The Pact: A dark and compulsive thriller about secrets, privilege and revenge

by S J Bolton

  Actually, his wife was giving him an idea.

  ‘What about the payroll?’ his wife went on. ‘There’s the better part of half a million pounds waiting to come out at the end of the month. How will we pay the staff if she transfers the lot to an offshore account in Bermuda?’

  Was he up to it though, this new plan that had crept into his brain the way a sewer rat steals through pipework? Finance really wasn’t his thing or Megan wouldn’t have been here in the first place. Xav, on the other hand – yeah, Xav could do it.

  ‘Are you even listening to me?’

  ‘Please keep your voice down, Sarah. I’m keeping an eye on her, checking everything she does. There are safeguards in place for that sort of thing – we had them even before she came. The bank will spot anything unusual. And you know what, she’s been pretty efficient so far. She’s well on her way to getting the books under control.’

  Sarah got up, so quickly he thought she was going to come for him, but it was his desk cupboard she was interested in. She pulled it open and grabbed the bottle.

  ‘You’re a drunk, Felix. You’re not capable of keeping an eye on anything. And she can’t work here – I’ve checked.’

  He took the bottle from her and put it away. ‘What are you talking about?’

  A knock sounded on the door, startling them both. It opened before he had a chance to speak and revealed Megan in the doorway.

  ‘We’re busy,’ Sarah snapped.

  ‘Talking about me – I heard.’ Megan stepped inside and let the door close.

  Faced with Megan herself, Sarah lost some of her bluster, but wasn’t about to back down completely. She positioned herself to one side of Felix’s chair and looked the other woman in the eyes.

  ‘I don’t wish to be unhelpful, I appreciate you’re in a difficult position, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to work on the company’s accounts,’ she said. ‘The shareholders wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘There are no shareholders,’ Megan replied. ‘It’s a privately owned company.’

  Felix heard the whistling of his wife’s breath. ‘Part-funded by my father,’ she said.

  It was a while since Felix had heard that one; a good couple of months, at least.

  Megan said, ‘Felix is managing director, it’s up to him. With respect, you aren’t even on the board.’

  ‘It’s against the law for you to practise accountancy,’ Sarah said. ‘You’re a convicted criminal.’ She gave Felix’s shoulders a nudge to get his attention. ‘I asked Claire, her sister’s an accountant in one of the big London firms.’

  ‘Claire’s misinformed,’ Megan said, before Felix could reply. ‘I won’t be allowed to join any of the professional bodies with my conviction, but there was nothing to stop me taking and passing all the relevant exams. It’s entirely up to Felix whether he employs me or not.’ As though losing interest in Sarah, Megan then addressed Felix. ‘You didn’t see a brown envelope in my bag just now, did you?’

  Unable to speak, but grateful at last for his wife’s presence, Felix shook his head.

  ‘Shame.’ Her stare became a little too fixed. ‘I thought you might have seen it when you were cavorting around under my desk just now.’

  Felix forced himself to meet her gaze. ‘Sorry.’

  Megan seemed to lose interest. ‘Must have left it at home. God, I’m losing everything these days. I’ve had to buy new sunglasses, two new umbrellas and a pair of gloves this week alone.’

  ‘Dan has your red sunglasses,’ Felix said. ‘You left them at Tal’s at the weekend.’

  ‘He can keep them. Nasty second-hand pair.’ She smiled at Sarah as she left the room. ‘Good to see you again.’

  Sarah didn’t even wait for the door to close before she rounded on him. ‘Are you going to let her talk to me like that?’

  Felix sighed, although he had to admit Sarah’s objections were entirely reasonable. ‘Can we discuss this at home?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re discussing it now.’

  ‘No, we’re not, because you haven’t the first fucking clue what you’re talking about. Now, I’ve a lot to do, so if you want the bills to be paid, you’d better leave me to it.’

  Without another word, Sarah left his office. She attempted a door slam, but the soft-closing mechanism prevented even that. Megan had got the better of her for now, but by the time he got home that night, she’d have recharged her batteries and he’d face a fresh barrage of complaints.

  Exhaustion swept over Felix; already the Scotch high was fading, and he could feel the familiar trembling creeping into his fingers. He wanted nothing more than to drop his head onto the desk and sink into oblivion. He wasn’t sure he could get through the day, never mind face hours of petulance and recrimination once he got home.

  The phone rang and he picked it up; there were motions to go through.

  At five o’clock, the admin staff went home and Megan stayed at her desk. By six, the technical staff and the sales reps had all drifted out. Megan hadn’t moved. By six thirty, the cleaners had reclaimed the building and it was empty but for them, Felix, and Megan.

  From his desk, he couldn’t see Megan, even with the adjoining door open, but was acutely conscious of her presence, not yards away. She was messing with him, she had to be; she’d found the envelope in the bin and was waiting for him to try to retrieve it.

  Felix hadn’t had a drink since lunchtime and that felt like a victory of sorts, but sometime in the last hour he’d opened his desk cupboard and let his right hand drift down to touch the bottle. For some reason, one that made no sense whatsoever, physical contact with the bottle was helping.

  Within an hour of his wife’s storming out, it had occurred to Felix that he could tell her the real reason for employing Megan. His wife was a practical sort. She had a lifestyle she valued, a son to take care of; she wouldn’t willingly see him in prison.

  Sarah would be unmoved by the fate of Sophie Robinson and her children, he knew that instinctively. His wife was almost totally lacking in empathy. She’d fight to the death for her own son, but the illness of other children left her unmoved.

  Her charitable work was local and visible: riding for the disabled, Helen & Douglas House, Friends of Oxford Hospitals, all causes that got her noticed by the people who mattered. He had never known her send so much as a pound to charities overseas, or do a single good deed that wasn’t visible.

  Sarah’s element was radon, an almost-impossible-to-detect noble gas that decayed in your lungs and slowly poisoned you from the inside out.

  Sarah wouldn’t give him away. On the other hand, there would be one more in the circle, one more potential liability. No, somehow, he would avoid telling Sarah the truth for as long as he could.

  The door opened and a thin, black man in his late twenties, wearing the uniform of the cleaning company, pushed a trolley into the room. The cleaners had reached the upper floor; they’d be emptying the bins and he was running out of time. A woman followed, small and dark-skinned, pulling an industrial vacuum cleaner, and he remembered how his wife invariably left the house when the cleaners arrived. Always polite to them, she didn’t want to get embroiled in their stories. ‘The minimum-wage brigade can be so needy,’ she’d said to him once.

  Felix felt he’d learned more about his wife in one afternoon than in seven years of marriage. He hadn’t realised before, quite how alike, how well suited, the two of them were. He didn’t love her, of course; love was something he’d watched slip away a long time ago.

  He started. Megan was standing in the doorway, as though she’d been there for some time. ‘Miles away?’ she said.

  Felix opened his mouth to ask if she’d found her envelope and realised it would be better to act as though he’d forgotten all about it. ‘Lot on my mind,’ he said.

  ‘Tough at the top?’

  He shrugged. ‘You o
ff?’

  ‘I’m sorry about Sarah,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to talk to her?’

  Megan’s smile seemed a hair’s width from sincere, her eyes holding a gloss of slyness. ‘There’s an awful lot I could tell Sarah,’ she seemed to be implying, ‘if I chose to.’ On the other hand, he might be becoming as paranoid as Dan.

  The sound of a vacuum cleaner filled the main office.

  ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll sort it,’ Felix lied, then, ‘You’re doing a good job, Meg. You’ve got this.’

  A change in her stance, then, and in her expression. Felix couldn’t have put it into words but thought about the glow around a newly lit candle, a second before the flame builds to its full strength.

  ‘I’ll see you.’ She moved to leave the room.

  ‘Meg!’

  She looked back over her shoulder.

  ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘if you need an advance on your salary, I can arrange it. We’ve got another ten days to go.’

  ‘I’m good, thanks.’ She seemed to think of something. ‘Oh, that reminds me. I came across something that puzzled me.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A monthly payment, quite sizeable, into a numbered account.’

  Stomach churning, Felix kept his face blank.

  ‘The amount fluctuates each month, which seemed odd, until I realised it was always exactly ten per cent of the company’s profits.’

  Ten per cent of their income, the agreement made long ago in an Oxford college library. He’d set it up that way, thinking an annual payment would be much more noticeable to anyone who went through the accounts.

  ‘Trust fund,’ he said, using the story he’d repeated to several accountants over the years. ‘For Luke.’

  ‘Ah. Very prudent. Do you want me to take a look at it? Financial advice isn’t my strong point but there are certain boxes long-term investments should tick, you know, pension provision, balance of risk, that sort of thing.’

  Megan could not be given access to her own trust fund – she would see that contributions came in regularly from Tal, Dan, Amber and Xav. ‘You’ve got more than enough to be getting on with for the time being,’ he said.

  She half-smiled and this time, really did seem about to leave. ‘I wouldn’t have guessed it was for Luke,’ she said. ‘Because he’s what – two years old? And the trust dates back as far as I could trace records. You must have always been sure you were going to be a dad.’

  Once more they held eye contact for a second longer than seemed normal and he thought, Dan’s not paranoid, he’s right. She does remember.

  ‘Don’t miss your bus, Megan,’ he said.

  Determined to do nothing until she left the building, Felix watched Megan cross the car park and vanish behind a line of trees that hid the bus stop from view. Only then did he run into the main office. Her bin was empty. Tearing across the office, he found the cleaners in the corridor.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he called.

  They looked back at him as though he were breaking some unwritten rule, maybe, that there should be no interaction between company staff and contract cleaners. He certainly couldn’t remember speaking to either of them, even seeing them before. It was possible the company sent different people every night – he’d never even thought about it.

  ‘I need something from one of the bins,’ he explained. ‘I threw it away by mistake.’

  They were staring, as though not quite following him. Giving up on explanations, he spotted the large bag suspended from the trolley.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  He pulled the bag from its fastening and tipped it upside down. The detritus of the day spilled out: papers, screwed up carrier bags, empty envelopes, lottery tickets, supermarket coupons, sandwich wrappers, banana skins, apple cores. A coffee cup that hadn’t been emptied tipped a pale brown liquid over the blue carpet.

  There. The brown envelope. He grabbed it and looked up, as though caught in the act of something shameful. The man and the woman were watching him, silently. Pushing the envelope to one side, he gathered up the rubbish and replaced it in the bag. Getting to his feet, he handed the bag to the man who took it without a word.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, gesturing to the coffee stain on the floor. ‘That was clumsy of me.’

  ‘It isn’t a problem, sir,’ the man replied in a rich, accent-free voice. ‘We will deal with it.’

  25

  Felix tipped the film out onto the pub table. He’d suggested the Turf Tavern in central Oxford because its dark rooms, low ceilings and access via a narrow, medieval passage, made it seem the right sort of place for clandestine meetings. As he’d arrived, he’d wondered if he was taking the piss out of Talitha and her insistence on meeting only rarely and always in different locations. It didn’t matter; Tal wasn’t remotely self-aware enough to realise.

  At short notice, only four of them had made it. Amber was stuck in London and would be till late, but Xav had been on the train home when Felix called and had swung round to collect Dan from their old school.

  ‘Shit,’ Xav said, his eyes on the film.

  ‘You were right, Dan, she is lying to us,’ Talitha said.

  Dan didn’t seem to be enjoying his triumph; he’d lost weight since Megan’s return, and his skin looked unhealthy, eczema breaking out on his wrists and temples.

  ‘Looks like it,’ he muttered, as he clutched his drink.

  ‘What I don’t get is why,’ Talitha went on. ‘Why not tell us what she wants and get it over with? Megan was never mean.’

  ‘Nothing we can give her will make up for what she lost,’ Dan replied. ‘It’s not only about claiming what she’s due, it’s about hurting us as much as she can.’

  All four of them were keeping their voices low. The pub might be noisy, but fellow drinkers were very close.

  ‘Was it a Kodak?’ Xav picked up the round black tube and held it to the light. ‘What about the letter?’

  Felix shook his head. ‘Just this. Nothing else.’

  ‘The letter’s irrelevant without this,’ Talitha said. ‘The letter could be fake, it could be a joke, it proves nothing if we all stand firm. It’s the photograph that will bring us down.’ She reached out and gently punched Felix’s shoulder. ‘Well done, Felix.’

  Someone, a drunken student, stared in at them through the open doorway and Felix instinctively put his hand on top of the film to hide it.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Xav asked.

  ‘We get it developed,’ Daniel said. ‘We have to be sure.’

  ‘Yeah, well we can’t exactly drop it off at Boots,’ Felix told them. ‘I’ve put in an overnight order for sodium thiosulfate, acetic acid and phenidone. Delivered to the house in case Megan gets suspicious.’

  ‘Handy line of work you’re in.’ Xav, like Felix and Megan, had excelled at A level chemistry.

  ‘Sorry, are those . . .’ Daniel began.

  ‘Agents I need for developing film,’ Felix said. ‘I’ve got the rest in stock. I can set up a darkroom in the shed at home.’

  Talitha leaned back against the bare stone wall. ‘I can’t believe it could be over this time tomorrow.’

  Felix said, ‘We shouldn’t count our chickens, not till we’ve seen it. Oh, and she found the trust fund.’

  A moment of silence.

  ‘How?’ Talitha asked.

  ‘She’s doing my accounts. She has access to all my company’s finances. And she’s frigging good at what she does. In different circumstances, I’d employ her happily.’

  ‘Are we going to release it?’ Xav said. ‘Amber wants to. She was on the phone last night.’

  ‘It may soften the blow,’ Felix said. ‘Once we tell her the game’s up. I can’t keep her on at work – Sarah’s doing her nut.’

  ‘Mark isn’t thrilled either,’ Talitha said. ‘I’m not
sure what I’ll do if she wants to come to the house again.’

  ‘She phoned me today,’ Dan said. ‘Your office number came up, Felix, so I thought it was you and I answered. She wants to meet up.’

  ‘Me too.’ Talitha’s face was grim. ‘I’m having lunch with her on Friday. Five Arrows at Waddesdon. I can’t wait.’

  ‘I think she’s been phoning my house,’ Xav said.

  Instantly, the others were interested; Megan contacting Xav seemed more serious, somehow.

  ‘You think?’ Felix said.

  ‘Only when I’m out at work. I got home the other night and Ella came dancing up to me, wanting to know if I was having an affair, because she’d been answering the phone all day to find no one on the other end.’

  ‘That’s all you need,’ Felix voiced his sympathy.

  ‘She was joking,’ Xav went on. ‘I’ve never met a woman less possessive than Ella. She called the phone company the next day to complain about a fault on the line. But it could have been Megan.’

  For a moment, no one spoke.

  ‘Are you going to meet her?’ Felix asked Dan.

  Daniel picked up the film. ‘I guess it depends what we find on this,’ he said.

  26

  ‘We could have gone somewhere closer to the factory,’ Talitha said, as she and Megan settled themselves in the alcove table at the Five Arrows. Talitha, who had her choice of tables at the Arrows so long as she gave them a few hours’ notice, had thought long and hard about where she wanted to sit. In the main restaurant, Megan might be less likely to raise difficult subjects; on the other hand, were she to do so, the fallout could be a whole lot worse. In the end, she’d opted for the alcove; its stone walls on three sides offered the closest to privacy they were likely to get.

  Megan was looking out at the garden and didn’t respond.

  ‘How did you even get here?’ Talitha went on. ‘I’d have picked you up.’

  ‘I bought a car,’ Megan told her. ‘Mum left me some money. It’s an old banger, but it will do for a few months.’