by Janet Neel
He divested her firmly of both, and, wide awake and feeling perfectly in control of the situation, proceeded to deploy all his considerable experience. He felt her relax, then tense again in concentration, and he waited until he was quite, quite sure she had come, before he did. He lay beside her, both of them sweating lightly, and as he pushed her fringe back from her eyes, he realized she was crying.
‘Fran, darling. Wasn’t it all right?’ He was momentarily appalled and she reached urgently for him.
‘It was lovely, darling John. It’s just relief.’ She kissed him in reassurance and scrubbed her eyes with the sleeve of the discarded pyjamas.
‘I love you. Go to sleep and we’ll try again later. No, don’t put that object on, stay here.’
Five hours later he was sitting in the kitchen watching Francesca cook a huge breakfast, which she did with the neatness and dispatch of a short-order chef, confirming McLeish’s view that she was only clumsy when her mind was not on the job. He was extremely happy. He had made love to her again two hours earlier and it had been an undoubted, unqualified success. Francesca, to his admittedly prejudiced eye, was glowing with it. He had understood from what she had left unsaid that he had given her pleasure in a way which her previous lovers and her husband had not, twice in one night, and he was feeling a pure, primitive satisfaction about that, too. She gave him a huge, beautifully laid-out plate of bacon, eggs, tomatoes, fried potatoes and sausages, and they held hands in the intervals of eating the lot. It was quite the best breakfast he had ever had.
‘When do we pick Perry up?’ he asked, over his third cup of coffee.
‘Two o’clock.’ She hesitated. ‘I promised to take the Roller rather than my Mini, since we have Perry, plus Jamie, plus all their kit; but I’m frightened of driving it.’
‘If it’s insured for me, I’ll drive. Doesn’t Perry know you’re frightened of it?’
‘All the boys assume I can do anything.’
‘Time you disillusioned them, my sweet.’ He put his arm around her comfortably, but she was not prepared to be teased and he noted he was on uneasy ground.
He had no difficulty with the huge, beautifully engineered machine and managed to park it without incident at the airport. He followed Francesca into the VIP lounge and nodded to a Special Branch officer whom he recognized. Francesca noticed and asked with interest whether he was recognized everywhere.
‘Nine years in the Met does get your face known, yes.’
‘There are Perry and James,’ she observed. ‘Better hang back a bit.’
They waited while Perry dealt patiently and courteously with the waiting reporters. McLeish realized that he had not grasped the extent to which Perry and young James were news. As he watched, Perry listened to a question about his love life addressed in fractured English, and replied briskly in German, making the questioner laugh.
‘He said he couldn’t remember when he first went out with girls,’ Francesca translated. ‘Probably true — he can’t have been more than four when the little girl next door offered for him. In my calmer moments I try to remember that Sheena is the latest of a very, very long string.’
‘Is his German good?’
‘Oh very. So is his French, Spanish and Italian. His Portuguese and Russian are less fluent. He has a marvellous ear, and can pick up any language in about twenty minutes — it’s just a trick, unattached to intelligence as far as I can see.’ She caught him looking at her doubtfully, and laughed. ‘When he was interviewed for Cambridge, one poor chap realized what a fantastic linguist he is — Perry was probably telling jokes in Welsh, or similar — and suggested that he read Oriental Languages rather than music. He was totally boggled by Perry who told him, quite truthfully, that he liked languages, but he absolutely couldn’t be bothered with Literature. Mercifully the chap was too horror-stricken to ask Perry just how he learns all these languages.’
‘How does he?’
‘He reads, with occasional reference to a dictionary, any three of the James Bond books translated into whichever language it is. At the end of this he has the language. He is too idle to bother with any more demanding text. He is lazy; he just has these useful gifts.’
‘And you love him.’
‘And I love him,’ she agreed, resignedly.
Perry finally emerged from the press of reporters, kissed his sister and greeted McLeish kindly. In the hiatus of collecting the luggage, McLeish just saw Perry ask Francesca something, grinning broadly, his eyebrows peaking as hers did.
‘How did you manage with The Car?’ Perry asked amicably as they caught up with McLeish.
‘Very well. John drove it.’
‘Ah.’ Perry touched his sister’s arm smiling, plainly having been given the answer to his question. ‘Do you hate being driven, John, or can I drive it back?’
McLeish signified that he had no objection to Perry’s driving his own car, and stowed the luggage, wondering whether Francesca only ever allowed a man to drive if he was sleeping with her and whether she always told her brothers. Probably, he decided detachedly; which would be something he would have to stop.
Perry moved the big car smoothly out of the car-park and slid into the traffic stream. He drove as he sang, beautifully, concentrated but relaxed.
‘How did it go?’ asked Francesca, in the back with James.
‘“The Apple Tree” went very well,’ James volunteered, ‘but the alto was not as good as you, Frannie.’
McLeished focused on young James promptly and the boy smiled back at him without self-consciousness. Small for his age, at thirteen he was uncannily grown-up and self-contained. His blond hair was expensively cut and swept up from his forehead. A serious child — or maybe it was just the long neck and high cheekbones, like a blond version of Perry. McLeish remembered that James’s mother, like Mary Wilson, was a Scot.
‘Let’s do it,’ Fran suggested and the child nodded to her gravely, focused his eyes on the back of the seat and sang a note. Then he started to sing the old carol, the only sound in the car the true high treble. He was obviously and endearingly a boy who sang as naturally as he breathed. There was none of the controlled, rather nasal, ethereal cathedral treble about this one; he was belting it out. On the second verse Francesca and Perry came in singing the alto and tenor parts, and McLeish listened with real pleasure to Francesca. In any other family, he thought, one not containing the dazzling Perry, her voice would have been considered worth training.
Perry was tactfully under-singing, using only some of that marvellous voice, but all three of them articulated beautifully, so every word and note of the odd rhythmic plainsong was clear. In perfect and welltrained unison they swept into the last three verses, and took the penultimate verse fortissimo, McLeish noting without surprise that James could make his treble heard above both grown-ups. He watched Perry’s long hands moving lightly on the wheel in counterpart to the music, and stiffened as a lorry pulled out, forcing a car in front of them into their lane. McLeish braced himself for the collision, deciding with another part of his mind that if he died now, listening to the country’s finest treble, the best young tenor he had ever heard and his darling Francesca, it would hardly matter. Perry, without missing a beat, moved his hands and the big car shifted sideways, sliding into a gap behind the lorry, missing it by a coat of paint, and through into a gap which was just opening up in the inner lane. McLeish let out a long breath, and into the silence came James’s pure, hard edged treble from the back seat, singing the last verse by himself, every word clear and separate.
‘Nicely driven,’ McLeish said and Perry nodded, without taking his eyes off the road.
‘Where are we going Perry?’
‘I’m going to put Jamie on a train at King’s Cross, then I’m going to see Sheena in hospital, then I’m going out.’
‘Where out?’
‘Just out.’ His sister looked at him sharply, and McLeish decided Perry was going off with a girl and wasn’t about to confess. He felt a moment’s
pang for the beautiful, unconscious Sheena but decided she must know how to cope with the likes of Perry.
‘Do you sing, John?’ Perry was watching his sister in the rear view mirror.
‘Not enough to sing with you lot. Rugger-club standard.’
‘Can’t have everything,’ Perry said, grinning at his sister who, thinking herself unobserved, made a horrible face at him. He laughed at her and started softly to sing ‘The Lost Chord’, and she and Jamie joined in. She wound down the windows as they came round Shepherd’s Bush roundabout, so that as they came past the Edgware Road police station and halted in a traffic jam, McLeish found himself with a fascinated audience of half a dozen of the uniformed branch, just as the singers arrived at the final stanza and death’s bright angel.
Bruce Davidson signalled them in, grinning. ‘I thought you were the radio, John. Afternoon Miss Wilson, Mr Wilson. Since you’ve dropped by, there’s a call from Doncaster. Inspector Brady — will you call him ASAP? Says he has something on that enquiry and it’s urgent.’
15
‘It’s not a lot to go on, is it?’ Bruce Davidson observed as he reached the end of McLeish’s notes of his telephone conversation with Brady. ‘Mostly gossip. Where did he get it?’
McLeish read his notes again carefully. He had talked to Brady at some length the day before, dictated a note, and decided to sleep on it, this being his natural inclination when faced with new evidence. Since he would be sleeping with Francesca, the decision had admittedly been easy to take, but he had worried away at the problem in the intervals of spending Sunday evening and Sunday night with her.
‘What do we have in this wee note of yours? That Peter Hampton, who is separated from his wife and earns £40,000 a year plus perks, is never short of cash and has his suits made for him. I suppose the suits are a fact.’
‘So’s his wife’s maintenance. Factually, she and the kids are getting about 40 per cent of his gross salary, which doesn’t leave an enormous amount of take-home pay.’
‘Who says he is never short of a few bob? The note doesnae suggest a source.’
‘The source is Brady’s wife. I thought when I was there that she’d been having a walk-out with Hampton, but Brady isn’t admitting it. He’s got her to talk about Hampton, but neither of them is saying to the other or to me that she was pretty close to him. Still, it’s a lead.’
He was not about to tell Davidson that at the very end of this. conversation Brady had said, with some hesitation, that Francesca and Hampton’s display of dancing at the Grand had been widely talked of. Indeed, his wife had heard all about it when they were in a local pub for a Sunday drink. Not difficult to see the sequence of events, McLeish thought grimly: Julie Brady, understanding that Hampton really was looking elsewhere, had decided to make trouble for him. Still, Brady was reliable and would have looked for proper evidence. He sat brooding; then after a bit looked longingly at the telephone. If he could find another lead, if Henry Blackshaw’s own recommendation as to the best method of taking money from a company was right, then he might find something from the suppliers. He decided to try it, telephoned Henry and explained succinctly that one of the Britex people seemed to have a bit more cash about than seemed consistent with his salary and commitments. Could Henry let him have a list of suppliers in case it came from there?
‘No, I can’t,’ said Henry on consideration. ‘But there is a complete list at the company. You can ask for it.’
‘Not without alerting our man, if he exists. Don’t want him to run. If you’re right, he’ll have funds outside the country.’
‘You’ll alert him anyway if you start talking to suppliers.’
‘True,’ McLeish acknowledged and listened to the thoughtful silence at the other end of the line.
‘I can ask around a bit, without including Britex. I know a lot of these suppliers. If the company is being sold — remember you don’t know that — it’ll be the purchasers’ job to talk to suppliers, not mine; but I can do it under the old pals’ act.’
McLeish thanked him warmly, being clear that Henry would get a better lead than he would and without disturbing the game. If there were a murderer at Britex, then he should be caught, not enabled to sit in Brazil thumbing his nose at all attempts to bring him back and getting himself in women’s magazines. He sat, trying to work out whether he really thought something was going on at Britex.
At the Department, Henry, Francesca by his side, had welcomed Hal Guadareschi and Ed Patello and was listening with pleasure as they did a practised double act. Hal was playing the nice guy, expressing keenness to take over the Britex assets and to make the business work. Ed was apparently sunk in gloom, rousing himself at intervals to make one telling point after another about the difficulties involved in coaxing a phoenix from the ashes of Britex. They were perfectly capable of reversing the roles if it suited them, and Henry wondered idly on what basis they had decided that today Ed should be the hard man. Perhaps they tossed for it. He was recalled from this line of speculation by Ed’s changing position slightly in his chair as Hal observed cheerfully that where the business was attractive, then, gee, the financials could always be arranged. Ed, without altering expression, opined that the financials here did look exceptionally difficult.
‘Do you have a ball-park figure?’ Henry decided they had better get on. Hal and Ed did not even glance at each other, but Ed roused himself to say that no man of sense would pay a receiver more than £10m for the assets, but working capital requirements could easily be another £10m.
‘So, the way we see it, Henry, is that the total project that you have here could be of the order of twenty million of your pounds, and I guess that is a major problem for you,’ Hal said, with undiminished cheerfulness. Henry mentally saluted the negotiating competence that stated the whole issue as a problem for him rather than an opportunity for them.
‘We are constrained by the rules of the European Community as to the level of assistance that can be offered,’ he began smoothly. ‘Francesca is the expert here, and I will ask her to explain it in more detail.’
He sat back while she explained that 30 per cent of total project costs represented the absolute maximum of assistance that the Department could give and proceeded to a succinct explanation of project costs. The Americans listened to her, smiling indulgently with the air of men listening to an ingenious commercial, but to Henry’s pleasure she was not distracted, taking them steadily through the main rules.
‘And that means what it says,’ he told them firmly as she finished. ‘Whatever we do has to be within those parameters. Then we have to persuade a Minister that what we are offering is suitable, and he has to convince the Treasury.’
‘I expect Francesca here could convince anyone,’ Hal offered gallantly, getting for his pains a long speculative look from those dark-blue eyes and a very brief smile of acknowledgement.
Ed was ignoring all this and thinking hard. ‘You are saying, Henry, as I understand it, that one-third of project costs represents the maximum contribution that the British Government is able to make to keep these thousand jobs in existence?’
‘And that the Government definition of project costs may not quite sit with yours,’ Francesca observed sharply.
Ed, without doing anything particular to his face, gave her his full attention. ‘That would be an area in which you might have some flexibility, right, Francesca?’
‘Yes. Limited, mark you, but it exists.’
Henry reflected with resignation that expecting Francesca to sit quiet except when spoken to at a meeting was always going to be a doomed exercise. Very well, she could do the work. He formed, promptly, a subgroup of Hal plus a silent, young accountant he had brought with him, Martin and Francesca, to establish what the project costs might be, offered to meet the group again for lunch and banished them from his office. Ed, while agreeing this piece of organization, did not move from his chair as the rest of the group left the office.
‘Henry, both Hal and I wou
ld appreciate it if you would offer us any, uh, insights of your own that you may have gathered in your researches into the affairs of this company.’
Henry seized his opportunity. ‘The management accounts are all right; the stock seems to be reasonably under control — much too much of it, as you know, but they know where it is and they count in. I just have a slight idea that someone may have been on the take.’
‘In what area, Henry?’
‘It’s usually a supplier’s fiddle, isn’t it? I was going to have a look at the smaller suppliers. Here’s the list.’
Ed read silently for two minutes. ‘These guys here, Alutex. I’ve had a problem with them in Birmingham. Just a smell, nothing to get hold of. Who in the company is doing it?’
‘Dunno. I don’t even know it is happening, but I’d look for it.’
Ed observed, unconsciously echoing Detective Inspector Brady, that when a company was in this much of a problem you often got odd bits of fraudulent behaviour. Meanwhile he had a few more questions if Henry would bear with him? For example, how good was the management below Board level?
‘Competent in the main, but no better. The Purchasing Department lost its head six months ago and the acting manager was the chap who was murdered the week before last.’
‘That right?’ Ed looked up from the suppliers’ list slowly. ‘Any connection with your doubt about the suppliers?’
Henry cursed inwardly; it was easy, but fatal to underestimate Ed Patello. ‘The detective on the case thinks there may be. I should say that he has nothing much to go on; it looks like a simple mugging and it happened in London.’
‘OK. If I get shot at, I’ll let you know. I’m not going to conduct any inquests, Henry, I’ll just make it known that any suppliers offering any, uh, unwarranted incentives, will do no more business with any of our companies.’ He heaved himself to his feet and observed that he guessed he would just join the rest of the group. Henry thankfully called his secretary and attacked his In tray, putting the affairs of Britex out of his mind for the moment.
