He didn’t so much hear her presence as feel it. When he looked up, their eyes met and he saw her physically lose her breath. For a split second neither of them spoke and then Anna broke the silence, her voice cracking.
‘What are you doing here?’
Before Harry could answer, he heard another voice, ‘Are you ready? Oh …’
‘Harry,’ Anna said, appearing to gather herself. ‘This is my husband, David. You know Harry …’
What was she saying? For fuck’s sake, Harry wanted to shake her. Of course he knew David. Was she so drunk that she had forgotten which part of her life was real and which was imagined?
‘My God,’ she said, ‘but it has been years.’
David hardly flinched. ‘Harry, of course. Good to see you.’ And then he looked to Harry’s right. ‘Andrea?’
Harry watched them. ‘You two know each other?’ He struggled to think of what to say next, to fill the silence that opened up between them.
‘Andrea works for the firm who put on the charity ball,’ Harry said finally.
‘Of course,’ David replied, apparently unperturbed by this unlikely connection. ‘That’s my old firm. Andrea and I, we did work experience together back in the day.’
Harry regarded them both as David moved forward and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘This is Anna, my wife.’
There was a moment’s silence and then David spoke again. ‘We’d better be off, our taxi …’
‘Please,’ Harry said, relieved, the room suddenly spinning around them. ‘Good to see you.’
‘You know David Witherall?’ Harry said quietly, as Andrea took her coat from under Harry’s arm.
Andrea widened her eyes, moving in conspiratorially. ‘Not a fucking clue. I’m usually good with faces, but that guy I can’t remember ever having seen before in my life. Awkward. Did I make a convincing job of pretending? And what was with his wife? She couldn’t take her eyes off you, or maybe she was trying hard not to fall over. She was rat-arsed.’
Leaning out a little, Andrea straightened up, her eyes responding to something in Harry’s expression.
‘Are you OK? Was Anna an old girlfriend or something?’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘Nothing like that.’
He put a hand on the small of her back, a cold wind rushing through the hallway as David and Anna moved out onto the Strand.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
Harry
It was almost twenty-four hours before he checked his old phone. There was no reason for him to do so, it was obsolete, and yet something had made him hold onto it, even after cutting Anna off. Something told him to turn it on and wait for a message to appear on the screen. The sight of Anna’s number, when it appeared, sent a chill through his chest.
He read the message three times, digesting its meaning with a growing sense of panic.
Dear Harry,
I don’t know if you’re reading this, but after seeing you again I’ve realised the guilt is too much. I can’t do it any more. For so long, I’ve been lying to so many people. I have let everyone down. I can’t see any way to absolve my guilt other than to be honest with the people who have stood by me. My family. I’m sorry if that means I’ve let you down too, but I suppose that makes us even.
He moved quickly into the kitchen and poured a drink, pacing the room while he worked out the plan. Half an hour later, he threw on his jacket and strode towards the Hope & Anchor, the speakers booming as he walked towards the bar.
‘Mimi?’
The barmaid looked up at him and smiled. She’d always had a weakness for him, though after Naomi he had resolutely steered clear of women who were under their mid-twenties; it wasn’t worth the trouble.
‘I need to ask you a favour. It’s urgent.’
He met Mimi just down the footpath from the pub the following day.
‘This is fucking weird,’ she said as he ran over the plan once more.
‘Well I’m paying you for it – and you’re a drama student, aren’t you?’
‘I know, but—’ She broke off. ‘What time are we meeting this Anna woman?’
‘Twenty minutes,’ he said, looking over his shoulder. ‘She’ll be waiting for us on one of the benches at the top of the park.’
‘As if she’s going to fall for it, though.’ Mimi looked unconvinced.
‘You don’t need to worry about that. You’ve memorised everything I need you to say.’
‘Of course. I’m a professional …’
‘Right, and you’ve nailed the accent?’
‘I mean, I’ve tried,’ she said. ‘I’ve Googled it. You know my family is from Jamaica, yeah? I know we might all look the same to you, but it’s been a few generations since any of my family were from the Motherland.’
‘Well I’m sure you’ll smash it.’ He held her with a look that made her slightly recoil. ‘All you need to do is persuade her that your brother was one of the men in Equatorial Guinea who was part of the chemical spillage, and that he was killed by the villagers in retaliation for what he did. Just stick to the script, you’ll be fine.’
‘What’s all this about?’ she asked.
‘I’ve paid you handsomely,’ Harry said. ‘This is a job for you, nothing more. It’s best you don’t ask questions. Right, you ready? Let’s go.’
Harry
If only she had left when he told her to, and she almost had.
Christ, Mimi’s performance had been persuasive. It was so good he too had nearly fallen for the story he had concocted on her behalf about the brother in Equatorial Guinea, a poorly paid delivery driver who had been instructed to dump the waste near the playground, and who had later been killed in order to cover tracks. He had been proud of his cunning strategy to convince Anna to flee, once it had become clear that she was more of a liability than he’d been willing to see. He was doing it for her own safety, as much as his. If she was really on the brink of telling David, as she’d said she was, then her life was in jeopardy. And to his credit it had worked, nearly.
She had made it as far as Greece before Clive and his people managed to lure her back with the story of David’s death – which faced her with the prospect of the twins left alone with no family left to look after them but Clive.
She had left him with no choice, hadn’t she? Together, they had whittled away the line between the impossible and the inevitable, until it hung by a single thread that was too weak to withstand the slightest tug.
Harry
London, the day before Anna dies
Harry watches the building for just over an hour before Clive appears, figures from the lunchtime crowds on the other side of the Central London square passing in flashes between the winter-faded hedgerows.
He’s frailer than Harry had imagined, his body already riddled with cancer. His expression hardly shifts when Harry steps out in front of his door. Holding out a hand to forestall the doorman who immediately steps in, Witherall considers the figure in front of him with an almost amused expression.
‘So you came,’ he says after a moment.
‘Looks like it,’ Harry replies.
Clive’s nose twitches. ‘Good. I thought you might let me know – I wasn’t sure my message had reached you.’
‘Well, I’m here, so I guess it must have,’ Harry says. ‘Shall we go inside?’
‘I was just leaving. I do wish you’d given me some warning.’ Flicking his eyes back to his apartment, he turns and ushers Harry inside, closing the door behind them.
In the apartment, a windowless corridor leads through to the living room. In one of the rooms to the left, a housemaid swills plates at the sink.
As they take their seats on opposing sofas, Harry feels a pang of pity for the old man, lowering himself with the help of an expensive walking cane.
Harry isn’t letting his guard down yet – after all, he has no idea what he has been summoned here for, and despite appearances, Clive is a dangerous man. And yet if he means to hurt him, he could have done
so immediately rather than summoning Harry to a meeting. For now, they are alone, apart from the maid.
Clive lowers himself carefully into his throne-like armchair, pointing with his stick to the sofa opposite.
‘Sit down,’ he says, smoothing out the wrinkles in his trousers. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘You’ve just settled, I’ll get it,’ Harry replies instinctively. Despite how he feels about the man, he can’t watch an old person creak in and out of their chair when his own legs work perfectly well.
What must it be like to be so powerful for so long and then to find yourself weak? Harry is struck by a memory of his grandmother, days before she died, her milky eyes staring back at him as if his very existence was a marvel. Her final words to him: Don’t get old, Harry, there’s no future in it.
It happens to us all, if we are lucky, and yet the ravaging of time must hit so much harder for those who are used to living in a way that bolsters them against life’s usual threats; protected by money and power and the submission of the people around them. Whoever you are, you can only be invincible for so long in this life.
‘No need,’ Clive says, calling out to his maid. Despite his physical appearance, he is not ready to relinquish power just yet. ‘Aarti!’
The housemaid appears, setting down two glasses and a crystal decanter in front of them. Once she has left, Clive continues.
‘So, Harry Dwyer …’
Clive leans forward and sips from his glass, considering Harry with an almost admiring expression. The brandy burns the back of Harry’s throat.
‘This isn’t poisoned, I take it?’ Harry quips and Clive narrows his eyes.
‘Why would I want to poison you?’
‘I could think of a couple of reasons.’
‘Oh, really?’ Clive’s eyes widen in mock surprise. ‘And what might they be?’
‘Because I was paid to investigate you,’ Harry says without hesitation. Honesty isn’t just the smartest tactic, it’s the only one. For Clive to have brought him here like this, he must already know something. Of course he does; he’s been on to Anna so obviously he’s on to Harry, too. But Harry still has leverage, and he’s prepared to use it.
‘I was working for a corporate investigations firm to investigate you and TradeSmart, and for the right price I’m willing to tell you who my client was. I think you’d like to know.’
Harry stops and waits for Clive to respond.
They sit like that for a few seconds, watching each other, and then Clive speaks again. ‘It was Nguema.’
Clive keeps his eyes on Harry, enjoying the thrill of seeing him squirm, feeding off it.
‘What, you thought I didn’t know?’ Clive sighs, as if by way of apology for letting him down. ‘How frustrating for you. God, you must be starting to wonder why you got into all this in the first place. Complicated business, isn’t it? Nasty. And it’s always such a pain to learn you’re not as clever as you think you are. So I tell you what, I’m going to let you into all of it, save you the indignity of thinking you know something when you don’t. Here, let me top up your glass.’
‘Jeff was the one who first introduced me to Francisco Nguema. It was via May, who had studied business at university with Francisco and remained friends with him after he moved back to Africa, and she went on to study law.
‘In the early days, when I’d just started TradeSmart and Jeff was working as my accountant, Jeff mentioned he had a contact who was interested in us using his boats for the purpose of import/export. In return for our loyalty, Jeff said, he would do us a great price. So I went to Greece and met Nguema for the first time. He was charming, and as Jeff inferred, he was willing to cut a very good deal – too good, I might have thought if I wasn’t so green around the gills. He also offered investment advice. The Eighties was a glorious time for Greece.’
Not everyone saw it that way, Harry resists commenting, thinking of those who had not benefited from the voting in of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement following the end of the military junta in the previous decade.
‘The accession of Greece to the European Economic Community made it an attractive proposition for foreign investment, and really we got in there at just the right time. If I’d known, I might have invested more. But remember, I was just starting out. I had no idea what was to come. I had no idea about any of it – not least that our products were going to be used by Nguema as a cover to bring arms in and out of Africa, from Europe. I’m still not sure how much Jeff learnt, and when, but really it was May who was steering things. She could never have enough money, that one. And she was a gambler, in every respect. I admire her in many ways for that. But I blame her too, I suppose.
‘Back then, I had such respect for May. I really valued her opinion. She was the brains, never Jeff. I’m not sure what she ever saw in him although I suppose it worked out nicely; her issuing the demands and him implementing them. She reaped the benefits and her hands were always clean – officially. Brilliant, really.’
Harry raises his eyebrows in acknowledgement.
‘As the business grew, we needed more advice, more structure, and May offered to introduce us to a lawyer she’d trained with – one James McCann. I had no reason to think anything of it until one day McCann, clearly convinced by May that we were looking for ways to diversify our portfolio, introduced us to a Russian by the name of Irena Vasiliev. Artemis was struggling and I suppose I slightly took my eye off the ball for a minute. Anyway, the next thing I knew, Jeff and May had embroiled us in a scam involving tax fraud, facilitated by different laws across EU member states. It was a money spinner, I will concede, but it was risky. Far too risky – and we didn’t need it. We were making plenty through the business’s legitimate strains – or so I thought, not realising then what Nguema was up to.’
Harry considers Clive, wondering at the extent to which he genuinely believes his own innocence. If you are running a company, it’s your duty to know what is going on within it. If Clive truly wasn’t aware of the side dealings that were happening in his name – and from which he was benefiting significantly – is ignorance really an excuse?
‘May tried to convince me to stay in once I called time on it. She rang me one afternoon when David was young and tried to put the thumbscrews on me. I was livid. Who did she think she was? She had nothing to do with the business and yet she seemed to see herself as some unofficial broker. She wouldn’t listen to reason when I explained that it was a one-off. After that, we didn’t see each other for a while. Things seemed to calm down for a few years, and then one day, on David’s seventh birthday, she started again. She said Nguema and Vasiliev had a new business opportunity that I’d be wise to listen to, and when I told her I didn’t want to hear it, she handed over to Jeff.’
Clive shook his head in disbelief. ‘Except this time, Jeff went behind my back. He went straight to Nguema and told him we were in. One day I got a letter at home from Vasiliev, thanking me for agreeing to register a company jointly – Jeff had instigated the whole thing without talking to me about it. What could I do? Vasiliev was hungry for the air of legitimacy our brand brought to the venture, and Nguema was intent on making it happen for reasons I didn’t understand the extent of then. And I was so indebted to Nguema by this stage – he had invested so much and owned part of the business; if he decided to pull out …’
Clive’s jaw tightened. ‘Things had been very rocky for a while – I’d been facing bankruptcy. When you have as big a business as I had then, you’re vulnerable. TradeSmart was one of the largest oil traders in the UK, handling around two million barrels of crude oil and oil products a day. One minute I had more money than I knew what to do with, and then the next … Jeff and I were at each other’s throats. I suppose, if I’m honest, we got greedy; we’d begun to believe we were untouchable. By the time things went wrong we’d diversified into carbon trading and other green energies, and had our ethical foundation up and running. There was so much at stake.’
‘Really? B
ecause from what I heard the business was worth seventy-six billion dollars at the time of the chemical spillage.’
Clive’s face darkens. ‘That’s because I made choices – difficult choices, but choices nonetheless. A few years ago we started purchasing heavy naphtha – I’m not proud of it, but it served a purpose. The naphtha was contaminated with a high content of sulphur compounds, known as mercaptans, but it was cheap and it could be made suitable as blendstock for petrol by washing it, as they say, with caustic soda. As I said, it was not a great time for us financially. Nguema had us over a barrel, and he knew it.’
‘And you’re telling me he then orchestrated the chemical spillage and made it look like you were responsible?’
‘Yes,’ Clive replies.
‘Why?’
‘Punishment. Revenge. A power-play. Call it what you want. With us out of the way, he had our business model, which he could easily replicate; he had all our contacts.’ Clive pauses. ‘I’m not saying I’m a good man. I’m saying I’m not a bad man in the way that you think I am.’
‘Can I refill your glass?’ Clive asks.
Harry nods. ‘What happened to your wife?’
Clive stops pouring. For a moment Harry thinks he’s going to say something else, but then he stops himself and rearranges his face. ‘My wife was a wonderful woman. She had what we would now call post-traumatic stress after the house she lived in collapsed with her and her parents in it. She was only very young but her sister was killed, and she never really forgave herself. After David was born she was very happy, and then … things got bad. She never told him what happened with her sister. In fact, she never even told me about the earthquake – it was her best friend who did that. When Artemis found out I knew, she was furious.’
‘She killed herself?’ Harry doesn’t know why he has to say it aloud, but it feels good, to wield some power over this man. It is wrong to use a person’s dead wife as ammunition against him, but Harry is sure Clive would do the same if the tables were turned.
The Second Woman Page 13