you're not still harbouring dark thoughts about Denise, are you?"
"No," she admitted, "I'm not. That was unworthy of me too. Denise is as loyal as they come. But if it was her, it would say a lot; for example that I must be a really crap managing director if my own PA plotted to get rid of me."
"Which you're not. You're brilliant, even if you are a grumpy wee witch at times. Now you just let Fisher and Harvey earn their exorbitant directors' fees by running their investigation, unimpeded by you. Your job is to see whether you can cancel the house sales to these three hooligans and to their henchmen… assuming that the Record story's true, that is."
"I'm ahead of you," she told me. "I was going to get hold of Greg McPhillips first thing, but he beat me to it. He called just after you left in fact. So did Des Lancaster, the project manager. The story's accurate, okay: Ravens, Perry and Cornwell, the Three Bears, are all purchasers, but in their wives' names, not their own. As for the henchmen, we can't say for certain who they are: the development's been selling very well off the plans and there are a lot of buyers."
"What did Greg say?"
"Nothing good, but nothing I didn't expect. If we could prove that there was a conspiracy here, we might have a chance of cancelling the contracts, but we'll have the devil's own job doing that. All of the three actually do have more or less respectable front businesses, and none of them have any significant criminal convictions. As for their wives, they all raise money for bloody charities. They've all signed contracts and paid deposits; the next obligations lie on our side now.
They can pull out, on forfeiture of their deposits, but we can't. As things stand, if we just gave them their money back and told them to piss off, they could sue us… unless we cancelled the whole project, which I will not, no, cannot do."
"So what are you going to do?"
"My instant reaction is to give them their money back, tell them to piss off, and take my chances, but I'll take serious legal advice before I do that. These people may not care to launch a civil court action."
"No," I snorted, 'they may just blow up your office instead. These are gangsters, Susie."
"Ach, they are of a certain level, that's all; there's bigger than them. The Lord Provost was, for a start. I don't give a damn about them, really. Let's try and put it in perspective, now the initial shock's worn off. Think this through with me, Oz. What's happened so far?"
"First, the letter-bomb," I said, 'leaked to the press."
"Right. We dealt with that at the time and it did no damage. Next?"
"The Three Bears buy into the New Bearsden project, and that fact is leaked. This time it has done damage to the company."
"True, but that doesn't need to be a conspiracy at all: the three of them might each have fancied the project separately and bought with no collusion. But someone's come upon the fact and leaked it. I don't think that the McMafia give a bugger about us. They're not our real enemies. The person who's feeding the press is, and the way I read what Jenny Pollock said to you, that wasn't done by a mole within this company, but by someone who's paying them."
"So how do we deal with the New Bearsden situation?"
She gave me a small laugh. A good sign; when Susie's sense of humour is working, she's on the ball. "This time we can't do what you did with the letter-bomb, and just lie about it. I see another option, but we use it calmly and quietly. Subject to the legal advice I mentioned earlier, what I intend to do is indeed to give our three dodgy clients their money back. But I don't intend to tell them to piss off. I intend to ask them, through our legal advisers, so that we can't be accused of defaming anyone, how much it would take for them to agree to piss off. What do you think?"
"Good old-fashioned bribery? That usually works, I'll grant you. But remember, love, these guys are among other things in the protection racket. If you give them a bung to go away, what's to stop them pulling the same dodge on every housing project you undertake in the future?"
"We'll see them coming next time."
"But will you see their cousins, or their mates, or just some punter they've picked up in a pub and paid to front for them?"
"Maybe not, but I'll deal with that as and when it happens. This is today's crisis, and old-fashioned bribery, as you call it, is our best chance of knocking it on the head. Got any better ideas?"
I did, but I doubted whether Everett and Jerry would co-operate. "No,"
I said, 'if you think that's your best shot, take it."
"I will, but there's something else: our real enem
y. Fisher and Harvey can look for the mole, but we need to do more than that. I want to follow my instincts, Oz. I want Natalie Morgan tailed; I want to know everyone she has contact with. I want her phone tapped if it's possible; I want to know everyone she speaks to. But I don't want the instruction to come from within the company, in case our mole finds out about it. Do you think Ricky would do it?"
"Not the phone-tap. He won't do that because it's illegal. But as for the rest of it, I'm sure he will. He used to work for Torrent, remember, until Natalie's Uncle James sacked him. He's got a long memory, has ex-superintendent Ross. I'm sure he'll take the job."
"Okay. You instruct him. Tell him we'll pay for it privately."
"Susie," I protested, "I'm working here."
"Oh? Where are you now? That doesn't sound like film studio noise in the background." I owned up to my surroundings. "Okay, call him now.
Get him on the case."
"If it'll make you happy," I conceded. "Kiss our daughter for me, and I'll call you tonight. Go carefully, though."
I called Ricky straight away, catching him at home. "It's you," he growled. "Thanks a fucking million for last night; the phone never stopped till three in the morning."
"That teach you to sleep with a PR consultant. I've got a job for you now, though." I filled him in on Susie's requirements; as I had expected, he jumped at the chance to get one back at Torrent. Ross Security had been embarrassed by its public dismissal by the company, and probably a little damaged financially as well.
"Who gets the reports?" That was all he asked; we didn't discuss money, legal parameters, or anything else.
"Susie: at home, though, not in the office. I'll be down south for a while."
I left him to it, and spent what little was left of the trip to the studios in Middlesex on the phone to my bankers, to see how much ready cash I had to play with, and then to my brokers to tell them I was a buyer for any Gantry shares that came on to the market… but in small lots. I didn't want to boost the price too quickly; there might be a profit to be made, at the end of the day.
I did something else too, as soon as I got to the studios. I checked the schedule to see whether Ewan Capperauld was on set that day… I knew he wasn't in any of my scenes… and when I found out that he was, sought him out in his dressing room. He was in surprisingly fine form, for a Monday morning. I asked him what had brightened his day, but all I got was a mysterious smile.
The Gantry story hadn't made the London press… they really are insular bastards down there… and so I had to fill him in on the details. When I had finished I asked him something, straight out. "Are you still seeing Nat Morgan?"
The smile came back. "No. As I told you, I'm horizontally occupied in other quarters at the moment."
"Rather you than me, mate," I thought.
"You haven't seen her at all lately?"
"No, nor spoken to her for at least three months."
"When you were on speaking terms, did she ever talk about Susie, and the Gantry Group?"
"Did she ever not? I'm afraid your wife is something of an obsession with the lovely Nat. She's a business megalomaniac, you know; it's something she seems to have inherited from that appalling uncle of hers. She wants to build Torrent into a corporation that stretches from sea to shining sea."
"Do you think she's up to it?"
"Not a chance, m' boy. Between you and me she's better in bed than in the boardroom. Your Susie would have her for breakfast in a business battle."
"Did she ever mention having any contacts within the Gantry Group?"
"Not that I recall. The only things she ever said about it were derogatory, and you don't really want to hear them."
"I sure do." In the distance I heard an assistant director call my name, but I ignored him. They're best left alone anyway.
"It was personal," Ewan said, 'petty stuff. I ignored it, really. She would say that Susie had inherited her position and that she had no vision of her own. She suspected that she was still taking orders from her father, for all that he was locked away. She said that Lord Provost Gantry and her Uncle James had been men who had understood each other."
I didn't know they'd ever met, but Jack Gantry certainly got around.
"Do you have any idea what she's up to these days?"
"Trying to do you down, from the sound of it."
"I meant personally."
"So did I," he laughed, and then was suddenly serious. "As for the other, I don't know. The truth is, Oz, the last time I heard from Natalie, she called me to say she didn't want to see me any more. Her affections now lie elsewhere, I'm afraid."
"Any idea where?"
He shook his head. "Not the faintest." He grinned again. "And now my boy, you really must go. That assistant director is almost hoarse shouting for you."
Twenty-Four.
I wasn't the most popular man on set that morning; my discussion with Ewan had held up shooting, and delays can be more expensive in the movie industry than almost anywhere else in the world. But I made up for it by being flawless.
I had worked on my scenes the day before, and refreshed them on the plane… once I'd finished reading the newspaper coverage.
Concentrating as hard as I ever have in my life, I was able to put everything and everyone else out of my mind and, literally, become Mathew Fleming from the moment I walked on to the sound stage until the moment the make-up woman took off my dramatic facial scar at the end of the day's work. Louise Golding was on top form too, and all our scenes were first takes… a rare occurrence on a Paul Girone movie, as I'd found out already. By the time we were finished, not only had we made up for my delay, we'd bought time for one of Ewan's key shots to be wrapped up.
They had booked the cast… apart from Ewan and Scott Steele, who both live in London… into a hotel in Surrey, a secluded country house just south of Guildford, down the A3. There was still some commuter traffic around when we left Shepperton, and so we didn't get there to check in until almost eight.
I'd been snacking on set, and, frankly, Louise and I had both seen enough of the excitable M. Girone for one day, so I asked for a poached salmon salad to be sent to my room, and went off there straight away, to phone Susie.
"Good day at the office?" she asked me, just as the room service waiter wheeled in my salad on a trolley. I bunged him a fiver and he left, nodding and muttering thanks. There was a bottle of Martin Codax, a nice Spanish Albarino white wine, in an ice-bucket; I poured myself a glass as I answered.
"It was fine, and it just got better; my dinner's arrived." (Scottish people do not have 'supper'.) I described the plateful on the trolley, and sipped the wine; not bad at all.
"Lucky you," said my wife. "I had macaroni with Ethel and Janet."
At once I felt envious, and homesick, so I forced myself back to the serious stuff. "How did it go with the lawyers?"
"I've been told to make no public comment."
"Not even to me?"
"Don't be daft. Greg McPhillips spoke to his tame QC, and her very firm advice was that we should say absolutely nothing at all to avoid any risk of defaming the purchasers of these houses, who are not, she reminded me, Ravens, Cornwell and Perry, but their wives. She gave the okay to my proposal that we offer to buy them out of the deal, but she insists that any contact must be in print, and that she drafts all our correspondence. That's where we're at."
"When will she have finished the first letter?"
"Tomorrow, she hoped."
"What's been the effect of the stories on the New Bearsden project?"
Susie snorted; I could see her frowning as clearly as if I was looking at her across our desk. "Just as we expected," she replied. "Total and utter catastrophe. Sales have been trotting along at nine or ten a day until now. Today we didn't have a single visitor to the sales office, other than journalists demanding to see the site plan so they could pin-point the three plots in question; I've had to tell Des Lancaster to close until further notice. Worse than that, though, we'v
e had umpteen phone calls from buyers, straight people who've reserved plots, wanting to know whether they'll be living next door to drug dealers, and we've had at least half a dozen formal contacts from solicitors advising that their clients want to cancel, without financial penalty."
"How have you dealt with them?"
"Stalled them, for now. We've reserved our position and said that we'll respond at the beginning of next week."
"I don't suppose we've had any contact from the Three Bears?"
"Funny you should ask that. Mummy Bear Perry called Lancaster and accused him of blackening her good name in the papers. Bizarre, eh?"
"You said it." I forked up some poached salmon. "Alongside all that, how's the Star Chamber going?"
"What?" She laughed. "Ah, you mean Fisher's uncompromising, in-depth investigation, as he's quoted as saying in the Scotsman. So far, it's achieved the resignation of Des Lancaster's secretary… which she was subsequently persuaded to withdraw, after Des gave her a made-up apology from the chairman for the rudeness of his questioning… and it's prompted one of the New Bearsden site agents to adopt an aggressive attitude. That's how Sir Graeme described it. The way Gillian Harvey tells it, the guy… he's Irish: Aidan Keane… said that anyone who accused him of deceit or disloyalty would be eating all his meals with a straw for the next six weeks. Other than that, though, there's been nothing."
"How many suspects are there?"
"As many as might have walked into Des's office and had a look at the sales list. He's a bit cavalier about things like that, is our man.
Fisher's already saying he's got to go. He may be right, but I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of admitting that straight away.
I'll wait till the smoke's cleared a bit, then I'll transfer him to head office, swap him with Brian Shaw, the purchasing manager, job for job."
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