‘Yes, exactly. If that happens, God forbid, he would be their stepfather.’
‘But you’d still be around to have an influence,’ she said.
‘Only at his discretion, and how do you think that would play out?’ I didn’t give her time to come up with an answer. ‘Not just that, though. Where is your will lodged? Scotland or Monaco?’
‘Scotland.’
‘Then surely, he’d be entitled to a share of your estate, even if you don’t mention him in it. You’re still the majority shareholder in the company. I don’t know if he would be, but what if he was legally entitled to some of those shares as a surviving spouse? If he was, it wouldn’t affect Tom, but what about Janet and wee Jonathan’s interests?’
‘But my will puts all my shareholding in trust for them,’ she countered. ‘Only …’ she hesitated, ‘… you’re wrong about Tom. He does have an interest. He’s Oz’s kid, so my view always was that he should benefit as the others do; after all, Oz’s personal shareholding was divided among the three of them. So you see, they’re all in the trust.’
‘And who’s the named trustee?’
‘Oz. I’ve never changed it since he died.’
‘Then the court would probably replace him with his successor, wouldn’t it?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose.’
‘Susie, can I ask you something else. Do you love this guy? It’s just that I’ve never heard you use the word.’
‘Love him?’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t be daft. You know who I …’ Her voice tailed off. ‘I’ve walked blindfold into something here, haven’t I?’
‘I don’t think you’ve walked anywhere, Susie. I think you’ve been led.’ Too frank, perhaps, Primavera. ‘But,’ I said, trying to retreat a little, ‘maybe I’m wrong about the man.’
‘Maybe you are, I hope you are. But you may have a point, and I’m not chancing my children’s future to the fucked-up state my head is in at the moment. What should I do?’
‘Change your will to appoint independent trustees to look after their interests, that’s what I would do first.’
‘How about you being one?’ she asked.
‘Only if you can’t shift Duncan legally from the trustee list. I’m not independent, honey, remember.’ Something obvious occurred to me, very late. ‘Where is he, right now? He can’t hear you, can he?’
‘No. He and Audrey have gone to make arrangements for the flight back. He wouldn’t give her his passport, so they both went.’
Why the hell not? I wondered. ‘When are you coming home?’ I asked.
‘Tomorrow,’ she replied, ‘if everything’s confirmed. We should get to Monaco on Monday morning. Audrey’s going to ask Conrad to bring Janet and wee Jonathan home then.’
‘How about holding off for a day or so?’ I suggested.
‘I want to see them,’ she moaned.
‘Then rest up for a bit before you do. Be at your best for them.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ she agreed. ‘I should speak to Janet. Is she there?’ I filled her in on their day, and on where they were at that moment. ‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘All kids together. When I do get to talk to her, after that she isn’t going to be a wee girl any more, not ever.’
‘She hasn’t been for the last few months, Susie. You haven’t been ready to see it, that’s all.’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Primavera,’ she continued, after a while, ‘about Duncan. You understand, don’t you? I needed somebody and he was the only one around.’
‘Sure, I understand.’
‘Then watch out for me, love; watch my back. I realise now I’m way exposed. I need to get in touch with my lawyer quietly when I’m back, but meantime is there one you could talk to for me? Just to get some thoughts on the will and everything?’
I thought about that. ‘There is one,’ I told her. ‘Although it would only be as a first step. Leave it with me.’
‘Okay,’ Susie said. ‘But only for the kids’ sake, Primavera, only for them. I’ve made my bed with Duncan, and I’ll lie in it.’ She giggled, an old-style Susie giggle that perked me up a little. ‘Mind you,’ she added, ‘that’s all I’ll be doing there, for a while at least.’
‘Good. Rest is what you need.’
I was far more shaken when we ended that conversation than I had been on the beach the night before. I should have known that Susie was likely to have researched her own condition. I tried to imagine what it had been like inside her head since her cross-examination of her doctor, but I couldn’t. We all know that we’re going to die, but the ‘when’ being added makes all the difference.
I thought for a while before making my next call, but I’d told Susie I would, so I didn’t have a choice. My only qualm about calling Harvey January was that he’s a judge and so might have felt himself unable to give any sort of legal advice, but that was overridden pretty quickly by the fact that he’s the kids’ uncle by virtue of his marriage to Oz’s sister. He’s also a pretty nice guy.
I didn’t want to involve Ellie if I could avoid it, given the way she feels about Susie, so I called him on his mobile, hoping that they weren’t side by side on the family sofa watching Lawyers in Love, or some other telly soap. I struck it lucky; he and his father-in-law were having lunch in the Golf Tavern in Elie, after Harvey’s latest eighteen-hole arse-kicking by Mac the Dentist.
‘You should know by now,’ I told him, once he’d explained the circumstances. ‘Mac spent several years peering into the distance after Jonny’s tee shots, and now he’s taking it all out on you.’
‘I think of it as making an old man very happy,’ he chuckled. ‘Now, what’s up? We’re at the coffee stage so I can talk.’
I filled him in on the Susie story. He’s neutral as far as she’s concerned, having not been around when it all kicked off, so he was more concerned about her health issue than I guessed Mac might have been. As for her legal situation, he sparked right away.
‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘that is potentially huge. As widower he’d be entitled to a percentage of her estate, even if he wasn’t named in her will. That would not include any shareholdings, but that might not matter. In the event of her demise, do you know what percentage of the company’s share capital would be held in the children’s trust?’
I had to think about that. ‘Something approaching seventy per cent,’ I told him. ‘Sixty-eight, sixty-nine.’
‘And the new husband’s uncle; does he have a personal holding?’
That one I knew, as I’d made a mental note of it the last time I’d read the Gantry Annual Report. ‘Yes, nine and a half per cent.’
‘In that case, if the children did inherit and the trust was under the control of Susie’s widower, as he would be … tell you later, Mac,’ he murmured, ‘… then he and his uncle could do anything they liked. They could sell the company out from under the minority shareholders, they could take it off the Stock Exchange, they could change its constitution.’
‘But there’s no reason to think they would do that.’
‘Of course not,’ he agreed. ‘I’m talking worst-case scenario, that’s all.’
‘In those circumstances what could I do to stop that?’
‘Mmm.’ He did some legal pondering. ‘Well, as Tom’s mother I suppose you could go to the Court of Session and seek an interdict preventing any sale, as being against his interests. The problem with that would be that you might not win. If such a case came before me, and the proposed deal had the approval of the board, I would need strong evidence before I could go against them.’
‘What can Susie do?’
‘Step one, change her will pronto. Step two, actually set up the trust now so that she can set its constitution and prevent the children’s vulnerability from being exploited. Step three, appoint a reputable non-executive chair, and put non-exec directors into a voting majority on the board. Who’s her lawyer?’
‘I don’t know, but she won’t be in a position to instruct him personally for few days.’
‘Then she could give you, or someone else she trusts, a specific power of attorney to do that for her.’ He paused. ‘But listen, Primavera, none of this may be necessary; it would assume ill-will, by more than one person. What do you know of Mr Culshaw senior?’
‘I’ve never met him, so not a lot, only what I’ve been told by Oz and Susie. He’s in his mid to late sixties, he was a big-time accountant till he retired early. He was brought into the company as a non-exec director initially, and became managing director after Janet was born and Susie backed off a little. Oz liked him; he told me that once he helped see off a threat to the business, a potential takeover by a predator company.’
‘Yes, Ellen told me about that,’ Harvey said. ‘It was called Torrent PLC, an office supplies business. It was a major company once, but it’s changed its focus, since the photocopier leasing that generated a lot of its income was upstaged by computers. That’s the area it’s in now, as I understand it. There was a Scotsman magazine piece on it lately. When Ellen read it she said that Oz had dealings with it, and with its present owner.’
‘Yes.’ I confirmed that. I recalled the story, although he’d never mentioned the name of the company. ‘Her name was Natalie Morgan. He told me about her. But those dealings were fairly confrontational, from what he said. As a successful businesswoman around the same age, she and Susie were seen by the media as rivals. It was true as far as Morgan was concerned: she hated Susie. That was the main reason why she tried to stage a buyout of the Gantry Group, with the support of the guy who was chairman at that time, and of a few other people who were less than clean. She nearly managed it, but Oz and Culshaw put paid to it. The old chairman fell on his sword after that and Susie’s chaired the company pretty much ever since, apart from a short period when Oz did the job.’
‘That’s more than Ellen knew,’ he remarked.
‘What’s Morgan doing now?’ I asked.
‘Same as most other people, from what I hear. Trying to see her business through some difficult marketplace conditions.’
‘I wasn’t really talking about business,’ I laughed. ‘I don’t suppose you do gossip, Harvey.’
‘I try to avoid it, but I recall Ellen mentioning something about her and Oz’s actor friend, Ewan Capperauld. That was some time ago, though.’
‘Yes, Oz did say she put it about … but never in his direction, he promised.’
I called Susie back straight away, and gave her a rundown on what Harvey had said … although I left out his worst-case scenario. She didn’t need to be thinking along those lines.
‘A non-executive chairman,’ she murmured. ‘In my darker moments, I’ve come to realise that I may have to step down soon. But … The Gantry Group might be a public company, Primavera, but I still think of it as the family firm, as it is in terms of majority control, and I don’t want to hand over to an outsider. At the moment, the board is me, Phil, Gerry Meek, the finance director, and a lady named Gillian Harvey. She’s the only non-exec just now. The company secretary’s Wylie Smith, from our law firm, but he’s not on the board. That’s his preference, not mine; apparently most solicitors don’t like to be directors of client companies. My dream was that one day, maybe another twenty years on, I’d step back and hand over to one of the kids, as my dad did with me. Now … twelve’s a bit young, eh.’
‘Just a bit,’ I conceded, grimly.
‘So I can only see one option, my dear,’ she continued, her voice firmer than it had been. ‘I want you to become non-executive chair of the Gantry Group.’
‘Me?’ I exclaimed, more loudly than was necessary. ‘I couldn’t chair a fucking whist drive.’
‘Nonsense,’ she retorted. ‘You’re a director of your brother-in-law’s wine company. And look at that job you had in the consulate; I know about some of the deals you did there. For FlyEuro, for example, and that Jack Weighley character … a journalist described him as a Scottish cult figure a couple of months back; I dropped a note saying he’d spelt it wrong.’
‘But I’m not family, Susie.’
‘You’re the nearest thing I’ve got to family, girl. You’re my stepson’s mother. And we both loved the same guy. You know he’s looking down on us, nodding approval at the idea.’
‘If he’s looking in any direction, it’s up,’ I countered. ‘That’s what Liam Matthews said.’
‘Liam Matthews? Oz’s wrestler pal? When did you see him?’
‘This morning. He’s here on holiday. I’m having dinner with him tonight.’
‘Is he still single?’
‘Yes, but forget it.’
Susie laughed. ‘Come on, woman. Do you like him?’
‘He seems like a nice guy,’ I conceded.
‘Not bad-looking either.’
‘True.’
‘Then do yourself a favour. There is absolutely no harm in getting yourself laid. The clock’s ticking, you …’ Her voice tailed away as she realised how ominous that was for her.
‘Please do it, Primavera,’ she whispered. ‘Take the chair, for me and for him, and for Tom as well. You’ll be looking after him.’
‘Can I think about it?’ I asked
‘No. It needs doing now. I’ve thought it through. We’ll make a formal announcement to the Stock Exchange on Monday that I’m stepping down from the chair on health grounds and that you’re succeeding me on a non-exec basis. Also, Audrey Kent will be appointed a director.’
‘Does she know?’
‘No, she’s not back yet.’
‘Do you have the authority to do this? Won’t the other three directors have to agree?’
‘I have the power as chairman, and as majority shareholder. Okay?’
I sighed. ‘Okay.’
‘Good. Now, the kids’ trust. I like what Harvey says. I want to do it quietly and quickly. Is there any chance of you going to Scotland next week?’
‘Once Janet and wee Jonathan are back with you, yes, I could.’
‘Fine,’ she declared. ‘In that case your first act as chair should be to set up a meeting in Glasgow, soon as you can, Tuesday if possible. While you’re there I want you to go to see my personal lawyer. You know him. Remember Greg McPhillips, Oz’s pal?’
‘Yes of course. Flash bastard, bit of a womaniser.’
‘Both of the above, but a great lawyer. I’m going to give you power of attorney to act for me in putting the trust together, and to appoint trustees. I’d like Greg to be one himself, and Mac Blackstone, if he’s prepared.’
‘For his grandchildren? Susie, if you didn’t ask him he’d never speak to you again.’
‘So you ask him for me. Then there’s my will. I want you to ask Greg to draw it up so that my surviving husband gets what he’d have if he had to go to court for it, but no shares in the business, if that can be avoided.’
‘I’ll do all that, but you’ll have to sign it.’
‘I know.’ I could hear her growing more tired by the minute. ‘Tell Greg he’ll need to bring it over to Monaco.’
‘Will do. I’m sure he’ll fancy the trip.’
‘He always does,’ she said. ‘But Primavera, tell him not to hang about. I need to get this done soon. Just in case, girl, just in case.’
I searched for a reassuring counter, but I couldn’t find one.
Eight
I promised Susie that I’d make sure Janet called her, and I did as soon as she came back from the beach. I took her up to my room, telling the boys that we were having some ‘girlie time’, placed the call on the landline, then went out on to the terrace while they spoke.
I stripped down to my pants, lay on my sunbed and closed my eyes, contemplating the day I was having. It was one of the most unexpected and most solemn of my life, and it was only a little more than halfway through. I thought over Susie’s advice, but decided against taking it. Yes, I liked Liam, but I’d made myself a solemn vow that for me, there had to be more than liking involved, and I wasn’t about to break it.
I’m no
t sure how long I lay there before I became aware of a fleeting shadow, a momentary change in the light as Janet passed between me and the sun and sat in the chair alongside.
I propped myself up on my elbows and looked at her. She met my gaze and I saw that her eyes were moist. ‘Did you have a good talk?’ I murmured.
She nodded. ‘Yes, she told me what’s wrong with her and about the treatment she’s had. And she said she was sorry for not telling me before, but she didn’t want to worry me. She said that it’s all finished now and that she’s going to be fine. She sounded good.’ Nonetheless the kid frowned. ‘She told me something else, Auntie Primavera. She and Duncan; they’re married. He’s in America with her and Audrey.’
‘How do you feel about that?’ I asked her.
‘I don’t know. I don’t like him, especially when he drinks. Wee Jonathan hates him; he’s scared of him. He said he told you about him hitting Tom.’
I nodded. ‘And about what happened afterwards. You won’t have any more trouble with him, not that kind anyway. Duncan’s not a fool; he knows that Tom’s getting bigger and stronger every day, and that he’d protect you two.’
‘But Tom’s not always there,’ she pointed out. ‘If Duncan ever hits Jonathan …’ I caught a flash of her father in her eyes.
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t. But if he ever does, or threatens to, you should tell your mother or you should tell Conrad. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ she whispered, then paused. ‘Auntie Primavera,’ she ventured, ‘what is leukaemia?’
‘It’s a disease of the blood or bone marrow,’ I replied. ‘It can affect your immune system, make you susceptible to infections and so on.’
She frowned. ‘You mean like AIDS?’
In spite of everything, I smiled. ‘No, nothing like that. AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease. Leukaemia’s … different. It’s just bad luck, really.’
‘Can people die from it?’
Deep breath time, Auntie P. ‘Yes, they can,’ I admitted, ‘but many, many people survive. And new treatments are being developed all the time. Your mum’s been looked after at one of the finest clinics in the world. She couldn’t be in better hands.’ I reached across and touched her knee. ‘She’s had her therapy,’ I said, ‘and now it’s up to her to get better. We’ve all got to help in that. Me, by looking out for you lot when I have to, and by doing some business stuff she’s asked me to take on. Duncan, by making her home life as easy as possible. You, by being as strong for her as you can be and by getting on with Duncan, even if it goes against the grain. You up for that?’
Deadly Business Page 10
