by J G Alva
Sandy shrugged. There were no tears from her, but Nick wondered if there hadn’t been behind closed doors. Now Sandy seemed to be as devoid of emotion as she was of moisture, a shrivelled nut of a woman with her life in pieces around her, as her kitchen was in pieces around her.
“I’ll give you the shares,” Sandy said, flapping her hand dismissively. “You can have them. I don’t want them. What am I going to do with them? I don’t know shares from Adam.”
“We will pay for them,” Yilmaz said, but Sandy interrupted him.
“I don’t want the money. Just take them. They’re no good to me. And I certainly don’t want Mike to have them. Mike Ross has had his way for far too long, and it’s about time his nose was knocked out of joint. Take them. I don’t want them. They’re yours.”
Nick looked at Yilmaz, and then back at Sandy, but she was staring at the floor miserably.
Nick could think of nothing else to say, so he said, “we’ll send somebody to arrange it all. Thank you for your time.”
◆◆◆
“What is the British obsession with the noses?” Yilmaz asked cheerfully.
Nick took a moment trying to make sense of that, but couldn’t.
“What?”
“Noses,” Yilmaz said, waving back at the house as they walked down the path and on to the street. “Harold is saying pay through the nose, now Sandy is saying nose out of joint. Why all the talk of noses?”
Nick shrugged.
“Beats me.”
“You British are very strange people,” he said, but he was smiling.
“I prefer to think of us as charming,” Nick said.
“No, no. Strange.”
“We’ve got them, Yilmaz. We’ve got them all.”
Yilmaz’s smiled stretched wider.
“It is good feeling, no?”
◆◆◆
“We have Mrs Keats’ shares,” Yilmaz told Harold over the phone. “Could you send someone to do the paperwork with her?”
“I’ll get it done,” Harold said.
“What do we do now?”
“Well, with Keats’ 16.2% you have the controlling interest. I’ll start juggling it all to be under your name, I mean, you, directly, and then I suppose we call an extraordinary board meeting. Get all the shareholders together, and then you can officially lay claim to what is now your company.”
“Good. You can arrange this?”
“I’ll get it going.”
“How long, do you think?”
“Well, depending on a few things, I think we can set the board meeting for a week from today. That should be enough time for everybody to get organised.”
“Good. You have done well, Harold.”
“When you first came to me, I didn’t think what you were asking was possible, but...you’ve done it. You’ve done well, Mr Karipidis. Congratulations.”
Yilmaz laughed.
“We are both good. I will speak to you soon, Harold. Goodbye.”
◆◆◆
CHAPTER 19
“Is Mr Karipidis there, please?”
“Mr Thomas? Stephen Sommers. No, Yilmaz is out at the moment. Are we all set for the board meeting?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line that sent a note of disquiet through Nick.
“I really need to speak to Mr Karipidis.“
“Just tell me, Mr Thomas. What’s wrong?”
Another, shorter pause.
“I really would prefer to speak to Mr Karipidis.”
“Mr Thomas, you’re boring me. What is it?”
An even shorter pause.
“It’s Mrs Keats,” Harold exploded.
“What about her?”
“After you saw her last week, I sent one of my guys around to do the paperwork, and she apologised, said she couldn’t find the share certificates, that she couldn’t – "
"What’s a share certificate?”
“Oh, it’s the deeds to the shares, the legal document that proves ownership. So my guy told her to contact us when she found it. Two days later she still hasn’t called, so I contacted her, and she said the certificates are with her solicitor, contact him. So I contact him and he assures me it will be done that day. Or by the end of tomorrow, at the latest. When I still didn’t have it yesterday, I started to panic. I talked to the solicitor and he said that Mrs Keats informed him not to sell. So I go round there, me, myself, and perhaps I wasn’t as – as collected as I should have been, but – "
“What did you do?”
The shortest pause yet.
“I told her that she had entered a verbal contract with Mr Karipidis and yourself and that if she did not sell her shares to us I would take her to court.”
“Okay. What happened?”
“She threw me out.”
“She what?”
“She said she’d call the police if I didn’t leave. I...I didn’t know what else to do.”
Nick thought.
“So we’re stuck. Again. And the board meeting’s tonight. Fuck.”
“You need to go and see her. Whatever you did last time worked. Maybe you could do it again.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Nick said, and just then he heard the front door open.
Nick waved Yilmaz in and then said quickly in to the phone, “alright, Harold, you did what you could do. We’ll go and see her. I’ll get back to you.”
Harold was sputtering apologies down the phone when Nick hung up.
“What?” Yilmaz said.
“We’ve got to go and see Sandy Keats. Now.”
◆◆◆
“I’m sorry to have led you up the garden path, but my mind’s made up. I can’t let you have them.”
“When we saw you last week – "
Sandy shook her head, cutting him off.
“I wasn’t...thinking clearly then. I was too hasty. I’ve had time to think it over and...selling Arthur’s shares isn’t right. It’s a betrayal of him, of everything he worked for. I can’t do that.”
Nick looked at Yilmaz helplessly.
“But he betrayed you,” he said to her.
She shook her head again, quickly.
“No. He never had that affair. The pictures are fake. They look like him but it’s not him. I can’t prove it, but I know it in my heart. And I didn’t trust him, I just thought the worst, kicked him out and he killed himself because of it. Because of me. I’ll have to live with that. So be it. But I won’t betray him again by selling his shares to you. They’re where they belong, with Mike.”
Nick could feel the red creeping in to this face.
“You sold them to him?” He said, taking a step toward her, his clenched hand coming up threateningly almost of its own accord.
Yilmaz put a hand on his arm, stopping him.
Nick came back to himself, dropped his arm and stared at the floor, thinking. Well, trying to think anyway. Sandy looked a little scared of him in that moment, and that cooled his boiling blood somewhat.
“But last week,” he said, desperately, “all that talk about Mike being as bad as your husband – "
“I was wrong. I was in shock. Or something. I loved my husband, and I’m sure he loved me too. And Michael Ross was his best friend, perhaps his only friend. Arthur would want Mike to have those shares. I know it. And nothing you do or say is going to change my mind about that.”
She stood in her kitchen, a little cleaner and more orderly now with the tins in their cupboards, the washing put away, the plates drying in the dish rack, resolute, stoic, the loyal housewife, wringing her hands self-consciously over her pot belly. Nick seriously considered the idea of scaring her in to giving them up, but that wouldn’t work, how could it? Mike already had the shares, there was no way now to get them back, but Nick might have done it anyway, for the pure satisfaction of it, if Yilmaz hadn’t been there, and with shock he thought look at what I have become scaring old ladies but of course there was Toad, and now Toad spoke, that bitch stole our one chance for reve
nge, she deserves to be scared, hell it might do her good to have the shit kicked out of her, go on, do it.
No, Nick thought.
They were beaten.
Mike had won.
Unless...
“Alright,” Nick said quietly, and he realised he was talking to himself rather than to anybody else, so he looked at Sandy and nodded and said, louder, clearer, “alright.”
He turned, and got out of that house before he did something to Sandy Keats that he would regret.
◆◆◆
“So,” Yilmaz said softly, in the car. “It is over.”
Nick looked at the clock in the car’s dashboard.
“What time’s the meeting?” He asked.
“I believe seven.”
Nick looked at Yilmaz and said, “we better get ready then.”
Yilmaz’s expression changed slowly, his eyes widening at the corners, his nostrils flaring slightly at the edges.
“What? What is it you are thinking? What plan is it that you have?”
◆◆◆
“You what?” Alex Lovett said.
“You heard me,” Nick said, with the ghost of a smile. “The question is, will it work? Is it legal?”
Alex shut his open mouth and worked the problem over in his mind.
“I don’t know. I don’t...There’ll be a few technicalities, but...do you know what? I think it just might.”
◆◆◆
Alex, Yilmaz and Nick arrived a little late, as was the plan; in a sea of faces Nick hoped he might be able to fade in to the background somewhat.
By mutual consent the extraordinary board meeting of the shareholders of Mitchell Cole had decided to meet in the board room of the main building of Merchant Hammond. It seemed an eternity ago to Nick when they had first sat down to talk to Graham Hammond, and looking around he could almost convince himself it was a different room. With all the people in it, milling restlessly about, helping themselves to coffee and snacks from the long antique sideboard at the back of the room, the chairs half full around the long oak table, the desk Hammond had sat behind removed, it was hardly recognisable.
Heads turned to them as they entered, and Nick hung behind Alex Lovett, keeping his head purposely lowered so as to avoid close scrutiny. But he could feel the eyes on him, pecking at his face like birds. Did any of them recognise him? He didn’t know. There were no gasps, no dropped glasses, no horrified exclamations, and that had to be good.
They took three chairs not too far from the door, and Nick thought with humour, is that in case we have to bolt? Alex put his briefcase on the table, snapped it open, and begun piling papers in a small stack next to it. He was impressive, Nick thought. He decided that he liked him.
From where he sat, obscured slightly by Yilmaz sitting a little forward of him, Nick surreptitiously surveyed the people around the table. There were a lot of faces he didn’t recognise, people, he had been told by Alex, who owned only a small amount of shares, but were entitled to a vote nonetheless…at least in line with the amount they owned. They all looked, to Nick’s untrained eye, like successful businessmen, and women, or men who had spent their lives squeezing as much out of a limited inheritance as they could get. He didn’t see one person under forty. That was, except for himself.
And Jessica.
She did not look well. She was pale, and her hair framed the sides of her face like old, dirty curtains. The shadows under her eyes were black, like paint. She held herself like an eighty year old woman, as if she was afraid of a fall that might shatter her in to a thousand pieces.
Mike himself didn’t look a picture of health either. His skin seemed to be stretched tightly over his face, and his attempt to look every bit the managing director, with hair brushed back carefully from his face, and his suit and tie in sombre, sensible colours, navy and white, seemed only to highlight the peaked look of him. As Nick watched, Mike seemed to have developed some sort of tick in his cheek, which pulled the left corner of his mouth into a strange half smile every now and then. It was a sight that both heartened and restored Nick. If nothing else, if their plan failed, it was good to know he had gotten to him. That he had gotten to them both. They should not have underestimated him.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Graham Hammond said, still looking very much like an unhappy undertaker. “I think we are all here now, so if we’d like to begin?”
The few people standing, either nibbling at the food or drinking coffee, quickly found chairs around the table, and the room settled in to some sort of order.
“I think we all know why we’re here,” Mike Ross said clearly, and all heads turned toward him at the far corner of the long table. He indicated Yilmaz. “Mr Karipidis. This is your meeting. Let’s have it.”
This was Mike all over, pushing, trying to take control.
Alex rose to his feet, spent a moment looking at his papers, and then turned to the room.
“For those of you who don’t know me, ladies and gentlemen, I’m Alex Lovett, and I’m representing Mr Karipidis in this, uh...endeavour,” he said, and smiled. A few smiles went off around the room, like camera flashes. Mike, Jessica and what Nick presumed was their lawyer next to them weren’t smiling however. “As all of you are probably aware, Mr Karipidis has, for the past two weeks, been accruing Mitchell Cole shares. He now owns 32.6% of the shares. Mr Karipidis has a lot of respect for this company, and the way it has been run, but he feels it has yet to reach its full potential. I have here proposals” – Alex began passing paper around the table – “of a sound business plan which, should he be given the opportunity, he feels sure would catapult this company from something that is, forgive the expression, mediocre, to something that will be a whole lot more. I’d like you, ladies and gentlemen, to take some time to study it before – "
“Is this a takeover bid or not?” Somebody asked loudly from the far end of the table.
Alex smiled pleasantly at the interruption.
“I say we vote now,” somebody else said.
Alex had warned them of this. Mike would have friends amongst his shareholders, and he would use them to get what he wanted. It’s like a war, Alex had said, with strategies and everything, and as it stood at the moment, they had fewer troops.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Alex said, “I’d like you first to study the proposals before we – "
“I don’t need to study anything,” a man sitting directly across from them said, throwing the proposal dismissively back towards them. He was about fifty, healthy in a stern way, with fluffy white hair, and a face with hard lines etched in it. “Mr Karipidis may be, as some have reported to me, an entrepreneur, but I see no reason why we should allow him to take over Mitchell Cole. Mike built that company from practically nothing. He’s already proven that he more than meets the challenge, and I think he should continue to do so. My shares are behind him. Anything he wants to do, I’ll back it.”
“As do I,” a woman said, a little down from the white haired man. She was in her sixties, had expensively and elaborately constructed hair dyed a subtle shade of blue, and big hanging earrings. “Quite frankly, Mr Karipidis, I don’t see what you have to offer that Mike hasn’t done already.”
“Mr Karipidis has an almost unlimited amount of investment capital to put in to Mitchell Cole,” someone said, from their side of the table. “New machines, more people. We’d be foolish to turn our backs on that.”
“What if you were to take over Mitchell Cole,” a fragile looking old man asked, not two seats away from them. “Could you guarantee that the current board of directors, as it stands, will not be altered in any way?”
Alex cleared his throat and said, “Mr Karipidis feels that...fresh minds would be better suited to give the company the energy and impetus it needs to lead it in the direction he has in mind.”
Low grumbling, mainly of dissent, erupted around the table. Nick looked over at Mike, saw him lean over and speak quietly to his lawyer. He was looking down at Nick’s end of the table,
but Nick couldn’t be sure if he was looking at him, or Yilmaz. Nick turned slightly away from him.
A voice broke through the muted mutterings and said, “what do you think, Mike?”
Mike rose.
“Well,” he said, and smiled that charming Mike Ross smile. It made Nick’s skin crawl. Strangely enough, without the moustache, the smile didn’t seem quite as earnest. “You know me. You know my track record. Mr Karipidis has told us what he’s offering. I say we vote on it. I think you all know where my vote is going, and that’s not behind Mr Karipidis.”
There was some laughter around the table, and then it began, Hammond asking those around the table which way they were voting, and as he did so a faceless young bank employee in a black suit totalled up the shares as they were announced, for or against.