Death's Bright Angel

by Janet Neel

  ‘You could have rung up and asked for it back,’ his sister said, sharply, in greeting. ‘I don’t think you know Peter Hampton.’

  The look of pure, wounded astonishment that Perry turned on her said more clearly than any words that he had not been expecting to disturb his sister in a tender scene with a man unknown to him, and Francesca blushed uncomfortably. It was Perry who recovered first.

  ‘No, I don’t think we have met. Nice to see you,’ he said, punctiliously shaking hands with Hampton. ‘I am sorry to barge in like this, but I did need this jacket.’ He brandished it demonstratively, and refused the drink that his sister belatedly managed to offer him. Shaking hands again with Hampton, and giving his sister a long, wondering, reproachful look by way of farewell, he left behind him a marked silence which endured until the front door slammed behind him.

  ‘I must change the system and get that key back,’ she said, ruffled and apologetic, but Hampton laughed.

  ‘Come on. We’ll go dancing and get some food.’ She followed him downstairs, amused in her turn by his apparent lightness of touch, and unwillingness to resuscitate a scene that had gone wrong. She got in his car, very conscious of him, but he kept both hands on the wheel and chatted easily as they arrived at the Palais. Dancing together was as great a pleasure as it had been in Doncaster, and she said as much as they sat down after a long session, both breathing hard.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ he agreed. ‘We might have been practising for months.’

  He raised his glass to her, and smiled but she noticed that he was looking tired and said so.

  ‘Yes. Well, it’s not an easy day tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh dear. It isn’t, is it?’ She looked into her glass. ‘I can’t really think the Minister is going to overrule the advice Henry told you we had given.’

  ‘Oh, nor do I. Not your fault, beautiful. It’s just gone on rather a long time. Don’t let’s talk about it.’

  ‘OK. I think you and your lot have been very steady and goodtempered through it all, and that can’t be common.’ She smiled at him. ‘You only got ratty once.’ He looked at her blankly, and she was embarrassed but decided it was better to go on. ‘You know — when I was roaming the corridors at the factory trying to find a ledger for Martin, and ran into William Blackett and one of his salesmen allegedly tidying up.’

  ‘I’d forgotten that. Yes, they weren’t really helping, were they? What were they doing there, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, they were looking for something. I rather think I found it for them, quite by accident, because it had got tangled with the ledger, only everybody was so cross I never stopped to ask, just crept out.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Something like the discount on purchases from Alutex — I mean it was headed Alutex and appeared to be about commission paid. What a very boring subject, Peter, I’m sorry I introduced it. Well may you look fed up.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound terribly important, either way. I was just remembering you had a photographic memory. Not much use keeping things from you.’ There was a slight edge to his voice, and she said hastily that she didn’t really think anyone had been trying to keep it from her particularly, and asked if she might have another drink, deciding that she would really have to stop showing off. They had another drink and a hamburger, and danced together again, amity restored. He kissed her as they reached the car, and drove her back sedately. She watched his profile, confident now of the evening’s likely outcome and hoping she had tidied up the bedroom properly.

  ‘It’s still a fairly rough district, isn’t it?’ he observed as he drove cautiously past the crowd spilling out of a pub.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, firmly. ‘I’ve lived round here for ages and it’s perfectly safe. I run round here at night.’

  ‘By yourself?’ he asked, scandalized, and sounding so like John McLeish that she was taken aback.

  ‘Yes, of course — absent anyone else living with me.’

  ‘That can’t be a good idea, can it? You could easily get mugged.’

  ‘Don’t you start.’ She spoke warningly, and was immediately and uneasily conscious that she had told him rather more than she meant to. They arrived at her door and she invited him in demurely for coffee, and made them both some. As she had confidently expected, he finished his coffee in a business-like way, standing in the kitchen, and reached for her. She slid her arms round him under his jacket, and was without warning assailed by an exact memory of the feel of John McLeish’s heavily muscled, comforting shape. She put this thought resolutely and irritably from her and settled to the business in hand.

  ‘Sweetie,’ Hampton pulled gently away from her, ‘listen — I’ve got to meet my potential partner. He flew in tonight from his holiday, and it’s the only time I can see him. I didn’t tell you before because I wanted as much time with you as possible, but I’ve run out of rope. I have to talk to him.’ He touched her cheek. ‘Can I see you tomorrow, assuming the day ever ends? I have to go up to Doncaster tomorrow night to be at the factory when the news breaks, but I could get the late train.’

  Francesca considered him, disconcerted but realizing that something had not gone quite right; and wondered if he had sensed her momentary qualms.

  ‘Tomorrow has its difficulties because I’ve got a rehearsal of the Messiah. It starts at 3 o’clock, and only God and the leader of the choir know when it will finish. We could have a quick meal or a drink — I’m never hungry when I’ve been singing.’

  ‘I’d like to see you, even just for a little while tomorrow.’ He stood, looking down at her intently. ‘If I’d met someone like you ten years ago, everything might have been rather different.’

  ‘I’d have been eighteen and head girl of my school,’ she pointed out, in the interests of reality, and he laughed, and put an arm round her, shepherding her towards the door. He collected his coat and the two of them stood for a moment on the doorstep, agreeing precisely where they would meet next day. He bent and kissed her lightly, and went off to his car with a backward wave. Watching the car out of sight, she failed absolutely to notice John McLeish’s car hastily accelerate past her.

  McLeish, who had found himself driving past her door on his normal route home from the station had seen Peter Hampton bend to kiss her, the whole vignette brightly illuminated by the light over her door, and had been concerned only to get out of the way. As he drove on, he found himself so gripped by rage and desolation that he had to stop the car in order to recover. He sat, with the engine running, staring unseeingly through the windscreen, totally winded. It was less than twenty-four hours ago that he and Francesca had been on their way home to bed together, and after one fierce quarrel there was already another bloke on the scene. He sat, getting steadily angrier and more miserable, deciding bitterly that he ought to have taken some warning from earlier history when she had apparently switched so easily from O’Brien to him. At least the bastard wasn’t staying the night, he thought savagely — but then perhaps he had already had what he came for? At all events, there was nothing for him to do but cut his losses and go home.

  He glanced automatically in the mirror before pulling out and froze at the sight of Francesca pounding along the pavement. He shrank in his seat, but she was past him, unseeing, and he remembered that she never noticed cars unless they were about to run her down in the street. He watched as she turned left at the top of the road, Charlie’s tracksuit flopping round her, and remembered, from what seemed many weeks ago, that one evening when they had made love she had refused to run with him on the basis that her knees were no good afterwards. So either Hampton had not got her to bed, or the experience had been such as to leave her knees unimpaired.

  He cruised after her at a safe distance, determined to see her safe home, if only for the sake of his station’s crime statistics, and watched her in through her own door before turning the car back towards his flat, entirely unconscious of the other man who had also been following Francesca’s course.

  19

&
nbsp; ‘So what you are telling me, Henry, is that Britex in its present form cannot be rescued?’

  Henry Blackshaw, who had spent some time going over Francesca’s admirably concise two-page submission to the Minister, suffered a moment’s paralysing irritation at the thought that David Llewellyn had apparently not read any of it. Francesca, in obedience to his edict on the conduct of meetings, sat admirably silent.

  ‘That’s right, Minister,’ he said, patiently. ‘Also that we have a credible purchaser for the assets who will preserve some two-thirds of the jobs.’ David Llewellyn nodded, looking uncomfortable and aggrieved, and Henry mentally apologized to Rajiv, who was looking sleek and unperturbed, and to Francesca who had both predicted exactly this reaction. ‘No politician can bear to use the word “no”,’ Francesca had explained authoritatively, and this one was certainly having trouble even when ‘no’ was the only possible response.

  ‘A receiver will always try and preserve the jobs, though, won’t he?’ the Minister asked hopefully. ‘I met Ian Fraser last night at some reception and he told me that he would always try and cooperate with Government in saving jobs.’

  Henry blinked at this unexpected view of a corporate undertaker’s work, particularly considering that it came from the senior vulture of them all. He cast about for some alternative to telling the Minister outright that this statement was a load of old cobblers and Ian Fraser a conniving liar trying to get some business put his way by innocent Department of Trade and Industry Ministers, and the delay gave Francesca a chance to seize the baton.

  ‘Minister, I am not sure that we have ever briefed you on the legal duties of a receiver.’

  Llewellyn, nobody’s fool, looked at her suspiciously.

  ‘Does this mean I am going to hear something I would rather not?’

  Henry laughed aloud, and Francesca, grinning apologetically, nodded to him to continue. ‘A receiver, Minister, can only be appointed by a secured creditor. That is, a creditor who has a charge on the assets of the business. Once appointed, a receiver’s primary duty is to ensure that the creditor who appointed him gets paid. He has only the most rudimentary duty to any other creditor — it boils down to avoiding kicking them in the nuts — and no duty at all to anyone else.’

  Llewellyn’s face was a study in reluctant enlightenment. ‘So if the best offer from his creditor’s point of view involves throwing the whole of the work-force on the streets, that is just too bad?’

  Henry opened his mouth, but Francesca leapt in with the answer. ‘Theoretically you are absolutely right, Minister, but in practice the best offer for the business usually comes from someone who wants to keep it going, and needs the work-force. Typically, a receiver will try and keep the business going in order to attract the best offer. But if push comes to shove, he has indeed to take the best financial offer.’

  She hesitated, watching Llewellyn carefully to see if he had understood, and opened her mouth to speak again, but Henry gently kicked her under the table. She glanced at him under her eyelashes and subsided, while the more experienced Henry waited patiently for Llewellyn’s question to formulate itself.

  ‘Might the best financial offer come from some other textile firm who just want the order book, and who would let the work-force go?’

  Henry, who had been waiting for him to get there, agreed that there was a risk of this but not, he thought, a serious one. That part of the textile trade engaged in making sheets and thermal underwear was fragmented, and no UK firm was really big enough to outbid a purchaser who wanted to manufacture here. Nor indeed would the Britex order book be very valuable, since it was both short and skimpy.

  ‘Like their sheets,’ Rajiv was heard to murmur, disruptively.

  ‘What about these Americans?’ Henry now understood that the Minister had in fact read the papers carefully, and was working through the key points.

  ‘Sound businessmen,’ he said, firmly, ‘and well able to deal with a receiver. Perhaps it would help your thinking to meet them?’

  Llewellyn looked towards Rajiv and Francesca enquiringly, and Henry understood that a political judgement was being sought.

  ‘You need to meet them, Minister.’ It was Rajiv who answered, taking, as senior adviser there present, responsibility for the serious business of political advice. ‘If you decide to recommend assistance to your colleagues, the amount involved will be over £6m. There could, I would have thought, be some criticism if Departmental Ministers had not insisted on meeting prospective management when taxpayers’ money at that level was involved.’ Henry realized from Llewellyn’s alarmed jerk of the head that ‘taxpayers’ money’ must be a shorthand method of indicating every kind of trouble, from a row with backbench MP members of the powerful Public Accounts Committee to leaders in the heavier papers.

  They left the Minister’s office with his agreement that the current Britex management should be told that Ministers had now agreed that assistance would not be forthcoming. The Americans should be told that, in principle, assistance would be considered for their plans, up to a maximum of £6.3m. Henry was pleased with the way the meeting had gone, and told Francesca that she had behaved well. She smiled at him with affection, and he noticed that she was looking pale and tired.

  ‘Burning the candle at both ends?’ he asked bluntly when Rajiv had left them.

  ‘No. Precisely not. I just slept badly.’ She looked at her feet. ‘I seem to be in a muddle.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  She hesitated, tempted, and then recalled the absolute impossibility of confessing to going out with Peter Hampton in the teeth of Henry’s warning.

  ‘How is your nice policeman?’

  ‘Part of the problem. I’ll just have to sort it,’ she said, firmly and dismissively. ‘Listen, Henry, someone — like you — needs to ring Sir James Blackett at Britex and tell him that the Minister has agreed no assistance. I’ll ring the good Hal and tell him and Ed to parade tomorrow to meet the Minister. You and I have the Messiah orchestra rehearsal at 3 p.m. so we’d better get on.’

  Henry agreed meekly to do his part of the task, and took her with him to listen while he failed to locate Sir James.

  ‘I must call someone there,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to Hampton.’

  ‘He’s at the London office with Blackett fils.’

  Henry accepted without a blink this unconscious betrayal, and rang the London office, flipping over the loudspeaker switch as he was connected and punctiliously telling Peter Hampton that he had Francesca with him. He delivered his message, added civil regrets that he had not felt able to recommend otherwise, and thanked Hampton for his help and cooperation, his eyes on Francesca who was openly soaking up the technique of delivering a difficult message

  ‘And I’d like to thank you — and Francesca and Martin — for the way you have handled this case,’ Peter Hampton said, civilly, the slight northern accent emphasized by the phone. ‘I can’t pretend the decision is unexpected since you warned us what you were recommending. All the directors are here, except Sir James who is on his way — he telephoned from his car — and I expect we will be asking the bank to put in a receiver as soon as possible.’

  Henry rang off after a further exchange of civilities, and looked across at Francesca. ‘Nothing else to be done but tell them, Frannie. Don’t look so anxious.’

  ‘I’m not — I mean, I thought you did that very well, and now I know how to do it. I’m just tired. What can I usefully do for you apart from organize Hal?’

  For a few minutes they discussed and divided up the various tasks, Francesca taking part with every evidence of intelligence while her emotional and intellectual energy was entirely deployed, as it had been all night, in trying to decide whether she really wanted Peter Hampton enough to risk the loss of John McLeish whom she wanted very much and was missing painfully. Or whether there was some way she could have her cake and eat it. Having considered all the angles, she decided that whatever she did long-term she could not in decency cancel a date w
ith Peter Hampton on the evening of a day in which he and fellow directors had been forced to ask for a receiver to be appointed to his company.

  She returned to the business at hand, and contemplated the list of tasks that had appeared under her hand, bent her mind to it, asked one key question, and went away.

  Henry reached over to switch the phone back to his secretary, but picked it up as it rang to find John McLeish on the line, sounding over-tired and harassed.

  ‘Mr Blackshaw — Henry — sorry, but I can’t find Francesca. Peregrine’s girl-friend, Sheena, has recovered consciousness.’

  ‘That’s marvellous. I’ll tell Fran, she was just here. Hey up — does Perry’s girl know who attacked her?’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, she does.’

  Henry waited for a count of five before losing patience. ‘So who was it then, lad?’

  ‘Her brother-in-law. Her husband’s brother, moved by indignation and drink, most probably. He has a lot of form. Mrs Byers is quite clear about it, and I don’t doubt she’s right. We went looking for him straightaway of course, and he’s in Marbella. Has been since last Tuesday, the day after she was attacked.’

  ‘That buggers it,’ Henry observed, realizing that any expression of sympathy would be hopelessly inadequate.

  ‘Makes me wonder whether I haven’t gone right over the top on this case.’ McLeish sounded both sour and despondent, and Henry sought for some way of cheering him up. ‘Had you got any further with any of the likely candidates, though?’ he enquired cautiously.

  ‘Yes a bit.’ The policeman’s voice warmed and strengthened, and Henry grinned to himself. ‘You know that salesman you tipped me off about — Ketterick? Well, I have a whisper that he might be a user – hard drugs. That’d take money, wouldn’t it? — and he is a supplier to Britex.’

  ‘Oh yes. Have you asked him to assist with your enquiries?’

  ‘Not even invited him for a friendly chat down the station.’ McLeish sounded ferocious. ‘No, the trouble is, Henry, the bastard’s gone missing, and no one knows where to find him.’