by John Burke
He wrenched himself back to reality. No eager young stalker needed an autobiography ghosted. Greg’s own task right now was to become Brigid Weir-cum-Dacre-cum-Pringle-cum-Crombie.
The flat had three bedrooms, each with its own shower and a lavatory whose mahogany seats, raised with august slowness by heavy brass weights, must surely have been salvaged from some grandiose nineteenth-century hotel. Greg’s room was the smallest of the three, with its own phone and a clock radio. Hector Crombie did not share the main bedroom or occupy the third. He had chosen instead to stay in one of the members’ flats at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society a few minutes’ walk away.
‘Be less of an interruption for you two,’ he had mumbled.
‘And we won’t interrupt your sampling of the hundred proof Speysides,’ Brigid retorted.
This main room, with its wide window looking out over the streets and harbour, was more an office than sitting-room. Like the Baldonald House library it had a VDU, phones, an answering and fax machine, and shelves of files. Where one might have expected to find copies of Country Life or Scottish Field on the coffee table and the window seat, there were business supplements and appointments inserts with a few items ticked or encircled with pink highliner. ‘Give you some idea of the general background,’ Brigid had said after declaiming part of a chapter and then phoning for a cab to take her to meet her husband at the Conference Venue Exhibition.
Greg put his coffee cup down and browsed through the advertisements for world-class administrators capable of handling international investment portfolios within a team environment; dedicated depute unit managers with experience in brand enhancement, segment repositioning skills, re-profiling and facilitation; and an Expert required in Change Management. And what might Change Management be? He tried to imagine himself moving smoothly and skilfully through such a world, inventing new descriptions for himself. Words sprang off the page at him. A Crisis Manager …? Did you have to create a crisis in the first place in order to demonstrate your skills at managing it and bringing it back under control?
Brigid had scribbled notes in margins here and there. He must ask her the meaning of ‘call options’ and ‘a strangler’.
In the meantime the printer had spewed out its final sheet. It was time to re-read the text and see where some of this jargon might be fitted into the bare bones of the story. Not that the bones were all that bare. A certain Project Potential Assessor looked very well covered with flesh in the pictures accompanying features in the financial press. The solidity of his reasoning was acclaimed, too, because he had been one of the first to insist on the importance of tackling the Millennium Bug. The fact that he was computer illiterate had not prevented him from sounding off impressively and manipulating the nerds who were genuinely immersed in the idiom. He was skilful at deriding critics within and outwith his own organisation, ever since Brigid had identified a placement for him and shown him how to exploit the weak spots of some and batten on the strengths of others. That glittering CV of his would be somewhat tarnished, though, when his enemies and the general public read of those secret deals with an American investment bank and a software company whose auditor had blabbed figures to Brigid.
Then there was a high-flier called Declan Fraser. Greg had always, quite irrationally, refused to believe that anyone named Declan could be trustworthy. It was just one of those things. If asked to ghost the memoirs of a Declan, no matter how well paid the job, he would have refused. The character would somehow have come out perverse and shifty, whether or not he had been that in the first place. And certainly this one, successful as he might be, gave off an air of seediness which would not endear him to the reader.
Though of course this might be just Brigid’s way of slanting the story.
When it came to selecting the juicier bits from the finished book, newspapers would surely pick on revelations like this. Brigid had spelled out in searing detail the way in which a global consortium based in Chicago had guardedly financed Fraser’s money management company in the UK, experts in leveraged buyouts. Later Fraser, supposedly in the interests of a UK pharmaceutical company which had consulted him about raising extra finance, organised a merger which turned out to be effectively a takeover. After surviving for eighteen months with the aid of Government funding, the asset strippers moved in. The company was wound up on the grounds that, regrettably, worldwide corporate strategy meant the consortium would have to close down these operations and move them elsewhere.
Fraser might claim this as normal business practice; but some aspects, such as the undeclared conflict of interest between the backers of his company and their part in the takeover, would surely now be investigated.
Nor would Alastair Blake be too pleased when he read Brigid Weir’s dissection of his climb to power.
‘We’ll start the book,’ Brigid had said, ‘with Blake. The bastard who dropped me in it. And then let’s see how long he survives.’
Privately Greg had decided that in any sensible chronology Blake must wait until later in the book. He figured most prominently in the Fall aspect of The Rise and Fall of Brigid Weir rather than in her earlier triumphs.
Starting as a financial journalist, with a flair for smooth talk and greasing the palms of political contacts, Blake had promoted himself from nudges and winks in Royal Mile bars to more solemn briefings in expensive restaurants. Eased into partnership with a retired administration officer from the Scottish Office Financial Systems Unit who had sought Brigid’s help in setting up an agency called Vinculum Placement, he had soon removed its founder and made himself supremo.
Whatever the nominal aims of the agency in finding appropriate placements for aspiring executives, Blake’s own concentration was on political lobbying. Discreet lunches and dinners were set up. Officially no money changed hands. On the rare occasions when awkward questions were asked, Vinculum could invoke the inevitable social cross-currents in the constricted world of top executives, unexpected shifts due entirely to circumstances of the moment over which the agency itself was powerless, and — the stock excuse — the need to keep Government and public services in constant touch with business and enterprise elements.
Opportunist as ever, Blake had been trying to lure Brigid herself into forming a new consortium within the Government Relations wing of his agency. She was to pick a couple of her best people within her present department and bring them with her.
Greg went on staring at the Scottish Office, like a squat atomic power station with a sun roof. With this and the new Scottish Parliament, there was going to be plenty of scope for lobbying in the neighbourhood.
Definitely a late chapter in the book. But it had done no harm to get the facts down on paper while Brigid was hyped up and in a mood to talk. And some of those facts jarred discordantly against the images portrayed in the financial columns. The sexual transgressions of some were bad enough. Far worse were the fiddles, the thousands of people who had been ruined by some sleight of hand which gave their destroyers even more profit than they had contrived at the start.
Greg was beginning to believe that the brothel keeper whose memoirs he had ghosted had led a far more honourable life than any of these pillars of the City.
He heard the faint whine of the lift, and Brigid’s key in the lock. She looked hard at him as if accusing him of wasting time, just standing there with a handful of papers instead of pounding away at the keyboard.
It was the expression he had known way back, when she had come back to their poky little flat and virtually condemned him for not having shouldered the deputy chairman and then the chairman of that tinpot little educational publisher out of the way to make room for himself.
He said: ‘Had a nice day?’
‘Amateurish bumbling. Disneyland castles with pretty pictures indoors and paddling pools outside. All their ideas need a complete overhaul. Someone at the top to pull it all together.’
‘And you know just the head to hunt?’
‘That sort of thing’s not my conc
ern any more. But’ — her eyes lit up and came fully alive again — ‘at least I had a happy half-hour with my solicitor. We’re going to screw those two shysters for every bawbee they’ve got.’
‘What’s their defence — rightful dismissal?’
‘Par for the course. They’ll make a settlement only if I sign a guarantee to honour the terms of commercial confidentiality.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning I mustn’t communicate information to any other employer or any individual or outside interest regarding the workings of the agency. All the usual blether.’
‘Not unreasonable, from their point of view.’
‘No chance. Absolutely no chance. They don’t know it yet, but every little detail’s going to be in the book.’
‘You’re not worried about libel?’ He held out the printed pages. ‘I think we might need to tone down this bit where —’
‘Let’s get the facts down first, all raw and bleeding. Then we can debate whether any of them need cooking.’
As she riffled through the sheets he had handed over, Greg said: ‘Just what does trigger you off? We’ve got the facts here, but not the motivation. With Blake, for instance. In the early stages did you wait to be approached, or did you sniff out what was going on and spot where you could make a few grand?’
‘I seize opportunities, yes. I’ve got a gut instinct. As you say, I can sniff them out — the right men for sensitive, lucrative jobs. Provided,’ Brigid added, ‘I get my appropriate finder’s fee.’
‘Like that chapter we sketched out last week? That top clinical research job. Only you’d just got round to saying the man wasn’t medically qualified, so —’
‘But a good creative accountant.’
‘Creative?’
‘Let’s say he knew where the blood transfusions could be set up most economically, and how to channel the supplies. He’d have made a good Dr Beeching, slimming down hospitals like the railways: getting rid of awkward things that clutter up the account books.’
‘I’d have thought that nowadays, with all these inquiries going on into top-heavy administration —’
‘Inquiries are just a way of postponing decisions nobody wants to make. He’s covered himself by now. Until,’ said Brigid, ‘I choose to uncover the holes in his duvet. Or I may let him down lightly. I did get rather well paid for that bit of consultancy.’
‘So it’s basically money plus the tingle you get from power.’
‘What else?’
‘If it involved some crime syndicate, would that worry you?’
She looked at her watch. ‘I think it’s time for a spot of lunch. And then we’ll press on.’
*
In the glass shell of the Turkish restaurant facing the Scottish Office, Brigid plucked herself out of whatever had occupied her during the morning, and concentrated on her next priority. Now, without any preamble, it was single-minded application to the matter of a man called Veitch.
‘Clever in his way,’ Brigid was saying. ‘Damn good at assessing in venture capital the players who’ll be able to keep a clear head during the white knuckle phase.’ Her glee in reliving old campaigns was infectious. She was a retired general rejoicing over past tactics, rarely admitting that some victories were due more to the enemy’s errors than to his own brilliance. ‘I met him this morning at the Exhibition. And he really deserves a chapter to himself. How he got a knighthood. I can tell quite a story there. All about a little creep who spent years in Opposition denouncing cronyism and backstairs dealings, and when in power showed just how much he had been studying form. It cost Veitch a pretty penny in that direction to get where he is. And some even prettier pounds to finance the peerage he’s expecting now. But where do you suppose all those pounds and pennies went to?’
For a few minutes they both wrestled appreciatively with their kebabs, and then Greg ventured: ‘Have you considered putting a few success stories in?’
‘They’re all success stories. How to win prizes by putting your coins in the right slot.’
‘What I meant was, isn’t there any example of one of your placements which has worked out for the public benefit? I mean, just for once without any backstairs fiddling? I do think we might get some variety into the overall tone of the book.’
‘In the end,’ Brigid overrode him, ‘mine’ll be the big name on the book. So it had better be the real me between the covers.’
The phrase made him laugh. On impulse he asked: ‘All these men — did you sleep with any of them?’
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’
‘I’d have thought there were circumstances when it might have been quite an important factor.’
‘You’re not jealous, are you, Greg?’
‘After all this time?’
‘I’ve often thought we could have made a go of it, you and I. If only you hadn’t been so pig-headed.’
Years ago he might have flown off the handle at the monstrosity of that. Today he simply said: ‘Yes or no — did you sleep with any of them?’
She shrugged. ‘When it suited me.’
‘Many of them?’
‘Only when it seemed necessary. Pathetic, really. Often I’d got them hooked without having to go the whole way.’
‘Basically, to get what you wanted you didn’t mind being a prick-tease?’
‘You put it a bit crudely, Greg.’
‘How else would you put it?’
Her smile was slowly becoming one of complicity, of sharing a joke. She was beginning to enjoy this line of questioning.
‘It gave them a feeling of such importance. Made them feel they were in charge after all. All that old macho swaggering. For all my importance in fixing things for them, they loved to convince themselves I was still more in their power than they were in mine. So easy to let them believe that, and then do what I’d meant to do all along. Wait till they read this book, then they’ll get the whole scenario.’
‘You didn’t ever feel you were degrading yourself?’
‘Never. I’ve always enjoyed a good session in bed as much as a well-organised deal. You should remember that.’ A slight arch of her right eyebrow suggested she wasn’t sure whether he really appreciated what he had lost. ‘The preliminaries,’ she reminisced. ‘Dinner, subdued lighting, whispering secrets and half promises … mounting tension …’ Yes, thought Greg. Thrust and brief battle of bodies and minds, and the sated withdrawal. And afterwards, the reckoning. Only so far as he and Brigid had been concerned, they had started out too poor to have much in the way of expensive dinners or subdued lighting — other than the 40-watt bulbs in that dismal rented flat, and the night-light by the baby’s cot.
‘Just as money-orientated, when you think of it,’ he said, ‘as a prostitute’s bargain. Only in this case the men never quite realise whose body is being sold along with the soul.’
‘Most of them were grateful for the pay-off. I was the one who saw a potential they’d never have seen in themselves. I virtually created their new persona.’
‘You didn’t create me.’
‘You never gave me enough time.’
‘Or maybe you just never made the time to see the potential, as you call it. Too busy with Simon’s potential. Too busy edging him into that cushy number as a — what was it? — Interpersonal Strategy Consultant. Whatever that may be. Just as meaningless as the claptrap Simon could talk non-stop without any outside help. Must have suited him perfectly.’
‘I always knew how to place people.’
‘As a matter of interest’ — he kept it as cool and level as possible — ‘why did you ditch Simon in the end?’
‘We haven’t got to that bit yet. I’ve told you, he’ll come in when I’m good and ready.’
‘You’re dodging something. Don’t tell me there’s still something I haven’t been told about that two-faced little shit?’
She waved to a passing waiter and dug out her credit card. ‘Time we got back and did some serious work
.’
When they were back in the flat, she looked expectantly at the tape recorder, obviously rehearsing mentally what she wanted to deal with next. Before switching on, Greg said: ‘Why d’you suppose you’re so good at assessing men for difficult jobs but so hopeless at choosing one for yourself?’
‘I’ve got no complaints about Hector.’
‘After two disastrous failures, I suppose he must be a very comfortable type.’
‘You wouldn’t begin to understand.’
He shot it at her: ‘Are you going to put all the bedroom negotiations into the book as well?’
‘Where relevant.’
‘And you think Hector’s going to enjoy reading every titillating little detail?’
‘Never mind about Hector. What about you? Are you up to getting it all down on paper? Think you can stand —’ She was interrupted by the phone ringing, and reached for it with automatic precision. ‘No, your father’s not here. Still up at the Exhibition.’ She put her hand over the mouthpiece and flashed a grin at Greg. ‘Or back in the Members’ Room trying his tenth malt of the day.’ She removed her hand. ‘What is it, Caroline?’
The grin did not so much fade as snap off. Brigid listened, took a deep breath, and then said: ‘We’ll come back at once.’
‘Something wrong?’ Greg knew it was silly as soon as he had spoken. All too obviously there was something wrong.
‘Grotesque.’ In a crisis Brigid could be either flintily calm or flintily savage. This time she was calm. ‘Only a few hours ago, there I was, looking at all that paraphernalia for protecting property — locks, bolts, bars, alarms and the rest of it. Too late. That was Caroline. We’ve had a break-in at the house. A pretty thorough job, by the sound of it.’
5
Morning mist had been slow to clear from the valley. Tendrils like spun sugar clung to the branches of trees as Detective Inspector Lesley Gunn and a uniformed constable drove in through the main gates. She hadn’t expected to see Lord and Lady Crombie again so soon, this time close to. Wryly she thought what a pity it was that they hadn’t had time to take any of the precautions on display at the exhibition.
