Sweet Talking Money

by Harry Bingham

  ‘I’ve got some pictures. I’d like to sell them.’

  The girl flapped briefly, as though being spoken to was outside her job description. Then her eyes happened to fall on the telephone in front of her. She pressed a button. ‘Mr Fraser … please,’ she murmured. She replaced the handset. In the meantime, something terrible had happened to her hair, and she began to attempt an emergency resuscitation. Mr Fraser appeared.

  ‘May I help?’

  ‘I’ve two etchings I want to sell. Picasso and Matisse. I’ve got the certificates of authenticity and everything.’

  ‘Indeed. I’ll be happy to look, though certificates aren’t always conclusive, of course.’

  ‘They’d better be, since they’ve got this gallery’s name on them.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I see. Perhaps I may view the pieces?’

  Bryn laid the pictures on the glass desk. The girl rolled back on her chair, worried about close contact with human beings. Her hair seemed OK for now and she sat still, worried that movement might damage something. Mr Fraser examined the etchings.

  ‘Matisse. Yes, an earlyish piece. Perhaps 1916 or thereabouts. 1918, is it? Yes, an interesting piece, well presented, even if the print run is a little on the lengthy side. The Picasso’s a bit more ordinary perhaps, but let’s see. Only the fourth print to be taken from this particular plate, and good condition. You wanted to sell both?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I could offer, perhaps, eleven thousand for the pair. Roughly six for the Matisse, just a little less for the Picasso.’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Perhaps you would like to arrange with Persephone here a time to bring them in and we’ll have a cheque ready for you.’

  Persephone rolled closer to the desk in an act of bravery and picked up a sharp pencil, as though to prove she knew how to use it. An appointments book lay open before her, empty as the room, blank as her mind.

  ‘I have brought them in,’ said Bryn, ‘and I’d like the cheque now.’

  ‘Now?’ said Fraser. ‘Yes, very well. A moment, please. Persephone, perhaps you could look after this gentleman, while I …’

  Fraser drifted off behind a white door at the back of the gallery. Persephone executed her looking-after duties by offering Bryn a smile which barely wrinkled her skin, but was no doubt intended to chop him off at the knees. Bryn left her and strolled round the gallery, looking at the Hockneys. Swimming pools, dogs, a clothed woman, a couple of naked men. Bryn thought of his dad and how little he would appreciate these works.

  Fraser reappeared soundlessly, holding a sealed envelope addressed in an italic hand to Bryn Hughes, Esq. Fraser followed Bryn’s gaze to one of Hockney’s naked men.

  ‘Beautiful draughtsmanship, is it not? If you should require our assistance in the future, please don’t hesitate. We have many more pieces available at the back, should you wish …’ Fraser drifted off, as though finishing a sentence would insult the art.

  ‘Modern art,’ said Bryn. He flicked the picture in a place where the naked man would be most likely to feel it. ‘If you ask me, it’s mostly cock,’ then, turning his head so his gaze took in the rest of the gallery, ‘and bull,’

  Out on the street, cheque in his pocket, he dialled a number salvaged from one of Cecily’s gardening books. It was the Royal Hallam Nursery and Arboretum, a regular supplier of out-of-season or unusual plants to the Chelsea Flower Show, offering horticultural perfection at eye-popping prices.

  ‘Can I help you?’ asked the girl who answered the phone.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bryn. ‘I’m very sure you can.’

  3

  The day Fulham Research Ltd (or rather, the Fulham Clinic, as it had now become) got its fifth full-time employee was a day everyone remembered. Cameron and Kati had declared their need for serious computer assistance, and they’d begun to interview a wearisome succession of IT types, rich in jargon but apparently devoid of real programming ability. Until Mungo.

  He shambled in, half an hour later than his appointed time, wearing a grubby T-shirt, a pair of enormous khaki-coloured trousers studded with unnecessary pockets, and a pair of luminous trainers which you could probably cross the Channel in, if you could have tolerated the smell.

  ‘Wicked place,’ he commented, looking around Bryn’s high-ceilinged, big-windowed office and offering no apology for his lateness.

  Bryn and Cameron looked at each other, wondering whether to sling him out and wait for an adult with a working knowledge of the rudiments of hygiene.

  ‘OK, briefly – er – Mungo, our major priority is some programming work which will be conducted under Dr Wilde’s supervision, as well as –’

  Bryn broke off. Mungo was shaking his head in ever larger side-to-side movements. ‘No way, man. Priority number two, could be.’ He ran his words into each other. Could be sounded more like coo-be, or even just c’be. ‘You need to get some kick-ass security going first. What you’ve got is ropy, man. Row-peeee.’

  Bryn smiled thinly, very thinly. Eavesdropping assiduously from the reception desk, Meg overheard his tone and moved closer, anxious not to miss the forthcoming explosion. ‘Our IT security has been professionally installed, and as I say our main –’

  ‘OK. Go into MS-DOS, and I’ll show you.’

  ‘MS-?’

  Mungo swung Bryn’s keyboard away from him and with practised fingers closed down Windows and moved into the Disk Operating System – territory deeply unfamiliar to Bryn.

  ‘Type “tiger”.’

  Mungo swung the keyboard back to Bryn.

  ‘Tiger?’

  ‘Yeah. As in, you know, tiger.’

  Bryn typed the word and instantly the screen filled. ‘WARNING. This computer system has been tiger-teamed. The following security defects have been detected …’ There followed a long list of problems, none of which made any sense to Bryn. ‘Recommended actions: Hire Mungo.’

  ‘You did this?’ asked Bryn stupidly. ‘From outside?’

  ‘Yeah. Always do with new jobs. Check it out. Trouble is most places do what you do. Hire some drongo in a suit who farts around for a few days, then tells you what a wicked job they’ve done. You say, “Wicked job? Oh, I say, top hole. Here’s a big pile of wonga, please spend it on your lady wife.” You’ve been ripped, man, but course you’re not going to know.’ (This last bit pronounced roughly: nu-gu-nu-no). “S not their fault mostly. Only kids.’ At a guess, Mungo himself was nineteen, maybe twenty.

  ‘Tiger-team?’ said Bryn, looking back at the screen. ‘As in SAS, huh?’

  “S right. It’s a bit of an overstatement, seeing as how this particular tiger-team consisted of me and a big bag of smoky bacon flavour pretzels. Mind you, I did use to do a lot of samurai work for the telcos, before they got too square.’

  ‘Samurai?’ asked Bryn weakly.

  ‘Bust in to the telecoms networks. Left an e-mail telling ’em how I did it. Asked them to make a contribution to the Mungo-for-Mayor appeal. Trouble was when the droids got involved – suits, man, droid equals suit without the humour – first they started sending me cheques. I mean, cheques. To a fourteen-year-old? I ask you. Plus then they got all “Oooh, criminal activity” about it. Dweebs, man, total dweebs.’

  Bryn stared at Cameron. Cameron stared at Bryn. They’d never seen anything like Mungo before, never would again.

  ‘Mungo, we’d love you to join. When can you start?’

  Mungo stared at Bryn as though he was a halfwit. He rapped on Bryn’s monitor where the warning sign was still displayed. ‘No, man, don’t you get it? I have started.’

  4

  It’s tough being rich these days. Any fool can own a sports car. Designer labels slum it in the supermarket. Any tomfool accountant who sticks at his job can get the big house and the tennis court, maybe even the place in the sun.

  Flowers are an example. Roses in January? It ought to be impossible, the laws of nature forbid it. Yet a hundred quid will buy enough January roses to fill your home. How is money me
ant to talk, when the jingle of small change sounds so loud?

  Bryn had solved this particular problem. As he crossed the lobby, eyes turned at the tree he drew behind him on a trolley. The tree was miniature, eight foot tall and already mature. But that wasn’t what caught the attention. On to the dwarfing root stock, not one but two trees had been grafted. The lower section belonged to an early-fruiting cherry, the upper section was taken from a late-flowering crab apple.

  On the streets outside, a thin sleet hesitated on the verge of snow and pedestrians passed quickly in a huddle of coats and scarves. But Bryn’s tree knew nothing of this. Bred by geneticists, born of surgery, reared under computer-controlled lamps, the tree had waited all its life for this day and this moment. Its upper branches were crammed with blossom, its lower boughs hung with cherries, well formed and glossy, although inedible. It was a miracle, eight thousand pounds’ worth of miracle.

  ‘I have a gift for Miss Cheryl Kessler.’

  The receptionist eyed Bryn and the magical tree behind. The hotel was used to celebrities, and the annoyances that came with them. House policy was to refuse all requests for autographs and similar nuisances, but to accept gifts, which were taken upstairs at the end of every day. The policy was a strict one, but the tree was beyond policy. You couldn’t ask a cherry tree which flowered and fruited all at once to wait in line, like any old bunch of flowers.

  ‘I’ll have it taken up right away.’

  The receptionist was nervous, expecting Bryn to challenge her right to take the tree off him, but he was all smiles.

  ‘Excellent. If Miss Kessler wishes to see us, we will be seated over there.’ Bryn pointed to the sofa in the lobby where Cameron waited. ‘Please mention to Miss Kessler that there is a note with the gift.’ He indicated an envelope nestled in the snow-white down of the blossom.

  The receptionist nodded and summoned a bell-boy, then, thinking that such a gift needed an escort, found somebody else to serve behind the counter while she and the bell-boy bore the miraculous gift upstairs.

  ‘Now we wait,’ said Bryn.

  ‘I don’t see the point,’ said Cameron.

  ‘Cheryl Kessler is ill. Conventional medicine hasn’t been able to find a cure and there are millions of fans praying for her recovery. Don’t you want to make her better?’

  ‘She’s only one data point and I don’t see why we’ve started to pay our patients in trees.’

  ‘Publicity. We need to put ourselves on the map. And I wish you’d stop calling our clients data points. They’re not data points, they’re patients.’

  ‘You call them revenue units.’

  ‘Well, we won’t have any bloody data or any bloody revenue if things don’t look up.’

  Bryn scowled at himself: no use in letting Cameron know he was tense. He apologised for snapping. Cameron muttered something sarcastic, then turned back to a pile of research papers she had brought with her. Time passed.

  ‘Cameron. Sorry. Would you mind sitting up a bit straighter?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s just that we need to make a good impression.’

  Cameron’s slouch didn’t change. Bryn had forced her to put on something smart – a dark skirt and jacket, which she hated – but she’d refused absolutely to mess around with her hair or face, and the best that Meg and Bryn had been able to do was to persuade her that a purple scrunchy with a bit of shine in the fabric was preferable to a rubber band.

  Bryn’s smile froze, then loosened. A gorilla of a man, three hundred pounds of him, was buying postcards at the hotel gift shop and using the opportunity to scrutinise the lobby.

  ‘Look at me and smile as if I’ve just made a joke,’ said Bryn.

  Cameron pulled a face.

  ‘We’re being inspected,’ said Bryn, still smiling. ‘We need to show them we’re not wackos.’

  ‘You’ve given somebody you don’t know a tree worth twelve thousand dollars and you want to show them you’re not a wacko?’

  The gorilla was pink with pricklish yellow hair. He made a call from his mobile, his gaze now openly fixed on Bryn and Cameron. Bryn crossed his legs and picked up his paper again. He’d selected The Times as the safest bet: conservative, recognisable to American gorillas, but not as stuffy as the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal. Cameron, of course, had piles of research papers in front of her, which she devoured as intensively as ever. Out of the corner of his eye, Bryn noticed the first gorilla being joined by his big brother, a black guy, unnervingly dressed in a three-piece suit. The bodyguards decided something and came over.

  ‘You want to see Miss Kessler?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Allow me to introduce Dr Wilde here, formerly of Harvard University, and myself, Bryn Hughes, proprietor of the Fulham Clinic.’

  ‘You know how many people want to see Miss Kessler?’

  Bryn wanted to stand up, shake hands, be polite, but the gorillas stood too close to let him stand. He maintained his unnatural, oily politeness.

  ‘All of London, I’m sure. Did she receive our gift in good condition?’

  ‘London?’ said the blond gorilla. ‘London, England?’

  ‘Everybody wants to see Miss Kessler,’ said the black guy. ‘Everybody in the world.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You a psycho?’

  ‘No. Cameron here is a doctor and –’

  ‘Oh, she’s the doctor,’ said the blond gorilla. ‘She’s the doctor and you’re what? Her dancing mistress?’

  The black gorilla turned his attention to Cameron for the first time.

  ‘You send Miss Kessler the tree?’

  ‘I guess,’ said Cameron. She didn’t seem unnerved by sitting beneath a wall of American beef. She was more interested in her research material.

  ‘You think you can fix Miss Kessler?’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘You hear that?’ The black gorilla spoke to his pink partner. ‘This little lady thinks she can cure Miss Kessler. Two hundred doctors don’t know what’s wrong with Miss Kessler and this lady says she can make her better.’

  ‘You send trees to all your patients?’ The black gorilla bent down, tucked his fingers beneath Cameron’s arms and lifted her upright. In a single movement, his hands swept down, checking her for weapons.

  ‘Miss Kessler would like to see you about your tree,’ said the pink gorilla. ‘She wants to know why the cherries ain’t ripe.’ He shook briefly, which is probably gorilla for laughter.

  The two giants walked off, with Cameron sandwiched in between. Bryn they ignored. He walked behind, unable to find a way through the human wall in front, then crammed himself into the lift, leaping between the closing doors. The top floor was given over to penthouses and suites, and Cheryl Kessler had taken the lot. Technicians, PR types, production staff, money men swarmed around; drones humming round the one queen bee.

  At the entrance to the Royal Suite, the two gorillas shifted position. Before he knew it, Bryn found himself flung against the wall, arms and legs spread, while fingers big as bananas explored his body. The exploration wasn’t gentle and wasn’t meant to be. With a final cautionary jab, they discarded him and opened the door.

  The room was dark, curtains drawn, lamps off. Against the far wall, something white gleamed in the blackness and there was a scent of spring in the air. Cherry blossom. As his eyes grew better able to handle the gloom, Bryn made out a heap of pillows and quilts. A pale oval marked the face of the world’s biggest rock star. The face spoke.

  ‘I puked after the show last night.’

  Somebody needed to reply, so Bryn did.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was your fault I puked?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry you felt ill.’

  ‘That why you sent me a tree?’

  ‘No, I –’

  ‘You ever consider I might have allergies?’

  ‘Allergies?’

  ‘The tree’s got pollen, right? Or is it too screwed up to have stuff
like that?’

  This was no good. Time to take control. ‘Miss Kessler, I sent you the tree because I believe that Dr Wilde here can cure you. The tree was to get your attention.’

  ‘A chat-up line?’

  ‘In order to get you well, we’re going to need to take some blood, some urine, run some tests, then we’ll be back to you with a treatment plan.’

  ‘I’ve done a million tests. I’m running out of blood.’

  ‘We’ll keep the blood draw requirements to a minimum, I promise.’

  ‘How come you’re talking? I thought you said the other one was the doctor.’

  Cameron stepped forward.

  ‘I’m Dr Wilde. You want to tell me what’s the matter?’

  ‘Didn’t you read the piece in Vanity Fair?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Rolling Stone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You see my Letterman interview?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, I’ve got better –’

  ‘You even know who I am?’

  ‘Know? Yes. Care? No. You’re a singer.’

  ‘Right, I’m a singer. You hear that, boys? I’m a singer.’ The gorillas grunted and shifted their weight. ‘Only now I’m a very sick singer.’ And Cheryl Kessler, the tough-as-nails megastar, began to recite a list of symptoms with an invalid’s absorption.

  Cameron, who had no sense at all of being in the presence of one of the best-known celebrities on the planet, interrupted freely with her questions. Skin disorders? Food sensitivities? Faintness on standing? Temperature regulation? Kessler acted tough, but she answered everything. Ever since the mystery virus had hit her, she’d cancelled most of her obligations and where she’d refused to cancel, she’d given her concerts lying in a vast four-poster bed draped in sheets of scarlet satin. The newspapers speculated openly about whether she was genuinely ill or whether the whole thing was a gimmick. But the truth was that Kessler was seriously unwell and desperately anxious to find out what was happening.