Paper Money

by Ken Follett

  He fingered the sharp crease of his trousers, and thought about Tony Cox. He had taken to the young hoodlum, despite his obvious homosexuality, because he sensed what the English called a kindred spirit. Like Laski, Cox had come from poverty to wealth on determination, opportunism, and ruthlessness. Also like Laski, he tried in small ways to take the edge off his lower-class manners: Laski was doing it better, but only because he had been practicing longer. Cox wanted to be like Laski, and he would make it--by the time he was in his fifties, he would be a distinguished, gray-haired City gent.

  Laski realized he did not have a single sound reason for trusting Cox. There was his instinct, of course, which told him the young man was honest with people he knew: but the Tony Coxes of this world were practiced deceivers. Had he simply invented the whole thing about Tim Fitzpeterson?

  The television set screened the Hamilton Holdings price again: it was down another point. Laski wished they wouldn't use that damn computer typeface, all horizontal and vertical lines: it strained his eyes. He began to calculate what he stood to lose if Hamilton did not get the license.

  If he could sell the 510,000 shares right now, he would have lost only a few thousand pounds. But it would not be possible to dump the lot at the market value. And the price was still slipping. Say a loss of twenty thousand at the outside. And a psychological setback--damage to his reputation as a winner.

  Was there anything else at risk? What Cox planned to do with the information Laski had supplied was certain to be criminal. However, since Laski did not actually know about it, he could not be convicted of conspiracy.

  There was still Britain's Official Secrets Act--mild by East European standards, but a formidable piece of legislation. It was illegal to approach a civil servant and get from him confidential data. Proving that Laski had done that would be difficult, but not impossible. He had asked Peters whether he had a big day ahead, and Peters had said: "One of the days." Then Laski had said to Cox: "It's today." Well, if Cox and Peters could be persuaded to testify, then Laski would be convicted. But Peters did not even know he had given away a secret, and nobody would think of asking him. Suppose Cox was arrested? The British police had ways of squeezing information out of people, even if they did not use baseball bats. Cox might say he got the information from Laski; then they would check Laski's movements on the day, and they might discover he had taken coffee with Peters . . .

  It was a pretty distant possibility. Laski was more worried about finishing off the Hamilton deal.

  The phone rang. Laski answered: "Yes?"

  "It's Threadneedle Street--Mr. Ley," Carol said.

  Laski rutted. "It's probably about the Cotton Bank. Put him on to Jones."

  "He's been through to the Cotton Bank, and Mr. Jones has gone home."

  "Gone home? All right, I'll take it."

  He heard Carol say: "I have Mr. Laski for you now."

  "Laski?" The voice was high-pitched, the accent an aristocratic drawl.

  "Yes."

  "Ley here, Bank of England."

  "How are you?"

  "Good afternoon. Now look here, old chap"--Laski rolled his eyes at this phrase--"you've made out rather a large check to Fett and Company."

  Laski paled. "My God, have they presented it already?"

  "Yes, well, I rather gathered the ink was still wet. Now the thing is, it's drawn on the Cotton Bank, as you obviously know, and the poor little Cotton Bank can't cover it. Do you follow me?"

  "Of course I follow you." The bloody man was talking as if to a child. Nothing annoyed Laski more. "Clearly, my instructions as to the arrangements for providing these funds have not been followed. However, perhaps I can plead that my staff might well have thought they had a little time to spare."

  "Mmm. It's nice, really, to have the funds ready before you sign the damn thing, you know, just to be safe, don't you think?"

  Laski thought fast. Damn, this need not have happened if the announcement had been made on time. And where the devil was Jones? "You may have guessed that the check is payment for a controlling interest in Hamilton Holdings. I should think those shares would stand as security--"

  "Oh, dear me, no," Ley interrupted. "That really wouldn't do. The Bank of England is not in business to finance speculation on the stock market."

  Maybe not, Laski thought; but if the announcement had been made, and you knew that Hamilton Holdings now had an oil well, you wouldn't be making this fuss. It occurred to him that perhaps they did know, and Hamilton had not got the oil well, hence the phone call. He felt angry. "Look, you're a bank," he said. "I'll pay you the rate for twenty-four-hour money--"

  "The Bank is not accustomed to being in the money market."

  Laski raised his voice. "You know damn well I can cover that check with ease, given a little time! If you return it, my reputation is gone. Are you going to ruin me for the sake of a lousy million overnight and a foolish tradition?"

  Ley's voice went very cold. "Mr. Laski, our traditions exist specifically for the purpose of ruining people who sign checks they cannot honor. If this draft cannot be cleared today, I shall ask the payee to represent. That means, in effect, that you have an hour and a half in which to make a cash deposit of one million pounds at Threadneedle Street. Good day."

  "Damn you," Laski said, but the line was dead. He cradled the receiver, cracking the plastic of the phone. His mind raced. There had to be a way of raising a million instantly . . . didn't there?

  His coffee had arrived while he was on the phone. He had not noticed Carol come in. He sipped it, and made a face.

  "Carol!" he shouted.

  She opened the door. "Yes?"

  Red-faced and trembling, he threw the delicate china cup into the metal wastepaper basket, where it shattered noisily. He bellowed: "The bloody coffee is cold!"

  The girl turned around and fled.

  TWO P.M.

  26

  Young Billy Johnson was looking for Tony Cox, but he kept forgetting this.

  He had got out of the house quite fast after they all returned from the hospital. His mother was doing a lot of screaming, there were a few policemen hanging around, and Jacko had been carted off to the station to help with inquiries. The neighbors and relatives who kept dropping in added to the confusion. Billy liked quiet.

  Nobody seemed disposed to get his lunch or pay him any attention, so he ate a packet of ginger biscuits and went out the back way, telling Mrs. Glebe from three doors down that he was going up to his auntie's to watch her color television.

  He had been getting things sorted out as he walked. Walking helped him to think. When he found himself baffled, he could look at the cars and the shops and the people for a while, to rest his mind.

  He went toward his auntie's at first, until he remembered that he did not really want to go there; he had only said that to stop Mrs. Glebe making trouble. Then he had to think where he was going. He stopped, looking in the window of a record shop, painstakingly reading the names on the gaudy sleeves, and trying to match them to songs he had heard on the radio. He had a record player, but he never had any money to buy records, and his parents' taste did not suit him. Ma liked soppy songs, Pa liked brass bands, and Billy liked rock-and-roll. The only other person he knew who liked rock-and-roll was Tony Cox--

  That was it. He was looking for Tony Cox.

  He headed in what he thought was roughly the direction for Bethnal Green. He knew the East End very well--every street, every shop, all the bomb sites, patches of waste ground, canals and parks--but he knew it in bits. He passed a demolition site, and remembered that Granny Parker had lived there, and had sat stubbornly in her front room while the old houses on either side had been torn down, until she had caught pneumonia and died, relieving the London Borough of Tower Hamlets of the problem of what to do about her. Billy had followed the story with interest: it was like something on the television. Yes, he knew every particle of the East London landscape; but he could not connect them together in his mind. He knew Commer
cial Road and he knew Mile End Road, but he did not know that they met at Aldgate. Despite this, he could almost always find his way home, even if sometimes it took longer than he expected; and if he really got lost the Old Bill would run him back to the house in a squad car. All the coppers knew his pa.

  By the time he got to Wapping, he had forgotten his destination again; but he thought he was probably going to see the ships. He got in through a hole in a fence: the same hole he had used with Snowy White and Tubby Toms, that day when they caught a rat and the others told Billy to take it home to his ma, because she would be pleased and cook it for tea. She had not been pleased, of course: she jumped in the air and dropped a bag of sugar and screamed, and later she cried and said they shouldn't make fun of Billy. People often played tricks on him, but he did not mind, because it was nice to have pals.

  He wandered around for a while. He had the feeling that there used to be more ships here, in the days when he was little. Today he could see only one. It was a big one, quite low in the water, with a name on the side which he could not read. The men were running a pipe from the ship to a warehouse.

  He stood watching for a while, then asked one of the men: "What's in it?"

  The man, who wore a cloth cap and a waistcoat, looked at him. "Wine, mate."

  Billy was surprised. "In the ship? All wine? Full?"

  "Yes, mate. Chateau Morocco, vintage about last Thursday." All the men laughed at this, but Billy did not understand it. He laughed all the same. The men worked on for a while; then the one he had spoken to said: "What are you doing here, anyway?"

  Billy thought for a moment, then said: "I've forgot."

  The man looked hard at him, and mumbled something to one of the others. Billy heard part of the reply: "--might fall in the bleeding drink." The first man went inside the warehouse.

  After a while, a docks policeman came along. He said to the men: "Is this the lad?" They nodded, and the copper addressed Billy. "Are you lost?"

  "No," Billy said.

  "Where are you going?"

  Billy was about to say he was not going anywhere, but that seemed the wrong answer. Suddenly he remembered. "Bethnal Green."

  "All right, come with me and I'll set you on the right road."

  Always willing to take the line of least resistance, Billy walked alongside the copper to the dock gate.

  "Where do you live, then?" the man asked.

  "Yew Street."

  "Does your mother know where you are?"

  Billy decided that the policeman was another Mrs. Glebe, and that a lie was called for. "Yes. I'm going up my auntie's."

  "Sure you know the way?"

  "Yes."

  They were at the gate. The copper looked at him speculatively, then made up his mind. "All right, then, off you go. Don't wander around the docks no more--you're safer to stop outside."

  "Thanks," Billy said. When in doubt, he thanked people. He walked off.

  It was getting easier to remember. Pa was up the hospital. He was going to be blind, and it was Tony Cox's fault. Billy knew one blind man--well, two, if you counted Squint Thatcher, who was blind only when he went up West with his accordion. But really blind, there was only Hopcraft, who lived alone in a smelly house on the Isle of Dogs and carried a white stick. Would Pa have to wear sunglasses and walk very slowly, tapping the curb with a stick? The thought upset Billy.

  People usually thought he was incapable of getting upset, because he never shed tears. That was how they found out he was different, when he was a baby: he used to hurt himself and not cry. Ma sometimes said: "He do feel things, but he don't never show it."

  Pa used to say that Ma got upset often enough for two, anyway.

  When really awful things happened, like the rat joke that Snowy and Tubby played, Billy found he got all boiled up inside, and he wanted to do something drastic, like scream, but it just never happened.

  He had killed the rat, and that had helped. He had held it with one hand, and with the other banged it on the head with a brick until it stopped wriggling.

  He would do something like that to Tony Cox.

  It occurred to him that Tony was bigger than a rat--indeed, bigger than Billy. That baffled him, so he put it out of his mind.

  He stopped at the end of a street. The corner house had a shop downstairs--one of the old shops, where they sold lots of things. Billy knew the owner's daughter, a pretty girl called Sharon with long hair. A couple of years ago she let him feel her tits, but then she ran away from him and would not speak to him anymore. For days afterward he had thought of nothing else but the small round mounds under her blouse, and the way he felt when he touched them. Eventually he had realized that the experience was one of those nice things that never happen twice.

  He went into the shop. Sharon's mother was behind the counter, wearing candy-striped nylon overalls. She did not recognize Billy.

  He smiled and said: "Hello."

  "Can I help you?" She was uneasy.

  Billy said: "How's Sharon?"

  "Fine, thanks. She's out at the moment. Do you know her?"

  "Yes." Billy looked around the shop, at the assortment of food, hardware, books, fancy goods, tobacco, and confectionery. He wanted to say, She let me feel her tits once, but he knew that would not be right. "I used to play with her."

  It seemed to be the answer the woman wanted: she looked relieved. She smiled, and Billy saw that her teeth were brown-stained, like his father's. She said: "Can I serve you with something?"

  There was a clatter of shoes on stairs, and Sharon came into the shop from the door behind the counter. Billy was surprised: she looked much older. Her hair was short, and her tits were quite big, wobbling under a T-shirt. She had long legs in tight jeans. She called: "Bye, Mum." She was rushing out.

  Billy said: "Hello, Sharon!"

  She stopped and stared at him. Recognition flickered in her face. "Oh, hi, Billy. Can't stop." Then she was gone.

  Her mother looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry--I forgot she was upstairs still--"

  "It's all right. I forget a lot of things."

  "Well, can I serve you with something?" the woman repeated.

  "I want a knife."

  It had popped into Billy's head from nowhere, but he knew straightaway that it was right. There was no point in banging a strong man like Tony Cox on the head with a stone--he would just hit you back. So you had to knife him in the back, like an Indian.

  "For yourself, or your mother?"

  "Me."

  "What's it for?"

  Billy knew he shouldn't tell her that. He frowned, and said: "Cutting things. String, and that."

  "Oh." The woman reached into the window display, and pulled out a knife in a sheath, like Boy Scouts had.

  Billy took all the money out of his trouser pocket. Money was something he was not good about--he always let the shopkeeper take however much was needed.

  Sharon's mother looked and said: "But you've only got eight pence."

  "Is it enough?"

  She sighed. "No, I'm sorry."

  "Well, can I have some bubblegum, then?"

  The woman put the knife back in the window and took a packet of gum from a shelf. "Six pence."

  Billy offered his handful of money, and the woman took some coins.

  "Thanks," Billy said. He went out into the street and opened the packet. He liked to put it all in his mouth at once. He walked on, chewing with enjoyment. For the moment, he had forgotten where he was going.

  He stopped to watch some men digging a hole in the pavement. The tops of their heads were level with Billy's feet. He saw, with interest, that the wall of the trench changed color as it went down. First there was the pavement, then some black stuff like tar, then loose brown earth, then wet clay. In the bottom lay a pipe made of clean new concrete. Why did they put pipes under the pavement? Billy had no idea. He leaned over and said: "Why are you putting a pipe under the pavement?"

  A workman looked up at him and said: "We're hiding it from
the Russians."

  "Oh." Billy nodded, as if he understood. After a moment he moved on.

  He felt hungry, but there was something he had to do before he went home for lunch. Lunch? He had eaten a packet of biscuits because Pa was up the hospital. That had something to do with why he was here in Bethnal Green, but he could not quite make the connection.

  He turned a corner, looked at the road name on a sign tacked high up on a wall, and saw that he was on Quill Street. Now he remembered. This was where Tony Cox lived--at number nineteen. He would knock on the door--

  No. He didn't know why, but he felt sure he ought to creep in by the back door. There was a lane behind the terrace. Billy walked along it until he came to the back of Tony's house.

  All the taste was gone from his bubblegum, so he took it out of his mouth and threw it away before quietly unlatching the back gate and walking stealthily in.

  27

  Tony Cox drove slowly along the rutted mud track, out of consideration for his own comfort rather than for the owner of the "borrowed" car. The lane, which had no name, led from a B-road to a farmhouse with a barn. The barn, the empty, dilapidated house, and the acre of infertile land surrounding them, were owned by a company called Land Development Ltd., which was in turn owned by a compulsive gambler who owed Tony Cox a lot of money. The barn was occasionally used to store job lots of fire-damaged goods bought at rock-bottom prices, so it was not unusual for a van and a car to draw up in the farmyard.

  The five-bar gate at the end of the lane was open, and Tony drove in. There was no sign of the blue van, but Jesse was leaning against the farmhouse wall, smoking a cigarette. He came across to open the car door for Tony.

  "It haven't gone smooth, Tony," he said immediately.

  Tony got out of the car. "Is the money here?"

  "In the van." Jesse jerked his head toward the barn. "But it never went smooth."

  "Let's get inside--it's too hot out here." Tony heaved the barn door open and stepped in. Jesse followed him. A quantity of packing cases occupied one third of the floor area. Tony read the labels on a couple: they contained surplus Forces uniforms and coats. The blue van stood opposite the door. Tony noticed that trade plates had been tied over the original license plates with string.