An Ocean Apart

by Robin Pilcher

  Also, I would be grateful if you could keep this between ourselves, and please do not approach anyone on the board of directors. If you do manage to find out anything, please fax me back immediately at the number on the confirmation slip. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll take it that all is well!

  With best wishes,

  David Corstorphine

  David inserted the paper into the machine and dialled the Glendurnich fax number. Then, as it began to go through, he turned and picked up the chair, pushing back Sophie’s bed into its customary position with his foot.

  “Sophie?”

  “Yes?” a sleepy voice replied from behind the curtain.

  “Your bed awaits you.”

  Chapter TWENTY-NINE

  Since getting her job at Glendurnich Distilleries, Doreen McWhirter had arrived at the office every morning at eight-thirty sharp, even though she was not expected until nine, along with the other office workers. However, in order to assert the control that she felt befitting her newly appointed position as receptionist, she thought it necessary to be at her station to greet the directors of the company when they walked through the door, and also to show herself as a figure of dedication and responsibility to her fellow workers when they traipsed in at the scheduled arrival time.

  Consequently, on that Monday morning she was both surprised and somewhat miffed to find that she was not the first to arrive, the main door having swung gently open when she had placed her key in its lock. She clipped her way across the reception area to her desk and studied the lights on her telephone.

  Mr. Caple was in, the red light corresponding to his office telephone being the only one that shone out from the console. Doreen smiled coyly to herself and, picking up her handbag, walked around the desk and with a dainty jaunt to her step made her way over to the ladies’ room. Placing the handbag on the shelf in front of the mirror, she took out her compact and lipstick, then, removing her winged spectacles, she began to give her face the gentlest of touch-overs.

  She really liked Mr. Caple. She had known that from the moment she had met him at the interview. It was so pleasant to encounter a young man who was so organized, so particular in the way he liked things done, and she was sure that he had given her the job because he had recognized similar attributes in herself.

  She snapped shut her compact and placed everything back in her bag. Then, having given the sides of her neatly cropped greying hair a quick flick with her fingers, she walked back out into the reception area and over to her desk. Pulling open one of the larger bottom drawers, she carefully laid her handbag on its side and slid the drawer slowly shut, making sure that no part of the soft leather would catch on its runners. Then, straightening up, she clapped her hands together once to signify that, for her, work was now under way.

  She began her routine by walking across to the front door and picking up the newspapers that had been pushed through the letter-box. She placed them in order of size on the coffee-table that was positioned between two of the leather sofas, uncreasing each as she laid it out with two quick wipes of the side of her hand.

  Having stepped back from the table to make sure that the newspapers appeared symmetrical also from the front angle, she made her way over to the fax machine to check if anything had been sent through over the weekend. There was only one message. She picked it up and walked back to her desk, reading it through as she went. At first, her face registered incomprehension, then, having read it through again, she looked up in thought, her eyes narrowed and her newly glossed lips pursed tight in disapproval.

  Glancing down at the switchboard, she saw that Mr. Caple’s light was now off. She strutted across the reception area and made her way quickly up the stairs and along the corridor to his office. She knocked and cocked an ear to await his reply.

  “Yes?” his voice called out.

  She opened the door and put her head around the side.

  “Ah, Doreen! How are you this morning? Come on in!”

  The receptionist smiled at his bright manner and entered. “You’re up with the lark this morning, Mr. Caple,” she said playfully, feeling a glow come to her cheeks as she said it.

  “Work to do, Doreen! Nothing should stop for work!”

  “Absolutely not!” she replied, letting out a merry little laugh. “I couldn’t agree with you more!”

  “So what can I do for you?”

  She walked over to his desk, clutching the fax to her bosom. “I hope you’ll agree with me that I’m doing the right thing. It’s just that I found this fax on the machine this morning, and, well, in my opinion, I do not think that its contents seem to have the best interests of the company at heart.”

  The smile on Duncan’s face was replaced with a quizzical frown, and he reached out his hand for the fax. “Then you’d better let me have a look at it, Doreen.”

  Doreen handed it over, quickly clasping her hands back to her bosom as she stood waiting in trepidation for his reaction. As Duncan read it through, he felt his stomach begin to tighten into a knot, and he had to make a conscious effort not to swear out loud. Looking up, he forced himself to smile at the receptionist before reading through the fax once more.

  “Right!” he said eventually, tossing the page down onto his desk. “You did exactly the right thing in showing me this.” He turned his chair to the side and stared thoughtfully out of the window.

  “Well, I think that it’s bordering on being a criminal act, Mr. Caple!” Doreen snipped tartly, pleased that he had agreed with her and thinking that this now granted her the right to speak her own mind on the subject. “I mean, fancy trying to go over the heads of the directors! And who, may I ask, does this man”—she leaned forward and spun round the fax on the desk so that she could read it—“this Mr. Corstorphine think he—”

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” Duncan cut in, turning his chair round to face her again. “Until I’ve been able to make some inquiries into this, I think we should keep it entirely between ourselves. Tell nobody, especially this”—he glanced at the fax—“this Archie McLachlan.” He looked up at her inquiringly. “I don’t think I know him, do I?”

  “Well, he’s presently working in distribution. As far as I can gather, he’s on a year’s training scheme, so he’s not a full-time employee of the distillery.”

  “Ah,” Duncan said, slowly nodding his head. “Well, as I said, Doreen, we’ll keep this to ourselves; but in the meantime, could you do something for me?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Could you find out how much longer young McLachlan has to serve before he completes his training scheme?”

  “Of course.” Doreen smiled knowingly at Duncan. “A very shrewd move, if you’ll allow me to say so.”

  “Okay, well, let’s leave it at that, and thank you for bringing this to my attention. I have a feeling that it might turn out to be an invaluable piece of information.”

  “I sincerely hope so,” she replied smugly and, turning sharply around, she walked smartly over to the door and left the office.

  Duncan waited until he heard her footsteps descending the stairs, then he jumped to his feet, making his chair shoot backwards. He turned and caught it before it banged against the back wall.

  “Damn!” he said under his breath.

  He picked up the fax and paced up and down the floor as he read it through again. He stopped and slapped the top of his head.

  “Damn! Damn! Damn!”

  He scrumpled up the paper into a ball in his fist and went to stand by the window, his eyes fixed blankly on the tall pines that stood beyond the car-park.

  How the hell had David found out about Kirkpatrick’s? Nobody else knew about it! And how long had he been keeping up clandestine contact with this guy Archie? Maybe more faxes had passed through the office without his knowing while old Margaret had still been here. Damn it, he had underestimated David. He thought that he was going to be away from the business for a hell of a lot longer than this! He turned and walked back to his d
esk, unscrumpling the fax as he went. He pulled in his chair and sat down, reading through the fax once more.

  He wasn’t definite, though, was he? “Probably nothing to worry about on Glendurnich’s part” he wrote. But, on the other hand, he must think something was up if he had expressly asked this guy McLachlan not to approach the board of directors.

  He shook his head and pressed the automatic dialling code on his telephone, leaving it on speaker mode. He sat back in his chair, still trying to work out the connotations of the fax as the telephone rang.

  The nasal tones of a female telephonist sang out from the speaker. “Good morn-ing, Kirkpatrick Hol-dings!”

  “Mr. Davenport’s office, please.”

  “May I say who’s call-ing?”

  “Duncan Caple, Glendurnich.”

  The telephone clicked, giving way to ten seconds of electronic Mozart before John Davenport spoke. “Hullo, Duncan. How are you this morning?”

  “Not good, I’m afraid, John. We’ve got a problem. The receptionist here has just brought me up a fax which came in sometime over the weekend.”

  “And?”

  “It’s from David Corstorphine in the States.”

  “Go on.”

  Duncan leaned forward to the speaker and went through the fax slowly and concisely. At the end, he sat back in his chair and waited. There was silence on the line, save for John Davenport’s heavy breathing.

  “Christ, I thought you said that he was out of action!”

  “Well, I thought he was! On the other hand, I wouldn’t say there’s any real evidence here to indicate that he’s back in action.”

  “Hell, I would have thought that that fax was conclusive enough.”

  “Not really. For a start, he’s based the whole thing on supposition. I honestly think that by coincidence he has heard a rumour of your plans to purchase a malt-whisky business, and he’s just checking it out—nothing more than that. And besides that, I’m pretty sure the guy’s not fit in the brain yet, because I make a point of asking his father about him, and he always replies that he’s not ready to come home yet.”

  “Right.” There was a short silence. “Then why do you think that he didn’t want the directors to be approached? I mean, why did he not just fax you direct?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t fathom that out either. At first, I thought that it might be that he’d been back in touch with Deakin’s, but then we’d have heard from Charles Deakin if that had been the case. The way I read it is that the guy feels the whole thing is so improbable that he doesn’t want to risk my witnessing him make a complete fool of himself again, like he did in New York.”

  John Davenport sighed. “Well, let’s look on the bright side. Thank God he sent a fax, and thank God we intercepted it.”

  Duncan picked up his pen and began doodling on his desk-pad.

  “So what do you want to do? Continue with the plan or, well, rethink it?”

  John Davenport’s voice exploded through the speaker. “Christ no! Listen, as you said, his whole fax is pure supposition! Kirkpatrick’s has great need of Glendurnich, Duncan, and I’m not going to throw a whole year’s positioning work out the window at this juncture! And remember, you’ve got half a million pounds coming to you if we succeed in purchasing the company. You don’t want to kiss that goodbye, do you? Come on, we go ahead with it, but we’ll just have to bring the whole schedule forward. We can’t risk leaving it for another two weeks.”

  “Right. So you want to make it this week, then.”

  “I’m afraid so, Duncan. What do you think? Can you manage it?”

  Duncan threw the pen down on the desk and fell back in his chair.

  “Okay!” he said decisively. “We’ll bring the schedule forward a week. I’ll call a meeting of all personnel in the car-park at five P.M. on Friday, just before they head home, and go through the proposal with them then. That’ll give them the weekend to mull it over. Then I’ll pay Inchelvie a visit on Saturday afternoon and tell him about the offer.”

  “All right, but I really think you are going to have to start putting some fairly extreme pressure on him now, Duncan. You have to convince him that this really is the only way that Glendurnich will survive in the future, and make sure that he understands implicitly that we have the best interests of both the company and the family at heart. I would suggest you really push your trump card concerning the workers’ thirty-one per-cent shareholding as soon as you’ve heard their decision on Monday, and maybe see if you can’t get him to sign over some of his own shares as soon as possible after that. I’d feel happier if we had nearer the fifty percent mark before the whole world gets wind of this.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry. I think we’ve worked out pretty well how to handle this whole thing.”

  “I hope so. I have to warn you that we are sailing pretty close to the wind with Glendurnich. While we’re not doing anything strictly illegal, our actions could be classed as being ‘over-manipulative.’”

  “Yes, I understand that, John.”

  “Good! Now, what are you going to do about Corstorphine’s fax?”

  “Well, I thought at first that I might answer it by sending a fax straight from the computer—no identifiable signature or anything. But I think that’s too dangerous, inasmuch as it would actually constitute an illegal action. No, I think we’ll just leave it. I mean, at least he left open that option for us by saying that he didn’t expect a reply.”

  “Okay, well, I agree with that. And what about this chap McLachlan?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll deal with him.”

  “Right. Just make sure you cover your back, Duncan, in every way. I’ve had to do it all my life, so I know what you’re about to let yourself in for! And keep in touch on a daily basis from now on, or even more frequently if you want any advice.”

  “Will do.”

  “Well, best of luck, then. Just go for it, boy!”

  The telephone clicked off before Duncan had time to reply. He switched off the speakerphone, then picked up the fax and slowly tore it into pieces and threw it away. He pressed the button on his intercom. “Doreen?”

  “Yes, Mr. Caple?”

  “What did you find out about McLachlan?”

  “His apprenticeship terminates at the end of next month.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m afraid that I have no option but to bring it forward, Doreen, so could you ask him to come to see me right now, please?”

  “Very good, Mr. Caple.”

  “And, Doreen?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks again for your assistance over this matter. I really think that that fax could have been very hurtful to the future of the company.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought. I shall contact young McLachlan straight away.”

  Chapter THIRTY

  The atmosphere in the offices of Culpepper Rowan on Tuesday morning was one of tense expectancy, the whole place seeming to have taken on the air of a legal-appeals office that was awaiting word of a reprieve from execution. There was little laughter or chat, the executives choosing to stay in their own offices behind closed doors, and those employees who passed in the corridors did so in silence, exchanging only a fleeting nervous smile with each other instead of the customary light-hearted greeting or teasing remark.

  The only contact that Sam Culpepper had made with the members of his staff that morning had been in the form of an internal E-mail, giving express instructions that if Tarvy’s were to be in touch, then he should be the first informed. Consequently, every time the telephone rang, Jennifer stopped what she was doing and gazed mesmerically at the light on the panel, nervously biting at a finger-nail until it went out again. Then, with a sigh of resignation, she would set about trying to get her brain back to work on the proposal for Russ’s new clients.

  However, by mid-day, she had heard nothing from Sam, and realizing that it would now be five o’clock in the afternoon in London, she began to conclude that somewhere in an office, not very far
away from theirs, a party was already under way to celebrate the winning of the Tarvy’s account. She went back over in her mind every last detail of her proposal, knowing each heading and paragraph as if it might be the most personal record she had ever kept of herself. The more she thought about it, the more new ideas or angles which had been discarded seemed to spring to mind, ones which she now wished she had had the sense to include in the document. And the more consideration she gave it, the more despondent she became.

  By one o’clock, the telephone seemed to have stopped ringing completely. That’s it, she thought to herself, it’s all over. We definitely didn’t get it. She slumped forward on her desk and rubbed at her face with her hands. What a waste of effort! Jesus, why did Sam ever think that they might have a chance against all those big shots? It was like—David trying to take on Goliath! She suddenly snorted out an involuntary laugh, realizing the funny side to her pun, and a mental picture sprang instantly to mind of her David standing in front of an enormous Philistine giant armed with a garden hoe and a tennis racket. Knowing him, he’d probably win, too!

  She pushed her seat back, and smoothing her hands over her hair and linking them at the back of her head, she swivelled round to focus on a couple of window-cleaners suspended in their cradle from the roof of the opposite office block, seemingly oblivious to their height above Fifth Avenue as they chatted.

  The door of her office was suddenly flung open with such force that it crashed against the bookcase behind it, making her jolt round in her chair. No one entered, but she heard muffled voices outside in the corridor.

  “Who’s there?” Jennifer asked, leaning forward on her desk to see if she could make out what was going on.

  “Come on, Russ, get it off!” a voice whispered.